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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2008 > July > 16
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Review: Austin Chamber Music Festival
Partway through the first week of this summer’s Austin Chamber Music Festival, it is clear that artistic director Michelle Schumann is building boldly on her impressive first season. The exciting new ingredient this summer is the new venues at the Long Center for the Performing Arts.
Tuesday evening offered the Gryphon Trio in Dell Hall. Though both performers and audience were a bit swallowed up in the lovely but large space, the players were fairly successful scaling everything up to fill the room. Pianist Jamie Parker has a bright, brilliant touch. With the piano lid fully open, his sound was much more present than that of cellist Roman Borys, though Borys consistently made himself heard. Violinist Annalee Patipatanakoon, however, was swamped more than once by the pianistic tidal wave.
One thing that this ensemble does well is balance and clarify a texture so that the music takes on a tactile quality. And though these musicians think and move as one — no small achievement — the music was always brilliant and facile, never moving. With the opening Mozart Trio this lack wasn’t so marked. But Dvorák’s “Dumky” trio was never warm and glowing, and the tango by Astor Piazzolla played as an encore lacked color and allure.
Last Saturday’s concert was interesting in an unusual way. The Cecilia String Quartet, a young, multiprize-winning ensemble, presented a satisfying though not always polished program in the Long Center’s Rollins Studio Theatre. The group is still building the techniques required of chamber music professionals.
Though the music making always had the right idea, the focus wasn’t always there.
But Rollins Theatre has a suspended wood floor that makes the entire room a sounding board for the music. I don’t remember the last time I heard a cello sound so naturally resonant in a concert, and the violins and the viola benefited in the same way. The only catch is that any audience noise is just as audible as the music; but we can learn to be quiet, can’t we, friends?
David Mead is an American-Statesman freelance classical music critic.
The Austin Chamber Music Festival continues through July 26 at various venues. Schedules and details at www.austinchambermusic.org.
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The Beats go on Thursday
Here’s something to really howl about.
Thursday night, the Harry Ransom Center and the Austin Chamber Music Center are teaming up to present the Tosca String Quartet in a tribute to the Beat poets.
Specifically, the captivating Tosca will play Boston composer Lee Hyla’s arrangement of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” the ultimate Beat Generation poem.
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,” goes the now-famous (infamous?) first line.
And best yet, Thursday’s event is FREE. It starts at 7:30 p.m. in Jessen Auditorium in Rainey Hall on the south end of the University of Texas campus.
Thursday’s show is held in conjunction with the Ransom Center’s exhibit “On the Road with the Beats” with is open until 7 p.m. on Thursdays. The Ransom Center is right next door to Rainey Hall.
Also on the program is a musical and vocal performance of Jack Kerouac’s “American Haiku” with John Mills on saxophone and Robert Kraft on vocals, a performance of “On the Road” with Graham Reynolds on keyboard and Kraft on vocals
Also on the program is a screening of two different versions of Shirley Clarke’s experimental 7-minute 1959 film “Bridges-Go-Round.” Shot around New York City, the film is a collage composition of footage of bridges filmed from unusual and surprising angles. Clarke commissioned two scores for the film. Teo Macero’s melodic score for brass and voices and Louis and Bebe Barron’s synthesizer and mechanical-sounding score.
Clarke, who trained as a dancer and choreographer before turning to filmmaking, once said, “You can make a dance film without dancers.”
Everybody, wear your black berets and be there, or be square.
