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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > April > 28
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Review: Graham Reynolds and Carrie Fountain give us a new kind of art song
Composer Graham Reynolds and poet Carrie Fountain delivered a totally Texas 21st-century remake on the classic art song with “Between Steel and Stardust (Songs of Texas Women)” which premiered Sunday at UT’s Butler School of Music.
UT vocal professor Darlene Wiley, wanting new repertoire for young singers — in particular new selections of high school singers to sing in UIL competitions — commissioned Reynolds for the song cycle. And Reynolds in turn tapped Fountain.
And together Reynolds and Fountain dreamed up charming, fresh, sweet and wonderfully relevant songs — all for soprano voice and piano accompaniment — that honored an utterly original fivesome of Texas women.
The Angel of Goliad, cosmetics empire builder Mary Kay Ash, Tejano pop singer Selena, colorful outlaw Bonnie Harper and U.S. Congresswoman Barbara Jordan got their musical and poetical due from Graham and Fountain. What better pantheon of Lone Star women to represent an modern, eclectic, inclusive view of history while engaging and delighting young women singers?
Wiley performed the songs Sunday accompanied by Rick Rowley.
The Angel of Goliad, who administered to wounded solidiers during the Texas ware for independence, received an appropriately honorific ode.
Mary Kay Ash likewise had a song that evoked the strong-willed self-made millionaire who built her fortune by unleashing thousands of Cadillac-driving cosmetics saleswomen. Reynolds gave it a melody that was charging, hectic, delightful. Fountain drew us charming images:
Pink
I’m thinking Pink.
Driving these streets
thankful some things are only skin deep
Selena and Harper were honored with beautiful, sensitive melodies. And for Jordan, Fountain pulled language from the Congresswoman’s own speeches to paint a portrait of a woman — the first African American female member to serve in the U.S. Congress from the South — who was steadfast in her will.
Let’s hope the UIL forces recognize what a delight — what a unique opportunity to sing about Texas women as inventively imagined by a Texas-based composer and poet — these songs could be for young singers.
Also premiered was Reynolds’ “Double Double: A Suite for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano,” a virtuosic piece pulled off with flair by Rowley, Rebecca Henderson and Kristin Wolfe Jensen and filled with Reynolds’ signature turns: charging rhythms, sweeping cinematic crescendos narrative melodic lines and rollicking arpeggios.
Both “Between Steel and Stardust” and “Double Double” were commissions by UT faculty to a non-UT local composer. And that represents a much commendable reach on UT’s part to the community and to Austin’s music scene — a reach that shouldn’t be so infrequent.
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Explore Austin’s other live music scene
We’re in the midst of a five-week project exploring Austin’s ‘other’ live music scene — classical music. Recent coverage: A symphony for 30 years of musical friendship | Michelle Schumann gives chamber music a needed update |
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Review: TEMP delivers delightful musical complaints
Whine, whine, whine.
We all do it. And we’ve been doing for centuries, sometimes, thankfully, with more poetry and music than not.
Taking a cue from the recent popularity of complaints choirs — modern ensembles specializing in resurrecting, and sometimes refashioning, Renaissance and Baroque songs of woe and heartbreak — the Texas Early Music Project delivered their own humor-inspired musical litany of grievances Saturday night at First English Lutheran Church.
TEMP artistic director Daniel Johnson’s musical celebration of kvetching attracted about 100 people who laughed at the funnier turns (and there were plenty) or showered with applause some of the regular TEMP soloists — mezzo-soprano Stephanie Prewitt and sopranos Gitlanjali Mathur and Jenifer Thyssen.
The musical grumbling began with secular songs from the 13th-century and wound their way through the centuries to the 18th-century. An instrumental ensemble — including Reniassiance lute, violin, harpsichord — complemented the changing line-up of vocalists.
Prewitt started things off with a soulful lament about a jealous husband, her voice clear yet rich and always full of nuance. Mathur and Thyssen impressed with their deft phrasing and full tones on a duet about a heartbroken young woman. And Mathur captivated with a poignant song adapted from Shakespeare’s ‘Othello.’
But the concert wasn’t all songs of woe and sadness. A
Giving their own nod to the centuries of complaints they sang, the ensemble ended with an hysterically funny flourish of their. Johnson molded the much-loved but over-played Pachelbel Canon in D into a 21st-century complaint song with lyrics culled from the TEMP member themselves.
“My boss doesn’t care if I do a good job, but I really have to look interested in the meetings.”
“Why can’t I ever catch up on sleep?”
“Why do they sell us ten hotdogs and eight buns?”
Valid gripes indeed and utterly charming when sung, as TEMP did, with plenty of flare and polish. Johnson and his ensemble get it right — they make gorgeous music and make it a good time.
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Texas art, in the beginning
Yes, Texas’ own art history is not all grandiose landscapes and frontier cowboy paintings.
This weekend the Center for Advancement and Study of Early Texas Art, gathering in town for its annual symposium, hosts an art fair. And a sponsored exhibit, on view through the summer, gathers art work that offers a slightly different take on the expected notions of what Lone Star art history.
Culled from the collections of the Blanton Museum of Art, the Harry Ransom Center, the Austin Museum of Art and the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum, the “Texas Treasures” exhibit features rarely celebrated masterworks of Texas art from 19th century impressionist landscapes to mid-century modernist abstractions.
Texas Treasures: Early Texas Art from Austin Museums.’
Opening reception: 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday.
Regular museum hours: 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays, 1 to 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.
Exhibit continues through Aug. 30
Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum, 605 Robert E. Lee Road
512-445-5582, www.umlaufsculpture.org
Texas Art Fair
When: 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. May 2, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. May 3
Admission: $10
AT&T Hotel and Conference Center, 1900 University Ave.
Participating galleries: Beuhler Fine Art, Cliff Logan Art & Antiques, David Dike Fine Art, Heritage Auction Galleries, Rainone Galleries, Inc., Robert E. Alker Fine Art, Russell Tether Fine Arts Associates, Simpson Galleries, Valley House Gallery & Sculpture Garden and William Reaves Fine Art
Image: Donald Leroy Weisman, “Electronic Icon,” ca. 1958, Blanton Museum of Art
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