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March 16, 2010
Review: Ellen Fullman and the Long String Instrument
Venue and performer synched perfectly Sunday night when experimental composer and instrument creator Ellen Fullman brought her 100-foot Long String Instrument to the Seaholm Power Plant, a defunct 1930s power plant in downtown Austin.
Hosted by the New Music Co-op, Fullman installed her Long String Instrument in the Seaholm’s towering turbine hall — its cavernous corners, abandoned industrial fittings and dust-caked windows dramatically lit by lighting designer William Meadows.
Atmosphere is everything for Fullman, a self-taught musician who began her career as a sculptor (and who created the Long String Instrument when she lived in Austin from 1985 to 1997).
Yes, there’s the resonance from the enormous venue that accentuated the almost ethereal sound of Fullman’s instrument. But the visuals and the environmental - and the audience interaction with both — played an equally strong part in the 90-minute performance.
Coating her hands with rosin, the petite Fullman walks like a tight rope performer, one foot carefully in front of the other as she moves the length of her instrument, vibrating its long strings as she slowly moves.
And as if to acquaint the audience to exactly what she was doing, Fullman started with “Event Locations, No. 2” a solo piece she played with tiny surveillance cameras attached to each of her wrists. The detail of her hands on the strings projected in black-and-white on a wall several yards away.
The magnificient ‘Adaptations from Stratified Bands: Last Kind Word’ was a re-setting for of Fullman’s epic piece composed in 2002 for the Kronos Quatret. Fullman was joined by New Music Co-op members James Alexander (violin), Henna Chou (cello) and Travis Weller (violin) whose fixed string instruments provided a kind of tonal grounding against the ethereal bent pitches of the Long String Instrument. Fullman used as a starting point for the piece a haunting 1930s blues song which echoed throughout.
Weller and Nicke Hennies joined Fullman on the box bow — the boxes are handle-held rhythmic devices used to play Fullman’s string instrument more rhythmicall — for ‘Time Crossing.’ Developed as Fullman’s homage to the sound of the harmonica in folk music, the box bow created repeated rhythms that jigged along sounding also sometimes like an accordion or a pump organ or a harmonium or a couple of banjoes or even the vestiges of marching band heard from a distance.
Its simple harmonies — characterized by big wide open fourths and fifths — bore the unmistakable sounds of early American folk music, at once joyous and plaintive and nostalgic.
Though there were seats for the sold-out audience of 250 (the second of two shows last weekend), people were invited to move quietly around the vast turbine hall. And wander they did, some slipping off to far corners, others drawing closer to the musicians. One woman danced free form. A woman and her young daughter paraded the perimeter of the crowd for a while quietly swinging hands.
As shadows in the industrial setting grew deeper as the night outside darkened, the audience only seemed to grow more engaged. As the last sounds resonated resonated, people seemingly froze for a moment — venue, musicians and audience by then in perfect synch.
Photos by Dell Hollingsworth.
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March 15, 2010
Review: Austin Symphony Orchestra, Douglas Harvey, cello
The shout of ‘bravo’ came a micro second after cellist Douglas Harvey let go of the last note of Strauss’ ‘Don Quixtoe’ at the Long Center Friday night.
Loud, clear, sincere — that ‘bravo’ packed a kind of spontaneous emotion rarely witnessed from an Austin Symphony Orchestra audience.
The kudos were deserved. Harvey, who is principal cellist for ASO, delivered an emotionally thoughtful, musically wise interpretation of Strauss’ vivid, spirited tone poem that tells the story of Cervantes’ picaresque novel through a series of lush yet highly caricaturesque variations.
Conductor Peter Bay kept the tempos moderate and sympathetic to Strauss very literal musical interpretation of Don Quixote’s imaginative adventures without letting the sometimes satirical piece from turning into caricature. The whimsy was just right; So was the pathos of Quixote’s misguided adventures.
Other orchestral soloists featured in the piece — concertmistress Jessica Mathaes and violaist Bruce Williams — deftly handling Strauss’ conversation-like musical dialogue.
Indeed, ASO is to be complimented for featuring soloist talent from its own ranks rather than hosting a guest soloist: It should happen more often.
Bay organized the evening’s program around works that celebrated literature and hence also presented Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture. With pieces both so often excerpted and rehashed in popular culture, they could remain indistinct, or worse, exaggerated. But again, Bay kept things nicely measured and sharp, allowing for a full-bodied presentation of each lush, fantastical work to take shape. No cartooning here.
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It was more than a little auspicious Sunday afternoon at the Paramount Theatre that opera singer Barbara Smith Conrad was greeted with waves of applause and standing ovations during the premiere of “When I Rise,” the intelligent, poignant and ultimately liberating documentary by Austin filmmaker Mat Hames chronicling Conrad’s life.
After all, when Conrad was a gifted young music student at the University of Texas in 1957 — part of the first group of African Americans to be admitted as undergraduates to Texas’ flagship university - she wasn’t initially allowed into the Paramount to see a film that her drama professor sent the class to see.
Produced under the auspices of UT’s Briscoe Center for American History, “When I Rise” is ultimately about the extraordinary grace of an extraordinary woman.
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March 2, 2010
A 100-foot-long string instrument to take up residency in Seaholm
The turbine hall of the historic Seaholm power plant will become the site for an utterly unconventional concert when Ellen Fullman, composer/performer and former Austinite, returns to town with her 100-foot-long string instrument.
When Fullman was here in Austin, 1985 to 1997, she rented a space in a former candy factory off Manor Road It was there that she developed her very unique instrument known as The Long String Instrument.
Fullman used amazing lengths of wire and custom-built wooden resonators to fashion her gigantic instrument. To play it, she developed a method of rosining her hands and walking the lengths of wire as she coaxed out otherworldly vibrations.
“My work resides between the fields of sound art and music,” she has said. “My interest is in composing music on multiple levels, constructing not only the fundamental harmonic content, but also creating a phantom composition by choreographing the performer’s movement through a multi-dimensional matrix of unfolding overtones.”
Fullman’s return visit — her first in 12 years — jibes with the SXSW premiere of Peter Esmonde’s documentary film about her music entitled “5 variations on a long string.”
The two performances at Seaholm are courtesy the non-profit group New Music Co-op.
8 p.m. March 13
8 p.m. March 14
Seaholm Power Plant, 214 West Ave.
Tickets: $12 students/advance and $15 at door
www.newmusiccoop.org
For the concerts Fullman will perform her compositions solo and in ensemble with NMC instrumentalists James Alexander (viola), Henna Chou (cello), Nick Hennies (percussion) and Travis Weller (violin).
Ellen Fullman performance at Berkeley Art Museum, Dec. 2009.
Photo by John Fago.
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March 1, 2010
Review: 'Albert Herring,' Butler Opera Center
Though it debuted in 1947, Benjamin Britten’s comic opera has only fairly recently gotten the love from the opera world with productions popping up on calendars more and more.
The University of Texas’ Butler Opera Center mounts a comely new production of its own which opened this past weekend.
Perhaps it’s Britten’s particularly cruel British comedic sensibility hits home with today’s audiences? Then again, perhaps it’s only now that Britten’s status as one of the greatest composers of the 20th century is now a given.
Like his more popular opera ‘Peter Grimes,’ Britten’s ‘Albert Herring’ centers on an outsider character misunderstood by uptight British society as represented by a small town riven with hypocrisy and intolerance.
Based on a short story by Guy de Maupassant — but thoroughly British in Britten’s interpretation — ‘Albert Herring’ is vicious satire on societal propriety as portrayed in early 20th-century Britain that leaves no character unscathed.
When the autocratic Lady Billows (in this production played by soprano Emily Ward) finds no suitably chaste young woman to be crowned May Queen in the village’s annual celebration, she is convinced by the a council of villagers to elect the hapless grocer Albert Herring (tenor Brad Raymond). Albert is, after all, a simpering momma’s boy.
After being dressed in the clownish humiliating May King costume for the village festival, Albert benefits from a glass of surreptiously spiked lemonade which leads him on an all-night bender. After a night of reckless wanton behavior, Albert returns to the village defiant in his new-found embrace life’s more licentious behavior.
The notable highlight of UT’s production was the orchestra led by Jim Lowe, the Butler Opera Center’s new conductor. Lowe (whose resumes includes stints with Houston Grand Opera and conducting the recent Tony Award-winning Broadway revival of ‘Gypsy’ starring Patti LuPone) wrested considerable panache out of the 12-piece chamber orchesrta of student musician. And that’s not an easy feat given that Britten’s score is chock full of deft musical craftsmanship and witty, ironic references to both the whole operatic canon and popular British music. (Britten quotes everything form Gilbert and Sullivan operattas, Baroque operas and even the late Romanticism of Richard Strauss). Lowe’s musical direction is some of the best seen yet from the Bulter Opera Center.
Though the voices in Sunday night’s cast were generally good, (a few secondary roles are double cast), Marc Reynolds’s limp stage direction left some cast members and their characters adrift.
Those who rose above it — and whose voices also stood out — shone.
Raymond makes Albert his own dramatically and vocally, utterly convincing at first as the hapless nerd, a convincing buffoon as the May King and finally a rather sardonic convert to life’s pleasures — and musically strong and distinct throughout.
As Albert’s erstwhile buddy Sid, baritone James Van Rens (who recently had a small part in Austin Lyric Opera’s charming ‘The Star’) was the complete opera package: a performer with excellent comedic acting chops and a rich voice full of clarity and seasoned with superb articulation.
Ditto with baritone Brian Pettery, in a secondary role as the Vicar. Vocal clarity and theatrical aplomb made his character stand out in a cast filled with many secondary characters.
An awkward set by Anne McMeeking had a split staircase serving as the main scenic element but its institutional modernist style were out-of-place next to Michaele Hite’s luscious period costumes.
Though in places uneven, this production of ‘Albert Herring’ nevertheless gives notice that this bitterly funny Britten comedy is not to be ignored.
‘Albert Herring’ continues at 7:30 p.m. March 5 and March 7. McCullough Theatre, UT campus. $20 ($10 for students). www.music.utexas.edu.
Photo by Jon Smith.
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Review: New Music Co-op 'Invisible Landscapes'
Silence permeated the new compositions played Saturday night by Austin’s New Music Co-op at Ceremony Hall, one of three different concerts — under the banner ‘Invisible Landscapes’ — the music collective presented which focused on the music of California-based composer Michael Pisaro in collaboration with percussionist Greg Stuart.
Warm water morphing into air was the primary image behind Pisaro’s ‘Ascending Series(7) (Evaporation),’ a 25-minute piece. A commission from the New Music Co-op, called for seven bowed instruments — in this case two violins, a viola, a bass and three percussionists who used bows on the rims of floor tom drums to create a soft, ethereal scraping sound. ‘Ascending’ started with a tone that formed something of backbone of the sound. Then, after slowly crescendoing, the tone seemed to evaporate, longer stretches of silence marrying the ever quieter moments of the almost white noise coming from the percussive bowing. Ambient noises from outside the auditorium made delightful guest appearances while ‘Ascending’ demanded careful, meditative listening.
New Music Co-op member Nick Hennies debuted his ‘Second Skin With Lungs’ which had five musicians at floor toms making a circle around the audience. Slowing using their hands to make circular motions across the drum skins, the musicians created a gentle wave of sound, sometime no more than a whisper.
Also getting a debut was Travis Weller’s ‘Toward and Away From the Point of Balance,’ a mesmerizing 10-minute piece for a string trio and The Owl, Weller’s inventive 16-string instrument that produces haunting sounds. Toward’ arched from silence to purpose and back to silence with moody slivers of harmony roughed up a bit with the string players injecting near-silent and other-worldly scraping sounds.
Sound may have been the product of Saturday’s concert, but, cleverly, silence emerged as the subtle star.
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February 25, 2010
This weekend, fresh music abounds
Live Music Capital of the World? We got your fresh music right here. This weekend offers several opportunities to catch fresh approaches to the classical canon and also new composed music.
Friday night conductor Kristjan JärvI and his Absolute Ensemble play ‘Absolute Bach Reinvented’ at Hogg Memorial Auditorium.
The program features a 16-piece ensemble playing pieces that riff on Bach’s Inventions by members of the band.
To Jarvi, Bach is like water. ‘Like water is essential for life on this planet, Bach is essential to musicians,’ the Estonian-born conductor says by phone last week from New York.
Jarvi’s boundary-shredding musical MO eschews dumb-downed crossover antics, the typical model used to popularize classical music. If anything, he wants to return classical music back to its origins when a score was considered a little less sacrosanct and musicians and conductors felt empowered to improvise.
Read our story here.
Also this weekend, Friday through Sunday, Austin’s irrepressible New Music Co-op presents ‘Invisible Landscapes’ three different programs featuring the music of guest composer Michael Pisaro and percussionist Greg Stuart.
Featured on Friday is Pisaro’s piece ‘A Wave and Waves’ for 100 percussion instruments, played by Stuart accompanied by an eight-channel surround sound system. Saturday’s show features two major commission pieces, ‘Red River 7’ by Radu Malfatti and Pisaro’s ‘Ascending Series (7) (evaporation).’ Sunday’s free concert features more by Pisaro as well as new works by Co-op composers Brent Fariss and William Bridges.
Shows are at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. Ceremony Hall, 4100 Red River St. $12-$15 (free on Sunday). www.newmusic.coop
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February 22, 2010
Bang! Free music tonight
Forget the violin and the piano: In the new millennium, percussion has become the favored solo instrument of young composers.
Tonight, in a free concert, University of Texas-based percussion ensemble Line Upon Line spearheads ‘Clutch: New Music by UT Composers,’ a program of new percussion-based music by student and faculty composers. Included on the program are ‘Echoes of Veiled Light’ by Zack Stanton and a new piece by Steve Snowden.
The free concert is at 7:30 p.m. Recital Studio 2.608. Music Building, UT campus.
If you can’t make the concert, it will be Webcast live from www.music.utexas.edu.
Photo by www.c2wphotography.com.
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February 17, 2010
Austin's Miro Quartet leading Naxos online chart
The Miro Quartet — the string quartet in residence at the University of Texas’ Butler School of Music — is topping the charts right now.
That is, the foursome’s latest release is running in the number one spot on NaxosDirect, an online music distribution site run by the classical music label.
‘The Miro Quartet Live’ is actually co-released on the Longhorn label, UT’s all-but-invisible record label. The Miro plays Dvorak’s String Quartet in F Major “American,” and the world premiere recording of “Credo” by Kevin Puts. a work commissioned for the Miro Quartet by Chamber Music Monterey Bay.
The CD was recorded live in UT’s Bates Recital Hall.
The Miro Quartet next plays in Austin May 9 with cellist Lynn Harrell.
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February 9, 2010
Ellington's 'Sacred Concert' reprised Feb. 28
Last year, it was beyond standing room only when Austin Chamber Music Center hooked up with Huston-Tillotson University choirs and other performers in a rousing performance of Duke Ellington’s ‘Sacred Concert.’
People filled the aisles and even stood out in the hall of HTU’s King Seabrook Chapel last year as the choirs, jazz orchestra, soloists and an accompanying tap dancer made Ellington’s oratorio mighty.
Now, ACMC and Huston-Tillotson is reprising the concert at 3 p.m. Feb. 28, once again in King Seabrook Chapel on the HTU campus at E. Seventh St. and Chicon.
The concert is free. Seating is first-come, first-served. Early arrival is advisable if you want a space.
Ellington wrote three massiive works he called ‘Sacred Concerts, sprawling collections of songs and suites that blend gospel music with jazz, classical music, spirituals, blues, choral music and even dance and oratory. They were performed in cathedrals and churches during the last decade of his life, including 1973 in London’s Westminster Abbey.
Read more about last year’s joint performance with ACMC and HTU.
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February 8, 2010
Review: Golden Hornet Project: Symphony VI
If alt classical music presenters Golden Hornet Project accomplished nothing else Saturday night at two sold-out concerts at Austin Ventures Studio Theatre, the group made clear that their raison d’etre is relevant: Audiences are hungry for new composed music - or new classical music. And if you offer it in an accessible manner, they’ll be there to listen.
And listen eagerly and appreciatively the audience did as GHP co-artistic directors Graham Reynolds and Peter Stopschinski debuted their respective sixth symphonies, each written for string orchestra.
To add a little context to their alt classical genre-less starting point, Reynolds and Stopschinski added ‘Popcorn Superhet Receiver’ to finish the program, a two-movement symphonic work by Jonny Greenwood, BBC composer-in-residence and leadman of alt rock band Radiohead.
And the audience got it — the alt classical context, the sense of occasion of new music being debuted, the energetic yet unassuming vibe that both Austin composers project.
And the audience loved it: the energy in the room was palpable.
At times, though, that rawboned energy got the best of the orchestra, leaving spots in all three pieces in messy, if breathless, disarray. Conductor Ludek Drizhal did his best to corral the energy and maintain focus with each piece’s singular, and volatile, musicality.
Reynolds’ ‘The Difference Engine’ was triple concerto in five movements for violin (Leah Zeger), cello (Jonathan Dexter) and Reynolds on piano. Reynolds’ packed ‘Difference’ with his signature musical devices: plaintive melodies, charging rhythms, percussive splashes that were realized in Reynolds playing the piano strings with mallets and a few hyper-virtuosic solos (this time mostly for violin). Reynolds maintains something of a narrative thread through even his most varied works, a thread for the listener to make their way through even some of the most rapid-fire musical routes.
Stopschinski’s ‘Rough Night With Happy Ending’ traded on lots of harmonic and rhythmic complexities to terrific effect. Dark yet melodic colorations strode on top; a little rough scratching and other instrumental noise-making percolated throughout. Toying even further, Stopschinksi placed the violin section on both sides of the orchestra to simulate an echo. It was Surround Sound, the non-electronic version if you will. Though a mash-up of many things, ‘Rough Night’ made all its experiments rewarding.
Greenwood’s ‘Popcorn’ also aims to imitate electronic sound with unplugged instruments, riffing on the whooshing white noise that radio emits as a signal scoots up and down the dial. But at Friday’s first show, not all of the discrete glissandos and slow explorations of almost atonal clusters manifested as clearly as they could have which left Greenwood’s piece bereft of its clarity.
It’s a challenge of brand new compositions — the energy they demand. But it’s a challenge Austin musicians and audiences are clearly eager to take on.
Photo: Peter Stopschinski (foreground) with conductor Ludek Drizhal. Photo by Callie Richmond.
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February 4, 2010
Two new symphonies, with a little help from Radiohead, make their debut
It’s not easy for a genre-blurring musician in a genre-focused music industry. When it’s simpler for the music biz to sell its cultural product in neat categories, any music that bridges or blurs those market-described categories often gets left behind.
Graham Reynolds and Peter Stopschinski know that all too well. The pair of genre-defying Austin composers, well-known to arts audiences for their myriad collaborations with theater and dance productions, will debut their respective sixth symphonies on Saturday at Austin Ventures Studio Theater inside Ballet Austin’s downtown headquarters.
Read the rest of the story here.
Preview the music:
- Graham Reynolds: ‘The Difference Engine’, Movement 2: Ada
- Peter Stopschinski: ‘Rough Night with Happy Ending’, Movement 4
Photo by Ralph Berrera/Austin American-Statesman.
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February 2, 2010
Q-and-A with Anne Akiko Meyers, violinist
Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers burst onto the international concert stage when she was just 11 years old. Now, the California native is a sought after soloist with a busy schedule of concerts around the globe.
Meyers is also a new member of the faculty at the University of Texas Butler School of Music.
On Sunday, she gives her first recital since moving to Austin, with Anton Nel at the piano at UT’s Bates Recital Hall at 4 p.m. See www.music.utexas.edu for ticket information.
A-AS: How did you select the program you’ll be playing?
Anne Akiko Meyers: I programmed Schnittke, Beethoven, Vernon Duke, Gershwin and this amazing premiere by Jakub Ciupinski with several things in mind. I love how Schnittke took classical themes and sacred music such as ‘Silent Night’ and put such an ironical twist on it. Usually music like that can be so overdone but when you hear his music, he spins everything very subtlety on it’s head and ends up making a very dramatic original statement. That originalality is uncanny and very brilliant. There is also a seasonal thread through the program with me visiting spring in the Beethoven ‘Spring’ Sonata, summer with the Gershwin, autumn via Vernon Duke and winter with the Schnittke. The premiere by Jakub Ciupinski is with electronics. This is a first for me, exploring the rich tapestries of a musical universe using a recording to accompany the solo violin.
AA-S: You started your career at a preciously young age. What kind of career advice do you give your college-age students at UT?
Meyers: Yes, I began my career at a very young age and relished every bit of it! Everybody’s development is very different and most my students have no desire to be soloists. Being a soloist must start at a very young age and by the time one is in college, that choice should have been made much earlier in one’s life. I think it is very important to be honest with one’s abilities in order to focus on learning and making the most of one’s talents and capabilities. This way, the path is clear to make plans with one’s life and hopefully make an impact with the environment around you.
AA-S: You’re new to town. What are some your favorite places in Austin?
Meyers: Being that I travel so much, my favorite place to be in Austin is at home. I love being able to sleep in my own bed, crawl to the kitchen and serve myself loads of ice cream. Other places I love visiting are Mount Bonnell, Zilker Park, the shops and restaurants at the Domain, Whole Foods and the Milk and Honey Spa. I seem to spend a lot of time on Research Blvd. as well!
Anne Akiko Meyers
When: 4 p.m. Sunday
Where: Bates Recital Hall, Music Building, UT campus
Tickets: $10-$20
Information: 471-5401, www.music.utexas.edu
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February 1, 2010
Review: Austin Lyric Opera's 'The Star'
Combine a zany plot propelled by wacky characters, charming music laced with witty dialogue and a mad world made into a visually arresting mod funhouse and you have the utterly entertaining production of Emmanuel Chabrier’s ‘The Star,’ now getting a turn by Austin Lyric Opera at the Long Center.
Only now recognized for its brilliant goofiness after a century in obscurity, Chabrier’s 1877 opera bouffe is a sparkling confection — a bon bon for the opera connoisseur in this impressive, inventively-designed production by New York City Opera and Glimmerglass Opera.
And yet, with its mix of dialogue and singing — and thanks to some very clever direction by Alain Gauthier and droll dance moves by choreographer Jeff Michael Rebudal - this version of ‘The Star’ is also pure delight for any opera novice or musical theater aficianando.
Superbly conducted by Richard Buckley, who brilliantly extracted the lyrical wittiness in Chabrier’s exquisite score, ‘The Star’ is an opera bouffe that gently satirizes opera itself.
In this comic confection, King Ouf the First (tenor Jean-Paul Fouchecourt) scours his kingdom to find a subject to impale — a public execution, after all, being Ouf’s favorite birthday celebration. But unluckily, Ouf chooses a young peddler Lazuli (mezzo-soprano Deborah Domanski), whose star, the king’s astrologer, Siroco (basso buffo Kevin Glavin), reveals, is linked to Ouf’s.
And the problem? If Lazuli dies the king will die a day later — and Siroco 15 minutes after that. To complicate things, Lazuli falls in love with Ouf’s fiancée, Princess Laoula (soprano Nili Riemer)
After that, well, the plot spins comically out-of-control.
As Ouf, Fouchecourt is a remarkably gifted comic actor and sang with terrific lyricism. Domanski did well in the classic trouser role, all gangly moves capped by a sweet tone. Riemer impressed as Laoula. But it was the ensemble together in comic play that impressed the most.
So did the crazy yet stylish sets and costumes. Set designer Andrew Lieberman and costumer Constance Hoffman created a world where characters clad in saturated hues stood out against bright white surfaces and curving funhouse mirrors. Costume silhouettes are part period Toulouse-Lautrec, part animated Beatles movie, “Yellow Submarine.” Characters rode goofily adorned scooters on and off the stage. Ouf’s throne is giant, inflatable and yellow.
Special props have to go to the chorus who not only sang well but managing the abundant comic choreography with aplomb.
For a relatively young regional company, Austin Lyric Opera has made many a sophisticated gestures itself in its almost 25 years through tackling challenging contemporary repertoire, staging productions in non-traditional venue and premiering new operas.
Now, ALO demonstrates its sophistication again by joining the strata of international opera presenters who are smartly resurrecting forgotten jewels of the repertoire.
‘The Star’ continues at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 3 and 5 and 3 p.m. Feb. 7 at the Long Center. $29-$133. www.austinlyricopera.org
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January 31, 2010
No Grammy for Conspirare, but cheers at the ceremony
No Grammy this year for five-time nominated choir Austin Conspirare.
But we did hear audible cheers and hollers in the audience when Conspirare and artistic director Craig Hella Johnson were named. Johnson is at the awards with a contingent of family, friends and Conspirare supporters.
The Grammy’s pre-telecast show is being Web-cast live at www.grammys.com/live with Aretha Franklin hosting the classical awards.
Conspirare was nominated in the Best Classical Crossover Album for ‘A Company Of Voices: Conspirare In Concert,’ recorded live at the Long Center for the Performing Arts and released on the Harmonia Mundi label. It’s the fifth nomination for the non-profit organization.
The winner of the Best Classical Crossover Album was ‘Yo-Yo Ma & Friends: Songs Of Joy And Peace’ (Sony).
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January 29, 2010
For a third time, Conspirare heads to the Grammy Awards
For a third time, Austin-based choir Conspirare is headed to the Grammy Awards.
That’s a remarkable feat: Conspirare is the only Austin classical music group to ever be singled out so repeatedly by the industry. And to boot, Conspirare is a non-profit organization that only started year-round programming in 1999 and has a current annual budget in the $1.3 million range. Their artistic achievements are nothing short of outstanding.
Conspirare is nominated in the Best Classical Crossover Album for ‘A Company Of Voices: Conspirare In Concert,’ recorded live at the Long Center for the Performing Arts and released on the Harmonia Mundi label.
Last year, the choir, founded and directed by Craig Hella Johnson, netted two Grammy noms for, “Threshold of Night,” also released on Harmonia Mundia. The nominations were for Best Classical Album and Best Choral Choral Performance. “Threshold of Night” featured a song cycle by award-winning young British composer Tarik O’Regan.
And in 2006, Conspirare received two Grammy nominations for the CD “Requiem,” in the categories of Best Choral Performance and Best Engineered Album, Classical.
The classical music categories aren’t part of Sunday’s prime time telecast. But earlier in the afternoon, can follow the results and see a live stream of the ‘other Grammy’s’ here www.grammy.com.
We’ll also be posting the results in this blog and its accompanying Twitter handle, artsinaustin.
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January 26, 2010
Review: Austin Chamber Music Center
Concerts by Austin Chamber Music Center never fail to impress. And Saturday night’s program at the First Unitarian Church once again proved that ACMC is one of Austin’s most notable music groups.
Part of what makes ACMC’s programs so appealing is their, well, appealing-ness. There’s none of the classical music exclusivity to the tenor of ACMC’s audience
For starters, pianist ACMC artistic director Michelle Schumann eschews written program notes in favor of informal introductions she gives before each piece — wonderful, friendly short talks that reveal not only clever anecdotes into the composers and their lives, but Schumann’s own intelligent musicological insights
Such short chats seem like such a minor detail, but those chats have a way of prepping the audience as a group, getting them ready to listen, together. A little reaching out to the audience goes a long way in the usually stuffy classical music world.
Which is good because Schumann and ACMC are serious about the type of music presented.
Bucking the big B’s of the repertoire — Bach, Beethoven and Brahms — Schumann opted for chamber music by the R’s: Rossini, Ravel and Rachmaninov.
Schumann along with violinist Teresa Ling and cellist Greg Sauer were locked in a tight embrace for Ravel’s Piano Trio in A, full of energy and ardor for the composer’s colorful ride through myriad, diverse influences: Basque dance, Malaysian poetry, Baroque formalities. Whew.
Dedicated to his mentor, Tchaikovsky, Rachmanivov’s Trio Elegiatique No. 2 is utterly poignant and its sprawling length makes it more than reminiscent of the composer’s symphonic music for which he is much better known. Schumann brought her laser-like emotional committment to the virtuosic piano writing together the trio shoulder the weighty mournfulness with considerable inspiration.
Sauer opened the evening’s program with a cello transcription of Variations on One String on a Theme by Rossini, a rollicking virtuosic delight that he played with aplomb.
Yes, chamber music can be fun.
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January 15, 2010
Austin Lyric Opera announces 2010-2011 season
Verdi’s ‘La Traviata,’ ‘Rossini’s ‘The Italian Girl in Algiers’ and ‘Flight’, the contemporary comedy by Johnathan Dove mark Austin Lyric Opera’s 2010-2011 season, ALO general director Kevin Patterson will announce today.
Actually, the new season will begin this summer with Michael Nyman’s chamber opera ‘The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat.’ Based on the popular book by poetic neurologist Oliver Sacks, Nyman’s 60-minute opera will be staged at St. Martin Lutheran Church in collaboration with the Austin Chamber Music Center’s summer festival. ‘Hat’ will run July 9-11.
And ‘Hat’ marks an important development for ALO and opera in Austin. Finally, some chamber opera in this town — and some contemporary chamber opera to boot Nyman’s minimalist score riffs on Schumann lieder. The three-character story follows a singer who suffers from visual agnosia, the inability to recognize familiar things and people.
Dove’s ‘Flight’ will also make a mark on the Austin scene. Based the true story of Mehran Nasseri, an Iranian refugee whose stateless status forced him to live for years within Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport. Dove’s opera, premiered by Glyndebourne Touring Opera in 1998, finds a cast of very modern characters grounded by their own emotional incapacities and stuck together in an airport during a storm. ‘Flight’ plays in April 2011.
In November, ALO will present a Lyric Opera of Chicago production of ‘La Traviata’ wiht Pamela Armstrong singing Violetta and native Texan Chad Shelton singing Alfredo.
And in January 2011 it’s Rossini’s ‘The Italian Girl in Algiers (L’Italiana in Algeri)’ in a smart production from Santa Fe Opera. Sandra Piques Eddy, who wowed Austin in La Cenerentola in 2008, will sing Isabella.
Richard Buckley will conduct all of ALO’s upcoming season.
Image: ‘Flight.” Glyndebourne Opera.
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January 11, 2010
Review: Conspirare's 'New Year's Classic'
There’s a reason Richard Strauss’ Deutsche Motette isn’t frequently performed. Though only about 20 minutes in length, it’s a sprawling late romantic symphony for voices, dense in its musical imagery and staggering in its complexity with some 16 vocal parts.
Leave it to Austin choir Conspirare — which just received its fifth Grammy nomination — to make stunning work of Strauss’ stunning Motette, the marquee piece of a concert Saturday night at the acoustically fine St. Martin’s Lutheran Church.
Rich in impressionistic nuance, the Motette awes with its spectacle — particularly its astonishing harmonic shifts. And Conspirare’s genius at singing as one voice while also allowing enough space of each singer’s own voice to shine through made for much clarity and emotional resonance.
If there was a theme to the program selected by Conspirare founder and artistic director Craig Hella Johnson, perhaps it was musical complexity.
Before unleashing the Strauss, Johnson and the choir pulled off Bach’s motet Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied with aplomb, deftly maneuvering through Bach’s rich and intriguing wave of counterpoint.
Balancing the mighty weight of the Bach and the Strauss were a selection of Brahms’ romantic Leibeslieder Waltzes, stylishly sung. And as a delightful detour, Johnson threw in ‘My Little Green Cactus,’ a jumpy 1920s tune sung in the a capella style of the Comedian Harmonists, an all-male German close harmony ensemble that was one of the more successful pre-World War II groups. As cute as it was, the song really just re-enforced what the rest of the program made clear: That Conspirare continually demonstrate superb control and dexterity as a choir, no matter the repertoire.
Later this month, Johnson and Conspirare will go up for their fifth Grammy nomination, this time for Best Classical Crossover Album, competing against the likes of Yo Yo Ma. That an Austin non-profit musical organization even has the chops to even compete against a classical music icon —and commercial juggernaut — like Ma is impressive. Then again, Conspirare has the voice that roars, sublimely.
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January 5, 2010
Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet plays Jan. 27
With UT’s Texas Performing Arts (formerly known as the Performing Arts Center) program up and running full-throttle for a year now, Austin’s seeing a greater influx of marquee-caliber international classical ensembles and artists.
This is a very good thing for the self-proclaimed Live Music Capital of the World. After all, there’s nothing like raising the bar.
A $14.5 million renovation to UT-TPA’s main venue, Bass Concert Hall, and the hiring of Kathy Panoff as the organization’s new director. has led a season with some notable offerings.
Up next, the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet plays the intitimate McCullough Theatre on Jan. 27. Tickets are $36 ($10 for students). See www.texasperformingarts.org.
The Quintet’s program for the concert is:
W. A. Mozart: Fantasy f-minor KV 608 for a mechanical organ
Anton Reicha: Quintet in D Major, Op. 91, No. 3
Samuel Barber: Summer music, Op. 31
Carl Nielsen: Quintet Op.43
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December 31, 2009
Review: 'A Texas Christmas Carol'
Variety shows are tough. They can demand lightning fast emotional shifts as a troupe moves from lighter fare to more melodramatic matters. But they also can offer quick hits of all kinds of entertainment - here’s a show choir, here’s some ballet, here’s a jazz singer — a jukebox of the stage, if you will.
It helps to have a theme, and “A Texas Christmas Carol” pretty well explains it. No, Scrooge is not involved, thank God — transplanting him to Austin would be a bad look.
Instead, veteran producer Charles Duggan (“A Greater Tuna” and two sequels) has assembled an all-Austin talent revue based around a loose Christmas/holiday theme.
The MVPs are the almighty Biscuit Brothers and Tish Hinojosa — the former move the show along, the latter sings a mess of songs. Dancers from Ballet Austin crank out a nine-minute Nutcracker, perfect for your local 4-year-olds. (I took my 4-year-old Tuesday night.)
The Amazing Grace Gospel Choir gave us “Go Tell It On The Mountain” (not sure if the intro was supposed to remind me of Gyorgy Ligeti’s “Requiem,” but the effect was cool). Members of the Austin Lyric Opera were sprinkled throughout — they led a “Hallelujah” chorus sing-along and soloist Liz Cass delivered a sharp “O Holy Night” (a.k.a. the best Christmas carol ever).
Jazz vocalist Kat Edmonson was the guest star for the Dec. 30 performance, torching up “Santa Baby” and “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” The Tapestry Dance Company kicked, the Bowie High School Silver Stars show-choired and Zach Theatre regular Jill Blackwood seemed to sing on just about everything. The show benefits a variety of charities on various nights (see below).
At one point, Duggan emerged with his twin 7-year-old sons to talk about how the show was for them and children everywhere (see also the list of charities involved). It’s the first year for this production and Duggan hopes to make it an annual event. He’s enough of an old pro to learn from some slower moments (and a second act that’s longer than the first) and tighten things up next year.
Here’s hoping “A Texas Christmas Carol” is around for enough years for the twins to get thoroughly embarrassed by their dad bringing them out on stage.
‘A Texas Christmas Carol’
When: 1 and 6 p.m. today.
Long Center, 701 W. Riverside Drive.
$10-$60
www.thelongcenter.org
Each performance features a special guest artist or artists and also benefits an Austin charity with 20 percent of the ticket proceeds donated.
2 p.m. Saturday: Matthew Hinsley, Austin Classical Guitar Society (Helping Hand Home for Children)
7:30 p.m, Saturday: Anton Nel, Stanislav Pronin (Any Baby Can, Ronald McDonald House)
1 p.m. Sunday: Anton Nel (St. David’s Foundation)
6 p.m. Sunday: Matthew Hinsley and the Austin Classical Guitar Society (Make-a-Wish Foundation)
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December 21, 2009
School of Music faculty meets fundraising match
Despite recessionary cutbacks, some faculty at UT’s Butler School of Music have donated $25,000 to establish a new endowed scholarship in musicm, the university announced today.
The grassroots effort began this summer when philanthropists Sarah and Ernest Butler — who last year contributed $55 million to the UT School of Music which was named in their honor — said that they would provide matching funds for any scholarship gifts between $25,000 and $50,000 through the end of 2009. According to UT officials, several members of the music faculty saw the announcement as an opportunity to help provide much-needed student aid.
The resulting $50,000 endowed scholarship in music — when matched by the Butlers in January 2010 — will support undergraduate and graduate students in music.
“I am particularly moved by the fact that in a year in which the faculty received no merit raises, they would voluntarily donate funds in an amount sufficient to establish an endowed scholarship,” said B. Glenn Chandler, director of the Butler School of Music. “This is just another example of the unwavering dedication our faculty have to the education of their students.”
To date, the Butler’s dollar-for-dollar matching program has resulted in seven new scholarships for music. Chandler reportedly said he anticipates that three additional scholarships in progress will also be matched.
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Anton Nel named to endowed faculty position
The University of Texas has named UT professor of piano Anton Nel to the recently established Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Endowed Chair in Piano in the Butler School of Music.
The the endowed position was established through a $1 million gift from the Longs.
An nternationally-recognized pianist,Nel joined the UT faculty in 2000. In March, he was the first classical performer to play a solo concert at the year-old Long Center for the Performing Arts, also named for Joe and Teresa Long.
Nel’s next Austin appearances include a concert with violinist Anne Akiko-Meyers and with the Texas Piano Quartet on April 28. Both concerts are at UT’s Butler School of Music.
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December 10, 2009
Austin Symphony Orchestra hires new executive director
After suddenly losing its executive director earlier this year under a cloud of confusion, the Austin Symphony Orchestra has announced that it is hiring one of its own for the top management position.
Anthony Corroa, the orchestra’s operations manager since 2000 and the recent interim executive director, has been named the new executive director.
Orchestra board president Joe R. Long said in the announcement Thursday that Corroa was selected after a nationwide search.
Corroa’s appointment comes after the orchestra went through a tumultuous management shuffle earlier this fall.
Galen Wixson, the organization’s previous executive director, disappeared from the organization’s Web site Aug. 31. At the time, ASO board leaders offered no explanation for Wixson’s disappearance though it was reported that he had been fired.
On Sept. 1, more than two dozen orchestra musicians sent a letter to the board’s executive committee protesting Wixson’s sudden and unexplained absence.
Then on Sept. 9, Long finally issued a statement saying Wixson has resigned as executive director over creative differences.
Wixson never responded to requests for comment.
Wixson was hired in mid-March after a national search. He left the position of executive director of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra to take the Austin job. Previously, Wixson had served as executive director for the Symphony of Southeast Texas, the Manhattan Center for the Arts and the American String Teachers Association.
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‘Dance-Along Nutcracker'
Keeping Austin invincibly weird. Donning fanciful red jackets and hats that resemble the old-fashioned military outfit worn by a classic nutcracker figurine, the indie band Invincible Czars charge through their rock-ed up version of “The Nutcracker Suite.” And you’re invited to dance along!
‘Dance-Along Nutcracker’
When: 3 p.m. Saturday, family-friendly show. 9 p.m. adult show
Where: Jovita’s, 1617 S. First St.
Cost: $8 adults, $4 children. Adults’ show: $10
www.invincibleczars.com
The Invincible Czars perform their ‘Dance-Along Nutcracker’ at Houston’s Wortham Center Houston
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December 4, 2009
Guitar maestro, William Kanengiser
A member of the famed LA Guitar Quartet, William Kanengiser has a repertoire that ranges from the classics to contemporary adventures. On this program, he’ll play, among other selections, Spanish classics by Albeniz (‘Granada (Serenata) from Suite Española’) and by Sor (‘Elegiac Fantasy’) along with jazz-inspired pieces by contemporary composers such as Bryan Johanson and Brian Head.
8 p.m. Saturday
Northwest Hills United Methodist Church, 7050 Village Center Drive
$25-$35
www.austinclassicalguitar.org
William Kanengiser playing ‘Brookland Boogie’ (by Brian Head)
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December 3, 2009
Austin choral group Conspirare nets fifth Grammy nomination
Austin-based professional choral ensemble Conspirare has been nominated for a Grammy for Best Classical Crossover Album for its CD ‘Company of Voices: Conspirare in Concert’ on the Harmonia Mundi label.
“Company of Voices: Conspirare in Concert” was recorded live at the Long Center for the Performing Arts in October 2008 in cooperation with PBS television station KLRU. It was first released as a DVD for national broadcast on PBS affiliate stations nationwide beginning in March 2009, and was subsequently released on CD by Harmonia Mundi in June 2009. Both the CD and DVD are available for purchase through Conspirare www.conspirare.org.
Previously, Conspirare received Grammy Award nominations in 2009 for “Threshold of Night.” The nominations were for Best Classical Album and Best Choral Performance.
Conspirare previously received two nominations in 2006.
‘Christmas at the Carillon’
Conspirare’s annual holiday concert showcases artistic director Craig Hella Johnson’s blending of music old and new. This year’s special guest is Patrice Pike.
8 p.m. Long Center. 701 W. Riverside Drive
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November 24, 2009
Austin Children's Choir founder dies
Bernard Gastler, founder of the Austin Children’s Choir, died Saturday. Gastler died of a stroke. He is survived by his wife, Ruth Meyer Gastler, and two children, Connie and Gregory. Gastler was 80 years old.
Founded in 1986 by Gastler with the support of Concordia University, the choir performed throughout the country and locally. Gastler served as the choir’s conductor and artistic director for 23 years.
Over the course of his career, Gastler worked as an elementary school teacher and minister of music at Trinity Lutheran Church in Port Arthur and at St. Paul Lutheran Church and School in Austin, where he has also served as an organist. In 1982, he became a professor of music at Concordia University Texas.
Memorial services are pending.
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November 23, 2009
Review: Austin Symphony Orchestra and Conspirare
The soaring articulate voices Grammy-nominated choir Conspirare proved the star Saturday night at the Long Center when joined forces with the Austin Symphony Orchestra.
And Cary Ratcliff’s sweeping oratorio ‘Ode to Common Things’ proved to be the hit — a captivating, charming ride.
Collaborations between two of Austin’s major classical groups are always rewarding. That this one featured contemporary repertoire — not so typical for ASO — was decidedly refreshing.
Too bad, then, that attendance was far less than capacity. Empty seats — sometime whole rows — were scattered around the house.
The Rochester-based Ratcliff set music to poems by Chilean writer Pablo Neruda who, throughout the course of his life, devoted four volumes to odes to ordinary, everyday objects. Ratcliff selected five, keeping the text in the original Spanish.
Percussionists and harpist stayed busy with the shifting rhythms. Two pianos and a synthesizer (which added echoing sounds and Dopple shifts) gave the music dimension.
Starting with the percussive ‘Ode to Things,’ Ratcliff’s score rapidly shape-shifted through many moods yet the fury never overwhelmed. There was pleasure in the racket Ratcliff created — the almost 100 voices of Conspirare generating the rhythm with the textures of short consonants and open vowel sounds of Spanish.
The musical, and emotional, dimension grew deeper with ‘Ode to the Bed’ before the reflective ‘Ode to the Guitar.’
Among the trio of vocal soloists, mezzo-soprano Dana Beth Miller impressed in ‘Ode to the Guitar’ particularly in the almost edgy duet with acoustic guitar which echoed the darker, thoughtful tonal colors and complex harmonies.
The mood shifted again with ‘Ode to Scissors,’ a gentle parody of sorts of Orff’s over-played Carmina Burina. Syncopations ruled here, rhythms snipped along.
The final ‘Ode to Bread’ was as much urgent as hymnal, a reminder of our connection to the universal life of the everyday.
On the program’s first half, ASO music director Peter Bay placed Mendelssohn’s Incidental Music to ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ Performed nicely, it was nevertheless an oddly formal counterpoint to Ratcliff’s expressive, emotive work.
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November 22, 2009
Review: DJ Spooky's 'Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica'
Appropriately, DJ Spooky, aka multi-media artist and brainy hip hop deejay, Paul D. Miller, started his ‘Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica’ by playing a piece of ice. A haze filled the Hogg Auditorium Friday night before the show while sounds of crunching glaciers grew louder. Then Miller took the stage, a piece of a dry ice (the source of the haze, as it turns out) on a silver platter before him. Across the ice he slowly drew a set of metal chimes to create eerie tinkling sounds.
‘Terra Nova’ is Miller’s sometimes mesmerizing, sometimes not so mesmerizing, musical and visual consideration of Antarctica.
Riffing on the concept of Ralph Vaughan Williams ‘Sinfonia Antarctica,’ (Williams’ seventh symphony which originated with the composer’s score for the 1948 film ‘Scott of the Antarctic.’) Miller composed a 70-minute piece for piano, two violins and cello to lead by his live re-mixing of digital and found sounds.
Austin’s alt-classical ensemble Golden Hornet Project — here represented by Graham Reynolds, Hector Moreno, Alexis Ebbets and Joseph Suffield - accompanied, giving full throttle to Miller’s charging and very cinematic score. (GHP collaborated with Miller on his latest release, ‘The Secret Song,’ playing on six tracks.)
On two rear projections screens images flashed by in choreographed collage - swooping aerials of the startling Antarctic landscape, scientific data charts on rising sea levels, footage of a 1950s-era Soviet polar exploration, maps historic and current and deliberately provocative phrases such “ice is a geological clock.”
Though cleverly edited, the hardly-subtle, nor deep, collage grew repetitive. And in the end, Miller’s new millennium travelogue didn’t necessarily take us to a new point: Mostly, we already know the polar environment is threatened.
But if the unoriginality of the visuals wore, the music redeemed. And when considered as a live chamber symphony with some video and digitized accompaniment — rather than a new visual/aural re-mixed art form as may have been suggested — then ‘Terra Nova’ pleased.
Miller stylized his score with a kind of driving crescendo-filled minimalist repetition. Cinematic, often dire or plaintive in mood and only partially reflective, the music nevertheless communicated a sense of urgency.
Miller’s media mix-up isn’t for everyone. Some audience members walked out Friday night. But for others ‘Terra Nova’ deserved a very spontaneous standing ovation. Likely, the final point to ‘Terra Nova’ is somewhere inbetween.
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November 18, 2009
DJ Spooky's 'Sinfonia Antarctica'
Inspired by a trip to Antarctica, DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid (aka Paul Miller)’s ‘Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica” is a multimedia travelogue by the avant garde turntable master and intrepid re-mixer.
The 70-minute piece — which plays Hogg Auditorium Friday night — is a visual and acoustic portrait of the ever-mysterious yet rapidly changing Antarctic continent.
Read a feature story on the show here.
DJ Spooky will participate in an online chat 1 p.m. Thursday.
For the Austin gig, Miller has tapped Austin musicians Graham Reynolds on piano, violinists Alexis Ebbets and Joseph Shuffield and Hector Moreno on cello.
And as the Golden Hornet Project, Graham and Moreno, along with Peter Stopschinski, Bruce Colson, Jason Elinoff and Seetha Shivaswarmy join DJ Spooky on his new CD ‘The Secret Song,’ including on the track ‘Measure for Measure.
Photo by Rita Antonioli.
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November 11, 2009
Now, everyone can sing with Conspirare
Always dreamed of singing with Grammy-nominated choir Conspirare? Now you can as Conspirare presents its inaugural Rush Hour Big Sing.
The free community event invites everyone — regardless of their musical talents or lack thereof — to join Conspirare’s artistic director Craig Hella Johnson and members of the choir in a group sing.
Johnson will lead everyone through breathing exercises, vocal warm-ups, and short, melodic songs that can be easily learned without reading music. Conspirare Symphonic Choir members will sit among the audience to sing along and provide musical support and encouragement during the one-hour event.
Rush Hour Big Sing
5:30 p.m. Nov. 12
St. Martin’s Lutheran Church, 606 W. 15th St.
Free
www.conspirare.org
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November 8, 2009
Review: Austin Lyric Opera's 'La Boheme'
How to make “La Boheme” one of the most performed and beloved operas of all times sparkle anew?
Add some youthful energy. Austin Lyric Opera does just that with its current production at the Long Center which opened Saturday night. A roster of up-and-coming soloists bring vigor to this “La Boheme.” And that gives this story of struggling Parisian artists and a doomed love affair — wrapped in achingly beautiful music — a new vitality.
The bravos started early Saturday night, coming first for French tenor Sebastien Gueze who sang the role of Rodolfo, the poet who falls in love with the tuberculosis-stricken Mimi. His ‘Che gelida manina’ — one of the opera’s most famous arias, and really, how to follow up when the likes of Pavorotti made it world-famous to a popular audience? — brought Gueze spontaneous cheers. No wonder: Gueze delivered it with a bright-toned richness and his lyric quality seemed effortless. And after that, he could do no wrong with the audience. Acting the role of the young lover, Gueze was all gangly energy and expressive emotion.
As Mimi, Dina Kuznetsova had a sweet tone and manifested a sense of pathos in her tragic role.
Baritone Craig Verm — a native Houston making his Austin Lyric Opera debut - shone as Marcello, Rodolfo’s sidekick. Again, a youthful energy made for a character that was robust and forceful while Verm’s tone rich and passionate.
Liam Moran sang a touching Colline in the fourth act and Sari Gruber’s vivaciousness made a saucy Musetta.
Conductor Richard Buckley brought a gorgeous lushness along with a refreshing dynamism to the score. Puccini’s big sweeping emotional moments got all their due and then some without ever over-shadowing the tenderness of the smaller poignant episodes.
The scenic design, by San Diego Opera, only got its most interesting in the second act when giant Toulouse-Lautrec inspired posters decked out the Cafe Momus, the artists’ hangout. Indeed, the visual trappings of this “La Boheme” didn’t stray beyond the traditional.
But any conventionality to this production was undone by a uniformally lively young cast replete with excellent singers. Pucinni’s romantic coming-of-age tale rings true in this “La Boheme.”
“La Boheme” continues 7:30 p.m. Nov. 11 and 13, 3 p.m. Nov. 15. www.austinlyricopera.og.
Image: Craig Verm as Marcello, Jonathan Beyer as Schaunard, Liam Moran as Colline, Sébastien Gueze as Rodolpho. Photo by Mark Matson.
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November 2, 2009
'La Boheme' keeps it young
Since its debut more than a century ago, Puccini’s tragic romance about two young lovers struggling in 19th-century bohemian Paris has arguably become the basis of all subsequent struggling-artist love stories.
And while the production presented by Austin Lyric Opera that opens this weekend keeps Puccini’s story in the 19th century (created by the San Diego Opera, the sets riff on the art of painter Toulouse-Lautrec), the cast for this “La Bohème” is most decidedly young
Here’s 30-year-old French tenor Sebastien Gueze who plays Rodolfo in a recent production of ‘La Boheme.’
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October 28, 2009
'The House of the Sun'
Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara based his opera ‘The House of the Sun’ on the true tale of two sisters who fled the Russian revolution in 1917 and lived in virtual isolation in Finland for almost 70 years, refusing to believe that the revolution had ever happened and that their previous life of luxury was over. Finally in the winter of 1987, the sisters froze to death in their house in the woods, a house called Solgården (‘Sun’s garden’).
The Butler School of Music collaborates with the Sibelius Academy of Finland in this new production.
Sometimes characterized as a mystic or romantic composer, Rautavaara nevertheless employs a fundamentally post-modern musical language in which theirs a blend of modern and traditional tonalities and elements.
‘The House of the Sun’
7:30 p.m. Thursday through Sunday
McCullough Theatre, UT campus
$10-$20
www.music.utexas.edu
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October 16, 2009
Free. Music. Sunday.
We love recession-friendly arts programming.
Programming like the free concert by the Santiago-Salomon Duo, 3 p.m. Sunday at Mexic-Arte Museum, 419 Congress Ave.
The Austin Chamber Music Center is hosting the Oaxaca-based pair of musicians for a concert.
Violinist Ana Patricia Santiago and pianist Carlos R. Salomon have carved our a repertoire for themselves that blends classical music with the traditional music of Mexico and Latin America. For Sunday’s program, the duo will play many of Salomon’s own compositions.
A complimentary reception featuring Mexican-desserts reception will follow the concert. See www.austinchambermusic.org for more information.
Here’s something of what you can expect:
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October 14, 2009
Dial 'O' for opera tonight
Austin Lyric Opera general director Kevin Patterson wants to talk to you.
Tonight, from 7 to 7:30 p.m. Patterson is holding an live interactive phone chat with anyone who wants to dial in.
Patterson’s up for talking about ALO’s upcoming season which opens Nov. 7 with ‘La Boheme.’ And he promises to reveal what makes this production of ever-popular Puccini’s romantic tragedy — ‘La Boheme’ inspired ‘Rent’ — a must-see. Patterson also promises to reveal ‘five Incredible secrets no one knows about this season.’
Dial 512-501-4531 and enter the conference ID code 865962#.
Go to the live Web cast page for more info. And you can submit questions now.
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October 11, 2009
Review: Conspirare 'A Time for Life'
“Remember” the chorus breathed at the end of Robert Kyr’s ‘A Time for Life,’ a 90-minute piece for eight voices and a string trio.
Friday’s presentation at St. Louis Catholic Church was the second of four Conspirare performances of Kyr’s oratorio (it was premiered in 2007 by Portland, Oregon’s Cappella Romana).
Kyr plucked from myriad texts for his elegiac libretto. Native American prayers, Orthodox Church writings, portions of the Old Testament - it was all mixed together in an invocation for humankind to renew its commitment to the care of the planet.
Likewise, Kyr layered modalities that hinted at non-Western musical traditions as well as those from earlier eras of Western music in stunning blend. Wafts of medieval chants mixed with complex canons and contrapuntal harmonies or tender moments of sheer lyricism.
Conspirare director Craig Hella Johnson collaborated with Kyr (the composer was in town and offered pre-performance talks at each show) to stage ‘A Time for Life’ in the active manor Kyr intended. Tenor David Farwig walked slowly down the center aisle to the stage as the music began, pleading with us in quiet song to recall how the planet is dying. The other singers joined from the outer aisles before talking their places in front.
Farwig’s clear and present tenor commanded in his many prominent moments. Soprano Abigail Lennox deftly combined luscious tone with captivating drama.
The oratorio journeyed from dark and almost woeful to deeply thoughtful to an almost - though not entirely - celebratory end.
The Farwig proceed down the aisle followed be the remainder of the singers.
“Remember” they told us.
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October 6, 2009
'Hi, How Are You Are You?' artist Daniel Johnston gets an iPhone app
In a case of technology imitating art, the bipolar singer-songwriter and artist Daniel Johnston — legendary in Austin for, among other creations, his ‘Hi, How Are You?’ mural near the UT campus — now has a iPhone app that’s been created based on music and visual art.
Johnston’s quirky cartoon creatures inhabit a virtual world — the game is actually called ‘Hi, How Are You?’ — and as a player sets out to battle the devil-as-frog enemy, Johnston’s quirky folk music plays.
Read American-Statesman tech culture writer Omar Gallaga’s blog note on the game.
‘Hi, How Are You?’ was developed by Austin-based game creators Peter Franco and Steve Broumly of DrFunFun.
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October 5, 2009
More live music without the mud
Yes, you can enjoy live music in Austin without destroying the lawn at Zilker Park. (See “ACL grounds to remain closed until end of month.”)
On Wednesday, two of Austin’s busiest virtuosos — pianist Anton Nel and cellist Bion Tsang — team up for concert of sonatas by Barber, Prokoviev and Grieg.
The concert by pair of UT music professors is a t 7:30 p.m. in Bates Recital Hall. Tickets are $10 ($5 for students).
The concert will also be Web cast live. Log on to www.music.utexas.edu a few minutes before the concert begins to catch the live stream.
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Live music without the mud
Not into rolling in the mud in Zilker Park to see live music?
This Saturday, Austin Classical Guitar Society brings virtuoso Kazuhito Yamashita to town for a rare concert.
Yamashita rose to international prominence when he performed phenomenal feats on the solo classical guitar including Dvorak’s ‘New World Symphony’ and Musorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition.’ He recorded and toured extensively with flute giant James Galway and has enjoyed the distinction of being Japan’s most celebrated classical guitarist. Though a legendary performer, Yamashita makes trips to North America with extreme rarity.
For Saturday’s concert, Yamashita will play Sonata No.1 for solo guitar “The Blue Flower,” by Keiko Fujiie. He’ll also play his arrangements for Bach’s Cello Suite No.1, BWV 1007 and Bach’s Violin Sonata No.2 BWV 1003.
8 p.m. Saturday. Northwest Hills United Methodist Church, 7050 Village Center Dr., Tickets: $35-$60. www.AustinClassicalGuitar.org
Unaccompanied Cello Suite No. 6 in D Major, BWV 1012: I. Prelude by Johann Sebastian Bach. Arranged by Kazuhito Yamashita. Guitar : Kazuhito Yamashita. Live at Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, Tokyo, Japan. May 20, 2000
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October 2, 2009
Meanwhile, not at ACL
Not going to Austin City Limits this weekend? There’s plenty of ‘other’ music and arts going in town.
At the Long Center tonight through Sunday, Ballet Austin is staging Stephen Mills’ new choreography of ‘Firebird, offering a 21st-century take on a century-old dance to music of Igor Stravinsky. Read more about it here.
Here’s a rare video of the 82-year-old Stravinksy himself conducting the finale to his ‘Firebird Suite.
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September 24, 2009
Ann Hume Wilson named as Conspirare executive director
After a nationwide search, Austin Grammy-nominated choirConspirare has selected Ann Hume Wilson as its next executive director, Conspirare officials announced today.
Wilson is currently associate director of the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin, where she also served as interim director during 2008-09.
“Much as I will miss being at the Blanton, I jumped at the chance to come to Conspirare, which brings such acclaim to Austin through its recordings, tours, and always-moving performances,” said Wilson, in a statement released by Conspirare. “I am thrilled to be returning to the performing arts after many years with museums, and look forward to building more recognition and support for the inspiring art of Craig Hella Johnson and his amazing company of voices.”
Wilson’s job at the Blanton will conclude on October 23 and she will take the helm at Conspirare on November 2. Melissa J. Eddy, who has served as Conspirare’s interim managing director since July 1, will become its communications and grants manager.
A native of Washington D.C., Wilson has over three decades of experience in arts administration. Since 2004, she has been associate director of the Blanton, also serving as interim director during 2008-09. At the Blanton, she oversaw all administrative and operational aspects of the museum and led the institutional branding efforts and marketing campaign for the highly successful grand opening of the Blanton’s new building in 2006.
Wilson has served as director of marketing and communications for the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; manager of public relations and marketing for the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; director of marketing for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra; director of public relations for Spoleto Festival U.S.A.; and assistant manager of the Opera Company of Boston. She is a frequent speaker on arts management, branding and strategic planning at national and regional arts conferences.
Wilson bears a connection to a fun footnote in American vocal music history. Wilson is the daughter of the late Washington Post Music Critic Paul Hume who in 1950 earned the wrath of President Harry Truman when Hume wrote a negative review of a solo voice performance by Margaret Truman, the president’s daughter, who had aspirations to be a professional singer. “(She) cannot sing very well … is flat a good deal of the time,” wrote Hume. President Truman wrote Hume a blistering letter of complaint telling Hume “you’re off the beam.”
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September 21, 2009
Review: Austin Symphony Orchestra's season opening concert
Friday night at the Long Center the Austin Symphony Orchestra opened its 99th season with a concert featuring music by Mozart and Ravel.
Yet there was little sense of occasion that evening. (For most regional arts organization, a 99th season is a milestone.)
No public greeting or acknowledgment of the orchestra’s impending centenary. No usual beginning-of-the-season curtain speech by an official or a board leader welcoming the orchestra’s loyal audience and thanking patrons.
That silent treatment Friday night was all the more noticeable given the recent dust-up at the orchestra.
Reports emerged Aug. 31 that newly hired orchestra executive director Galen Wixson had suddenly been fired. Callers to the orchestra’s office were told that Wixson no longer worked there and he was scrubbed from the symphony’s Web site. The next day, orchestra musicians sent a protest letter to the board asking for explanation of Wixson’s disappearance.
More than a week later, board officials offered their explanation. The orchestra’s long-time legal counsel assisted in “facilitating the resolution” of “creative differences between the Austin Symphony Orchestra Society and Mr. Wixson.”
Just six months after he was hired to great fanfare, Wixson was gone.
The chill of those events seems to linger. What musical verve and artistic emotion there was to the Friday’s concert came from guest artists Leon Fleisher and Katherine Jacobson Fleisher.
With its jazzy rhythms and harmonies, Ravel’s Piano Concerto in D major for the Left Hand is a dramatic rocket ride that Fleisher — who himself spent nearly 40 years limited to the use of left hand after a neurological disorder affected his right hand — played with uncommon flair and vibrancy. The most stunning aspect of the Ravel is that by just listening to it, you would never know it’s scored for just one hand. But Ravel’s genius — and Fleisher’s virtuosity — makes for one of the best piano concertos in the repertoire.
After intermission, Fleisher was joined by his wife Jacobson Fleisher in a delightful, spirited performance of a two piano version of Mozart’s Concerto in F Major.
But the concert opener — Mozart’s Symphony No. 31”Paris” — felt perfunctory and dry, not spirited, buoyant and colorful as this popular Mozart symphony should be. The concert’s final piece Ravel’s Rapsodie Espagnole managed some verve and spirit if only because the rollicking Rapsodie is impossible, even in a dark mood, to resist.
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September 19, 2009
Review: Cassatt String Quartet
Captivating and full of nuance, the Cassatt String Quartet delivered a mesmerizing concert that was very warmly received Thursday night at UT’s McCullough Theatre.
The New York-based ensemble was there to feature the Texas premiere of String Quartet No. 3 “Cassatt” by Austin composer, and UT professor, Dan Welcher, a piece they commissioned from Welcher.
The quartet did so with passion, extracting considerable affection from Welcher’s complex three-part composition. Welcher based the quartet on three paintings by American impressionist, and ensemble namesake, Mary Cassatt, reproductions of which shared the stage with the musician. (That the quartet, now entering its third decade, had asked Welcher to compose its first namesake piece is an honor.)
Welcher’s appropriately very impressionistic piece made delightful use of a recurring theme that wove through the three movements. Yet each movement had a distinct profile thanks to some clever musical quoting and riffing. Shades of Gounod’s “Faust” percolated up in the atmospheric second movement; Debussy in the melodic and melancholy third. Tone and mood ruled mightily - and delightfully — in Quartet No. 3.
(The Cassatt String Quartet recently released a CD on Naxos of all three of Welcher’s quartets.)
The Cassatt finished with a breathtakingly moving performance of Ravel’s String Quartet.
Perhaps what give the Cassat String Quartet its distinction is the distinctive presence each musicians brings to her instrument. Seamless as an ensemble, Nicole Johnson, Jennifer Leshnower, Michiko Oshima and Muneko Otani nevertheless offer rare individual clarity and appeal.
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September 17, 2009
Tonight: Cassatt String Quartet gives Texas premiere to Dan Welcher composition
The Cassatt Quartet — the New York-based all-female string quartet — has crafted its acclaimed reputation over the past two decades as being a champion of work by living composers.
The Quartet commissioned noted Austin composer Dan Welcher to write the namesake piece. Tonight, the group will give Welcher’s String Quartet No. 3 “Cassatt” its Texas premiere at the University of Texas’ McCullough Theatre.
The piece is also included on the groups latest release on Naxos Records, “Dan Welcher: String Quartet’s Nos. 1-3.” Thursday’s program also include’s Welcher’s String Quartet No. 2 “Harbor Music.”
Cassatt String Quartet
8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 17
McCullough Theatre, University of Texas, 2350 Robert Dedman Drive
$30
www.utpac.org
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September 16, 2009
ALO names artist-in-residence
The Austin Lyric Opera has named Vincent Frittelli, former concertmaster for the opera orchestra, as the artist-in-residence at the opera’s Armstrong Community Music School.
Frittelli was concertmaster for ALO from their first production of Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’ in 1987 to its 2007 production of Rossini’s ‘The Barber of Seville.’ He also was concertmaster for the Austin Symphony Orchestra for 25 years and recently retired from the University of Texas at Austin where he was associate professor of violin.
“We feel it’s a real feather in our cap to have such a talent associated with our school.” said ALO’s General Director Kevin Patterson.
Fritelli will maintain a studio at the Armstrong Community Music School and will be accepting violin students.
ALO’s first production of the season “La Boheme” opens Nov. 8 and runs through Nov. 13. See www.AustinLyricOpera.org for more information.
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September 9, 2009
Orchestra confirms Wixson out
Austin Symphony Orchestra officials announced Wednesday that Galen Wixson has resigned as executive director over creative differences.
The announcement, made by Joe R. Long, the orchestra’s board president, comes more than a week after reports that Wixson was longer at his post.
Wixson, who had just been hired in March, has not returned phone calls for comment.
The statement released by Long on Wednesday says that William F. Kemp, the orchestra’s long-time legal counsel assisted in “facilitating the resolution” of “creative differences between the Austin Symphony Orchestra Society and Mr. Wixson.”
Long said he had no further comment beyond the statement.
Reports emerged early last week that Wixson had been fired. A person answering the phone at the orchestra office Aug. 31 told the American-Statesman that Wixson no longer worked there, and Wixson was no longer listed anywhere on the organization’s Web site.
On Sept. 1, more than two dozen orchestra musicians sent a letter to the board’s executive committee protesting the sudden and unexplained absence of Wixson. The orchestra’s letter said the group found it “hard to imagine” any justification “to force him to leave.”
Wixson’s hiring in March, after a national search, was greeted with much fanfare by orchestra officials. Before coming to Austin, Wixson had been executive director at the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra. He also held similar posts with the Reno Philharmonic, the Symphony of Southeast Texas and the Manhattan Center for the Arts. A statement issued by the Arkansas orchestra when Wixson announced he was headed to the Austin job praised Wixson for his “valuable leadership.”
Long said a search will begin immediately for a new executive director. Anthony Corroa has been named interim executive director of the Austin Symphony.
The departure comes at a critical time as the orchestra is about to start its 99th season on Sept. 18 and is preparing for centennial celebrations. Founded in 1911, the Austin Symphony Orchestra is one of the city’s longest-standing arts organizations. But its inner operations are fairly secretive because the privately held 501(c)(3) nonprofit receives only a small percentage of its approximately $4.5 million budget from government sources.
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September 3, 2009
Big weekend of new music (Happy Birthday John Cage!)
It’s a big weekend for new music in Austin, with two stellar concerts offered.
`Happy Birthday Mr. Cage’<br>
7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 4
First Unitarian Universalist Church, 4700 Grover Ave.
$10
www.austinchambermusic.org
That his birthday is celebrated every year in Austin with a concert followed by a grocery store sheet cake would no doubt tickle the late composer John Cage, the radical innovator whose experiments challenge the entire notion of what music could be.
For the past nine years, pianist Michelle Schumann has done precisely that. A scholar of Cage’s music and a skilled interpreter of his avant-garde stylings, Schumann, artistic director the Austin Chamber Music Center, will again celebrate the composer’s birthday.
Schumann will play Cage’s complete Sonatas and Interludes, his most ambitious set of works for what is perhaps his signature instrument: the prepared piano.
Cage re-imagined a piano by inserting screws, bolts, rubber, wood, weatherstripping, pencil erasers and various other found objects into the piano at prescribed points along the strings. The result is a piano that sounds tonally and rhythmically like no other, filled with rattles and rings.
‘The piano is an iconic instrument,’ Schumann says. ‘Everyone knows what a piano sounds like, and it has such an incredible history, from classical music to salacious lounge music. When you see someone sitting down at a piano, you pretty much know what to expect. But when someone sits down at a prepared piano, and starts to play, it shatters expectations.’
For Cage, the goal of music was to achieve a certain ‘purposelessness.’ The role of the composer, in Cage’s viewpoint, was to create situations in which sounds could simply be. And in his ‘Sonatas and Interludes,’ Cage sought particularly to exemplify the emotional impact that music had on the mind.
Schumann says she loves Sonatas and Interludes, a 70-minute piece because of the emotional impact.
‘It’s this incredible journey of the basic emotions of the human spirit, and after all the exploration, you’re left with this complete and utter peace,’ she says.
And the absurdity of sticking nuts and bolts in a piano?
‘I think Cage understood that his breaking down of barriers had both elements of profundity and banality,’ Schumann says. ‘I think he was very serious about his concepts, but approached everything with a childlike wonderment that allowed him to explore and create without boundaries — and without being self-conscious.’
Image: Michelle Schumann at the piano. Photo by Ricardo Brazziel.
‘Immeasurable Space & Infinite Worlds’
8 p.m. Saturday
Mexican-American Cultural Center, 600 River St.
$12-$15
www.amoda.org
Think you know percussion music? Think again.
Six musicians and a truckload of percussion instruments will envelop the audience Saturday night at the Mexican American Cultural Center, as the New Music Co-op and ensemble Line Upon Line join talents to present three of the 20th century’s most radical experiments in percussion music.
The musicians will transform the concert venue into a giant bell for a rare eight-channel surround realization of Xenakis’ 1962 electroacoustic piece `Bohor.’
Next, they will coax otherworldly sonic colors from metal, wood, skin. bamboo and live electronics in Luigi Nono’s 1979 work `Con Luigi Dallapiccola.’
Finally, Xenakis’ celebrated work `Persephassa’ - commissioned in 1969 by the Empress of Iran and premiered at the historic desert site of Persepolis - will be performed by six percussionists in a ring around the audience.
Think of it as live surround sound - with a beat.
Image: Line Upon Line.
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September 1, 2009
Orchestra musician protest ED's absence
More than two dozen musicians of the Austin Symphony Orchestra have signed a letter protesting the sudden absence of Galen Wixson, the orchestra’s executive director.
The letter was sent Monday to the orchestra’s executive committee after rumor’s emerged that Wixson had been fired.
A person answering the phone at the orchestra’s office Monday told the American-Statesman that Wixson no long works there. And Wixson is, as of late Tuesday, no listed on the orchestra’s Web site. Anthony Corroa is listed as interim executive director.
Jane Sibley, chairman of the orchestra board of directors, declined to comment.
“The Musician’s Committee found him to be a forward-thinking man, well-spoken and willing to listen to ideas,” said the letter, a copy of which was obtained by the American-Statesman. “We find it hard to imagine a reason good enough to force him to leave. We believe his leaving would be a mistake for this organization.”
Lana Harris, a violist and chairman of the committee that represents the orchestra musicians’ interests to the board of trustees, said that the musicians rarely petition the board.
Harris said that no board meeting was called to discuss Wixson’s dismissal.
“This was an unusual enough situation to state what we felt and state it quickly,” said Harris. “We’re concerned long-term what kind of message this will send.”
Wixson had only been on the job since mid-March.
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August 31, 2009
Austin Symphony Orchestra loses executive director
Galen Wixson, executive director of the Austin Symphony Orchestra, has left the organization, a call to the orchestra’s office Monday morning confirmed.
A person answering the phone at the orchestra office told the American-Statesman that Wixson no longer works there. Wixson is also no longer listed on the organization’s Web site as executive director.
Wixson had been on the job only since mid-March.
Jane Sibley, chairman of the board of directors, declined to comment. Edward Z. Safady, executive vice president of the board of directors, said that he was unaware of Wixson’s departure until told this afternoon by a reporter.
Calls to other board members, to symphony staff and to Wixson have not been returned.
Wixson was previously executive director of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra as well as executive director for the Symphony of Southeast Texas, Reno Philharmonic, Manhattan Center for the Arts and the American String Teachers Association.
Wixson has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in cello performance from Wichita State University in addition a master’s in arts management from the Carnegie Mellon Heinz School of Public Policy.
Story developing.
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August 14, 2009
'O Fortuna' gets a makeover
To extent, every artistic creation is a response to or a riff on every artistic creation that came before it.
Texas Choral Consort makes the point clear this weekend with their concert, ‘A Shadow of Light’ which plays Saturday and Sunday at the Northwest Hills United Methodist Church. The program features music from many centuries that is also music, well, based on other music.
Featured are J.S. Bach’s reworking of an old Lutheran tune and Mendelssohn’s Romantic-era take on Bach’s tried-and-true cantata style. And Arvo Part’s ‘Te Deum’ is a confluence of medieval chants and popular Eastern European sounds.
And getting its premiere is a new piece, ‘Orff’s Good Fortune’ by Austin composer Peter Stopschinski.
‘Orff’s Good Fortune’ is a riff on the most popular part of Carl Orff’s super-popular (and darkly dramatic) choral work, ‘Carmina Burana.’ Orff used the text from a 13th-century Latin poem cycle for his cantata which has been co-opted ad nauseum by popular culture.
Stopschinski says the opportunity to riff on that popularity was too unresistable.
“I wanted to do a parody and make a harsh song sound nice,” he says. “(I) ended up making this ‘O Fortuna’ a lullaby (by) picking and choosing text from the ancient Latin — which is amazing text — and using the motif and other random bits of musical material from the Orff’s composition. You get this kind of hip blend of extremely dark lyrics about succumbing to fate set to pretty music.”
“I’m interested in the ‘super-mega-hit classical pieces and why they are so popular,” Stopschinski continues. “My piece is in an ultra-lush romantic choral style with string orchestra accompaniment and mezzo-soprano and violin solos — a lullaby spectacle!”
See www.txconsort.org for ticket information.
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July 25, 2009
Review: Jorge Caballero
Sometimes, some concerts just strike a note of perfection from the top.
Such was the case Friday night at the Mexican American Cultural Center ‘Strings, Rhythm and Lyrics’ featuring Peruvian guitarist Jorge Caballero along with violinist Maria Conti, cellist Douglas Harvey and mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Cass.
A combination of vivid programming and superb musicianship dovetailed to produce a sparkling concert that spotlighted Caballero smart and sensitive arrangements on an eclectic range of music.
Caballero’s version of Falla’s Danza from ‘La Vida Breve’ let the piece remain the virtuosic violin showpiece that is, but gave it lustrous color with a guitar accompaniment.
A charismatic performer, Cass brought charming emotion to Falla’s ‘Siete Canciones Populares Espanolas,’ an enchanting song cycle packed with melodic beauty and rhythmic energy that swooped through moods from tenderness to playfulness to nostalgia.
Caballero and Conti brought plenty of panache to Piazzolla’s ‘L’Historia du Tango,’ the composer’s musical telling of the tango from its earliest folk-inspired days to the modernist angles of nuevo tango.
Fronting the program was Jorge Morel’s ‘Rapsodia Latina’ a rich, striking composition for violin, cello and guitar with melodies that chased from instrument to instrument.
To finish the concert, Caballero paid tribute to his mother, noted Peruvian singer Maria Obregon, with instrumental arrangements of a trio of classic Latin American songs his mother recorded. It’s was a charming flourish to an utterly charming concert.
‘Strings, Rhythm and Lyrics’ continues at 7:30 p.m. Saturday. See www.austinclassicalguitar.org for more info.
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July 21, 2009
The Longs give UT's Butler School of Music $1 million
Austin philanthropists Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long have donated $1 million to the University of Texas Butler School of Music to create a chaired professorship in piano performance.
The new gift follows the Longs’ $500,000 donation in March that created a piano scholarship endowment.
The Long Chair in Piano will be recommended by B. Glenn Chandler, director of the Butler School of Music, and approved by the board of regents. An appointment is expected to be announced at the end of the summer.
“We hope to accomplish two things with both of these gifts,” said Joe Long in statement released by the university. “One is to always have a professor of piano of national and international stature who will attract very talented students, we hope among the best in the nation. Secondly, with the gift for scholarships for piano students, we hope to further this goal and enable an outstanding professor in piano to offer scholarships to the very best students they can find.”
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July 20, 2009
MET Opera HD screenings
Cool summer getaway option: ‘The Met: Live in HD’ is returning to theaters with two encore performances from this past season.
‘Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Barber of Seville)’ screens 7 p.m. July 29 and Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’ screens 7 p.m. Aug. 5.
Screenings are at the Regal Metropolitan 14 in South Austin. Tickets are $15. See here for more information.
Met Opera production of ‘The Magic Flute.’
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July 10, 2009
What kind of Pops do you want?
The Austin Symphony Orchestra wants your opinion. What kind of Pops concerts do you want to see ASO present?
Take the survey here:
www.austinsymphony.org/news/pops-artists-survey
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July 9, 2009
P. Kellach Waddle celebrates the violin with Jessica Mathaes
One instrument at a time, award-winning Austin composer P. Kellach Waddle has been offering concerts of his compositions.
Now, it’s the violin’s turn and Waddle has enlisted the considerable talents of Jessica Mathaes, concert mistress for the Austin Symphony Orchestra, to play the premiere of several new pieces this Sunday.
True to his penchant for long titles, the always colorful ever-prolific Waddle again delights. Here’s the program:
• Two Lyric Pieces for Solo Violin:
— The Mist in the September Wine: Aria-Bagatelle for Solo Violin
— On Passing Texas Churches At Mystic Sunset: Hymn for Solo Violin
• Bottled Dreams in Liquid Oak: Sonata-Ballade in One Movement for Bass and Violin
• Staring At the Unremembering Moonlight: Elegy for Violin and Piano
• The Attack and Reign of the Broken Stained Glass Angels: Trio Gloratio for Violin, Viola and Piano
• The Flowers of Darkness: Sonata in forma di 4 Legendes for Solo Violin
Joining Waddle and Mathaes on the program is pianist Nikki Birdsong along with guest composer and violist Lawrence Wheeler. Wheeler will play two of his own works.
‘The Violin According to PKW’
3 p.m. Sunday
Hyde Park United Methodist Church, 4001 Speedway
Free, with a suggested offering of $15 for adults and $7 for students.
Wait — here’s more:
- Read a recent Q-and-A with Waddle here.
- Read a recent Q-and-A with Mathaes here.
Photo: P. Kellach Waddle by Benjamin Sklar.
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July 1, 2009
Celebrating pride with chamber music
Inclusive, accessible, celebratory — and FREE — a new addition to the line-up of the Austin Chamber Music Festival offers a fresh and much-needed way of considering classical music.
Thursday night it’s ‘Pride Concert: Celebrating Music by Gay and Lesbian Composers.’
Organized by Austin composer Russell Reed and pianist Jim James, the free concert features the work of gay and lesbian composers. ‘I think it is important for people to know about gay artists, both living and dead, who have helped to shape our artistic and cultural heritage,’ says Reed. ‘I wanted to do this for my community because I am constantly dismayed about how little gay people know about their own history.’
On the program are works by well-known composers such as Aaron Copland (Duo for Flute and Piano), Benjamin Britten (Lachrymae), John Cage (‘In a Landscape’) and Reynaldo Hahn (Sonata for Violin and Piano). And representing today’s new music by living composers is Reed’s own ‘Princess Songs,’ William Lackey’s ‘Twisted Tension’ and Pauline Oliveros’ ‘To Valerie Solaneas and Marilyn Monroe.’
Reed, by the way, was most recently nominated for Best Original Composition from the Austin Critics Table for ‘Light the Lovely Candles,’ a song cycle he wrote for soprano Elizabeth Petillot and violist Aurelien Petillot.
Aurelien Petillot is one of the musicians on the roster for Thursday’s concert. Also performing is Kim Pollini, soprano; Joseph Smith, violin; Seeth Shivaswamy, flute and Adam Bedell, percussion. Both Reed and James will play piano.
‘Pride Concert: Celebrating Music by Gay and Lesbian Composers’
7:30 p.m July 2
St. James Episcopal Church, 1941 Webberville Road
www.austinchambermusic.org
Photo: Russell Reed
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June 29, 2009
Review: Chamber Music Fest, Weekend One
Cool.
It’s how the Austin Chamber Music Festival unfolded its first weekend with a trio of eclectic concerts: Modern classical guitar, a string quartet’s Grammy Award-winning riff on jazz great John Coltrane and the indie stylings of the genre-busting Tin Hat Trio.
Friday, the Brasil Guitar Duo — a concert co-sponsored by the Austin Classical Guitar Society — made an impressive, virtuosic program seem effortless in front of a full house at Northwest Hills United Methodist Church. With extraordinary technique rising young international starts Joao Luiz and Douglas Lora moved fluently from Bach (with Luiz’s arrangements) to Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s to Lora’s own sparkling compositions. Drama came with Gismonti’s “Don Quixote,” an alluring rich composition from the contemporary Brazilian composer.
Saturday night at UT’s Bates Recital Hall, the festival shifted mood. The Turtle Island String Quartet won a Grammy for their CD “A Love Supreme: The Legacy of John Coltrane.” And no wonder. The quartet’s inspired interpretations of a wide range of jazz repertoire - Coltrane, yes, but also Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke — proved the foursome has not only the courage but the soul and the chops to channel the jazz legacy with freshness and authenticity. No schmaltzy pops stylings here — these are jazz musicians. And the improvisational finesse of David Balakrishnan, Mark Summer, Mads Tolling and Jeremy Kittel percolated with complexity and originality.
Sunday night, the Chamber Music Festival boldly went to a venue no chamber music group has been before — the Continental Club. About 200 people filled the storied South Congress Avenue rock club to hear Tin Hat Trio, the San Francisco-based group that blends blues, jazz, tango, classical and little cabaret into its own blend. Theirs is the kind of genre-defying music that signals the direction younger musicians are taking chamber music - blending it seamlessly with other genres and busting out of the formal concert hall. Tin Hat Trio made a bold but much welcome (and needed) choice for inclusion on a chamber music festival program.
You have to wonder when the last time people were handed a program when they walked into the Continental Club. And when was the last time the Austin Chamber Music Center music crowd ordered drinks during a concert? Both were refreshing sights.
However blame it on the current wilting heat wave or perhaps some awkward technical sound problems, but Tin Hat Trio didn’t quite deliver much energy Sunday. Ethereal to point of being atmospheric, they skittered around the music more than they seemed to arrive with it. The unusual combination of colors from the combo guitar, a soulful violin and an assortment of clarinets intrigued, but felt more like a tease than a show.
The Austin Chamber Music Festival continues through July 11. See www.austinchambermusic.org for more information.
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June 25, 2009
UT Butler School of Music hires violinist Anne Akiko Meyers
Another major score for the University of Texas’ Butler School of Music. This fall internationally renowned violinist Anne Akiko Meyers will join the school’s faculty, university officials announced today.
Meyers has earned world-wide recognition as asoloist, chamber musician and recording artist. She’s soloed with orchestras such as the Boston Symphony, London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, l’Orchestre de Paris, New York Philharmonic and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
‘I am thrilled at the opportunity to work with the incredibly talented faculty and build on the inspiration the Butlers have afforded the University of Texas at Austin,’ said the 39-year-old Meyers. ‘I believe the students and quality of music making will be the talk of the world! I look forward to passing on the traditions that I learned from my mentors and incredible teachers throughout my life.’
And in a great piece of news for the future of Austin’s percolating new music scene, Meyers is an avid champion of contemporary music. She has premiered pieces by, among other noted composers, John Corigliano, Jennifer Higdon, Olivier Messiaen, Arvo Part, Manuel Maria Ponce and Ezequiel Vinao.
Meyers most recent recording — ‘Smile’ (Koch International) — features a boundaring-busting program that includes Schubert’s Fantasie, Op. 159, Arvo Part’s Spiegel im Spiegel, the U.S. premiere of the Messiaen’e Fantasie and tango great Piazzolla’s Introduction et Angel and Milonga en Re “Tango.” Also on the CD are a pair of ethereal arrangements of traditional Japanese folk songs, Kojo no Tsuki (Moonlight Over the Ruined Castle) and Haru no Umi (Sea in Spring). And to finish off its eclectic and forward-thinking offering, the CD also has a very intimate renditions of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ as well as Charlie Chaplin’s ‘Smile.’ Sweet.
Meyers played the program in recital in Austin this April at UT.
Here’s Myers with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestr playing Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy, Leonard Slatkin conducting:
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June 24, 2009
ACMC Fest: Week One's stunning line-up
The heat wave may be burning down on us and the economy is still fizzling, but this year’s Austin Chamber Music Festival is bringing us some inspiring talent, and free concerts to boot.
Here’s the first week of the three-week festival offerings:
FREE CONCERT: Mendelssohn Piano Trio
12 noon, Thursday
Central Presbyterian Church, 200 E. Eighth St. Program: Three Nocturnes by Ernest Bloch and Brahm’s Piano Trio in B Major.
Brasil Guitar Duo
7:30 p.m. Friday
Northwest Hills United Methodist Church, 7050 Village Center Dr.
Young and blazingly talented, the Brasil Guitar Duo make their mark with a seamless blend of traditional and Brazilian works. On the program is music by Bach, Rameau, Piazzolla, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and others. Check out the Brasil Guitar Duo’s YouTube page.
Turtle Island String Quartet
7:30 p.m. Saturday
Bates Recital Hall, University of Texas Butler School of Music, 2350 Robert Dedman Drive.
The boundary-breaking quartet present their much-heralded interpretation of the music by the 20th-century jazz master that re-frames the improvising riffs of Coltrane’s saxophone for a sometimes-improvising string quartet. Also on the jazz-centered program — the first half of which will be announced from the stage — is Stanley Clarke’s ‘For John.’
Tin Hat
7:30 p.m. Sunday
Continental Club, 1315 S. Congress Ave.
This San Francisco-based ensemble uses accordion, guitar, violin, clarinet and other instruments in a singular blend of tango, blues, Eastern European folk music, cabaret songs and avant-garde classical. And where better to listen to that at one of Austin’s iconic live music clubs? (Yes, the club’s bar will be open.)
All concerts are $25. See www.austinchambermusic.org for more information.
See previous coverage and reviews of the festival here.
Image: Brasil Guitar Duo.
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June 21, 2009
Review: 'Tango on the Terrace'
Tango set a sophisticated tone for Austin Chamber Music Center’s kick-off concert Friday night for its annual summer festival.
Beautifully played by a five-piece ensemble led by ACMC artistic director Michelle Schumann and featuring Grammy-winning bandoneonist Raul Jaurena, the virtuoustic hour-long program of Astor Piazzolla’s urbane and expressive nuevo tango exemplified the smart, forward-thinking turn this chamber festival has taken since Schumann took the helm.
Regarded as one of the world’s most prominent bandoneonists — and a musician who can claim a direct link to Piazzolla before the great composer’s death in 1992 — Jaurena’s masterful playing exemplified tango’s schizophrenic tones and moods. Nervous and edgy, lusty and full-bodied, mournful and nostalgic — Jaurena wrested it out of an instrument that has one the most compellingly unique voices.
Schumann and the ensemble — Korine Fujiwara on violin, Russ Scanlon on electric guitar and Chris Maresh on bass — made spotless work of Piazzolla’s charging rhythms, twisting harmonies and jumpy use of counterpoint. In tango, every instrument can be used as percussion, with string players not just using pizzacato plucking, but making the distinctive ‘chicharra’ sound produced from scraping the strings. Those are tricky techniques that can sound inauthentic in some hands, but both Fujiwara and Maresh pulled it off with aplomb.
Jaurena and the ensemble poured a breathtaking level of energy and passion into the seamless program and that energy flowed off the stage. The audience — a packed house in the intimate auditorium of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center — began the rousing cheers about half-way into the concert that were soon joined by ovations.
Nothing like starting a sizzling three-week line-up of concerts with a sizzle.
The Austin Chamber Music Festival continues through July 11. See www.austinchambermusic.org for information.
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June 17, 2009
Symphony ED joins in on the concert
Galen Wixon — who came on board in Marchc as executive director of the Austin Symphony Orchestra — is picking up his cello and joining the ASO Woodwind Ensemble Sundya in a free performance of Dvorak’s Woodwind Serenade. The piece is scored for cello, double bass and woodwinds and will be played as part of the orchestra’s free Hartman Foundation Concerts in the Park which run every Sunday through Aug. 23.
7:30 p.m. Sunday
Long Center City Terrace Lawn, 701 W. Riverside Dr.
www.austinsymphony.org
Wixson has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in cello performance from Wichita State University in addition a master’s in arts management from the Carnegie Mellon Heinz School of Public Policy.
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May 28, 2009
Dvorak comes to Georgetown
Czech composer Antonin Dvorak wrote perhaps one of the most seminal, and most popular, American symphonies ever — his Symphony No. 9, known as ‘From the New World.’ So perhaps it’s fitting that he’s celebrated this summer on the frontier that is Central Texas.
The annual Georgetown Festival of the Arts, which begins Saturday, gathers internationally recognized Austin-based musicians — pianist Anton Nel along with the Miro Quartet — and special guest artists — including the Shanghai Quartet — for a series of concerts honoring Dvorák’s singular contribution as a music maker who artfully plumbed folk music traditions for inspiration for his classical compositions.
‘This year we are honoring Antonin Dvorak, who enriched this tradition by infusing it with national styles of his native Bohemia and of 19th-century America, with particular interest in American and Native American music,’ says Georgetown Arts Festival director Ellsworth Peterson. ‘In a way, this festival celebrates the ethnic diversity of our own Central Texas heritage.’
The festival starts with a free concert in San Gabriel Park; it runs Saturday through June 7. Tickets are $20 a concert (festival pass $80), $5 students. More information is at www.gtownfestival.org.
Other highlights:
• Free Concert: ‘Dvorak in the Park: ‘From the New World,’ Symphony No. 9.’ Performed by Temple Symphony Orchestra. 8 p.m. Saturday. Gazebo, San Gabriel Park. 1101 N. College St.
• ‘Chamber music: ‘American’ Quartet in F major, Quintet for Piano and Strings, Sextet for Strings.’ Performed by Anton Nel, Miró Quartet, Shanghai Quartet. 8 p.m. June 4. Alma Thomas Theatre, Southwestern University. 1001 University Ave.
• ‘Dvorak’s Songs: Songs in Folk Tone, Moravian Duets, Gypsy Songs and more.’ Performed by Virginia Dupuy, Lynn Parr Mock, Scott Cameron, Bruce Cain. 8 p.m. June 5. First United Methodist Church, 410 E. University Ave.
• ‘Chamber Music: Romance in F minor, Songs My Mother Taught Me, Rondo in G minor and more.’ Performed by Eri Lee Lam, Vincent Lam, Hai Zheng. 3:30 p.m. June 8. First United Methodist Church, 410 E. University Ave.
• ‘Dvorak’s Piano Music.’ Performed by Anton Nel, Michael Schneider. 8 p.m. June 6. Alma Thomas Theatre, Southwestern University. 1001 E. University Ave.
• Dvorak’s ‘Stabat Mater.’ Performed by festival orchestra and chorus with soloists Mela Dailey, Virginia Dupuy, Scot Cameron, Bruce Cain. 4 p.m. June 7. Klett Center for the Performing Arts, Georgetown High School, 2211 N. Austin Ave.
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May 27, 2009
Review: Audio Inversions' 'Meditations and Homage'
Austin indie classical music group Audio Inversions paid a smart homage Friday night at the Long Center to one of their inspiring sources, the late American composer Lou Harrison — a pioneer in the use of world musical influences, new instruments. inventive textures that yet never lost track of a deeply felt lyricism and delightful tonality.
The winner of the third Audio Inversions composition competition? ‘Lou’ by Balinder Singh Sekhon, a short piece for percussion ensemble of regular and irregular instruments (including flower pots, brake drums and metal pipes) and amplified cello, written as tribute to Harrison.
And ‘Lou’ was a fitting tribute: percolating with offbeat character, filled with world music references that were honest and not hamfisted (as such reference so often can be) and a delightful challenge to the cellist Benjamin Westney who didn’t so much touch a bow as strummed and picked. ‘Lou’ rocketed along, sometimes almost threatening to collapse under its own rhythmic cacophony. But it recovered and ended with an energy-packed flourish.
Sekhon received Audio Inversions $750 prize money along with the premiere performance.
‘Lou’ made a fitting to finale to solidly conceived program of new classical music, a keen mix of brand new works and two masterful song clusters by Henryk Gorecki.
Both the captivating Gorecki vocal pieces — ‘Three Lullabies’ and ‘Szeroka Woda’ — got a luminous treatment from the unaccompanied vocal quintet (Jeb Mueller, Amanda Lundy, Jimmy Shepard, Meredith Bowden and Caitlin Anderson-Patters) and seemed to grab the audience in a thrall of hushed awe.
James Norman’s ‘Incline, O Maiden’ was a brilliant mini-opera enchantingly sung by mezzo-soprano Misha Penton. Using text from Goethe’s Faust, Norman — who is composer-in-residence with Audio Inversions — gave us a jewel-like monodrama modern in its stylings and packed with both visceral drama and ethereal sounds. Short, dramatically direct, modern — is ‘Incline, O Maiden’ the anti-Wagner opera? Perhaps.
Audio Inversions stirred up entries from more than 100 composers for this year’s composition contest. And in addition to performing the Sekhon’s winning entry, the group also premiered Delvyn Case’s ‘Gemini Variations,’ the competition’s honorable mention and a short, spirited if still immature piece for two saxophones.
Audio Inversions does it right. Taking matters into their own hands, they advocate for the progression of classical music by just doing it — supporting new compositions, framing new classical music in approachable terms and making it happen. Kudos.
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May 21, 2009
Indie classical group Audio Inversions awards, and premieres, a new composition
The foursome of adventurous indie classical musicians who make up Audio Inversions are only too happy to put their money where their mouths are.
On Friday, they’ll premiere the third recipient of their annual composition competition, which awards $750 to the winning score and most importantly, gives the new music its premiere.
On Friday’s program is the winning piece, ‘Lou’ by Baljinder Singh Sekhon II, and also compositions by Delvyn Case, Arvo Pärt, Henryk Górecki, and Audio Inversions’ composers-in-residence James Norman and Anthony Suter. Expect an eclectic mix of sounds ranging from mixed chorus to saxophone duets to percussion orchestra to chamber ensembles.
We caught up with Audio Inversions’ composer Norman for a few questions.
What inspired you to start a composition competition?
James Norman: Composers today need all the help they can get to find opportunities for their music. And too often truly special music will sit on the shelves of young (and sometimes experienced) composers because the right performance opportunity has not made itself available. The goal of our competition is to continue promoting the most outstanding musical works and composers, with the added hope of engendering a love of contemporary music in a new audience. One of our main objectives has been to seek out lesser-known and underplayed composers and their compositions, regardless of the styles they represent, and it is our hope that this competition will aid us in our search.
What kind of musical trends did you see emerging based on the competition entries?
We received entries from over 100 composers and nearly 300 total works submitted (we encourage composers to submit more than one work) from 12 different countries such as Turkey, Greece and Japan. The great thing about this competition is that we get a snapshot of the various musical trends influencing young composers. However, if this competition has taught us anything, it’s that people are writing music in all styles — serialism, post-minimalism, post-modernism, neo-romanticism — you name it, all the major trends of the past century, although, it’s tough to ignore the growing trend of electro-acoustic composition. With each new year of the composition we find more and more works that strive to integrate this new soundscape into their compositions.
What was it about what winning composition that made it the winner?
Norman: After incredibly long sessions of studying scores and listening to the recordings, ‘Lou,’ by Baljinder Singh Sekhon II, truly began to stand out amongst its peers. It’s an incredibly mature work and beautifully written for cello and percussion orchestra. ‘Lou’ is a modern homage to Californian composer Lou Harrison, whose music was the very model of diversity and the global reach of classical music as many of his works included the music of non-Western cultures, such as Javanese-style gamelan music. And like Harrison, Sekhon has woven the traditions of Eastern and Western music together into something completely unique. We are thrilled that we are honoring a composition that is not a only the work of an extremely talented up-and-coming composer, but that we get to perform what we consider to be a great work as well.
Audio Inversions’ Fourth Season Finale
When: 8 p.m. Friday
Where: Rollins Studio Theatre, Long Center, 701 W. Riverside Drive
Cost: $15 ($10 students)
Info: www.audioinversions.com
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May 20, 2009
Ceremony Hall to fill with immersive sound art on Saturday
In the last few years, sound art has rippled at the edges of Austin’s contemporary culture scene.
Now, Austin’s New Music Co-op brings some serious talent to town.
Love the sound of leaves rustling in the wind? What about the soft clink of a handful of small river stones? Then prepare for an immersive sonic art experience. And prepare to listen closely like you might never have listened before.
Arizona composer and sound artist Jeph Jerman has spent 10 years presenting different iterations of his ‘Animist Orchestra’ project. The orchestra exists wherever Jerman fiinds artist willing to go down the same creative path as he.
He found like-minded artists in New Music Co-op — the first ensemble for which Jerman has specifically written a piece.
On Saturday Jerman, along with the collaboration of 20 Austin musicians will coax polyphonic masses of sound out of natural found objects (animal bones, seeds, leaves) culled from around Austin, as well as some from Arizona. Jerman’s score will direct the ensemble in the creation of soundscapes that are carefully wrought yet also spontaneous, wholly natural and at the same time artificial.
Jerman’s ultimate question — what happens when we listen? Two of the project’s primary goals are to let the sounds be themselves and to listen. As Jerman writes, his aim to “remove, as much as possible, the intent to ‘make music’ or ‘express ourselves,’ and just let the sounds be.” Jerman issued the simple instruction to continually re-listen and to turn one’s attention ever toward the sounds.
‘Animist Orchestra.’
8 p.m. Ceremony Hall, 4100 Red River St.
$15. www.newmusiccoop.org.
“If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.”
— John Cage
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May 18, 2009
Review: Austin Symphony Orchestra's make Mahler mighty
Austin Symphony Orchestra left the audience — and itself — breathless Friday night after its performance of Gustav Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ Symphony, the final concert of the orchestra’s subscription series.
Have we ever seen so many musicians on the stage of the Long Center’s Dell Hall? With Mahler’s massive work requiring additional musicians to the orchestra’s line-up and the 110-member Conspirare Symphonic Choir upstage, the musicians, in particular the string sections, spilled out past the proscenium.
This mighty mob of musicians was up to the monumental task Mahler’s emotional — and technical — rollercoaster of a symphony, as was conductor Peter Bay. (Conspirare conductor Craigh Hella Johnson prepared the choir.)
From the opening tremor of the bass lines to the massive chorale finale, Bay kept a tight reign. And the musicians respond with focus and energy.
Mostly importantly, Bay kept the musical integrity of each movement in tact, balancing the first movement’s motion between edgy tensions and soulful emotions while letting the second movement sound ethereal and nostalgic. The scherzo starts with a surprisingly sunny theme that’s then contrasted against bold fanfares before spinning seemingly out of control. But Bay kept Mahler’s musical madness in check while accentuating its complexity.
We’re almost exhausted by Mahler’s mood shifts by the time we get to the massive fifth movement. But it’s in the fifth movment that the whole package arrives and Bay and the musicians delivered it with gusto.
Having the violins well in front of the proscenium in Dell Hall, though, meant they didn’t always project as well and were sometimes overshadowed by the winds and brass. And while soprano Linda Mabbs and mezzo Susan Platts performed nicely, and both had lovely tone, they too perhaps suffered from being past the proscenium and somewhat subdued.
Next season, ASO and Conspirare will collaborate again, this time on Cary Ratcliff’s oratorio ‘Ode to Common Things’ based on the poems by Pablo Neruda. Let’s hear it for such musical partnerships.
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May 7, 2009
Bion Tsang, Anton Nel celebrate Brahms' birthday with a free download
Two of Austin’s most luminous musicians, cellist Bion Tsang and pianist Anton Nel, are celebrating Brahm’s birthday with a nifty little gesture.
Last year the duo recorded Brahams’ four Hungarian Dances by Johannes Brahms at the New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall for their second CD ‘Bion Tsang and Anton Nel: Live in Concert, Brahms Cello Sonatas and Four Hungarian Dances,’ to be released this summer by Artek Recordings.
But before the CD’s release and in honor of Brahms’ birthday — which is May 7 — Tsang and Nel offer a free MP3 download of Hungarian Dance No. 5 at www.biontsang.com. The download is available May 7-31.
Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5 is one of those classical pieces that’s infiltrated popular culture, and can be heard in many different arrangements, from orchestra versions to solo instruments. It was wildly popular during Brahms’ lifetime as well.
Here’s a video clip of Tsang and Nel performing the Hungarian Dance No. 5 at Jordan Hall:
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May 4, 2009
Review: Peter Bay conducts Dan Welcher's Fifth Symphony with flair
Finally — on the eve of its centenary — the Austin Symphony Orchestra made a gesture this past weekend that actually gave the organization somewhat of a timely and relevant burnish as a resident of the ‘Live Capital Music of the World.’
The orchestra premiered Dan Welcher’s Fifth Symphony, arguably the first time in living memory — or ever? — that ASO has premiered a symphony by an Austin-based composer.
And what a heartfelt musical gesture on Welcher’s part from: His Fifth Symphony was written for his good friend of three decades, ASO conductor Peter Bay who conducted it with brio, sincerity and passion.
There was no doubt that at least some in the audience Friday night found such a premiere thrilling with Welcher receiving heartfelt cheers and a very considered standing ovation.
Such a reception was deserved. Welcher’s Fifth is a 21st-century symphony for Austin: urbane, expressive, filled with touches of whimsy and expansively American in its artistic references.
Welcher’s far too mature of a composer to have quoted directly from his American composer predecessors. But the past century of American music percolated intelligently and originally throughout: A bluesy riff, syncopated rhythms, bold percussive turns, vigorous melodies and confident brass chorales balanced against moody swirls of woodwinds.
Most delightful was the second movement, Scherzo. In it, Welcher produced the most sophisticated musical impression yet of Austin’s famed colony of Mexican free-tail bats which fill the city’s evening skies. The woodwind melody, altering in its harmonic modes, skittered into a great cloud that was then countered by blasts from the brass section.
A more reflective and melodic third movement crossed seamlessly into the final fourth movement in which everything — the swirling woodwinds, the brass chorales, the driving rhythms, the bluesy riffs — built into a brilliant burst that ended with a bright flourish. A perfect ending.
But after intermission, the evening seemed to diverge into a totally different mode - not necessarily a bad divergence, just a marked one.
Star violinist Sarah Chang delivered every inch of star performance of Bruch’s Violin Concerto No 1. (interestingly the same piece the now 28-year-old phenom played for her audition at Julliard when she was a mere six-year-old).
Chang made the Bruch rhapsodic, giving it lyricism even though the piece does little to hide its profile as a soloist’s showpiece. Though her assertive virtuosity was at sometimes odds with the orchestra’s less propulsive thrust, Chang brought on an expressive voice.
Then the program’s mood shifted again with Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien, a lively piece full of 19th-century colloquial character that the orchestra clearly relished.
If anything, this weekend’s program, while noteworthy, revealed ASO’s greater disconnect from the very musical culture of its place and time.
Little if anything was done by the ASO management to specifically market Welcher’s piece to Austin audiences. It shouldn’t have had to share the limelight with a celebrated soloist.
And that strategy is curious, because a premiere by an Austin composer would have been an obvious means for ASO to connect with potential new and younger Austin audiences who wouldn’t normally connect with most of the symphonic repertoire ASO typically offers.
In fact, Welcher’s commission fee was paid for not by ASO, but by an independent consortium of private donors in a fundraising drive spearheaded by non-profit classical music radio station KMFA-FM. Welcher gifted his symphony to ASO in honor of his good friend Bay.
What a wonderful gesture — one that Bay, no stranger to open and forward-thinking programming, took up with honor.
It leaves to wonder how much ASO management has invested in what noted music scholar Joseph Horowitz, author of “Classical Music in America,” identifies as the over-esteemed “culture of performance” — a value system that holds above everything else celebrated soloists playing a very Eurocentric, or at least very typical and expected, classical repertoire. Where’s the confidence in the symphonic music being created here and now?
Would that ASO’s management reconsider its connection to its place in a music capital so much of the world already esteems for its progressiveness.
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May 3, 2009
Revew: UT Symphony Orchestra
Whoever had the idea of raising the pit in Bass Concert Hall and putting the entire University of Texas Symphony Orchestra on the apron out in front of the proscenium deserves a Wall Street-style bonus. This seating plan transformed Saturday night’s special concert honoring School of Music patron Sarah and Ernest Butler from another concert in Bass (renovated or not) into the best-sounding live performance by a symphony orchestra that these ears can remember.
The stage of Bates Recital Hall (the UT Symphony’s usual hangout) and the hall as a whole are too small to hold a large instrumental ensemble happily. Saturday night in Bass, the players had the physical room and their instruments had the acoustical room to speak properly. Every note (and every mistake) could not have been clearer, but the marvelous blend that conductor Gerhardt Zimmermann has built with his orchestra was audible in a dramatically new way. I heard the kind of presence and detail combined with an expansive, nicely reverberant room sound that I thought only those fancy Dutch recording engineers get using about 80 microphones.
But a great hall or a great setup don’t make a dumb performance into a great one. What we heard in Bass Saturday evening, quite precisely, was what wonderful work Zimmermann has been doing at UT, where before we only sort of got the idea.
Neither piece on the program — the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with student soloist Soo Jin Nam and the Beethoven Symphony no. 9 with a solo quartet of young professionals and the massed UT choruses (excellently trained by John Len Wiles)—was note-perfect. And I could quibble about some of Zimmermann’s interpretive choices (Beethoven wrote only F’s for the timpani in the second movement; don’t add stuff at the end). But Zimmermann’s interpretation made sense, it honored the piece that Beethoven wrote and he made the whole performance totally persuasive.
This is not the first time that a conductor who is an artist and a seasoned professional has led a talented and enthusiastic student orchestra (with an expanse of rehearsal time thrown in that most professional orchestras would kill for) and produced thrilling results. But those results happened in Bass Concert Hall on Saturday in a big way.
One more thing. I generally don’t like talking from the stage at music concerts; but Zimmermann’s spoken introduction to the Beethoven, witty and revelatory, was as valuable as the performance that followed it.
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May 1, 2009
Explosive new music: Free on Saturday
It’s something of a fitting finale to Fusebox — Golden Hornet Project unleashes new sounds in two free concerts tomorrow that will surround the audience with mesmirizing sound.
PVC in Surround: Piano, Cello and Violin in 5.1 Surround Sound.
When: 2 p.m, and 5 p.m, Saturday May 2
Where: 100 Congress Ave.
Who: Music composed by Peter Stopschinski, Gabriel Prokofiev (US Premiere), DJ Spooky, Josh Robins, and Graham Reynolds. Performed by Reynolds, Stopschinski, Leah Zeger (violin) and Hector Moreno (cello). Sound by Robert Fisher.
Graham Reynolds writes:
“Piano, violin, and cello is one of our favorite combinations, and it’s reasonably compact so we decided to create this show as our tour-able line-up of instruments and pieces. But the surround sound element is not particularly tour-able, so that will most likely be special to Austin and this performance. Robert Fisher is helping us out with this, putting the instruments through crazy effects that will send the sound all over the place. I recorded Austin’s fleet of trash trucks at 5:30 in the morning last week and am building a piece with those sounds in preparation for the Forklift Danceworks show later this year. Peter’s got these crazy drumbeats that swirl around the room.”
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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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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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April 27, 2009
Long-awaited in the Live Music Capital of the World: Austin's orchestra premieres an Austin-made symphony
Among the dozens of commissions Austin-based composer Dan Welcher has received in his three-decade career, he’s written works for the Boston Pops, Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the Guggenheim Foundation, and his work has been performed by more than 50 orchestras including Chicago Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony and the Atlanta Symphony.
This weekend the Austin Symphony Orchestra premieres Welcher’s Fifth Symphony,
And although it’s arguably the first time in living memory the Austin Symphony Orchestra is premiering a symphony by an Austin composer, the cost of the project is underwritten by an independent consortium of local donors, not the orchestra itself. The nonprofit radio station KMFA-FM spearheaded the fundraising drive that began nearly a year ago. To date about $40,000 toward the $50,000 goal has been raised, with donations ranging from as little as $50 to as much as $5,000.
Welcher is honoring his good friend Peter Bay, Austin Symphony Orchestra conductor. The two have been friends fo 30 years and Bay is celebrating his 10th season with the orchestra.
Sample Welcher’s music:
Austin Symphony Orchestra
Dan Welcher’s Symphony No. 5. Also on the program is guest violinist Sarah Chang playing Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1.
When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday
Where: Dell Hall, Long Center, 701 W. Riverside Drive.
Cost: $19-$48
Information: 512-476-6064, www.austinsymphony.org
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April 25, 2009
Q-and-A: Jessica Mathaes, violinist and concertmaster with Austin Symphony Orchestra
In 2005, violinist Jessica Mathaes won the distinction of being the youngest-ever and first female concertmaster of the Austin Symphony Orchestra at age 25.
Since landing the position, Mathaes has delighted Austin audiences with her vivacious playing that’s both technically superb and emotionally engaging. In addition to her role with the orchestra, Mathaes has a busy solo career, which you can find on her Web site, www.jessicamathaes.com, and this spring is releasing her first solo CD, ‘Suites and Sweets.’
Preview a sample here:
What are you working on right now?
It’s been a busy and fun 2009 for me so far! Most recently I soloed with the Round Rock Symphony— they are in their debut year as an organization and had such a great energy. I played a world premiere with them by Manly Romero, and a surprise encore, the “Souvenir d’Amerique- Yankee Doodle Variations” by Henri Vieuxtemps. The program was very virtuosic, so I had to practice it a lot, and playing it for the audiences made it very rewarding.
When I’m not on the Long Center stage performing as concertmaster of the Austin Symphony, I am usually preparing for or playing solo engagements both in and out of town. This year so far I have performed three different solo recital programs and a concerto program. There is so much great violin music to play, so I’m constantly learning new repertoire, which really keeps me on my toes. A lot of my work over the past months has been devoted to my debut solo CD, “Suites and Sweets.” The official release of the disc is coming up in May, which is very exciting for me.
What do you like about Austin’s classical music scene?
I love the audience members! I have felt very welcomed and appreciated ever since I came to the city in 2005, which makes it so fun to share my music with the Austin community. I always enjoy talking to the concertgoers and have met many interesting people that way.
One of my fondest Austin classical music memories is the bicentennial birthday bash I threw for my violin back in 2007. A perfectly quirky Austin event, the idea was actually dreamed up for me by an audience member at one of my previous concerts! I played pieces from 1807, 1907, and 2007, including a world premiere by Austin’s own P. Kellach Waddle. I was overwhelmed by the turnout when I walked out on stage and was greeted by four or five hundred Austinites in the hall to help celebrate. We had a birthday cake reception afterwards — it was a blast!
How could Austin’s classical scene be improved?
Unlike some other forms of music, classical music has a history that goes back a few hundred years. It is a really rich and exciting history, but the music is still very relevant to today and the emotions and tastes of modern people. The problem is when it is treated as something that’s old and stuffy, which it does not have to be. I think it’s up to the people who advertise classical music events to market them as something young people might enjoy. It is also up to the performers to be accessible and to potential audience members to go ahead and try classical even if they haven’t in a while — they might like it!
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April 24, 2009
Texas women get a new kind of tribute song
What if young Texas female singers could sing about the fabulous women who made Texas history?
They can now.
UT voice professor Darlene Wiley commissioned composer Graham Reynolds to write a song cycle for emerging singer. Reynolds in turn tapped poet Carrie Fountain to collaborate. On Sunday, “Between Steel and Stardust: Five Songs About Texas Women” premieres.
The concert is at 4 p.m. in Recital Studio 2.608, Music Building, UT campus. Admission is $10.
This is a not-to-miss gig, but if you can’t be there, it will be Web cast live at www.music.utexas.edu.
The Texas women honored in “Between Steel and Stardust” include the Angel of Goliad, U.S. Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, Bonnie Harper (of Bonnie and Clyde), Selena and Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics.
Also premiering is Reynolds’ Double Double: A Suite for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano.
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April 22, 2009
Q-and-A: Stephanie Prewitt, mezzo-soprano
Stephanie Prewitt’s luminous and rich mezzo-soprano voice has graced Austin stages for more than a decade. A native of Galveston and winner of an Austin Critics’ Table Award, Prewitt sings a vast repertoire and can be most often seen with several local ensembles that notably La Follia Austin Baroque and the Texas Early Music Project.
This Saturday, she’ll be featured in TEMP’s next concert, “Complaints Through the Ages,” 8 p.m. First English Lutheran Church, 3001 Whitis Ave. See early-music.org for ticket information.
What are you working on?
II just finished three performances of Messiah with Conspirare, which was enjoying its first excursion with a period orchestra. After this I’ll be singing in La Follia’s May concert.
So lately I’ve been immersed in singing with historical instruments, something I really love to do. Not that I don’t still love the modern ones! But when you’re singing the old style stuff, it’s great to get to do it with the old style instruments.
‘m now in rehearsals with Texas Early Music Project for a concert at the end of this week. TEMP’s next concert will involve medieval, renaissance and baroque instruments. It’s called “Complaints Through the Ages” and was inspired by this Complaint Choir fad that’s been happening in Europe and Canada. I first heard about it from my mother, who’d seen it featured on CBS Sunday Morning. Go to YouTube and type in “complaint choirs” and you’ll see what I’m talking about — it’s people singing about the things that annoy them, truly making lemons into lemonade.
When I heard them, I was reminded of a medieval piece that TEMP director Danny Johnsonloves to do called “Fort m’enoia” (in English, “I am greatly annoyed”); it’s basically a litany of complaints; and I thought, “Boy, we’ve been doing this for a long time, haven’t we?” When I told Danny about it, he said, “You know, I think you’ve got something there,” and proceeded to create an entire concert of complaints, from medieval time to now, topping it off with his own creation, woven out of the complaints of various members of TEMP. We just sang through it for the first time last night. I love it. It’s delightfully amusing and beautiful to hear.
What do you like about Austin’s classical music scene?
Two things occur to me at once: the warmth and collegiality, and the enormous range of repertoire that’s offered here. I love it that I never get up in front of an orchestra in Austin anymore that isn’t comprised of lots of old friends who I’ve heard playing……. tango, celtic, Brahms, Corigliano, a film score, jazz, you name it, in some other venue. And there they all are, come together to play a larger work, with a real depth of understanding for that style too. The Live Music Capitol of the World gets more of its juice from classical repertoire than a lot of people realize. The musicians that you hear in classical concerts here are gigging all over the place, and many of them bring in colleagues from other parts of the world to “enrich the scene”, so to speak. Musicians from around the country and around the world love to visit and perform in Austin — that’s true for classical music as well as other musical genres. It all makes for a great musical community in which to live and work.
How could Austin’s classical scene be improved?
One thing that would help enormously — a piece of real estate to call our own. I work with a lot of chamber groups and vocal ensembles, and we were all so sad when the Long Center had to scale back it’s original design, which provided more rehearsal and office space, as well as a medium-sized hall with acoustics more suited to chamber music.
We’re truly fortunate to be supported by so many of the beautiful churches in Austin. That’s where most of our work happens. But life would be easier for us — and more good work could happen — if we had a building in which to rehearse, perform, park instruments between performance, etc.
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April 21, 2009
Q-and-A: Matthew Hinsley, Austin Classical Guitar Society
On Saturday, the Austin Classical Guitar Society will present Tunisian-French guitarist and composer Roland Dyens in a solo concert.
We caught up with Matthew Hinsley, executive director of ACGS and himself a guitarist, to ask a few questions.
What are you working on?
I am fortunate to have a very rich and full life. My wife Glenda was recently doing an exercise where she was trying to brainstorm about what her ideal day would be and, after spending the day on it, she snagged me and asked me what my ideal day might be like. After thinking about it briefly, I surprised us both by responding: “I actually think I just lived it”.
My weekday mornings are spent running the Austin Classical Guitar Society, an organization I have been running for the past 12 years. The organization has grown to be the largest guitar society in America and it is a great privilege for me to be working on effective programs that benefit our community with the great people that give their time and energy to the organization. In the afternoons and evenings, and on Saturday, I teach. I have students of all ages and levels but my passion is teaching young people. Over the years I have been extremely fortunate to train major international award-winning youngsters and it seems like the more great young people I work with, the more come to see me from further and further away. Sharing music with passionate and talented young individuals is one of the great joys of my life. I was trained as a performer on the classical guitar (undergraduate at Oberlin Conservatory and Doctoral work at UT) and I round out my professional life as a concert artist.
My current projects for the Guitar Society include closing our 2008-09 International Concert Series and preparing for our 2009 Summer Chamber Series. In October 2008 we published (at www.GuitarCurriculum.com) a full-scale middle school and high curriculum for classroom classical guitar that serves over 500 students each day in Austin now and is in use around the world, so a major project currently is developing and implementing strategies for success with regard to that curriculum and our educational outreach program. The guitar society is also hosting the world’s most prestigious international classical guitar competition at the Long Center for a full week in June 2010 and so I am busy laying the groundwork for what I believe will be the most important guitar convention ever including local partnerships with the Austin Symphony Orchestra, Austin Lyric Opera, Austin Chamber Music Center and more.
As a teacher, I recently published my first book called “Classical Guitar for Young People.” The book comes on the heels of some of my students distinguishing themselves nationally and internationally and I have been simply thrilled at the rate of adoption of my book both as a teaching tool for colleagues around the country and as a text for university pedagogy classes. I was asked to begin the UT string project classical guitar program last fall, which has been marvelous, and I am coming off of a month of traveling where I judged several competitions and taught masterclasses. Two more trips are planned in the near future.
Performing is the hardest part of my life to keep balanced, but I have played several concerts this spring, I have an in town engagement in the next few weeks, and will travel for several concerts this summer and next fall. I am also an avid singer (tenor), and I still take voice lessons. Some of my favorite programs are when I self-accompany on art songs from the renaissance through romantic and modern works. Pure self indulgence really!
Increasingly I am being asked to consult for non-profit organizations. The Guitar Foundation of America asked me to join their board and chair their development committee this year, I have consulted for many guitar societies and in May I’ll travel to Toronto for my first International consulting job for the Toronto Guitar Society. In fact, I am just finishing a draft of what will be my second book this spring about building non-profit arts organizations.
What do you like about Austin’s classical music scene?
What is not to like? Our larger established groups are great, our mid-sized groups (like my organization!) are varied and high-quality, and we have amazing diversity in our smaller organizations and independent artists. The UT Butler School of Music is simply unbelievable and, in many ways, is the generative center of the wheel around which the rest of the arts community spins. Austin audiences are educated, have diverse and, I think, progressive interests, and support our rapidly evolving arts community. Recently I presented a fabulously talented young Polish virtuoso who is programming a lot of new music. I was very gratified that our artist received a standing ovation at the end of his first half (in and of itself an unusual thing) following a remarkable performance of a long, complex, modern work that no one had ever heard before.
I am extremely grateful to the Austin arts community for helping me to build the largest classical guitar society ever in America. Many people view classical guitar as a tiny segment of the classical music world which is itself a tiny segment of the entertainment industry in America. But the Austin arts community was open to the benefits we bring to our community through our vast education and community initiatives, and was willing to take a chance on us.
How could Austin’s classical scene be improved?
The great thing about our classical music scene is that it is evolving. There is a tremendous amount of talent and creativity and collaborative spirit in Austin that is always creating something new. From my limited perspective as a classical musician whose passion is for recitals and chamber music, I would say the single greatest missing element is a world-class 500 to 700 seat recital hall available for the public to use. I would love to be involved in the development of such a facility.
Photo by Greg Abell.
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April 20, 2009
Review: Ellington's 'Queenie Pie' gets a respectful refashioning
Duke Ellington received due homage this weekend when the University of Texas’ Butler School of Music debuted their smartly crafted production of ‘Queenie Pie,’ the jazz genius’ only opera.
Before his death in 1974, Ellington and his collaborating librettist, Bettie McGettigan, never completed ‘Queenie Pie,’ which was originally intended to be a one-hour PBS special.
From the remaining manuscripts — which sometimes indicated merely a melody for what should have been a fully-fledged orchestrated song — UT music scholars Jeff Hellmer, John Mills and Robert DeSimone crafted together an finished version of ‘Queenie Pie’ as close as possible to what Ellington may have envisioned.
(Concert versions of the work have been done and last year Oakland Opera presented their extended, operatic version.)
Read more about their process.
The result? A snappy operatta cum nightclub revue that wonderfully showcased Ellington’s big band-era genius. No extraneous excesses of added material here. Instead, we arguably got pretty close to what Ellington and McGettigan intended ‘Queenie Pie’ to be.
This production also showcased an important collaboration between UT and Huston-Tillotson University, an historically black college across town from UT. DeSimone, director of UT’s opera studies and director of ‘Queenie Pie,’ tapped HTU choral studies professor Gloria Quinlan who in turn rallied her students to join the production. Quinlan is also a UT alum, another element of synergy to the collaboration.
For all the musical burnish in this re-imagined ‘Queenie Pie,’ the plot remains slim. Queenie Pie is a Harlem beautician — a character modeled after Madam C.J. Walker, an early 20th-century cosmetician whose hair straightening product helped make her one of the first African American millionaires — and the reigning champion of a local beauty contest. When her primacy is challenged by the young Cafe Olay, Queenie frets and fusses. In a vivid dream, Queenie Pie finds love in the arms of the king of a magical island — a way out of her previous life.
But the UT creative team smartly didn’t try to overwrite or add to what Ellington and McGettigan left behind, patchy as the plot may be. Instead, this iteration ‘Queenie Pie’ played like a two-act, 75-minute revue, songs strong together with a little bit of narrated plot or dialogue in between and singers and big band presented as if the stage of UT’s McCullough Theatre were that of a Harlem jazz club.
And really, who needed a fleshed out plot when Ellington’s music did it all?
In their arrangements, Hellmer and Mills seamlessly filled out Ellington’s sound. And Hellmer led a crackerjack student big band (culled from UT’s jazz program) who sat behind glittering marquee stands on stage and delivered the punching, swinging rhythms with plenty of brio.
Although special guest, noted jazz singer Carmen Bradford, as Queenie Pie, ddin’t get her chance to impress until the second act, she wowed immediately with impeccable phrasing and pure panache. No wonder Count Bassie plucked her to sing with his orchestra when she was just a teen.
Soprano Morgan Gale Beckford, a UT student, stunned as the sassy Cafe Olay, with a voice clear, polished and full of confident character.
An energetic chorus of UT and HTU students flashed through their song and dance. And Michaele Hite’s 1920s period costumes dazzled, especially the women’s extravagant hats.
Somewhere, the Duke, has reason to be honored that his ‘Queenie Pie’ has gotten her proper moment on the stage.
‘Queenie Pie’ continues at 8 p.m. Friday and 7 p.m. Sunday at McCullough Theatre, UT campus. See www.music.utexas.edu for ticket information.
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April 19, 2009
Review: 'Dialogues of the Carmelites'
Austin Lyric Opera delivers a nuanced yet gut-wrenching production of Francis Poulenc’s “Dialogues of the Carmelites” which opened Saturday night at the Long Center.
And that’s no a small feat to pull of with Poulenc’s very modern intellectual yet ultimately emotional query into the nature of belief. “Dialogues” is hardly an easy opera (to like or to present well) though it’s gaining currency as one of the masterpieces of the 20th-century repertoire.
Premiered in 1957, “Dialogues,” is based on a screenplay that was in turn was based on historical accounts of 16 Carmelite nuns sent to the guillotine by revolutionaries during France’s Reign of Terror.
(ALO’s special guest in the audience Friday night was the renowned soprano Virginia Zeani who originated the role of the young nun Blanche de la Force and who was invited by Poulenc himself to take the role.)
As the title suggests, most of the opera is conversationally sung text. That throws a challenge to those who might expect that opera can only be bodice-ripping romances filled with show-stopping arias.
And it clearly threw a challenge to the audience at the Long Center Friday night: In the orchestra section at least, empty seats appeared after intermission.
That’s too bad because this “Dialogues” not only had vocal talent in spades but rang with a smart emotional and intellectual clarity.
Her voice beautifully shaded in tone yet powerfully dramatic, Emily Pulley relayed every ounce of Blanche’s neurosis, fear and ultimate acceptance of her vows. In Pulley’s hand, Blanche’s anxiety-fueled religious conversion and subsequent psychological journey rings with a very contemporary reality.
Always a highlight of any ALO productions she joins, the luminous soprano Suzanne Ramo brought a charming no-nonsense to Constance, the nun whose good nature belies her smarts and her beatific faith.
In their solos, Jennifer Check (Madame Lidoine) and Dana Beth Miller (Mother Marie) unleashed torrents of luscious clear tones.
Conductor Richard Buckley perfectly calibrated the color and pace of Poulenc’s score which is by turns hauntingly lyrical, sweepingly cinematic and even occasionally playful.
Director Eric Einhorn brought a very modern, realistic tone to this nicely spare production (originally created by Calgary Opera). These were no one-dimensional nuns but rather each emerged as complex and distinct as they wrested their decisions to sacrifice their lives for their faith.
In this telling, this production of a about 18th-century Catholic nuns transcends time and place to speak to us now.
“Dialogues of the Carmelites” continues 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Friday, 3 p.m. April 26 at the Long Center. See www.austinlyricopera.org for ticket information.
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April 17, 2009
Eric Einhorn rethinks 'Dialogues of the Carmelites'
Eric Einhorn thinks of himself as a storyteller. And he’s the first to admit that’s almost a traditional way of thinking about his role as an opera director, not one you might expect from a 28-year-old like himself.
It’s hard to know what would be typical from someone who isn’t even 30 and has already started to carve a national reputation for himself in a notoriously hierarchical and competitive profession.
Einhorn arrived in Austin about a month ago to direct Austin Lyric Opera’s production of Francis Poulenc’s “Dialogues of the Carmelites” which opened last night at the Long Center. Einhorn has a regular gig as an assistant director for many productions at the Metropolitan Opera. And increasingly, he’s invited to direct for opera companies across the country.
“What I crave (in an opera) is human interaction,” he says. “And what the challenge is for me as a storyteller, is to make those human relationships as real and direct as possible.”
In our day and age of multimedia, Einhorn points out, there’s no fooling an audience any more with routine theatrical tricks. If you can YouTube your way through the world, what haven’t you seen at this point? If media keeps you in the role as passive observer, what do you crave? Maybe, Einhorn suggests, what would feel new to an audience today is something immediate and human — a story told with clarity and sincerity.
Kevin Patterson, managing director at Austin Lyric Opera, says he invited Einhorn to direct “Dialogues” because Einhorn’s background and fresh approach would give a very 21st-century perspective to Poulenc’s psychologically charged opera about nuns during the French Revolution.
“I (also) asked him to direct this opera because he’s not Christian. He is Jewish,” Patterson says. “I wanted to not get caught up in all of the Catholic trappings of cloistered nuns. On a very basic level (‘Dialogues of the Carmelites’) is a story of nuns, but I wanted to challenge Eric to go beyond that initial story line as both he and I agreed that this opera has a strong universal statement. Beliefs are universal. They do not know the bounds of religion.”
Written in the mid-1950s, “Dialogues” musically typifies Poulenc’s lush harmonies, striking melodic lines and arresting orchestrations. And it also speaks of Poulenc’s own lifelong struggle with his Roman Catholic beliefs.
Based on historical events, “Dialogues” is set during the French Revolution and subsequent Reign of Terror. The opera tells the story of a nervous young woman of nobility, Blanche de la Force, who chooses to abandon her rank, and the violence of the secular world, for the safety and sanctity of a Carmelite convent. But once at the convent, Blanche realizes the convent is hardly a place that will protect her from the revolutionary terror that is ripping through the country. The anti-religious revolutionary forces are out to seize the convent and arrest the nuns. Blanche runs away, but once she learns that the nuns are condemned to death by guillotine, she realizes she might have saved her own life but not her soul. She joins her sisters on the march to the guillotine.
“(The story) is not really about nuns,” Einhorn says. “It’s about the choices we make and the conviction we have — or don’t have — to follow through on them.” And so, Einhorn conceived of the characters not as anonymous women in matching black and white habits, but rather as separate individuals.
“This is not some homogenous group of dour women,” he says. “This a microcosm of society. All of the women are there for very different reasons. All make their decisions to die for their beliefs for very different reasons.”
And all, he says, have their own fears as they approach the guillotine.
“Everybody fears death,” Einhorn says. And there’s no glossing over that fear. And as a good storyteller, he’s striving to make sure that emotion feels palpable to the audience.
“The story has to feel real, has to be told to you immediately and directly,” he says. “That’s my job.”
‘Dialogues of the Carmelites’ plays 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Wednesday and Friday, 3 p.m. April 26. Dell Hall, Long Center, 701 W. Riverside Drive. www.austinlyricopera.org
Photos by Laura Skelding/A-AS.
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Review: New percussion music beats in
Tom Burritt and the UT Percussion Ensemble charmed Tuesday night with premieres of new works by Austin composers Graham Reynolds and Dan Welcher.
Reynold joined the 12-piece student ensemble on piano for his ’ ‘Whale Drum.’ Rollicking minor chords pumped through decidedly groovy riffs that were alternated with more lyrical heartfelt moments. If anyone denies that a gathering of a dozen percussion instruments can’t be melodic, Reynolds proved otherwise, unleashing a funky harmonius frenzy.
“Whale Drum” is just first of three pieces UT’s music faculty have commissioned from Reynolds that will be premiered this spring. That inclusive gesture to a non-UT musician is welcomed bridge over the town-gown divide that keeps UT music efforts so often disconnected from the Austin community.
Welcher’s “You Can Fool” was a smart musical reflection on the recent presidential election. Written by the request of ensemble students Matthew Teodori and Philip Welder - the first commission Welcher said he’s ever received from students - “You Can Fool” flashed by as intense musical postcards of wildly different mood and color. The quartet of players paired off in duos, then rejoined at times in a dance of musical cooperation and opposition. Finally, a brief moment of peaceful world music soothed before the piece finished with rolling military snare drums. So much for a visionary getting through the layers of history, Welcher’s composition seemed to say.
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This weekend, it's crazy choral confluences
It never fails to happen at least several times during the arts season: Everybody’s event lands at the same time. This weekend, it seems like it’s all choral concerts all the time. I wonder, how can any hope to attract a full audience? And never mind that Austin Lyric Opera is opening “The Dialogues of the Carmelites” this weekend too along with UT’s production of Duke Ellington’s opera “Queenie Pie.” Tough choices, all around.
While you make your choices, listen to “We Remember Them” by Austin composer Donald Grantham, performed by the UT Chamber Singers.
SATURDAY
‘Harmonie and Thyme.’ Austin Singers take on John Rutter’s ‘The Sprig of Thyme’ along with Hayden’s ‘Harmoniemesse’. 8 p.m. Hope Presbyterian Church, 11512 Olson Drive. $5-$15. 314-5532 www.austinsingers.org.
‘Invitation to the Voyage.’ Madrigals and spirituals including Lauridsen’s ‘Lux Aeterna’, Brahms’ ‘Zigeunerlieder’ and Rachmaninov’s ‘Bogoroditse Devo’. 8 p.m. First Presbyterian Church, 8001 Mesa Drive. $15-$20. 372-3233 www.txconsort.org.
SUNDAY
Texas State University Singers, Women’s Chorus, & Men’s Chorus Concert.* Music by Eric Whitacre along with Britten’s ‘Rejoice in the Lamb’ and Rutter’s ‘Gloria.’ 2 p.m. Covenant Presbyterian Church, 3003 Northland Dr. Free. 512-245-2851. www.music.txstate.edu.
‘Invitation to the Voyage.’ (see above.) 3 p.m. First Presbyterian Church, 8001 Mesa Dr.
UT Chamber Singers and Concert Chorale. Music from several centuries from Brahms to Bernstein. 4 p.m. Bates Hall, Music Building, $10, www.music.utexas.edu.
‘Harmonie and Thyme.’ (see above) 4 p.m. University Presbyterian Church, 2203 San Antonio St. $5-$15. 314-5532 www.austinsingers.org.
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April 16, 2009
Q-and-A with Lois Ferrari, conductor
For their next program on April 25, Austin Civic Orchestra is joined by the noted violinist Brian Lewis and violist Roger Myers. We caught up with conductor Lois Ferrari.
Here we are in the year 2009, yet we still don’t see too many female orchestra conductors.
Women in leadership positions are few and far between in many fields. I don’t know for sure why this is but it seems to me that, as in any profession dominated mostly by men, it takes a few generations of women breaking into the field before their presence is not considered revolutionary or odd. I hope for the day when people don’t think of me first as a woman conductor, but rather just a conductor.
I think it’s very important for women in traditionally male professions not to set themselves apart purposefully as special and then expect to be treated equally. I have made a point throughout my career to not place a name tag on myself or make my choice of profession any kind of mission or statement. I think making strides via the mainstream makes a more lasting impression.
Can you tell us a little bit about your experience as a conductor?
My first experience as a bona fide conductor was teaching middle school band and orchestra on Long Island in the mid 1980s. It was there that I realized that conducting was my preferred niche in the music education field and decided to pursue this further. I went back to Ithaca College for my masters degree in conducting and was very fortunate to be a part of a program that not only allowed me to study with wonderful conductors but also in all three areas of conducting: band, orchestra, and choir.
In 1989, I took a position as a high school band director in upstate New York, but spent all my spare time traveling back and forth to Rochester to watch Donald Hunsberger rehearse and perform with the renowned Eastman Wind Ensemble. Shortly after that, I knew what I wanted to do, so for two years I studied hard and prepared for the audition into the doctoral conducting program at Eastman. I still remember the exact moment I opened my acceptance letter in the parking lot of my apartment complex.
Two years later, in 1993, I accepted the job offer from Southwestern University, thinking that this New Yorker would spend about three years gaining experience and then off I would go. Sixteen years later, I am still extremely happy at SU and can’t imagine working with better people anywhere.
My musical life and career also improved a great deal in 2002, thanks to my being nominated for and then appointed to the position of music director of the Austin Civic Orchestra. There are not enough superlatives to express my admiration and affection for all the wonderful, selfless people that make this organization work so well. I feel very lucky to be associated with both institutions and look forward to continuing to grow with and learn from them.
Through all these experiences, I don’t recall anyone ever telling me I couldn’t be a conductor because I’m a woman. A few people have remarked over the years that this was something noteworthy and might be difficult to achieve, but I don’t know of anyone who made disparaging or negative comments, at least not to me personally.
You’re a big champion of music by living composers. What’s important about supporting new music?
Until the mid-19th century, nearly all the music that the Western public consumed was new. There was no way to record performances and thus, music had no way to become “standard” or “popular” on a very large scale. There were favorites in small circles, of course, but the idea of new music in live performance was accepted as routine.
The advent of technology really made it difficult for composers in the 20th and now 21st centuries. Today, most Western audiences regard classical music concerts as entertainment and thus, expect to hear their favorite works, which have been preserved and mass distributed via easily available and affordable media.
The interesting thing, though, is that these same audiences, when presented with new material, almost always embrace the experience as at least interesting and rewarding, if not wholly extraordinary. I truly believe that audiences would welcome new music more if it wasn’t treated like a plate full of Brussels sprouts by some of us who are responsible for programming concerts.
Right now, the best or largest audience for new music is in academia and it is there that I feel not only the desire but the responsibility to commission and promote new compositions. Otherwise, the art of music would stagnate and disappear, and sadly we have been experiencing some of the tell-tale signs of that for some time.
On April 25, the ACO will present the third world premiere I have helped give birth to this semester, a work by Jason Hoogerhyde entitled, “Lament,” for string orchestra.
How could Austin’s classical music scene be improved?
That’s a tough question since Austin already has a very rich music scene of which it should be very proud. I guess the thing I would like most to see is the same amount of financial and community support that is given athletics in the public schools be given to Arts programs. In my not so reserved opinion, it is the Arts that defines us as human and evolved beings and it is the Arts that will ultimately save us from our own savagery. As my idol, John Adams once said: “I must study politics and war that my children may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My children ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain”
Spring Concert: Premiere of “Lament” by Jason Hoogerhyde; Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante; Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony
7:30 p.m. April 25
Reagan High School, 7104 Berkman Dr.
Tix: $10 ($8 students, $3 children 12 and under)
www.austincivicorchestra.org
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April 13, 2009
Got Twitter? You should if you want an audience
Hey orchestras and classical music groups, percussionist Thomas Burritt has a message for you.
“@tburritt: Use social and new media if you want to reach today’s new and younger audience that demands transparency, authenticity and accessibility.”
That message is 137 characters, three less than the maximum you can use on Twitter, the social messaging and microblogging service. (Minus tburritt, Burritt’s Twitter name, that is.)
Read more about Burritt’s advocacy of social media.
And don’t forget, Burritt and the UT Percussion Ensemble play a free concert Tuesday night that will feature premieres of new work by Austin composers Graham Reynolds and Dan Welcher as well as Iannis Xenakis monumental work for percussion “Peaux.”
University of Texas Percussion Ensemble
When: 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 14
Where: Bates Recital Hall, Music Building, UT campus
And if you want to follow me and this blog on Twitter, the Twitter name is @artsinaustin.
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April 12, 2009
New Music Co-op: Immersive and in the dark
The always adventurous New Music Co-op staged what was more an intense sound installation than a concert Saturday night at Ceremony Hall, exclusively featuring the work of American experimental composer Alvin Lucier.
The private chapel turned community space, Ceremony Hall was dimly lit when the audience was admitted, folding chairs arranged in a large oval, a xylaphone and some other music equipment in the middle. Also occupying the center were several snare drums standing on their sides. A synthesized sine wave pulsated throughout the room as people filtered in in the dim light.
The snare drums seemed to grab the slow pulsations of the synthesized sine wave emanating what a low buzz.
The sound was immersive, intense, meditative and even frustrating at times. And that amalgam of experience held through the more than 90 minutes of the concert, even after the snare drums were put aside and soloists began to play from different spots in the room.
Or was Saturday night a sound installation? After all the audience was invited to leave their seats and move around the space to listen from different spots. And while the program indicated the discrete pieces performed, the experience was more a continuously fluid experimentation in sound and listening. Solo instrumentalists (flute, French horn, violin, cello, percussion) took turns creating long tones of specific pitch to affect the sine waves. Some sounds soothed. Others provoked. All demanded that you listen.
To end the event, the performers turned out the lights completely and using Sondols (small hand-held echolocation devices conceived of in the 1960s, but never mass-produced), began to sonically map out Ceremony Hall, the Sondols emitting muted tapping sounds that varied in speed and intensity. (Co-op members made the Sondols modeled after original plans).
In the dark, the experience became as much about listening as it was about sound - a chance for personal meditation as much a group experience.
Since it formed in 2001, the New Music Co-op has developed a small but loyal following. After all, most experimental music efforts or electro-acoustic music explorers anywhere typically don’t attract huge audiences.
But New Music Co-op does well by those who are curious and come out to their concerts. No aloof insider attitude here. Thoughtfully written and very thorough program notes explain much. And the ensemble is only too happy to chat with audience members afterwards, which invariably happens with many lingering for a while.
And all that makes for an easy open-ended scene.
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April 9, 2009
The New Music Co-op gets a bit batty
One the most literally inventive music groups in Austin, the New Music Co-op, is once again crafting new and original instruments and sound-making devices for their concert this Saturday.
“Sound in Time” is a tribute to the music of minimalist American composer Alvin Lucier.
Among the pieces performed Saturday is Lucier’s “Vespers,” which the composer dedicated to “all living creatures who inhabit dark places and who, over the years, have developed acuity in the art of echolocation.” The title is taken “vespertilionidae” or “vesper bat” the largest species of North American bats — just like the kind who live under Austin’s Congress Avenue bridge.
According to the Lucier, the piece seeks to “make a picture in sound about the space you’re in.”
To perform the piece, New Music Co-op members Bill Meadows and Travis Weller have crafted replicas of the electronic “Sondol” echo-location devices which were used in Lucier’s original piece. The Sondol was originally conceived as an assistance device for the blind and visually impaired that would allow a person to perceive or read their surroundings based on the echoes that bounced back.
Six Sondols are used as musical instruments in “Vespers.” Prepare for a echo-immersion experience.
Sondols built by Meadows and Weller.
Sound in Time: The Music of Alvin Lucier
8 p.m. Saturday
Ceremony Hall, 4100 Red River St.
$12 students/advance and $15 at the door
www.newmusiccoop.org
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Tango - The original alt, indie classical music?
Perhaps tango is the original alt-classical music. Perhaps, in fact, tango ensembles were the original bar bands.
Here in Austin, the tango bug bit about a decade ago, right along with a general resurgence in the sultry, complicated dance that was rolling across the country. But unlike most other places where tango percolated, Austin had its own tango house band right from the get-go.
This Saturday, Glover Gill and the women of Tosca String Quartet are returning to their monthly gig at Esquina Tango and you can read more about here.
Have a listen here.
Glover Gill and the Tosca String Quartet
When: 10:30 p.m. Saturday (Beginning tango dance lesson at 9 p.m.)
Where: Esquina Tango, 209 Pedernales St.
Cost: $10 (includes dance class)
Information: 524-2772, www.esquinatangoaustin.com
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April 6, 2009
Review: Round Rock Symphony Orchestra, take 2
Saturday night, the Round Rock Symphony Orchestra, in its only second show, gave a much more polished performance than its debut in October.
The first of two performances, Saturday’s concert attracted more than 100 folks. And interestingly, it was in North Austin, at Westover Hills Church of Christ. Sunday, the RRSO played Round Rock.
Music director Silas Nathaniel Huff took an interesting approach for a new, suburban orchestra, presenting a program of two new works bookended by romantic symphonic staples.
Bringing panache to Saturday’s concert was guest soloist, violinist Jessica Mathaes, concertmistress of the Austin Symphony Orchestra. Mathaes played the premiere of Manly Romero’s “Remember Father.” Mathaes wrested a great deal of nuance form Romero’s intricate, repeating layers that built interesting into a tense height before exhaling with a mournful sigh.
Allen Schulz’s “This Day, This Dusk,” employed predictable contrasts between violent, melodies that were then balanced against lighter passages. In the end, the piece felt weary, not exhilarating.
Surrounding the Romero and Schulz were Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet’ Overture and Stravinsky’s ‘Firebird’ suite — both about as markedly un-modern as the two center pieces. Huff has got the orchestra sounding a bit tighter and smoother than its shaky debut even if all the awkward edges are not totally worked out. And confidence and cohesion still needs to grow.
And yet, an orchestra attempts to grow for Round Rock, and that’s just fine.
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April 5, 2009
Review: Itzhak Perlman
To a virtually sold-out house Sunday night at the Bass Concert Hall, violin great Itzhak Perlman played seemingly two concerts.
The first half was ultra-formal, hermetic even, Perlman nodding but not otherwise saying a word to the audience, instead delivering the music in quick succession.
To Handel’s Sonata No. 13 in D, Perlman brought a polished modern feel to the Baroque stylings. To Franck’s Sonata For Violin & Piano in A, Perlman also wrested an ever so slightly contemporary burnish to a piece that lies just on the edge of romanticism and modernism.
But after intermission, the silent, formal virtuoso didn’t appear. Instead, it was Perlman the casual, accessible - yet utterly genius - violin player, the man who, in his breathtaking half-century career, has not only performed with every great orchestra and in every great concert hall, but also played popular movie scores (“Schindler’s List”) and easily joked with muppets on “Sesame Street.”
“The good news is that the piece is not very long,” he deadpanned about Messiaen’s modernist Theme and Variations. “Just pretend you’ve heard ten times before and you’ll like it.”
After that it was seven short pieces.
“This is a computer printout of everything I’ve played here in the last 40 years,” he joked waving a piece of paper. “Maybe I play something you’ve heard before, you can tell me if you like it better now, or then.”
“Here, this is a good one,” he said, before embarking on Kreisler’s transcription for violin of Falla’s “Spanish Dances,” a staple of the classical guitar repertoire full of dramatic flourish.
The pieces grew in virtuosity and technical demands, yet with each, Perlman left micro-seconds of air, even between the most rapid successions of notes for exquisite yet seemingly effortless clarity.
After Bazzini’s rapid-fire “Dance of the Goblins,” the maestro was done. No need for an encore. After all, Perlman had effectively started the encore from the first note he played.
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Review: "The Color of Dissonance"
Art about art is tricky territory. And while creative collaborations often result in a rich pluralist end product, sometime too many divergent artistic enthusiasms can clutter.
Clutter seemed to muddle “The Color of Dissonance,” an ambitious new opera with music by Jason Hoogerhyde which premiered Friday for a three-performance run at Southwestern University’s Alma Thomas Theatre.
With a libretto by Hoogerhyde, Sergio Costola and Kimberly Smith, “The Color of Dissonance” turned its lens on a seminal moment of cultural history: the birth of modernism. As this story used the pre-World War I friendship of painters Wassily Kandinsky, Gabriele Munter and Arnold Schoenberg as means to examine the radical break modernism made, from realism to abstraction, pretty tonal melodies to harsh dissonances.
Unfortunately, such a heady intellectual topic was never quite realized into compelling theater.
To be sure, Southwestern University deserves kudos for commissioning its faculty— of which Hoogerhyde, Costola and Smith belong — to create a such an ambitious production.
And what a production.
Kandinsky, Munter and Schoenberg were each played by a singer, an actor and a dancer, the cast clad in all-white fin-de-siecle period garb. Thousands of images — from Kandinsky’s paintings to Schoenberg’s scores to glorious early cinema and period newsreels — were projected onto the screen backdrop or sometimes cast onto individual canvases or other surface. A chorus sang from offstage after parading through the audience at the start.
More a singspiel, with arias interspersed by spoken monologue, “Dissonance” found the three characters hardly interacting so much as remaining isolated figures addressing the audience in monologues or arias. And that made for a very static, sometimes wooden progression.
iIn and around the singers and actors, the dancers wove. But their presence, and the overly-stylized choreography, distracted.
As Kandinsky, baritone Oliver Worthington was a standout, his tone expressive and colorful. Indeed he seemed poised to bring more dramatic depth to role, if only that had been part of the theatrical direction.
Unfortunately, it was not.
Really, one wanted ultimately much more of Hoogerhyde’s rich yet ethereal music. Hoogerghyde’s delicate, thoughtful tonal dramas was where this opera’s emotional force lay.
Only the media design, by Duncan Alexander, had as much impact and complexity as the score. Far beyond a typical kaleidoscopic montage, the churning story written by the images and footage offered the only true dramatic foil to Hoogerhyde’s music.
After all, just because some collaboration is good, doesn’t always mean more is better.
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April 4, 2009
Three questions with P. Kellach Waddle, composer and bassist
Composer and bassist P. Kellach Waddle is a flurry of musical activity. Whether writing new pieces (he’s penned more 300 separate works of music) or concertizing with every group from the Austin Symphony Orchestra to a multitude of chamber groups, Waddle and his bass are perpetually on the go.
Last year his String Quartet #2, commissioned by the Miro Quartemt won the 2008 Austin Critic’s Table award for Outstanding Original Composition.
Through his presenting efforts, PKW Productions, Waddle has also created the wildly popular “Music and a Movie” series at the Alamo Drafthouse cinema. Waddle’s assembled ensembles to play pre- and post-movie concerts for films as diverse as “Amadeus” and “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” always attracting a packed house.
In his more than two decades in Austin, the ever-eclectic Waddle, a major advocate for new approaches to new classical music, sees Austin as a hub for change that nevertheless needs more support.
How could Austin’s classical music scene be improved?
Classical music, much less new classical music, is still the stepchild in the Austin music scene. Classical music is in general totally off the radar here in a city so known for music being in it’s everyday life.
Will anyone ever not ask me when I tell them I am a musician “what band are you in?”
[I have to wonder] if the folks at the Live Music Task Force have any clue who [we classical and indie classical musicians are.] I don’’t think it’s any malicious intent to exclude us, but music that doesn’t get heard in a bar at 1 a.m. on a Saturday night isn’t on Austin’s music scene radar. Do the Austin Music Awards even have a classical category?
This is something that needs to be continually addressed and we all need to do our part to change.
What do you like about Austin’s classical music scene?
I have a gargantuan amount of music performed and premiered here on a regular basis in all of my own series under the PKW Productions umbrella but I also get to have music on so many other of my colleagues’ series and projects and vice versa
Right now Austin has so much new classical music heard in venues that continue to tear down the stereotype of what people consider the “normal ” or perhaps, more bluntly, the “Intimidating or segregated” world of “new classical music.” I now have at least half if not more of my premieres at a book store (Book People on the “Music and Literature” series) and a movie theater (Alamo Drafthouse.)
That is what I think is so beautiful about what we have going in new classical music in Austin. While other cities have people valiantly trying to do these things, they still are seen as anomalies. Yet what so many of us are doing here — giving audiences new classical music - new audiences at that, that that’s something I really don’t think you find anywhere elsewhere. The kind of things we do are now a regular part of Austin’s classical music landscape and I think we are very blessed to have manifested this situation here.
What are you working on right now?
It’s been a busy few months with more than two dozen new pieces being premiered.
For my “Music and Literature” series at Book People, I’m finishing up pieces on books by F. Scott Fitzgerald including a quartet for three cellos and bass, a sonata for two basses, a solo bass piece and a violin/cello/bass trio.
In late May it’s new works for “The Violin According to PKW ” featuring Austin Symphony concertmistress Jessica Mathaes. And to continue the series, in early summer it’s “The Sound of the Bass and Cello According to PKW” and “The Sound of Two Basses According to PKW.”
The Austin Chamber Ensemble commissioned a new major work which will premier in May 14-15. And for the Balcones Chamber Orchestra I am completing work on a short ” symphony” of three intermezzos.
For my own upcoming solo concerts at Central Presbyterian Church, I just finished one set of three nocturnes.
Also for these concerts, I am, as always, practicing Bach solo movements and three pieces that were written for me by other composers
Listen to a sample of Waddle music:
Photo: Benjamin Sklar for the American-Statesman.
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April 3, 2009
Weekend Music Pix
This weekend, we’re overloaded with recommended music offerings, particularly on Sunday, when things
And no, this isn’t just happening on the classical music scene. Austin is dizzy with entertainment offering in April.
Tonight, for me it’s “The Color of Dissonance,” the new opera by Jason Hoogerhyde that’s getting its premiere at Southwestern University. It’s always an occasion when new operas are realized here in Austin. The opera plays tonight, Saturday and Sunday. www.southwestern.edu/boxoffice.
Listen to an excerpt:
Saturday, the Round Rock Symphony had a rocky debut last fall, but Jessica Mathaes, Austin Symphony Orchestra concertmistress is the guest soloist, and she’s not one to miss. Mathas plays the premiere of Manly Romero’s ‘Remember Father.’ 8 p.m. First Presbyterian Church, 8001 Mesa Drive. $15-$30. www.roundrocksymphony.org.
Sunday, Itzhak Perlman dominates the evening choices and I can’t resist that.
The rest of the offerings, which you can see here, are numerous. The Wild Basin Winds has an interesting looking program of new music — read about here — but it conflicts with the Perlman concert. UT’s Great Organ Series and repeated performances of “The Color of Dissonance” and Round Rock Symphony.
Image: “The Color of Dissonance.” Photo by Claire McAdams.
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April 2, 2009
Itzhak Perlman: Carnegie Hall, 'Sesame Street' -- It's all good
He’s played the world’s best symphony halls, won 16 Grammy Awards and also on performed on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and “Sesame Street.”
Of course, now that violinist Itzhak Perlman is celebrating his 50th season of his United States debut there’s little the virtuoso hasn’t done.
Perlman plays the Bass Concert Hall Sunday. On the program is Handel’s Violin Sonata No. 13, Franck’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in A and Messiaen’s Theme and Variations.
What’s perhaps remarkable about Perlman’s lengthy resumé is its democratic range. Yes, he can claim as his own the most exclusive classical gigs. But he’s also been a champion of classical music, taking his message to every pop culture or media platform he can. Besides, once you’ve already had your Carnegie Hall solo debut at 18, why not concertize with muppets if it means exposing a television audience of children to the beauty of classical music? Or why not play the achingly beautiful solo on the soundtrack to movie “Schindler’s List?”
Born in Tel Aviv in 1945, Perlman contracted polio at age four and grew up listening to classical music on the radio. Although he’s been known to eschew the word “prodigy,” that’s what he was: He gave his first solo recital aged 10. After moving with his family to the United States in the late 1950s, Perlman, who now walks with the use of a cane or uses a motorized scooter, soon embarked on a breathtaking career of award-winning recordings and nearly non-stop performing.
Sunday he plays the Bass Concert Hall in a solo recital. “Our society would be incomplete without culture, without music,” Perlman told a recent interviewer. “The world has so many problems these days, but music has proved to be something that can be around for a very long time.”
7 p.m. Sunday
Bass Concert Hall, University of Texas campus
$34-$75
512-477-6060. www.utpac.org.
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Wet Ink: Windy new music
It isn’t always easy getting an audience out to see a woodwind ensemble.
Maybe a little ‘American Idol’ type voting will help.
“Wet Ink,” a pair of concerts on Sunday and Tuesday by five-member Austin ensemble Wild Basins Winds, will feature all new music, including some compositions that have never been heard by an audience before
The audience will be invited to vote on which new piece they like best.
Read more about the program here and find concert information.
And check out this video clip of the Wild Basin Winds:
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March 31, 2009
New music anyone? Fear not
Who attends UT’s New Music Ensemble concerts? Like tonight, it’s usually about 70 or so people, many of whom seem to be music students and faculty.
New music is tough sell, even when it’s free, as UT New Music Ensemble concerts are. And if you’re not familiar with the UT campus, good luck penetrating (or even parking at) the ivory tower.
UT logistics aside, the idea of unfamiliar new classical music puts people off. Of course, there’s a lot of it that’s off-putting. Too much new music is insider stuff, seemingly written for like-minded academic specialists.
Then again, if you don’t take at least a chance at new music, you might miss something that will delight.
Graham Reynolds, arguably Austin’s busiest indie composer, was there tonight. Reynolds is putting the finishing touches on a song cycle and a trio for double reeds, both premiering April 26 at UT, a much welcome connection between town and gown given that Reynolds is in no way affiliated with UT.
But he had the time for a break tonight, as equally interested in hearing some new music as supporting Welcher and his efforts. And Reynolds was scoping out the young instrumental talent on stage. “I’m always looking for musicians,” Reynolds, who also co-directs Golden Hornet Project, a non-profit new music presenting organization.
In the UT New Music Ensemble spotlight tonight — two pieces by visiting composer Gabriela Lena Frank, who draws on her multi-cultural heritage (Peruvian/Chinese/Lithuanian/Jewish).
Frank’s ‘Las Sombras de Los Apus’ for four cellos proved compelling — each cello a jittery, antic voice that rattled and rumbled until they were spent, and then silent. “You can’t go wrong with four cellos,” Reynolds said before the piece began. And he spot on.
Franks ‘New Andean Songs’ — for soprano, mezzo-soprano, two pianos and two percussionists found — evoked the intriguing echoes reverberating sounds in the highlands. But while ‘Las Sombras’ had beautiful moments, a certain amount of unnecessary clutter crowded that beauty.
Student composers get their moment too at every UT New Music Ensemble.
Ian Dicke’s “The Lunatic Fringe” was a smart little piece of agit-prop. Dicke packed plenty into a 15-minute piece for chamber orchestra — chiefly a reflective commentary on the eight years of the Bush administration and the horrors of the Iraqi war. A crashing kaleidoscope of melodies (Bush’s favorite pop songs) imploded into ethereal melancholy. Throughout recorded snippets of Bush’s speeches laced through the music. Then the voices switched to those of grief-stricken families who lost loved ones in the war. Normally, spoken text mixed with music is irksome, even annoying. But Dicke pulled it off with polish.
Would that the live webcasts of UTNME’s and other UT concerts were archived online and readily available for further listening. They’re not, and that’s a shame.
In the meantime, go hear to listen to Welcher’s compositions.
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Bach rocks the Blanton
It was standing room only today in the atrium of the Blanton Museum of Art for Bach Cantata Project. About a couple of hundred people turned out for the monthly noontime concert series.
People stood on the stairs, leaned over from mezzanine and listened appreciatively to the 30-minute ‘Palm Sunday Cantata.’
And while I didn’t luck out and get a seat (I stood in the back, hence the long-shot picture), I did score with two of my favorite young singers — mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Petillot and bass Phillip Hill — featured as soloists. Both sang wonderfully, and the soaring Blanton atrium has a bit of a cathedral-like sound.
UT professor James Morrow started the Bach Cantata Project when the Blanton opened three years ago. About 200 of Bach’s cantatas survive today, which scholars estimate is about three-fifths of the total number the Baroque composer is thought to have composed.
Now, Morrow and a changing ensemble of singers and instrumentalists (from UT and beyond), present a different Bach cantata on the last Tuesday at the month. Since it launched, the Project has become incredibly popular, each concert drawing a healthy-sized audience.
What gives? Why is this noontime concert series so popular?
It’s glorious music for one thing, smartly performed in an historically accurate manner.
But the Bach Cantata Project also dovetails into how people want to consume culture in the 21st century.
Although it is a lunchtime series, that actually works well for many working people who have to juggle lots of evening and weekend commitments. The low ticket price (free with museum admission of $3-$7) makes it a bargain. You get a lot of bang — or Bach — for your buck: both a concert and a visit to the museum.
Finally, with just one cantata performed (and most are 25-40 minutes max), these concerts are accessible for people with over-busy schedules. Would that everyone have the two hours plus that’s required for most classical music concerts (really an entire evening is required). Bbut that’s not always the case. And there’s plenty of other culture out there — much of it more flexible in reach — to compete with those evening-long concerts.
Imagine: historically accurate Baroque Bach, re-shaped to fit into the 21t-century.
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March 30, 2009
Anton Nel: A luscious Long Center showing
The audience wouldn’t let Anton Nel leave the Long Center stage Sunday afternoon.
That seemed just fine with Nel. The celebrated Austin pianist exudes an elegant joy when he performs. And he clearly preferred to be nowhere else but performing for a hometown audience and on the stellar nine-foot Hamburg Steinway he helped the Long Center select.
The admiration was mutual. And Nel rewarded the audience’s appreciation and ovations with three encores after a particularly rich — and rigorous — program.
Indeed the concert was a bit of Austin arts history in the making. Since opening a year ago, the Long Center — Austin’s first civic performing arts center — hasn’t yet had a solo classical recital grace the stage of the acoustically exquisite Dell Hall. Fitting perhaps then Nel played the first such concert. The South African-born pianist and now proud Austinite has been eager supporter of the Long Center despite his own hectic schedule of teaching at the University of Texas and concertizing around the world. Nel made the Dell Hall and its Steinway shimmer Sunday.
Brilliantly virtuosic in his technical ability, Nel so smartly eschews showiness. He’s far too sophisticated a musician to be aggressive with the flourishes. Emotional tone and color is what he draws out with style and nuance.
Nel drew the intricacies out of Brahms’ Vier Klavierstucke and out of Schubert’s Fantasy in C Major, Nel extracted an ethereal mood. The selections from Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words Nel offered like distinct little jewels, each with its very different shine. And he played Mendellsohn’s Fantasy in F Sharp with a kind of affecting intensity which made the profound and deep moments all the more exquisite.
Nel’s a jewel himself. Would that we could have a Long Center recital by him an annual event. Please?
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Tuesday music pix: Busy, with tough choices
Tuesday, March 31, is tough when it comes to classical music choices. The new or the historic? Running up against the evening concert of the always interesting University of Texas New Music Ensemble is the legendary St. John’s College Choir, the UK-based choir with a most notable history dating back centuries. Before that, UT’s Bach Cantata Project, the little noon-time concert series that could.
I plan to attend the Bach Cantata Project. Then in evening, it’s going to be a tough coin toss.
Bach Cantata Project
The Bach Cantata Project has become something of a phenom in the three years since it started. Crowds now show up at noon on the last Tuesday of every month to hear one of Bach’s 200 cantatas presented by UT faculty and staff musicians in the Blanton Museum. This month it’s ‘Himmelskönig, sei willkommen.’ Noon. Blanton Museum of Art, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Brazos Street. Free with museum admission ($3-$7). 471-5401. www.blantonmuseum.org
St. John’s College Choir<br>
With a history dating to the 17th century, Cambridge University’s St. John’s College Choirs is simply one of the finest all-male collegiate choirs in the world. Their current five-state, nine-concert tour brings the 30-member choir to town, a guest of UT’s Butler School of Music, for a concert that includes Byrd’s Four-Part Mass, Howells’ Gloucester Service, Swayne’s Magnificat and Holst’s Nunc Dimittis, among other works, 7 p.m. St. Austin Catholic Church, 2026 Guadalupe St. $20 ($15 seniors, $10 students). 471-5401. www.music.utexas.edu.
St. John’s College Choir has terrific online webcasts for free listening opporturnites.
UT New Music Ensemble
The music of visiting composer Gabriela Lena Frank pulls from indigenous Peruvian music and legends. And a new work by Ian Dicke, ‘Lunatic Fringe,’ uses chamber orchestra and pre-recorded voice to plumb the last decade of American politics. 8 p.m. Bates Recital Hall, Butler School of Music, UT campus. Free. 471-5401. www.music.utexas.edu.
The UT New Music Ensemble concert will be webcast live.
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Monday Music Pix
Tonight: University of Texas Symphony Orchestra.
Since conductor Gerhardt Zimmerman took the baton a few years ago, the University of Texas symphony orchestra has sparkled. Sure, they’ve got youthful vigor and enthusiasm on their side. But Zimmerman burnishes them with plenty of
Monday they play Mendelssohn’s ‘Reformation’ Symphony No. 5, Rossini’s L’italiana in Algeri and Dvorak’s Concerto for Cello and Orchestra featuring Elizabethe Lee, winnder of the Butler School of Music String Concerto Competition.
8 p.m. Bates Recital Hall, Music Building, UT campus. $10 ($5 students). 471-5401. www.music.utexas.edu.
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March 29, 2009
Opera 101
Opera director, frequent intermission guest panelist of the Saturday afternoon Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts and author of the popular book “Opera 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving Opera,” Fred Plotkin comes to Austin Tuesday to talk about Austin Lyric Opera’s upcoming production of “Dialogues of the Carmelites” — an opera he believes “is arguably the operatic masterpiece of the 20th century.”
But before he gets into specifics, we asked Plotkin for a brief version of his “Opera 101” — five simple rules for any novice opera fan to use:
“Rule 1: Turn off your analytical faculties.
“Don’t analyze. Our training in life makes us think we’re supposed to understand everything, analyze every experience. But I’m a big believer in mystery — that we can experience something, enjoy something without putting a specific definition to it. And that’s part of the excitement.”
Rule 2: Suspend your belief in reality.
“Set aside your conventional ideas of narrative. Opera is theater, it’s not a class in school. And if we treat it like a class and expect it to give us all the answers in neat orderly way, we miss out.”
Rule 3: Listen, don’t just hear
“Use different faculties to listen, not just hear. Use your ears. When we go to an opera, all the sounds are messages.”
Rule 4: A little advanced preparation goes a long way.
“Read the story in advance, you can find all kinds information online. And if you a chance, borrow a recording or listen to the music online if you can. That way you’ll have a sense of the sound world you’re about to enter.”
Rule: 5 Give in to the opera once your there.
“Read the only the synopsis of the first act. Then just listen. Remember, the main narrative to an opera is the music. The second narrative is the theatricality. You’re in a world where the landscape and the story are music.”
“And Then There Were Nuns: Revolution and Religion in Poulenc’s ‘Dialogues of the Carmelites’,” a lecture by Fred Plotkin
When: 7 p.m. Tuesday
Where: Ducloux Hall, Austin Lyric Opera, 901 Barton Springs Road
Tickets: Free
Information: 472-5927, www.austinlyricopera.org.
Photo courtesy Fred Plotkin.
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March 28, 2009
Today: Free music on a windy Saturday
Today, a typical Texas wind storm is bringing whipping winds to Austin — appropriate perhaps for the gathering of wind ensembles at UT’s Butler School of Music, part of the College Band Directors National Association conference.
Mostly an affair for insiders, there is a line-up of free concerts that are open to the public.
Composers John Adams and John Corigliano, among others, are in town to hear premieres of their work.
Today, three free concerts — mostly of new and contemporary works — fill the bill. And if you can’t be there in person, log in to the live webcasts. All times are Central Standard Time.
At 2:30 p.m. it’s a small concert band playing, among other selections, “Farewell to Gray” by Austin’s Donald Grantham and “Masque” by 40-year-old British composer Kenneth Hesketh.
At 4 p.m. it’s a wind ensemble playing a wide selection from Bach to “Popcopy” a new piece by Waco-based Scott McAllister, a riff on pop culture that’s snatches snippets of sound from “Saturday Night Live” to “Seinfeld.”
At 8 p.m. more wind ensemble brings “Asphalt Cocktail” by Austin-based John Mackey and the premiere of William Bolcom’s First Symphony for Band.
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March 26, 2009
Weekend Music Pix
Here’s the best of the best of what’s going on in Austin’s ‘other live music scene.
The must see? Anton Nel’s solo recital on the Long Center’s 9-foot Hamburg Steinway on Sunday.
TODAY
Imani Winds. This Grammy-nominated African American wind quintet busts the boundaries of traditional chamber music with an inventive modern repertoire. 8 p.m. McCullough Theatre, UT campus. $30. 477-6060. www.utpac.org.
SATURDAY AND SUNDA
Conspirare. Handel’s ‘Messiah’ — it’s not just for the holidays. Actually, Handel never wrote it to be a Christmas piece in the first place: it premiered in April 1742, during Lent. Now, Austin’s Grammy-nominated choir performs the ‘Messiah’ with a historically accurate Baroque-period chamber orchestra. 8 p.m. Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday. St. Martin’s Lutheran Church, 606 W. 15th St. $36-$50. www.conspirare.org.
SUNDAY
Anton Nel. Austin’s internationally recognized pianist plays the 9-foot Hamburg Steinway grand he helped select for the Long Center. Read a casual interview with the eclectic Nel here. Nel will play by works by Haydn, Mendelssohn, Schubert and Brahms show off the instrument’s unusual rich color. 4 p.m. Long Center, 701 W. Riverside Drive. $24-$39. 474-5664. www.thelongcenter.org.
Miro Quartet. Music in the museum. University of Texas’ acclaimed and adventurous string quartet-in-residence plays Dvorák’s ‘American’ quartet and other works. 2 p.m. Blanton Museum of Art, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Brazos Street. Free with museum admission. ($3-$7). 471-5401. www.blantonmuseum.org.
Photo: Anton Nel relaxes over coffee. .
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Austin's 'other' live music scene
Beginning today Austin’s classical music scene gets a month with a little more time in the limelight.
Now that South by Southwest Music Festival has ended - now that the tens of thousands of people from around the world have left the world’s largest music conference — the self-proclaimed “Live Music Capital of the World” is back to being itself.
But where and how does classical music fit into the “Live Music Capital?” Perhaps most importantly, does it fit?
For about the next five weeks, I plan to catch as many classical music concerts as possible. You can see my list of critic’s pix here. Much of what’s on there is meant to highlight the range of what’s going on - from major organizations, to small groups to our regions vast university-based offerings — but what’s on the list are the highlights of those highlights.
Online and in print, I hope to talk to as many musicians, composers and organization leaders as possible. (However, I am the sole American-Statesman staff writer who covers all the fine arts in Austin, music, theater, dance, visual arts and design and we’ll not ignore the greater arts scene.)
Read another introduction to this project here.
Putting our local classical musicians in the spotlight is part of the goal. Asking questions is another.
What defines the culture of classical music in Austin? Who is leading the charge? Who brings in the crowds? Where are the disconnects with today’s younger audiences and 21st-century lifestyles? And what might be in the future of classical music in Austin?
For the most part, classical music in Austin doesn’t look or feel like the rest of the live music scene. Which is to say it doesn’t look much like the rest of culture in 21st century.
Cultture that resonates today across social strata is experiential, flexible, communal, global. But the strictures and traditions of classical music have kept it formal and increasingly out of step with the seismic shifts in how now we consumer - and appreciate - culture.
Consider art museums. Half a century ago, museums, like classical music, projected an aura of exclusivity and superiority and suggested that the public needed specialized knowledge to enjoy, or even understand, what they had in their hushed, hallowed halls.
Jump ahead to 2009. And consider the Blanton Museum of Art. When it opened in 2006, more than 13,000 Austinites showed up for the 24-hour opening, some standing in line for an hour even at 3 a.m. Inside, the place buzzed with interdisciplinary activity: music, dance, live poetry, and yes, an abundance of smartly-curated visual art spanning continents and centuries that was made relevant, timely, accessible.
Like art museums around the world have developed in the last 50 years, the Blanton is tuned to how people want to experience and consume culture now. And it’s still tuned, offering diverse, complex, aesthetic experiences that continues to draw crowds.
We have classical music pioneers in Austin, those are considering new ways of presenting music and as importantly, those who are adding to the repertoire through their own new compositions.
There’s much to consider about how classical fits into Austin. And we aim to raise more questions than we’d dare to answer.
But right now, it’s time to stop reading. And go out and listen.
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March 23, 2009
Nonclassical SXSW showcase
The crowd knew what to do — with a live string quartet on stage at a bar, that is.
Saturday night, at the UK-based Nonclassical records showcase, part of SXSW 2009, the audience swilled beer, perched at the bar, straddled stools, clapped when they liked and hooted too.
Mainly, though, they listened. After all, they were there with specificity in mind. Clearly half the audience lacked the SXSW badges and wristbands that admit to all festival showcases. This was a cover-charge paying crowd there with a purpose: to see what classically-based music (composed, notated) could be like when its let loose from its stifling concert hall confines.
Gabriel Prokofiev, the London-based composer, producer, Nonclassical founder (and also grandson of Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev), brought the Elysian Quartet with him from across the pond to play his String Quartet No. 2. Amplified, that is. Remember, the gig was in a bar.
That amplification gave the strings a metallic edge, perfect for Prokofiev’s jittery rhythms and moody pizzicato-laced melodies. Prokofiev plums the range of contemporary electro-based sounds and laces them through shifting stark yet excitable patterns.
Before the Elysian Quartet though, it was Delicious, Austin composer Peter Stopschinski’s ever-morphing ensemble. Four violins, bass, the ever-intriguing Ames Asbell on viola and Stopschinski on the piano delivering rolling streams of melody in a kind of alt-barrelhouse style. For her part, Asbell dug deep into Stopschinksi dark melodies, extracting a wide range of moods and sounds.
Graham Reynolds took over for a set, the super-prolific Austin alt classical composer wresting out his newest music, including gorgeous, heartfelt portions of his score to Fritz Lang’s famed movie “Metropolis.” (Reynolds and Stopschinski are forging the same path as Prokofiev.)
Later, the Elysian Quartet returned for another set, delivering an ethereal, emotive, impressive group improvisation — improvisation being a rarity in the world of string quartets. Elysian played with aplomb.
In between sets, Prokofiev DJ’d, offering atmospheric re-mixes of music from his Nonclassical label and just about anything else, including snippets from his grandfather’s ouevre. The sounds were groovy, vibrant, smart re-imaginings that made the point: Classical music (nonclassical music?) is all music in the 21st century and it can look and feel like all music.
Listen to samples of Prokofiev’s music;
- Elysian Quartet, String Quartet No. 1, movement 1
- Elysian Quartet, String Quartet No. 1, movement 1 - REMIX
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March 21, 2009
Austin Symphony Orchestra plays SXSW? No, but they did play delightfully
Friday night, inside the Long Center, the Austin Symphony Orchestra sparkled with a smartly coordinated program of seminal mid-century American music by Leonard Bernstein, George Gershwin and the often over-looked Oklahoma-born Roy Harris.
Outside, though, the crowds filled Auditorium Shores across the street for a free concert featuring Raul Malo and the Arc Angels, part of the South By Southwest Music Festival. Families laid blankets on the Long Center lawn to avoid the Auditorium Shores crowd. Children cart-wheeled in the evening light. And a few symphony-goers bopped to Malo’s Latin-infused rhythms.
Inside, the orchestra - and particularly its sharp and friendly 20th-century American program — was just as much an embodiment of Austin’s claim as the “Live Music Capital of the World” as the bands on Auditorium Shores.
And yet the disconnect between inside and outside the Long Center Friday night felt profound.
Why? It needn’t have been that way.
Now that ASO artistic director Peter Bay has had a full year in the Long Center’s acoustically perfect Dell Hall, he’s wrested greater nuance and color from the orchestra. That was evident in Harris’s sweeping, pastoral Third Symphony. Even more so with Gershwin’s Concerto in F that featured celebrated pianist Jon Nakamatsu.
This Gershwin Concerto had plenty of sass without being showy - a smart reading of Gershwin’s compelling yet sometimes emotionally ambiguous major work. Nakamatsu brought a bluesy and very moving sensibility to the soulful adagio.
Bay also brought a smartness to the program’s second half — Bernstein’s Facsimile and his ‘On The Town: Three Episodes.’ - in particular giving Facsimile a nice burnish of anxiety suited to the Bernstein’s ballet of disconnected love.
There wasn’t an anxiety to the disconnect between the orchestra and the SXSW concert. More just a polite distance. (Parking and traffic congestion seemed to not evolve into a crisis but remained a well-organized, if crowded, flow.)
Why not an ASO showcase as part of SXSW? Or a free community concert during SXSW? Or at least a ticket discount for SXSW wristband wearer?
Would that classical music in Austin not keep itself so exclusive of the rest of our live music scene.
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March 16, 2009
Craig Hella Johnson spikes Waterloo sales records
Conspirare founder Craig Hella Johnson broke Waterloo Records release week sales records last week with his new CD, ‘Thorns On The Rose. In less than two hours, 341 CDs were sold at the in-store signing party.
Produced by Michael Hynes of Austin’s Hideout Studios, ‘Thorns’ features Johnson in collaboration with Austin musicians. Eliza Gilkyson, Bukka Allen, Kim Deschamps, Andre Moran and Michael Hynes on pop, folk ballads and art songs with covers of Bob Dylan, Billy Jo Shaver, Eliza Gilkyson and four new Craig Hella Johnson originals set to the poems of Emily Dickinson and Tagore.
You can preview ‘Thorns on the Rose’ here.
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Pencil it in: Duke Ellington’s 'Queenie Pie'
It’s isn’t often that ‘Queenie Pie,’ Duke Ellington’s only opera, is performed. So we’re lucky to be getting a production here in Austin April 17-26.
University of Texas’ Butler School of Music teems up with the Huston-Tillotson University to bring ‘Queenie Pie’ to the stage. World-renowned jazz vocalist Carmen Bradford joins the cast to star in the title role. Ellington’s last large-scale work, ‘Queenie Pie’ merges jazz, opera, and musical theater.
Shows are at 8 p.m. April 17 and 24, 7 p.m. April 19 and 26.
Tickets are available at the door and through www.utpac.org for $20 general public; $17 faculty/staff and seniors; and $10 students.
McCullough Theater, UT campus, 23rd St. and Robert Dedman Dr.
Synopsis, courtesy the Butler School:
Queenie Pie is the National Honorary Degree and Title bestowed annually upon the Beautician-Cosmetologist voted “best” by her professional colleagues. The celebration surrounding the event is a Mardi Gras in Harlem, held on the 13th of every May. For the past ten years, Queenie has earned and held the esteemed title. She came up from the ranks of Beauticians, diligently studying and working to become the best. She has also entered into the business of producing Beauty Products.
With business and position fairly secure, Queenie has settled in to a life of social respectability. Her place is a gathering salon for interesting people. She and they all love each other madly - a most necessary ingredient: a mixture of instant approval and applause.
This years’ contest find Queenie in serious trouble with a beautiful, young contender: the smooth, sleek personification of her name, Café Olay. Possessed of a bad, jealous temper, Cafe Olay is trouble. Holt Fay, a handsome member of Queenie’s circle, is in charge of the contest festivities and has fallen in love with Café Olay.
The contest now becomes a personal struggle for these three and tragedy sets in when Café Olay kills Holt Fay. Queenie wins the title and crown again, but by default. Queenie realizes that time is fast on her heels and during a poignant self-appraisal her faithful old friend and servant guides her thoughts back to his birthplace - an uncharted island, where there is a magic formula for everlasting anythingness.
Queenie embarks on the journey to this island, acquires the mysterious article of necessity only to lose it through a mix-up in the following directions. Throughout the subsequent events, Queenie must now decide what is important in her life: the prize or living while on the road to attaining the Prize. She must learn and choose, as did Holt Fay, where to go to give up.
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March 13, 2009
Prokofiev to play SXSW
Yes, you read that headline right.
Gabriel Prokoviev — grandson of famed Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev — a 34-year-old London-based composer and producer, is hosting a showcase for his Nonclassical record label March 21 at the Tap Room.
With the Elysian Quartet laptop, violin- and-laptap duo John Matthias and Nick Ryan along with a lineup of Austin’s best indie classical musicians, Prokoviev will present a version of his monthly classical club nights that mixes live classically-based music with DJ’d electronica.
Have a listen here.
Prokofiev has been presenting his ‘Nonclassical’ club nights for 16 months in London to ever-increasing buzz.
Prokofiev, you see, is breaking musical boundaries, much like his grandfather. (Gabriel is at peace with the inevitable references. (“It is who I am,” says Gabriel. “But everyone wants to be judged on their own merits and not be the subject to unnecessary comparisons.”)
His own two releases on his Nonclassical label — String Quartet No. 1 and String Quartet No. 2, both played by the Elysian Quartet — bust far past any expected hybrid or crossover style. Ethereal and intelligent, the captivating quartets are followed by remixes of each of the four movements. And in an appropriate spirit of collaboration, Prokoviev shares the remix possibilities with other DJs.
Though he studied composition, electro-acoustic music and ethno-musicology at university, Prokofiev at first shunned the classical musical world, instead following the popular instincts he had since, well, see he was a wee young thing.
“I feel like contemporary classical music has gotten overly academic and overly analytical and it’s totally forgotten how much it should try and interact with everyday contemporary cultural,” said Prokofiev by phone Thursday from his London home. “Before, composers used to readily draw on folk music or popular music. And they appropriated that music because it was great and it had a good energy and it was fresh.”
This isn’t his first visit to SXSW. He and his electro-punk band Spektrum played in 2007.
“It feels like the timing is just right,” says Prokofiev of the SXSW showcase. “Austin has the right vibe and (our gig) will feel like any other live band showcase.”
Image: The Elysian Quartet with Gabriel Prokofiev (center). Photo by Maja Flink.
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March 11, 2009
Conspirare makes TV debut, Craig Hella Johnson release solo CD
Celebrated Austin-based, Grammy-nominated choir Conspirare adds another couple of firsts to its list.
Tonight, the ensemble makes its national television premiere on PBS-affiliate KLRU. And Thursday, Conspirare artistic director and founder Craig Hella Johnson celebrates the release of his first solo CD.
‘A Company of Voices: Conspirare in Concert’ airs at 7 p.m. today, and 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Sunday on KLRU.
“A Company of Voices: Conspirare in Concert” was filmed in front of a live audience last fall at the Long Center, the first time Austin’s new performing arts center was used for such an event. The one-hour show is quintessential Conspirare, showing Johnson’s signature collage style of musically quilting together classical choral works with spirituals, traditional American folk songs and pop standards into a fluid, layered whole.
“A Company of Voices” is scheduled to air on more than 130 PBS-affiliated stations in 28 states this month, PBS pledge month.
For his first solo recording, Johnson — who has an expressive, almost ethereal singing voice — takes a detour from classical music. Accompanying himself on the piano, Johnson collaborates with Eliza Gilkyson on Bob Dylan’s “Ring Them Bells” and solos on Gilkyson’s “The Way That You Are,” the first ever recording of the song. Songs by Billy Jo Shaver and Dan Fogelberg complement Johnson’s original pieces set to lyrics and poems of Emily Dickinson and Tagore. The final track is a haunting rendition of “Killing Me Softly With His Song” featuring renowned Austin cellist Bion Tsang.
“I really wanted to reach out to a broader audience with this CD, beyond my classical work,” Johnson said. “(This CD) is quite personal — these are some of the songs I sing late night at home while sitting at the piano. It’s just another way of expressing something inside that needs to be expressed.”
Craig Hella Johnson celebrates the release of ‘Thorns on a Rose’ CD with a signing from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Waterloo Records, 600 N. Lamar Blvd. Photo: Deborah Ray Turner for AA-S.
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March 10, 2009
Onix Ensemble: The 'other type' of classical music
As a term, ‘classical music’ feels dead and empty. And it certainly doesn’t define the myriad busy composers and musicians — like Mexico’s Onix Ensemble — who bust boundaries.
Onix plays UT’s McCullough Theatre at 8 p.m. Wednesday. See www.utpac.org for ticket information. This is a group of adventurous classically-trained musicians not to miss.
Founded in 1993 by Mexican flutist and new music advocate, Alejandro Escuer, the five-member Onix Ensemble (flute, piano, violin, cello and clarinet) is dedicated to being a voice for contemporary Mexican and Latin American composers — and also contemporary composers from around the world.
With verve, Onix plays a repertoire that ranges from the traditional-sounding to the most radically innovative.
Wednesday’s program includes short works by Mexican composers Armando Luna, Silvestre Revueltas and Gabriela Ortiz; Uruguyan-born LA-based Miguel Del Auila; U.S. composers Michael Torke and Steve Montague and something from Alegandr Cardona of Costa Rica.
Photo by Hector Armezquita.
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March 6, 2009
Another gig not to miss this weekend
You caught those amazing gigs at Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral in the year 1200, right?
No? Well, then you’re luck because Saturday night the Texas Early Music Project recreates the contemplative chant and exhilarating polyphony from a Marian Vespers service as it might have been heard at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris around 1200.
Hauntingly beautiful, this 800-year-old music is eerily contemporary in its almost minimalist stylings. (Yoo hoo Philip Glass!)
Saturday’s concert features an a cappella octet of male voices. Guest artist Temmo Korisheli, from California, joins some of Austin’s best singers, including Jeffrey Jones Ragona, Brett Barnes, Steve Olivares, Brent Baldwin, Peter Lohman, Andrew Gray and Daniel Johnson.
Because of its musical traditions, the music of Notre-Dame was unmatched throughout Europe at the end of the 12th century, a status that was mostly due to Perotin, who was the most famous member of the Notre Dame school of polyphony at that time. His elaborate, rhythmically complex polyphonic works are at once subtle yet powerfully enthralling and are a wonderful complement to the even older plainchant, which alternates with the polyphonic pieces.
From Notre-Dame to Austin: Medieval Vespers for Mary
8 p.m. Saturday, St. Mary Cathedral, 203 E. Tenth St.
$20 general admission $16 students and seniors
Tickets are available at the door by cash or check. Buy tickets online at www.early-music.org.
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March 3, 2009
Golden Hornet Project knows the future
Golden Hornet Project showed us what the future of indie classical music Sunday night at their sold-out concert at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz.
Or maybe Sunday night was what the future of classical music should like: An excited multi-generational crowd. Compelling live video accompaniment. Premieres by living composers.
And, oh yeah — there was beer and vegan cupcakes. Maybe that was why the gig sold out days in advance.
Golden Hornet co-founders Graham Reynolds and Peters Stopschinski took their decade-long efforts as indie composers and musicians to a new level last year when they transformed Golden Hornet into a full-fledge 501(c)(3) non-profit. Sunday was the celebration of that: 10 years of composing, playing and presenting new music and the first year of a whole new venture. Joining Reynolds and Stopschinski in the celebration was the inimitable Tosca String Quartet, themselves bold and adventurous musicians as equally accomplished on the symphony stage as in a live club.
Of course, staging the concert at a casual movie house known for its food and drink service at your seat, was the concert’s first important statement - not every composed music concert needs to take place in the austere rigidity of the concert hall. And the amplified quartet worked just fine for the program of eclectic new compositions. Behind the quartet, live video projections of the musicians — a real-time animation by local artists Lee Webster, Paul Baker, and Tyler Hardy — added moody vibrancy.
Like they have from the git-go, Reynolds and Stopschinski shared the bill with other composers. Most notably was Gabriel Prokofiev, the London-based composer and DJ, grandson of famed Sergei Prokofiev. Tosca delivered a deftly polished version of Prokofiev the contemporary’s haunting yet cerebral String Quartet 2. (Prokofiev plays SXSW March 20 with a showcase of his label Nonclassical.)
Austin musicians Tina Marsh, Josh Robbins, Emily Marks and Lauren Larson also had compositions on the bill. But it was the work of Reynolds and Stopschinski that shone. Both showed their talents crafting gorgeous, mesmirizing melodies (Reynold’s “The Ship ar the Bottom of the Sea”). Both knit strains classical, jazz, pop, rock, dance music and just about every other genre seamlessly together (Stopschinski’s String Quartet 2).
Most importantly for us, both know how to bust down barriers around composed new classical music so that everyone can find a way in.
Finally.
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March 1, 2009
Review: A heaven-sent Rachmaninov Vesper's
Grammy-nominated Austin choir Conspirare stunned and awed Saturday night with a heaven-sent (and sold-out) performance of Rachmaninov’s stirring Vespers at St. Martin’s Lutheran Church.
Hushed and full of reverence, Rachmaninov’s religious mass for unaccompanied chorus is exquisitely beautiful and a departure from the lush piano music or emotive symphonies for which the Russian composer is most commonly known. Considered the crowning achievement of Russian Orthodox choral music, the Vespers follow the rules governing the church’s music with no instruments accompanying the voices.
And yet, while Rachmaninov echoes the melodic style of traditional Orthodox Church chants, he nevertheless brings an undeniable — though carefully considered — sensuousness with harmonies refined to almost a pure essence. The fervid intent of the music’s spirituality is undeniable.
Conspirare director Craig Hella Johnson intimately understood the balance between the simplicity and sensuousness of Rachmaninov’s other-worldly score. The choir’s intonation and vocal blend was seemless and perfect, the soloists appropriately soft, the basses gently hit the low B flats. St. Martin’s high-valuted sanctuary provided lovely — and appropriate — acoustical depth and resonance for the spiritually exalting music.
Conspirare’s exacting perfection never translates to stiff, pretentious or distant. Quite the opposite. There’s a sincerity and prescence that underlies every Conspirare concert. No wonder the audience on Saturday hushed on its own before anyone took the stage: The sublime beauty of Conspirare exudes always.
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February 25, 2009
Free opera Saturday, composer Robert X. Rodriguez to boot
Two short operas. Two fantastic tales. And both for free.
On Saturday, Austin Lyric Opera teams up with the University of Texas Butler School of Music to present ‘La Curandera,’ a one-act comic opera by San Antonio-born Robert Xavier Rodriguez, who has composed music deeply rooted in the Hispanic culture of the American Southwest.
Rodriguez will be on hand Saturday to introduce, ‘La Curandera,’ which is based on an original story inspired by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s short opera ‘Bastien and Bastienne,’ which is also on the bill.
Both operas, each about an hour long, will be performed together.
Mozart’s opera follows the story of Bastienne, a shepherdess, who seeks the help of a sorcerer to help her win the love of her desired Bastien.
For ‘La Curandera,’ Rodriguez updated the story, replacing the original sorcerer with a Mexican curandera, or practitioner of folk healing and magic. The troubled lovers of Mozart’s tale become a young American young couple traveling to Mexico looking to overcome obstacles in their relationship.
‘The two operas go together beautifully to provide contrasting looks at the same subject,’ Rodriguez told a reporter soon after ‘La Curandera’ premiered at Opera Colorado in 2006. ‘I even used one of Mozart’s themes and ‘mariachi-ized’ it in my opera.’
Rodriguez’s opera is sung in English with brief dialoge in English and Spanish.
‘I grew up in a world where magic and the interplay between the real and the objective and the unreal and the magic coexisted on a daily basis,’ Rodriguez has said. ‘This has been a way of life in many of the cultures of Hispano-America.’
Mozart’s ‘Bastien and Bastienne’ and Rodriguez’s ‘La Curandera’
When: 3 p.m. Saturday
Where: Mexican American Cultural Center, 600 River St.
Cost: Free
Information: 472-5927, www.austinlyricopera.org
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February 23, 2009
Ellington's 'Sacred Concert' a glorious collaboration
Not a seat was empty Sunday afternoon when Austin Chamber Music Center teamed up with Huston-Tillotson University’s Concert Choir for a joyous version Duke Ellington’s ‘Sacred Concert,’ presented free as the Chamber Music Center’s annual Black History Month concert.
People spilled into the hall of Huston-Tillotson’s King-Seabrook Chapel. And the stage brimmed full too with the Concert Choir, led by soprano Gloria Quinlan, along with a 15-piece big band led by Keith Winking.
Part choral song cycle, part big band concert, part collection of gospel song, Ellington’s ‘Sacred Concert’ is a brilliant musical mashup. The jazz maestro considered it the most important music he had ever written and spent the last decade of his life devoted to it. Actually, there were three versions of the ‘Sacred Concert’ the first presented in 1965, the last in 1973 one year before Ellington’s death.
But because of the sheer scale of the works, versions of the ‘Sacred Concert’ aren’t often performed. Austin Chamber Music Center artistic director Michelle Schumann has been dreaming of presenting Ellington’s sprawling masterpiece for years. She deserves many kudos for pulling together the considerable forces to make it happen — and offer the concert free to the Austin community.
Certainly, Austin loved it on Sunday. The applause started rippling about two songs into the hour-long program that featured nine selections. At times the chorus alternated the spotlight with the big band. Quinlan showed her clear sweet soprano on “Heaven” even if some micing problems left the volume drift. Winking’s whip-smart ensemble piqued during several impressive solos. Trumpeter Curtis Calderon gave sublime swaggering minor-chord swing that nevertheless still rang as a clarion call. (‘Sacred Concert’ was Ellington’s most direct expression of his faith.) Tenor saxophonist Russell Haight offered a nicely nuanced spin on the bluesy, soulful “TGTT (Too Good To Be Titled).”
But what brought the house down was a surprise add to program, phenom tap dancer Jason Janas of Tapestry Dance Company, who blasted out a brilliant tap solo to “David Danced Before the Lord.” Janas’s storm of sound — all loose legs and furious footwork — begat a spontaneous standing ovation.
Good things — glorious music — happen when people collaborate, Sunday’s concert proved. Now, how about an annual Ellington ‘Sacred Concert’ here?
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Review: Philip Glass 'Book of Longing
Philip Glass and his ensemble only had about two-thirds of an audience at the 3,000-seat Bass Concert Hall Saturday night. That’s a departure from years past when the famed composer has usually filled the house for many of his concerts here.
What gives? Is it the recessionary economy? Or is Austin over its infatuation with everything Glass does? Then again, perhaps there just wasn’t much interest in “Book of Longing,” Glass’s musical treatment of poems by Leonard Cohen from Cohen’s volume of the same name.
Though the piece was co-commissioned by the University of Texas’ Performing Arts Center, the ‘Book of Longing’ premiered in 2007 and has toured since then. Both the live show, and the CD, have garnered mixed reviews. (The UT showing of ‘Book of Longing’ was on hold while Bass underwent an 18-month renovation. Bass re-opened in January.)
Glass and Cohen are longtime friends, artistic equals and their work shares essential similarities: Glass builds with essential musical elements repetitive; Cohen also reduces language to its rudiments.
But none of it seemed to gel in Glass’s 22-song series Saturday night, and while likeable, “Book of Longing” seemed ultimately too disparate.
Behind the nine musicians (including Glass and his longtime collaborator, Michael Riesman, both on keyboards) on stage were large images of Cohen’s drawings arrayed on a backdrop with a central video screen showing a constantly changing stream of yet more drawings.
The four vocalists, Broadway regulars, had strong, distinctive voices, alternating solos with quartets and duets. But the bright show-style vocals didn’t mesh with Glass’s mostly minor-chord machinations nor with Cohen’s terse, often humorously absurd lyrics.
Cohen and Glass each had their own solos of a sort. Cohen’s voice was heard on recordings reading some of his shorter poems. And Glass delivered lovely idiomatic solos for several members of the ensemble which provided the true highlights of the evening’s performance.
Cellist Wendy Sutter cello rendered an hauntingly beautiful melody. Saxophonist Andrew Sterman had an appropriately jazz inflected turn. And violinist Gloria Justen evoked a classical concerto.
But inbetween the solos, Glass’s music was at its most formulaic and repetitious. In the end, the individual pieces — the Broadway voices, the broken arpeggios and rhythms of Glass’s distinctive style, the spoken words, the instrumental solos — never melded.
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February 17, 2009
YouTube creates an orchestra
Consider a 21st century version of a standard joke:
How do you get to Carnegie Hall? YouTube, YouTube, YouTube.
Mixing internet technology with “American Idol” sensibilities, YouTube is putting together the first orchestra selected entirely from video auditions posted online and chosen in part by online votes.
Through Feb. 22, you can vote online at www.youtube.com/symphony for one of the 200 finalists which have been culled from more than 3,000 video submissions from 70-plus countries.
About 80 musicians will be selected and results will be announced March 2.
On April 15, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra will premiere at Carnegie Hall on under the direction of conductor Michael Tilson Thomas.
Auditions were open to any musicians, professional or amateur playing any instrument. A panel of judges from leading symphony orchestras culled the 3,000 submissions to the 200 up for the current final audition. In suitable e-democratic fashion, there’s little info on the individual musicians. You have to vote based simply on the quality of their playing.
Video auditions aren’t entirely new to the opera and symphony world. Plenty of producers and directors pre-screen performance candidates via online videos. But assembling an international orchestra entirely from video auditions arguably hasn’t been done before.
Some of the first-round entrants took on the challenge set-up by YouTube and posted video performance of snippets from Tan Dun’s “Internet Symphony for YouTube,” a new piece written for the occasion by the renowned Chinese composer. Members of the London Symphony Orchestra posted master classes to offer tips on how to tackle the Tan Dun piece and more general advice on auditions.
A spirited fanfare inspired by street sounds the world over, Tan Dun says of his symphony in a YouTube interview, “It’s very important to have symphony culture relate to today’s street sounds because there are oh so many invisible Beethovens behind YouTube.”
All the Tan Dun submissions will be compiled into a mashup video which will be premiered at Carnegie Hall on April 15 and will be hosted on YouTube on April 16. No other news on what will be on the Carnegie Hall program though likely Tilson Thomas will pull together his own mashup of what classical music can be in the year 2009.
Here’s Tan Dun talking more about his “Internet Symphony for YouTube” and workshopping it with the London Symphony Orchestra:
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February 16, 2009
Synergy -- and DJ Spooky -- in the house
Sometimes synergy happens. And when it does, things sizzle and explode.
There’s plenty of synergy flowing around Golden Hornet Project these days. Composers Graham Reynolds and Peter Stopschinski took their decade-long collaboration to a new level last year when they formed the Golden Hornet Project into full-fledged 501(c)(3) non-profit arts organization.
Now, the two indie musicians have a platform to refine and promote their considerable vision. Reynolds and Stopschinski — along with a board of trustees that includes Alamo drafthouse founder Tim League, public relations whiz David Wyatt, club booking master minder Graham Williams and Tosca String Quartet violist Ames Asbell. among others — have re-doubled their efforts to present new musical works.
Golden Hornet Project is on a mission to collapse the barrier between the nightclub and the concert hall, conflate the academy with the underground. And that’s long overdue in Austin, and everywhere for that matter. The limits of categorization — classical music, new music, pop music — impose too many boundaries between composer and listener.
Sunday night, Golden Hornet Project’s new found synergy was in full force at a preview of the group’s March 1 Tenth Anniversary Concert which will feature Tosca String Quartet.
As dusk fell about 70 people gathered at The Plant at Kyle, the post-modern architectural jewel that’s under the co-stewardship of Dana Friis-Hansen, Golden Hornet Project board member and director of the Austin Museum of Art.
The evening’s special guest was Paul Miller, aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid. Something of a conceptual music artist who applies DJ techniques not only to music and found sounds but to film and multi-media, the New York-based world-traveling Miller was a guest of Golden Hornet Project all weekend, giving a show Friday night at the Mohawk with Reynolds and Stopschinski. Miller also stopped by the Alamo Drafthouse to present “Rebirth of a Nation,” his re-mix of the D.W. Griffith’s 1915 infamous film “Birth of a Nation.”
But at The Plant on Sunday, Miller gifted a CD of his latest mix to everyone in the audience before the Tosca String Quartet played a snippet of Miller’s “Nature Morte,” the nine-movement piece which is the composer’s musical meditation on global climate change. Ethereal and dissonant, “Nature Morte” suggested a sound portrait both sad yet beautiful.
Despite the evening’s chill — which caused Tosca’s string instruments to slip out of tune; remember why Izthak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma played to a recording at the Inauguration? — the quartet gave a nice turn to excerpts of pieces by Reynolds and Stopschinski that will be heard in the entirity at the March 1 gig.
Afterward, as darkness spread, Miller signed copies of new book “Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture.”
“Music is exchange,” said Miller. “Today, you are what you play and sound is global.”
Graham Reynolds, Paul Miller, Peter Stopschinski
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February 11, 2009
Philip Glass (hearts) Austin
Philip Glass sent something of an early valentine to Austin today in a phone interview I had with the venerable composer.
For more than two decades Glass has been making almost yearly visits to Austin, garnering a large and loyal audience. Likewise the composer has grown to appreciate Austin.
“There are certain cities in the country that have always been beacons of culture in unexpected places,” said Glass by a phone from his home in New York. “My performing career really began in places like that — places that are not on the main road to speak but were still important places. There seemed to be a connection between my artistic interests and what was going on [in Austin].”
Beginning in the early 1990s, former UT Performing Arts Center director Pebbles Wadsworth was instrumental in getting Glass to Austin on an almost annual basis and she instigated UT’s commission for “Book of Longing,” which the composer brings to the Bass Concert Hall on Saturday.
Based on a book of poetry by legendary wordsmith Leonard Cohen, Glass’s musical version crafts Cohen’s poems — a personal, confessional rumination on the loves and losses of bygone days — into a 100-minute, 22-song cycle. Cohen’s recorded voice, along with projections of his paintings and drawings, add a multi-media touch.
The last time Austinites got a glimpse of Glass was in 2007 in a non-UT gig: Austin Lyric Opera presented the United States premiere of “Waiting for the Barbarians,” the composer’s politically forthright opera that other U.S. opera companies were reluctant to premiere.
“I’ve been able to do things (in Austin) I haven’t been able to do elsewhere,” said Glass. “And I’m grateful for that.”
Philip Glass’ ‘Book of Longing.’
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Austin Wind Symphony joins 'Orchestras Feeding America'
A little orchestra does good. One of Austin’s smaller and newer orchestras is the first in the area to join an important national hunger relief campaign.
Austin Wind Symphony will participate in Orchestras Feeding America, the first national food drive sponsored by America’s symphony orchestras.
The food drive — to take place in March and April — is organized by the League of American Orchestras, which represents the nation’s professional, volunteer and youth orchestras.
To date, over 160 orchestras have come together to combat hunger in their communities through Orchestras Feeding America. Austin Wind Symphony is the only Austin orchestra so far to participate in the program.
Volunteers will collect non-perishable food donations at the Austin Wind Symphony’s performance on March 26 at the Monarch Event Center.
The national food drive is inspired by the true story depicted in the upcoming film “The Soloist.” The movie is based on the story of the friendship between Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez and Nathaniel Ayers, a gifted Juilliard-trained string player whose mental illness landed him homeless on the streets. Starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr., the film is due for release April 24.
“I am very inspired by the number of people coming together during this time of need for so many people,” said Austin Wind Symphony Vice President Shelly Eager in a released statemen. “So often as musicians we are speaking through the music, telling stories, and teaching valuable lessons. This was our opportunity to step outside of the music, and truly make a difference.”
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February 9, 2009
Austin Symphony Orchestra names new executive director
Austin Symphony Orchestra has named Galen Wixson as the organization’s new executive director. Wixson is currently serving as executive director of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra. He begins his job March 16..
Wixson will be in charge of all daily business operations of ASO supervising marketing, public relations, policy development and fundraising. Peter Bay remains music director.
Wixson is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz School of Public Policy and Management with a Master of Arts Management degree. He also holds Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in Cello Performance from Wichita State University.
His previous positions include executive director for the Symphony of Southeast Texas, Reno Philharmonic, Manhattan Center for the Arts and the American String Teachers Association.
Previous executive director Jim Reagan retired in 2007.
Galen Wixon.
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Review: Jupiter Quartet
Friday night at the University of Texas’ McCullough Theater, the Jupiter String Quartet demonstrated again their exceptional technical and artistic quality. Following two previous engagements at the Austin Chamber Music Festival (in 2005 and 2007), the Jupiter on this visit offered a strikingly organized program performed with the tonal intensity and refined expression that are becoming familiar.
The first and last of the three works played were both in A minor and shared more than simply a key. Beethoven’s towering Quartet no. 15 in A minor, among his last compositions, is in five movements with a large central slow movement inscribed by Beethoven, “Holy song of thanks from one recovered to the Divinity.” This rewarding, uncompromising quartet received a young people’s performance, though these young people grasped the technical problems of the music almost flawlessly and were persuasive and self-assured in their expression. Their readings of it should be tremendous before long.
The 18-year-old Felix Mendelssohn intensively studied Beethoven’s last quartets when they were new publications; the boy’s Quartet in A minor, published as no. 2, was his response. Containing several allusions or quotations to the Beethoven quartets, especially no. 15, Mendelssohn’s is ambitious, with his artistic reach exceeding his grasp a wee bit. The Mendelssohn opened the evening, getting a serious, sophisticated treatment from the Jupiter that wanted a sharper interpretive focus.
Bringing the first half to an intriguing conclusion, ‘Arcadiana’ by the British composer Thomas Adés had the players acting independently of each other, producing unusual sonorities laced with numerous allusions to other composers, most notably Edward Elgar’s “Enigma” Variations. The players executed the piece with care and enthusiasm, sounding both angular and sweet.
Between having the Mirò Quartet in residence at UT’s Butler School of Music and receiving periodic visits from the Jupiter Quartet, Austin’s chamber music scene is blessed these days with high-quality string quartet playing.
[David Mead is an American-Statesman freelance critic.]
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February 8, 2009
Conspirare misses out on Grammy
Austin choral group Conspirare missed out on a Grammy Award today, the second time around that the group has been nominated.
Conspriare’s CD “Threshold of Night: Music of Tarik O’Regan” was nominated for Best Choral Performance and Best Classical Album.
Winning for Best Choral Performance was “Symphony Of Psalms,” with Sir Simon Rattle, conductor and Simon Halsey, chorus master (Berliner Philharmoniker; Rundfunkchor Berlin
Winning Best Classical Album was “Weill: Rise And Fall Of The City Of Mahagonny (Los Angeles Opera Chorus and Los Angeles Opera Orchestra).
Conspirare’s next round of concerts in Austin comes Feb. 28 and March 1.
Rachmaninov Vespers, 8 p.m. Feb. 28 Regarded as the crowning achievement of the “Golden Age” of Russian Orthodox sacred music, as well as one of the greatest works of choral music ever written.
‘American Songs & Spirituals,’ 2:30 p.m. March 1 Back by popular demand, this concerts includes such favorites as “Shenandoah,” “Deep River” and Moses Hogan’s glorious arrangements of African-American spirituals.
Both concerts are at St. Martin’s Lutheran Church 606 W. 15th St. Tickets $26, $36 and $46 (Half-price tickets for youth, ages 6-17).
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February 7, 2009
A rarity: Ellington's 'Sacred Concert'
Pencil it in: On Feb. 22, Austin audiences will get the relatively rare chance to hear Duke Ellington’s “Sacred Concerts” when Austin Chamber Music Center joins forces with Huston-Tillotson University to present selections from the three sweeping musical works that the jazz maestro himself called the most important music he had ever written.
The free concert is at 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 22 in the King-Seabrook Chapel at Huston-Tillotson Univ., 900 Chicon St. That’s right, the concert is free.
In the last years of his life, between 1965 and 1973, the jazz genius Ellington composed three massive works he called the ‘Sacred Concerts.’ They were performed in cathedrals and churches around the world. Based on Ellington’s own astute spiritual writings, the concerts are sprawling collections of songs and suites that juxtapose gospel music with jazz, classical music, spirituals, blues, choral music and even dance and oratory.
But because of the sheer scale of the ‘Sacred Concerts’ — they require huge choruses, ensembles of musicians, dancers, solo singers — they have rarely been performed in a grand scale since Ellington’s death in 1974. Also complicating things, the scores were never published in a definitive version.
ACMC artistic director Michelle Schumann has worked for several years now to assemble the kind of collaborators to mount a Schumann’s teamed up with Texas State Univ. prof Keith Winking who will lead a big band. Soprano Gloria Quinlan, Huston-Tillotson music professor and director of choirs, will solo and lead the Huston-Tillotson Concert Choir.
The Feb. 22 concert promises to stunning, accomplished — and moving. Ellington himself wrote expressively in the program notes for the first ‘Sacred Concert.”
“As I travel from place to place by car, bus, train, plane … taking rhythm to the dancers, harmony to the romantic, melody to the nostalgic, gratitude to the listener … receiving praise, applause and handshakes, and at the same time, doing the thing I like to do, I feel that I am most fortunate because I know that God has blessed my timing, without which no thing could have happened—the right time or place or with the right people. The four must converge. Thank God … .
… In this program, you may hear a wide variety of statements without words, and I think you should know that if it is a phrase with six tones, it symbolizes the six syllables in the first four words of the Bible, “In the beginning God,” which is our theme. We say it many times … many ways.”
[The Duke Ellington Reader, ed. Mark Tucker (Oxford University Press, 1993)]
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February 5, 2009
Barbara Smith Conrad's amazing grace
It was a heartfelt homecoming for Barbara Smith Conrad last night when the celebrated mezzo-soprano gave a solo recital at the University of Texas’ Bates Recital Hall.
“I never dreamed I would be so happy to be back at the University of Texas,” the silken-voiced Conrad told the audience.
Understandable. After all, in 1957, UT administrators, pressured by some members of the Texas Legislature, removed Conrad from the lead role in a production of the opera ‘Dido and Aenas.’ Conrad was one of the first African American students to attend UT and she was cast to play opposite a white male student.
Conrad is in town this week for several celebratory events, including receiving a proclamation in her honor today from the Texas Legislature.
“It’s all the emotions you can imagine,” Conrad said last night. “I don’t know if I want to laugh or cry. Thank you for believing that my dream was a worthwhile dream to share.” When news broke in 1957 about Conrad’s dismissal of the role, it attracted national attention. After she graduated from UT, she went on to a recognized career as a professional opera singer.
You can read a detailed version of Conrad’s inspiring story here.
Though no longer singing the large dramatic roles she once did, the 68-year-old Conrad, who lives in New York, now nurtures her life long passion for spirituals. Last night, her eight-song program included several arrangements by Hall Johnson, the noted African American composer who gave the spiritual a new sophistication with marked by classical stylings.
But when it came time for “Amazing Grace,” Conrad had something else in mind.
“We all have to sing church style together — stand up everyone!”
And we did. And it was amazing.
Conrad rehearsing last week at UT.
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February 3, 2009
Conrad's story evokes memories
Sunday’s front page story about Barbara Smith Conrad, has provoked memories in some who were close to the 1957 incident. Conrad was a 17-year-old voice major — one of the first African American students to attend the University of Texas — when she was denied the chance to perform in a UT student opera after she was cast in the lead of “Dido and Aeneas” opposite a white male student.
Conrad’s story reverberated around the country. But not before it shocked many here in Austin.
Phyllis Rothgeb Schenkkan was on the UT campus at the time, assigned to oversee the costumes for “Dido and Aenas.” Schenkkan writes:
“Each time I see recognition of Barbara Smith Conrad’s achievements, I feel some measure of relief and satisfaction. As a Teaching Fellow in Costume Design under Lucy Barton, I was assigned the task of supervising the construction and fitting of the costumes and, during performance, dressing Barbara Smith for her performance as Dido in “Dido and Aeneas.” After attending rehearsals, seeing to the construction of the simple concert-style costumes (there were severe budget restraints on costumes for operas in those days), I still relive the shock of going to assist Ms. Conrad and finding another artist in her place. Thanks to the Texas Legislature and the American-Statesman for its role in addressing these wrongs.”
Conrad gives a solo recital of spirituals Wednesday night at UT’s Bates Recital Hall. On Thursday, she’ll be honored with a resolution by both houses of the Texas Legislature.
Barbara Smith Conrad.
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January 29, 2009
Review: Austin Chamber Music Center
As if we needed further proof that Michelle Schumann and the Austin Chamber Music Center take classical music to a new level in Austin — Saturday’s concert at the Long Center’s Rollins Studio Theatre was sold-out and then some.
Two extra rows of seats had to be added last minute when more than the projected 180 audience members showed up. Good thing that the Rollins, a flexible black box theater with multiple seating possibilities, is nimble. The extra seating didn’t prove a problem.
In fact, it just made the entire concert feel more festive.
Perhaps appropriately,then, Schumann announced that program would start with an encore of sorts by the evening’s featured guests, the lively Carpe Diem String Quartet.
Before they dug into the program’s first piece - Dohnanyi’s String Quartet No. 3 — with a flourish, the quartet whisked off Monti’s ‘Csárdás,’ a frisky, virtuosic piece based on a Hungarian folk dance.
Indeed, frisky characterized the mood of the evening. So did virtuosity. The Ohio-based Carpe Diem not only delivered a vigorous and polished show, they projected an aura of openness
Maybe it was because for the first half of the program, the quartet did without their seats and, except for cellist Diego Fainguersch played standing up. That may seem like a small thing, but it’s really not. Too often the formalities of concert presentation stifles performers - and that in turn colors the audience. But violinists Charles Wetherbee and John Ewing along with violist Korine Fujiwara didn’t hold back on physically expressing their clear joy of playing, swaying swayed and otherwise And how could we not feel that enthusiasm?
The enthusiasm and outward virtuosity really popped when Schumann was joined by Wetherbee and Austin Symphony Orchestra principal clarinetist Stephen Girko for Schoenfeld’s crazy klezmer-infused Trio Freylakh.
Before tackling a mesmerizing presentation of Dvorak’s masterly Piano Quintet, the Carpe Diem strings showed us more of their fun side with Fujiw][=ara’s own homage to her Montana ranching roots with a brilliant burst of fiddle music.
But it was Dvorak’s Quintet that was the gem of the evening. In parts warm and lyrical, in others dramatic and moody, and still at other times folksy, what makes the Dvorak Quintet a masterpiece is ultimate unity. And Schumann and Carpe Diem handled it superbly, with loads of finesse and also with heartfelt soul.
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January 27, 2009
Skip the bad weather; Watch Austin Lyric Opera on PBS
Skip the bad weather tonight and catch Austin Lyric Opera’s recent production of ‘Cinderella’ which has its television debut on PBS affiliate KLRU. Producer Dutch Rall, filmed the production, which transports the classic fairy to glizty 1930s Hollywood, for the award-winning series Incontext TV. The two-and-a-half hour production — filmed in high definition and with English subtitles — ‘Cinderella’ airs for the first time tonight at 8 p.m.
Check out the trailer here.
Friday, Austin Lyric Opera welcomes Houston tenor Chad Shelton as he makes his debut in the role of the Duke in Verdi’s ‘Rigoletto.’ Russian soprano
Shelton is stepping into the role in a bit of last minute maneuver. Read about that here
In other opera news, UT’s Butler School of Music announced its schedule for Mozart’s ‘Bastien und Bastienne’ and Robert X, Rodriguez’s ‘La Curandera.’ Performances of the two short operas are Fridays, February 27 and March 6 at 8 p.m. and Sundays March 1 and 8 at 7 p.m. in McCullough Theatre.
Originally commissioned by Opera Colorado, ‘Curandera’ is Rodriguez’s own response to Mozart’s comedic three-character one-act opera about the lovers Bastien and Bastienne.
The production of ‘Bastien und Bastienne’ is conducted by Wesley Schulz and directed by Rebecca Herman; the production of La Curandera is conducted by Stefan Sanders and directed by Marc Reynolds.
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January 22, 2009
Keeping Austin Viola
Aurelien Petillot and his charming and talented ensemble Viola By Choice have another intriguing gig Friday night.
You can read more about Petillot here in a story from today’s paper.
And if you want have a listen to Petillot and company, here’s a couple of sound files:
Niccolo Paganini, Quartet No. 15
Music Inspired By Colors’
When: 8 p.m. Friday
Where: Bethel Hall, St. David’s Episcopal Church, 301 E. Eighth St.
Cost: $15 ($12 seniors, $8 students, $5 children)
Info: www.violabychoice.org
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January 15, 2009
Austin Lyric Opera announces 2009-2010 season
Austin Lyric Opera announces their 2009-2010 season today — and welcomes to two operas into its repertoire to boot.
Undoubtedly the sprarkliest production on ALO’s lineup is the surreal Glimmerglass Opera production of Emmanuel Chabrier’s ‘L’Etoile.’
‘L’Etoile,’ Jan. 30-Feb. 7, 2010 at ALO.
Chabrier’s operatta is filled with witty tunes and clever dialogue, a confection of a piece that pokes fun at society’s mores and class snobbery with plenty of outrageous slapstick. But it’s also a slyly sharp satire as well, despite its zany plot that revolves around a kind named Ouf who loves to impale things (well, people) and a peddler named Lazuli who pines for Ouf’s beloved, Princess Laoula.
Sung in French with dialogue in English, this production features acid-hued sets, outrageous props and hyper-stylized costumes. Jean-Paul Fouchecourt plays Ouf with Deborah Domanski as Lazuli and Nili Reimer as Princess Laoula. Richard Buckley conducts.
‘L’Etoile,’ Jan. 30-Feb. 7, 2010 at ALO.
Also new to the ALO repertoire is Humperdinck’s ‘Hansel and Gretel,’ next season presented in an edgy production by the New York City Opera.
Yes, Humperdinck’s opera is based on the familiar fairy tale, but with this inventive — and dark — staging, the story is set in 1893 New York when the city was teeming with immigrants. And fraught with fear. Hansel and Gretel live in a gritty Lower East Side tenement and when they wander in search of food, they end up in a snowy Central Park. The witch? She lives in a sumptuous Fifth Avenue mansion.
Also a first for ALO, countertenor Jason Abrams will sing the role of the Sandman. Abrams will be the first countertenor featured in an ALO production and I look forward to that ethereal countertenor sound he’ll bring to the role.
“Hansel and Gretel,” April 24-May, 2010 at ALO.
Opening the ALO season is Puccini’s ‘Boheme.’ A production of San Diego Opera, this show is probably the most traditional telling of Puccini’s tragedy of bohemian Paris — remember, it’s the origin of the Broadway musical ‘Rent’ — that Austin has seen. This ‘Boheme’ is set in 19th-century France, awash in Toulouse-Lautrec visual references.
‘La Boheme’ Nov. 7-11, 2009 at ALO.
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January 6, 2009
Patron pledges $1 million to the Austin Symphony Orchestra
Austin arts patron James C. Armstrong has pledged $1 million to the Austin Symphony Orchestra’s education programs, symphony officials announced Tuesday.
The monies will be used in an endowment to support the symphony’s youth programs. Armstrong has been a longtime supporter of the symphony’s Young People’s Concerts which bring fourth and fifth graders to the special 45-minute orchestra concerts. The concert feature music the children have heard all year at school via study guides designed and published by ASO.
A steady supporter of youth arts programs, Armstrong has also donated to the Austin Lyric Opera, Ballet Austin, Austin Museum of Art and Zach Theatre, among other arts organizations. Austin Lyric Opera’s Armstrong School of Music is named in his honor.
