Rachel Podger Leads
Philharmonia Baroque in The Italian Violin, a Concert of Virtuoso Violin
Concerti, March 15-17 and 20, 2013, Berkeley - San Francisco - Standford

Violinist Rachel Podger, past leader of The English
Concert, and regular collaborator with the Orchestra of the Age of the
Enlightenment, leads Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra on a tour of virtuoso 18th
century Italian concerti for one, two, and four violins. These concerts feature
Philharmonia concertmasters, Elizabeth Blumenstock, Katherine Kyme, and Carla
Moore, alongside Ms. Podger.
On the program is Antonio Vivaldi’s spirited Concerto for Two Violins in A major,
from L’estro armonico, as well as
Arcangelo Corelli’s Concerto Grosso No. 1
in D Major, and Giovanni Mossi’s Concerto
for Four Violins in G major.
Rachel Podger was the leader of The English Concert from
1997-2002, frequently performing as the soloist in Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, before becoming guest
director at the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment, which she led on an
acclaimed tour with J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg
Concertos. She appears as guest director and soloist with numerous Baroque
music ensembles in the United States and Europe, and teaches at the Royal
Academy of Music in London and the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen.
Ms. Podger performs on a 1739 violin made in Genoa by Pesarinius, a late
student of Antonio Stradivari.
The March edition of Philharmonia Baroque’s regular show
on KDFC (90.3 San Francisco / 89.9 Wine Country / 104.9 San Jose) includes
works by Vivaldi and other Italian composers - Sunday, March 10 at 8:00 PM. For
more information, please visit
www.philharmonia.org or call 415-252-1288 x.
315.
Who:
Rachel Podger, violin and leader
Elizabeth Blumenstock, violin
Katherine Kyme, violin
Carla Moore, violin
Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra
What:
Antonio Vivaldi: Concerto
for Violin in A major, RV 348
from La cetra,
Op. 9 No. 2 and Concerto for Two Violins in A major, RV 519
from L’estro
armonico, Op. 3 No. 5
Arcangelo Corelli: Concerto
Grosso No. 1 in D major, Op. 6
Giovanni Mossi: Concerto
for Four Violins in G minor, Op. 4 No.
12
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi: Concerto for Violin in B-flat major
Pietro Locatelli: Concerto
for Four Violins in F major No. 12, Op. 4
Featuring some of the 18th century’s most thrilling violin
music, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra takes a whirlwind tour through the works
of Vivaldi, Corelli, Pergolesi, and more. Led by Rachel Podger, an acclaimed
interpreter of the Baroque period and guest director at Orchestra of the Age of
Enlightenment, the concert also features Philharmonia concertmasters Elizabeth
Blumenstock, Katherine Kyme, and Carla Moore.
When/Where:
Friday, March 15, 2013 at 8:00 pm
San Francisco - Herbst Theater (401 Van Ness Avenue)
Saturday, March 16, 2013 at 8:00 pm
Berkeley - First Congregational Church (2345 Channing Way)
Sunday, March 17, 2013 at 7:30 pm
Berkeley - First Congregational Church (2345 Channing Way)
Wednesday, March 20, 2013 at 8:00 pm
Stanford – Bing Concert Hall (327 Lasuen Mall) in
partnership with Stanford Live
Tickets: Tickets start at $25.
Please visit us online at
www.philharmonia.org to purchase
tickets.
--Ben Casement Stoll, Philharmonia Baroque
American Bach
Soloists Present Bach, Vivaldi & Handel - March 1-4
Elizabeth Blumenstock, viola d’amore; Debra Nagy, oboe
d’amore; and the American Bach Choir are featured in a program of concertos and
choral works.
After a sensational start to the 2012-13 season with
sold-out performances of Handel’s Messiah in Grace Cathedral, San Francisco,
and intensely moving performances of Bach’s St.
John Passion, the American Bach Soloists (ABS) turn their focus to
concertos and psalm settings by the Baroque’s big three: Johann Sebastian Bach,
George Frideric Handel, and Antonio Vivaldi. Maestro Jeffrey Thomas and ABS
will present a pair of glorious choral works that represent the epitome of
18th-century Roman and Venetian traditions: Handel’s Dixit Dominus and Vivaldi’s Beatus
vir. These exuberant works for soloists, chorus, and orchestra will feature
the American Bach Choir, an ensemble that “sets the standard in choral singing”
(San Francisco Classical Voice). Vocal soloists will include soprano Kathryn
Mueller, mezzo soprano Danielle Reutter-Harrah, baritone Robert Stafford, and,
in his ABS debut, countertenor Eric Jurenas.
The instrumental portion of the program boasts two artists
known for their abilities to communicate beauty and pathos through virtuosic
performances. A frequent soloist and concertmaster with ABS, violinist
Elizabeth Blumenstock is widely admired for her work with many of the finest
period instrument ensembles in the country. Known for her “technical flair and
melodic elegance” (San Francisco
Chronicle), Blumenstock will be the soloist in one of Vivaldi’s enthralling
concertos for viola d’amore, an exotic 12-stringed instrument with likely
origins in Turkey or India. Vivaldi was a prolific composer of concertos—he
wrote more than 500, including 350 for solo instruments, 230 of which were for
solo violin—and this Concerto for Viola
d’amore in D Major is a superb showcase for the instrument, rarely heard in
solo concertos yet known for its especially beautiful timbre. Blumenstock
performing as a featured soloist with ABS always generates thrilling musical
results and this pairing of an exquisite composition and an extraordinary
interpreter should not be missed.
Oboist Debra Nagy will be featured in Bach’s Concerto for Oboe d’amore, BWV 1055,
composed for a solo instrument that, in name and tone, conjures images of love,
with its warm and deeply rich tone. Hailed for her “dazzling technique and
soulful expressiveness” (Rocky Mountain
News), and recognized as “a Baroque oboist of consummate taste and
expressivity” (Cleveland Plain Dealer),
Nagy lends her sensitivity as a musical communicator to Bach’s work, which was
once feared lost. Reconstructed from a later version for harpsichord, Bach’s
original composition for oboe d’amore soloist—with its jubilant outer movements
and poignant Larghetto—is an ideal setting for a performer of Nagy’s
virtuosity.
A free, pre-concert lecture—“Insights”—by ABS oboist Debra
Nagy will begin one hour prior to each performance.
Tickets: $20 - $60
For tickets or information, please visit
americanbach.org/tickets or call 415-621-7900.
Bach, Handel & Vivaldi:
Handel: Dixit
Dominus
Vivaldi: Beatus vir
Bach: Concerto for
Oboe d’amore, BWV 1055
Vivaldi: Concerto
for Viola d’amore, RV 392
Friday, March 1, 2013, 8:00 p.m.
St. Stephen’s Church, 3 Bayview Avenue at Golden Gate,
Belvedere, California
Saturday, March 2, 2013, 8:00 p.m.
First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way at Dana,
Berkeley, California
Sunday, March 3, 2013, 4:00 p.m.
St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, 1111 O’Farrell Street at
Franklin, San Francisco, California
Monday, March 4, 2013, 7:00 p.m.
Davis Community Church, 412 C Street at Fourth, Davis,
California
--Christopher D. Lewis, American Bach Soloists
Pianist Jeffrey
Kahane Plays Liszt Transcriptions, Chopin Boat Music, Haas Piano Suite, and
Music About His Dog in Recital on Sunday, March 10, in Hertz Hall, Berkeley,
California
Pianist Jeffrey Kahane comes to Cal Performances on
Sunday, March 10 at 3:00 p.m. in Hertz Hall, playing an eclectic mix of works
from the 16th to 21st centuries. Kahane began his musical career as an
acclaimed solo pianist in the early 1980s, and later that decade expanded into
orchestral conducting, where he earned additional accolades. Of late, he has
returned to the intimate setting of the solo piano recital. Kahane performs
“with expressive warmth and fleet-fingered high spirits” (Los Angeles Times).
Kahane’s program will lean heavily on the brilliant piano
transcriptions of Franz Liszt. Liszt’s transcription for piano of J.S. Bach’s Organ Prelude and Fugue in A minor
simulates the organ’s pedal parts with the left hand while retaining Bach’s
intricate melodic figurations. Two other Liszt transcriptions—of Robert
Schumann’s Widmung (Dedication) and
Franz Schubert’s Auf dem Wasser zu singen
(To be Sung on the Water)—cast these emotional lieder as equally heartfelt solo
piano works. Another Schumann composition, the C major Fantasy, consists of three movements, the first of which is
based on a motif from a Beethoven song cycle. The two works by New York–based
musician (and Jeffrey’s son) Gabriel Kahane—Django:
Tiny Variations on a Big Dog (commissioned by Jeffrey Kahane, the subject
being the family dog) and Where are the
Arms—were composed in the last five years. Pavel Haas’s Suite for Piano
shows the Czech composer’s mastery of technique learned from his teacher LeoÅ¡
Janá?ek, including the use of brief motives and folk-musical elements. Frédéric
Chopin’s Barcarolle in F sharp Major
is a transcendent, technically demanding example of a form—the “boat song” or
“gondolier’s song”—that many composers wrote for 19th-century piano salons.
Jeffrey Kahane was born in Los Angeles in 1956 and began
studying piano at age five. He trained with Howard Weisel and Jakob Gimpel,
graduated from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and in 1981 was a
finalist in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. In 1983 he won
first prize at the Rubenstein Competition and received the Avery Fisher Career
Grant; in 1987 he won the first Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award, and the next
year made his conducting debut at the Oregon Bach Festival. He has appeared in
recital and as soloist in major music centers throughout the United States,
Europe, and Israel, and guest conducted orchestras and festival orchestras
across the United States. He has also recorded widely, including works of
Gershwin and Bernstein with Yo-Yo Ma. Kahane has been music director of the Los
Angeles Chamber Orchestra since 1997, and in that capacity performed all five
Beethoven piano concertos with the orchestra over two consecutive nights at the
Hollywood Bowl in 2003—a feat he repeated twice in 2004. Kahane also served as
director of the Colorado Symphony from 2005–2008, but a bout with
hypertension—now controlled—led him to resign that post to focus more of his
creative energy on piano performance.
Ticket information:
Tickets for Jeffrey Kahane, piano on Sunday, March 10 at
3:00 p.m. in Hertz Hall are priced at $42.00, subject to change. Tickets are
available through the Ticket Office at Zellerbach Hall; at (510) 642-9988; at
www.calperformances.org; and at the door.
Half-price tickets are available for UC Berkeley students. UC faculty
and staff, senior citizens, other students and UC Alumni Association members
receive a $5.00 discount (Special Events excluded). For select performances,
Cal Performances offers UCB student, faculty and staff, senior, and community
rush tickets. For more information
about discounts, go to
http://calperformances.org/buy/discounts.php or call
(510) 642-9988.
Sunday, March 10 at 3:00 p.m.
Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley Campus
Way at Telegraph Ave., Berkeley, California
Koret Recital Series
Jeffrey Kahane, piano
Program:
Bach-Liszt: Organ
Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 543
Schumann: Fantasy in
C, Op. 17
Haas: Suite for
Piano, Op. 13
G. Kahane: Django:
Tiny Variations on a Big Dog
G. Kahane: Where are
the Arms
Schumann-Liszt: Widmung
Schubert-Liszt: Auf
dem Wasser zu singen
Chopin: Barcarolle
in F-sharp Major, Op. 60
Tickets: $42.00 subject to change, and are available
through the Cal Performances Ticket Office at Zellerbach Hall; at (510)
642-9988; at
calperformances.org; and at the door.
--Christina Kellogg, Cal Performances
Longwood Gardens
Announces Competitors for International Organ Competition
Longwood Gardens today announced the ten talented
organists who will compete in the inaugural International Organ
Competition. The international
performers will compete on the 10,010-pipe Longwood Organ for the $40,000 first
prize. All contestants will compete in the preliminary rounds June 18-19, with
the top five contestants competing in the final round on June 22. The
competition takes place in the magnificent Ballroom at Longwood Gardens near
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Tickets are
available now at
http://longwoodgardens.org/organcompetition.html.
The competitors include:
Daria Burlak, 27, was born in Vladivostok, Russia. She
began studying piano at age five in Moscow and studied at the Moscow State
Central Music School, at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, and at the
Cologne Conservatory of Music.
Thomas Gaynor, 21, from Wellington, New Zealand, began his
music studies at age 10 with piano lessons, moving on to the organ at 13. In
2004, he began an organ scholarship at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Wellington, New
Zealand, a position he held for seven years until being awarded the title of
Honorary Sub-Organist.
James Kennerley, 28, a native of the UK, is working as an
organist, conductor, singer, coach, and educator. Kennerley has been Organist
and Music Director at the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Times Square, since
2008.
Jinhee Kim, 27, of Seoul, South Korea, studied organ with
Dr. Tong-Soon Kwak at Yonsei University in Seoul. She graduated with highest
honors and was awarded both the university designated scholarship and the
Yonsei Alumni Scholarship.
Matthieu Latreille, 29, Quebec, Canada, received a Diplôme
d'études supérieures en musique I from the Gatineau Conservatory of Music. In
September 2005, he entered the organ class at the Montreal Conservatory,
studying with Jean Le Buis.
Baptiste-Florian Marle-Ouvard, 30, began studying piano in
France at age 4. He later studied organ, conducting, composition and
improvisation at Conservatoire National Supérieur de musique de Paris where he
graduated with honours.
Silviya Mateva, 27, of Plovdiv, Bulgaria, started studying
piano at the age of seven and began her organ studies when she was 16.
Yuri McCoy, 28, of Huntington, West Virginia, is a first
year graduate student at the Shepherd School of Music where he studies with
Kenneth Cowan.
Adam Pajan, 26, a Monroeville, Pennsylvania native, is a
DMA degree student in organ with a church music emphasis at the University of
Oklahoma’s American Organ Institute where he studies with John Schwandt and is
both a Graduate College Research Fellow and Graduate Assistant.
Benjamin SheenBenjamin Sheen, 23, from London, UK, is a
first year Master's student at the Juilliard School in New York, studying with
Paul Jacobs.
A distinguished panel of experts will judge the
competition including Paul Jacobs, Chair of the Organ Department at The
Juilliard School; Thomas Murray, Professor of Music at Yale University; Oliver
Condy, Editor of BBC Music Magazine; Sophie-Véronique Cauchefer-Choplin,
Titular of the Grand Orgue of Saint Jean-Baptiste de la Salle in Paris; and
Peter Richard Conte, Grand Court Organist of the renowned Wanamaker Organ and
Principal Organist at Longwood Gardens.
“We are pleased to have ten such outstanding young
organists competing in the inaugural Longwood Gardens International Organ
Competition,” said Longwood Gardens Director Paul B. Redman. “They are truly
among the finest young talents in the organ world today and we look forward to
hearing them perform on The Longwood Organ and helping them to further their
music careers.”
Longwood Organ is among the world’s largest concert
organs, with 146 ranks and 10,010 pipes. After a seven-year restoration
completed in 2011, the organ is restored to its original 1930 condition and
incorporates today’s most innovative technology.
The winner receives the $40,000 Pierre S. du Pont First
Prize, a contract with Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists, and a 2013-14
performance at Longwood. Second place receives the Firmin Swinnen $15,000 prize
and third place receives the Clarence Snyder $5,000 prize. Swinnen and Snyder
were past resident organists at Longwood.
About Longwood Gardens:
Longwood Gardens is one of the world’s great gardens,
encompassing 1,077 acres of gardens, woodlands, meadows, fountains, a
10,010-pipe Aeolian organ and a 4-acre conservatory. Longwood continues the
mission set forth by founder Pierre S. du Pont to inspire people through
excellence in garden design, horticulture, education and the arts. More
information at
www.longwoodgardens.org.
--Amanda Sweet, BuckleSweet Media
Eric Whitacre
Singers U.S. Tour
The Grammy-Award winning ensemble makes its U.S. debut
with appearances in Washington, DC, Philadelphia, Boston, and New York March
18-21, 2013.
Visionary composer and conductor Eric Whitacre and the
Eric Whitacre Singers – winners of the 2012 Grammy for Best Choral Performance
for their Decca debut album Light &
Gold – will embark on a four city US tour this March, marking the first
American appearances for the American Whitacre’s UK-based namesake ensemble.
The tour is presented by Distinguished Concerts International (DCINY) a
creative producing entity and a presenting organization with a long history of
collaboration with Whitacre.
The tour begins at the Music Center at Strathmore in
Bethesda, MD (March 18) and goes on to Boston’s Symphony Hall (March 19),
Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center (March 20), and finally New York’s Alice Tully
Hall at Lincoln Center (March 21). The concert program, entitled Inspirations, will feature works from
the Eric Whitacre Singers’ Decca
recordings – including Light & Gold
and 2012’s Water Night – alongside
works by American composers Morten Lauridsen and John Corigliano and beloved works
by Monteverdi and Bach.
“This is, quite simply, one of the most exciting tours of
my life,” writes Eric Whitacre about the upcoming American visit. “The Eric
Whitacre Singers is a stunning group of musicians, singers and friends who
brilliantly and uniquely combine intimacy and excellence in their performances.
The idea of bringing them home to the U.S. for what I hope will be the first of
many trips is thrilling beyond belief.”
March 18, 8 pm:
The Music Center at Strathmore, Bethesda, MD
March 19, 8 pm:
Symphony Hall Boston, MA
March 20, 8 pm:
Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts,
Philadelphia, PA
March 21, 1 & 7 pm:
Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center for the Performing
Arts, New York, NY
--Rebecca Davis Public Relations
Joseph C. Phillips,
Jr. Unveils Two New Works at Kaufman Music Center's Ecstatic Music Festival,
Including Collaboration with Imani Uzuri
The polyglot composer leads Numinous in a pair of
premieres commissioned by the postclassical music festival on March 16th at
Merkin Concert Hall, New York City, NY.
Joseph C. Phillips, Jr. will unveil his two new works at
the Ecstatic Music Festival, presented by Kaufman Music Center, as well as a
brand new collaborative piece with the soulful songstress Imani Uzuri. They
will perform on March 16th at 7:30 pm at Merkin Concert Hall (129 W. 67th
Street, New York, NY 10023). Tickets ($25; $15 Students with ID) can be
purchased by visiting
http://www.kaufmanmusiccenter.org/mch/event/ecstatic-music-festival-joe-phillips-imani-uzuri
or by calling 212 501 3330.
Brooklyn-based composer Joseph C. Phillips, Jr., an
adamant proponent of individuality over genre affiliation, unlocks his earliest
musical influences in Changing Same,
a new piece commissioned by the Ecstatic Music Festival. The piece is also a
central element for the forthcoming disc of Phillips’s music that is being
planned for release by New Amsterdam Records. With a title inspired by Amiri
Baraka’s seminal 1966 essay “The Changing Same (R&B and the New Black
Music),” Changing Same acknowledges
the black popular music that infiltrated Phillips’ childhood.
“This piece is a philosophical and musical departure for
me,” explains Phillips, who was struck by the indie/alt-classical scene’s
penchant for art rock as source material for new chamber works and wanted to
apply this sensibility to black vernacular music. Over the course of six
movements, Schoenberg sidles up against Curtis Mayfield, Bach collides with
Donny Hathaway, Prince gives way to Holst and the Love Train gets a joyous
minimalist-tinged makeover. The result is a highly personal musical memoir that
follows an emotional arc from youthful whimsy through existential despair and
finally transcendent joy.
“For the opening movement, I basically ask is it possible
to make Schoenberg funky,” says Phillips. “And throughout the piece I am
responding to memories of my early musical heritage through the unavoidable
prism of my life and musical interests since then. In many ways this is a
journey ‘home’, a genuine search for an organic fusion of artistic and cultural
influences, to create a new personal artistic
statement that is more than the sum of its parts. This is what I mean when I
describe my work as mixed music.”
As the Ecstatic Music Festival’s stock-in-trade is
devising intriguing musical matches, Phillips will also be teaming up with the
alluring, globally-minded vocalist and composer Imani Uzuri. Like Phillips,
Uzuri’s eclectic style and musical versatility makes it impossible for her to
be pigeonholed into any one genre. “We both make music that is hard to define
and really embrace individuality,” says Phillips. “There’s also a clear
spirituality in both of our music although we come at it differently.” If
Phillips’s music evokes the cool aesthetic of a scientist beholden to the
beauty of the universe, with the elegant scores to go with it, Uzuri’s is
steeped in oral tradition and earthly passion.
Their collaboration has resulted in a five-movement piece
inspired by the themes of awe and humility that exploits these different
perspectives, with Phillips setting a starry poem by Heinrich Heine and an
excerpt from Jhumpa Lahiri’s novella The
Namesake. For her part, Uzuri has set Mary Oliver’s poem “Peonies” and a
self-penned text.
The other piece on the program is an original multi-voice
and multi-instrument musical suite by Uzuri titled Placeless, with
orchestrations by Phillips. This work explores the loaded concept of “home” and
makes use of the Psalms, the writings of Sufi mystic and poet Rumi and the folk
hymnody African-American Spirituals.
All music will be performed by Phillips’s chamber
orchestra Numinous, which features some of NYC’s most intrepid and versatile
musicians. The Ecstatic concert follows on the heels of a screening of Ernst
Lubitsch’s recently restored silent film The
Loves of Pharaoh, which featured Phillips’s critically acclaimed new score
that was commissioned for the 2012 BAM Next Wave Festival, and To Begin the World Over Again, a
collaboration between Phillips and choreographer Edisa Weeks that explored the
revolutionary writings of Thomas Paine.
--Julia Casey, BuckleSweet Media
Baritone Nathan
Gunn Comes to Cal Performances Saturday, March 9, at 8 p.m. at First
Congregational Church in Berkeley, California
After receiving rave reviews as Papageno in the San
Francisco Opera’s recent production of The
Magic Flute, Nathan Gunn fans have a chance to hear him perform in the
intimate setting of First Congregational Church in Berkeley, CA, on Saturday,
March 9 at 8:00 p.m. With his compelling stage presence and musical
versatility, Gunn will give a program that blends classical and contemporary
songs. The first half of the concert will consist of Franz Schubert and Robert
Schumann lieder, while the second half will feature works by Samuel Barber,
Charles Ives and William Bolcom. Gunn will be accompanied on piano by Julie
Gunn, his collaborator and wife. “He brings all kinds of excellence to his
work: musical intelligence, crisp rhythmic delivery and sensitivity to the
text, impressive acting skills, and daring physicality” (The New York Times).
Nathan Gunn was born in 1970 in South Bend, Indiana. After
graduating from the University of Illinois he participated in the Metropolitan
Opera’s Lindemann Young Artists Program and, at 24, won the Met’s National
Council Audition. He has since won accolades and awards, including the 2006
Beverly Sills Career Grant and in 2008 was included in People magazine’s “The Sexiest Men Alive” list.
Known for his dramatic talents, Gunn recently played the
titular role in Billy Budd, a recording of which won the 2010 Grammy for Best
Opera Recording. This season, Gunn will return to the Metropolitan Opera as
Raimbaud in Le Comte d’Ory before heading to the Dallas Opera to play the
Lodger in Dominick Argento’s The Aspern
Papers. In addition to his opera roles, Gunn maintains a busy recital and
concert schedule. He has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco
Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, and the Chicago, Boston and London symphony
orchestras. Recital appearances have been given at Alice Tully Hall and
Carnegie Hall.
Ticket information:
Tickets for Nathan Gunn on March 9 at 8:00 p.m. at First
Congregational Church are $56.00, and are subject to change. Tickets are
available through the Ticket Office at Zellerbach Hall; at (510) 642-9988; at
www.calperformances.org; and at the door. Half-price tickets are available for
UC Berkeley students. UC faculty and staff, senior citizens, other students and
UC Alumni Association members receive a $5.00 discount (Special Events
excluded). For select performances, Cal Performances offers UCB students,
faculty and staff, senior, and community rush tickets. For more information about discounts, call
(510) 642-9988 or go to
http://calperformances.org/buy/discounts.php.
--Christina Kellogg, Cal Performances
Borough’s Brightest
Belters in “Operation Brooklyn”
AOP and Opera on Tap showcase music from New Opera’s Decoration, Windows and Smashed.
On Saturday, March 23, 7:30pm, AOP (American Opera
Projects) and Opera on Tap will present a new installment of their acclaimed
series, "OPERAtion Brooklyn" a semi-annual festival that highlights
Brooklyn as the cultural epicenter for progressive works of opera and classical
music. Audiences will be guided around multiple floors of ART-NY's South Oxford
Space (138 S. Oxford St., Brooklyn, NY 11217) in Fort Greene, Brooklyn to hear
music from new operas by local talents Mikael Karlsson, James Barry and Zach
Redler. Tickets are $20, available at
www.operationbrooklyn.com. The evening will
run 1 hour, thirty minutes.
From a prostitute who is desperately in love with her pimp
to a teenage father whose baby will not stop crying, six short monodramas
conspire to explore the diverse life situations of the individuals in Windows,
a new work by composer Zach Redler and librettist Sara Cooper. The 40-minute
staged song-cycle will feature performances by Sumayya Ali, Amelia Watkins,
Jeffrey Gavett, Justin Hopkins, Brittney Redler, and Etai BenShlomo. Noah
Himmelstein directs with Mila Henry on piano.
Opera on Tap will present a preview of their latest
project, SMASHED: The Carrie Nation Story,
by James Barry and Timothy Braun, which premieres April 4-6 at HERE Arts Center
in the Dorothy B. Williams Theater. Based loosely on the life and memoirs of
temperance leader Carrie A. Nation, this absurdly comic opera about drinking
booze (and about the people who don't) was commissioned by Opera on Tap for the
inauguration of its Roadwork Series that creates operas in New York City that
are subsequently presented by Opera On Tap chapters around the country. The
OPERAtion Brooklyn preview will be conducted by Conrad Chu with stage direction
by Jenny Lee Mitchell with Mila Henry on piano and performances by Patricia
Vital, Seth Gilman, Joseph Flaxman, Michael Bragg, Cameron Russell, Christiana
Little, Kayleigh Butcher, and soprano Krista Wozniak as the ax-wielding moral
vigilante.
Two sisters, one pregnant and one dying, confront rabbits,
diapers and the end of time itself in Decoration, music by Mikael Karlsson,
libretto by the composer and David Flodén. Presented by AOP, in collaboration
with Manhattan School of Music, scenes from the opera will feature
mezzo-sopranos Rebecca Ringle and Raehann Bryce-Davis, soprano Margreth
Fredheim, and baritone Jason Cox, direction by Caren France, and Scott Rednour
on the piano.
--Matt Gray, Opera Projects
Beijing Guitar Duo
in Concert with Manuel Barrueco, Saturday, March 9, 2013, 8:00 p.m., at the
92nd Street Y, New York City, NY
Manuel Barrueco is internationally recognized as one of
the most important guitarists of our time. His unique artistry has been
continually described as that of a superb instrumentalist and a superior and
elegant musician, possessing a seductive sound and uncommon lyrical gifts.
The Beijing Guitar Duo is composed of Meng Su and Yameng
Wang, who met at the Central Conservatory in Beijing, China, where they both
studied with Chen Zhi. In 2006, they met Manuel Barrueco while he was on tour
in Hong Kong. At his personal invitation, they applied and were accepted to the
Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, where they continued their studies
with Mr. Barrueco. At his recommendation, they formed their duo.
DIABELLI: Trio in F major, Op. 62
TORROBA: Estampas
DUN: Eight Memories in Watercolor (trans. Barrueco) New
York premiere
SIERRA: Sonata New York premiere, dedicated to Manuel
Barrueco
S. ASSAD: The Enchanted Island New York premiere,
dedicated to both Mr. Barrueco and the Beijing Guitar Duo
PIAZZOLLA: L’Evasion
PIAZZOLLA: Fuga y Misterio
PIAZZOLLA: Revirado
Pre-concert talk at 7 p.m. with Benjamin Verdery of Yale
University.
Tickets are available at
www.92Y.org/concerts or
212-415-5500.
--Ashlyn Damm, Kirshbaum Demler & Associates