The American
Classical Orchestra kicks off HANDELFEST with a Family Concert on March 1, 2014
at the Church of the Blessed Sacrament, NYC at 1:30 PM

Join the American Classical Orchestra for HANDELFEST, the
first festival event from ACO that celebrates the music of Handel during the
month of March. The festivities get under way with a family-friendly concert at
the Church of the Blessed Sacrament (152 W 71st St., NYC) featuring some of
Handel’s most uplifting works. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased by clicking
here or by calling 212-362-2727.
A full 35-piece period orchestra opens the festival with a
performance of the grandiose Music for
Royal Fireworks. Soloists from Samson
(Megan Chartrand and John Taylor Ward) perform some of Handel’s most famous
arias including “The Trumpet Shall Sound,” “Let the Bright Seraphim,” and
“Lascia Ch’io pianga.” In addition, the 70-member New York City Children’s
Chorus joins for excerpts from Messiah,
including “Lift Up Your Heads” and a participatory “Hallelujah Chorus.”
Handel is even slated for a guest appearance as well. The
public concert is part of the ACO’s Classical Music for Kids outreach program
in which ACO members perform for nearly 5,000 students at 20 New York City
public schools. This family concert is the perfect way to commence this
incredible festival, presented by the American Classical Orchestra.
For its first-ever festival event, HANDELFEST, the
American Classical Orchestra collaborates with some of the world’s leading
artists and experts for an exceptional month of music celebrating George
Frederick Handel.
Following the family concert will be Handel’s Samson on March 4, 2014 at 8pm at Alice
Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, NYC. The celebrated Handelian Nicholas McGegan
makes his first appearance with the ACO, conducting what is widely considered
one of the crowning achievements of Handel’s oeuvre. Tenor Thomas Cooley sings
the title role.
Also at Alice Tully Hall on March 19, 2014 at 8pm, ACO
presents Alceste, a work from Handel
rarely heard in its entirety today. Eminent choreographer John Heginbotham
joins the production and Cynthia Edwards (formerly of New York City Opera)
stage directs. The program also features Handel’s double wind band work
Concerti a due cori and the choral showcase Utrecht Jubilate. Be sure to arrive
early for a pre-concert lecture by one of the world’s most venerated
musicologists, Neal Zaslaw.
--Julia Casey, BuckleSweet Media
Second Annual PARMA
Music Festival Announced
PARMA Recordings is pleased to announce the second annual
PARMA Music Festival on Wednesday, August 13 through Saturday, August 16, 2014
in Portsmouth, NH. The four-day festival will include day-and night-time events
and performances and will conclude with a concert at The Music Hall on August
16.
--Rory Cooper, Parma Recordings
Santa Fe Chamber
Music Festival Announces 2014 Season July 2--August 25
Pianist Yefim Bronfman to be 2014 Artist-in-Residence, performing a solo recital August 19 featuring Prokofiev Sonatas and Marc Neikrug’s Passions, Reflected.
“Bach Plus” Five-Concert Series including all six Brandenburg Concerti performed over two
concerts plus a solo piano recital by Benjamin Hochman
Two all-Beethoven programs to feature the composer’s last
works for cach instrument or ensemble, including a brief, rarely performed Fugue for String Quintet in D Major, Op.
137
2014 commissions include:
Festival commission and world premiere by Brett Dean,
featuring soprano Tony Arnold and the Orion String Quartet
Festival co-commission and U.S. premiere by Julian
Anderson, performed by the FLUX Quartet
Festival co-commission and New Mexico premiere of Lowell
Liebermann’s Four Seasons Op. 123, featuring Mezzo-Soprano Sasha Cooke and the
composer playing piano
Second annual Young Composers’ String Quartet Workshop,
featuring works by Ryan Chase and Tonia Ko, performed by the FLUX Quartet
Artists Making Festival debut:
Alessio Bax, piano; Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano; Ran Dank,
piano; Dover Quartet; Caleb Hudson, trumpet; William Kinderman, piano/lecturer;
Mark Kosower, cello; Leigh Mesh, bass; O’Connor String Quartet; James Shields,
clarinet; Wilhelmina Smith, cello; Pei-Yao Wang, piano; and Stephen Williamson,
clarinet.
Gala to be held July 22, including a silent auction, wine
auction, performance and dinner.
Subscriptions available now & single tickets on sale
February 24 from
www.SantaFeChamberMusic.com or by phone (505) 982-1890
--Ashlyn Damm, Kirshbaum Demler & Associates
March 9 at Lincoln
Center: Cameron Carpenter launches the Organ Heard 'Round The World
The genre-defying virtuoso organist gives his
International Touring Organ its world premiere in two Lincoln Center concerts
on March 9. A European tour, Sony debut album, and feature-length film complete
the instrument’s explosive debut
Cameron Carpenter, the “extravagantly talented" (The New York Times) “smasher of cultural
and classical music taboos" (The New
Yorker), debuts his long-awaited International Touring Organ in two
concerts at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, NYC on March 9, 2014. The
unveiling concert at 2pm is followed by a Dedication Concert at 7pm, tickets
$35-$200. ($100 and $200 ticketholders have access to additional private events
and a champagne reception). The concerts, each with different programs, feature
music by Bach, Bernstein, Demessieux, Dupré, Scriabin, Vaughan Williams and
many others, including the world premiere performance of Cameron’s Music For An Imaginary Film (2013).
The simplicity of Cameron’s mandate – that a great
organist, like any other great musician, should have a personal instrument upon
which to perform consistently anywhere in the world – belies its ambitiousness.
To make a mobile digital organ artistically and sonically equal to any of the
world’s great organs is so monumental a project as to have taken nearly ten
years, the emergence of maverick organbuilders Marshall & Ogletree LLC, and
a historic cooperation between two of the world’s most powerful musical
managements (CAMI Music LLC and Konzertdirektion Schmid) to complete.
For more information on Cameron Carpenter, click
http://www.cameroncarpenter.com
--Amanda Sweet, BuckleSweet Media
Sacred Music in a
Sacred Space presents Andrew Henderson on the N.P. Mander Organ Sunday,
February 23 at 3pm at NYC’s Church of St. Ignatius Loyola
Hear the spectacular N.P. Mander Organ played by
celebrated organist Andrew Henderson on February 23, 2014 at 3pm. He will
perform selections from Bach, Widor, Grier, and Weaver at the Church of St.
Ignatius Loyola in New York City. Call 212-288-2520 or click here for tickets.
Henderson will perform Bach’s Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue, which he describes as “one of the
great composer’s longest freely-composed works for the organ.” He will also
perform Flourish and Reverie, a fascinating work from the great 20th century
English composer Francis Grier. Henderson learned this piece specifically for
this performance and says, “It requires a myriad of contrasting sounds that I
believe will sound fabulous at St. Ignatius: the fanfare-like ‘Flourish’
declaimed on different combinations of reed stops (Trumpets, Oboes, Cromornes),
with the expansive and hypnotic “Reverie” being written for the colorful flute
stops.”
Henderson will also perform a piece composed by his former
organ teacher and predecessor as Director of Music at Madison Avenue
Presbyterian Church, organist John Weaver. Weaver is a published composer of
fascinating works for the organ, including his ebullient Toccata (1959). Henderson will perform an unpublished prelude from
Weaver’s Beach Spring, which is a beautiful, inventive setting of an early
American hymn tune first published in The
Sacred Harp, 1844.
For more information, click
http://smssconcerts.org
--Julia Casey, BuckleSweet Media
Young People's
Chorus of New York City Annual Gala
Francisco J. Núñez, Artistic Director/Founder
Monday, March 3 at 7 p.m. at Frederick P. Rose Hall, home
of Jazz at Lincoln Center, NYC.
Don't miss this year's one-performance-only musical
spectacular, featuring:
All 350 YPC after-school choristers, The New York Pops,
and special guest artists Broadway's Mary
Poppins Ashley Brown and NEA Jazz Master Delfeayo Marsalis.
In a musical revue featuring folk, jazz, and classical
music and incredible Broadway production numbers from West Side Story, Mary
Poppins, and more.
Tickets prices:
$60, $75, $100, $125, and $300.
For best seats, buy now at Jazz at Lincoln Center Box
Office (Broadway and 60th Street), CenterCharge 212-721-6500, or online at
www.jalc.org.
--Katharine Gibson, YPC
92Y March Concerts
Saturday, March 1, 8:00 PM
Brentano String Quartet and pianist Vijay Iyer
92Y - Kaufmann Concert Hall, NYC
Monday, March 10, 7:30 PM
Pianist Benjamin Hochman
92Y Concerts at SubCulture, NYC
Saturday, March 22, 8:00 PM
Guitarist David Russell
92Y - Kaufmann Concert Hall, NYC
Sunday, March 30, 3:00 PM
Pianist Yefim Bronfman and musicians from the New York
Philharmonic
Tickets are available at
www.92Y.org/concerts or
212-415-5500.
--Ashlyn Damm, Kirshbaum Demler & Associates
Jordi Savall and
Hesperion XXI Join with Mexico’s Tembembe Ensamble Continuo to Perform Baroque
Music of Europe and the Americas at First Congregational Church, Berkeley, CA,
on March 1
Returning to Cal Performances for a sold-out performance,
Jordi Savall and his historical music ensemble, Hespèrion XXI, join Tembembe
Ensamble Continuo, a Mexican group dedicated to ancient music of the New World,
on March 1 at 8:00 p.m. in First Congregational Church. A perennial presence at
Cal Performances and always a Berkeley favorite, Savall and his ensemble will
perform “FolÃas Antiquas & Criollas: From the Ancient World to the New
World”—a program that explores links between the early music of Europe and
music created in the Western Hemisphere. “Instinct and scholarship, impeccable
musicality, and a true sense of theater merge as Savall brings to life sounds
that are half a millennium old,” raves the San
Francisco Chronicle. “And how modern they seem, how thrilling and how new
is all this music first heard so long ago.”
The composers highlighted in FolÃas Antiquas &
Criollas include Diego Ortiz, Pedro Guerrero Moresca, Código Trujillo, Antonio de
Cabezón, Juan del Enzina, Santiago de Murcia, Antonio MartÃn y Coll, Juan Pérez
de Bocanegra, Francisco Correa de Arauxo, and Antonio Valente. The works that
cannot be identified with specific authors—in particular, the folk songs and
dance music—hail from throughout Latin America. Although these composers’ names
are lost to history, their works—many of which include improvisatory sections
created by the performers—resonate through the centuries.
Jordi Savall is a tireless performer, enthusiastic educator,
and thoughtful scholar on early music. He has rediscovered and restored
countless works of music from the 18th century and before, and has performed
them around the world. Barcelona-born Savall is widely credited with reviving
modern interest in the viola da gamba, a stringed instrument that was popular
in the Renaissance and Baroque eras. In addition to leading Hespèrion XXI,
Savall has created a record label, Alia Vox, and founded and directed La
Capella Reial and Le Concert des Nations, two groups dedicated to historical
music performance. Hespèrion XXI was founded (as Hespèrion XX) in 1974 by
Savall. Taking its name from hesperia, the ancient name for the Italian and
Iberian peninsulas, the 21st-century musicians of the ensemble are dedicated to
reconstructing the rich music from other ages—specifically, music from the 10th
to the 18th century—and thereby breathing new life into current musical
thinking. Members of Hespèrion XXI
include Xavier DÃaz-Latorre, theorbo and guitar; Andrew Lawrence-King, arpa
cruzada; Xavier Puertas, violone; and David Mayoral, percussion.
Ticket information:
Tickets for Jordi Savall with Hespèrion XXI and Tembembe
Ensamble Continuo on Saturday, March 1, at 8:00 p.m. in First Congregational
Church is sold out. Tickets may become available; check with Cal Performances’
Ticket Office at (510) 642-9988. Tickets are priced at $68.00 and are subject
to change. Half-price tickets are available for UC Berkeley students. Tickets
are available through the Ticket Office at Zellerbach Hall, at (510) 642-9988,
at
http://www.calperformances.org, and at the door. For more information about
discounts, go to
http://calperformances.org/buy/discounts.php.
--Rusty Barnes, Cal Performances
2014 American Bach
Soloists Festival & Academy Tickets Now on Sale
The 5th Annual Festival “Bach’s Inspiration” July 11-20
presented at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Highlights include Bach’s
arrangement of the Pergolesi Stabat Mater,
Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il
Moderato, and two performances of Bach’s Mass in B Minor, plus a Distinguished Artist Recital by soprano
Mary Wilson.
The American Bach Soloists (ABS) are pleased to announce
that tickets for the 2014 American Bach Soloists Festival & Academy are now
on sale. Titled “Bach’s Inspiration,” the 2014 Festival will trace the
influences of Italian, French, and North German composers on J.S. Bach’s life
and music. Works by Vivaldi, Handel, Buxtehude, and Bach’s forbears will be
presented alongside masterworks by ABS’s namesake in a Festival line-up that
promises to be the best in the five-year history of the Festival.
Festival highlights include our annual performances of
Bach’s Mass in B Minor along with
Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il
Moderato, Vivaldi’s Concerto in B
Minor for Four Violins, Kuhnau’s Wie
schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, Bach’s Brandenburg
Concerto No. 2, and a work by Bach’s elder cousin Johann Christoph Bach, Es erhub sich ein Striet. The
performances of the Mass, a popular
and always highly anticipated Festival tradition, will be performed by the ABS
Festival Orchestra—an ensemble comprised of ABS and members of the ABS
Academy—under the direction of Jeffrey Thomas.
All Concerts held at the San Francisco Conservatory of
Music, 50 Oak Street, San Francisco.
--Jeff McMillan, American Bach Soloists
Pianist Rudolf
Buchbinder Returns to Perform with the Cleveland Orchestra for the First Time
in 15 Years
The “Viennese oracle” (The Philadelphia Inquirer) pianist
Rudolf Buchbinder returns to perform for the first time in fifteen years with
The Cleveland Orchestra led by Music Director Franz Welser-Möst on Thursday,
March 6, 2014 at 7:30pm; Friday, March 7, 2014 at 7pm; and Saturday, March 8,
2014 at 8pm at Severance Hall (11001 Euclid Ave.). Rudolf Buchbinder will
perform Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini at all three concerts.
Over the course of two years, Rudolf Buchbinder is
performing with all of the “Big Five” American orchestras. Following his
acclaimed concerts with the New York Philharmonic under Music Director Alan
Gilbert in February 2013 and the Philadelphia Orchestra under Christoph von
Dohnányi in March 2013, he appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under
Music Director Riccardo Muti in June 2013 for the first time in over thirty
years. He was immediately invited back for another engagement with the CSO
during the 2014-2015 season. During the 2013-2014 season, in addition to his
concerts with The Cleveland Orchestra, he will perform with the Pittsburgh
Symphony Orchestra under Music Director Manfred Honeck (June 13-15, 2014). In
the fall of 2014, he returns to perform with the Boston Symphony Orchestra for
the first time in over twenty years.
You can find more about Rudolf Buchbinder at his official
Web site:
www.buchbinder.net
--Christina Jensen PR
Deutsche Grammophon
and Decca Release New 3-for-1 Sets on February 25, 2014
Including Claudio Arrau, Alfred Brendel, Viktoria Mullova,
Jessye Norman, Beaux Arts Trio, Claudio Abbado, Vladimir Horowitz, Magdalena
Kozena, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Gil Shaham.
Celebrating some of the most iconic classical artists,
Deutsche Grammophon and Decca announce a new 3-for-1 limited edition series
featuring three outstanding / renowned albums from a single iconic artist, for
the price of just a single album.
Each of the three albums is presented with a brief new
essay plus track list. The handsome
slipcase artwork underscores the iconic status held by most of these albums.
These sets are Limited Editions with only 1000 available across North America.
The first five Decca 3-for-1 sets include performances by
the late Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau, Austrian pianist Alfred Brendel,
Russian violinist Viktoria Mullova, Grammy award-winning opera singer Jessye
Norman, and renowned piano trio, the Beaux Arts Trio.
Deutsche Grammophon’s initial 3-for-1 sets will include
Italian conductor Claudio Abbado, American classical pianist Vladimir Horowitz,
Czech mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozena, Russian cellist and conductor Mstislav
Rostropovich, and Israeli-American violinist Gil Shaham.
--Casey Corrigan, Universal Music Classics