Month: May 2009

The Seattle Symphony announced the formation of a search committee to find Gerard Schwarz’s replacement when his contract runs out at the end of the 2011.  Former Washington State First Lady Nancy Evans will chair the committee and is joined by three SSO musicians: David Sabee (cello); Elisa Barston (2nd violin); and Seth Krimsky (bassoon).  Elena Dubinets, the orchestra’s artistic administrator is also part of the committee.

Both Dubinets and Sabee are affiliated with the Seattle Chamber Players and are advocates for contemporary music.  Barston is widely considered by her fellow musicians to be one of the most talented members of the orchestra who has already found significant success as the principal second violin.  Seth Krimsky has been with the orchestra since 1986 and is also happily associated with the area’s contemporary music scene and the Univeristy of Washington.

The announcement of a search committee is good news, especially since Amos Yang turned down the principal cello position with the orchestra vacated last year by Joshua Roman.  Yang was in town a few weeks ago to play with the Cascade Symphony.  Currently, he is the assistant principal cellist with the San Francisco Symphony.  Hopefully the news of the search committee will continue buoy the orchestra as they approach the end of the season.

For nearly ten years, the American String Project has given Seattle audiences consistently satisfying, well played string orchestra concerts. In addition to playing the standard repertoire for string orchestra, for example Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, the ad hoc group of musicians from around the world, has built its reputation playing Project founder Barry Lieberman’s arrangements of chamber music.

The arrangements aren’t easy, Lieberman plays the double bass, and as he explained at Saturday’s concert, the challenge is figuring out what the bass will play. Does the bass just double the cello part? Or, are there opportunities for the instrument to underscore other parts and even carry the melody from time to time?

Continue reading The American String Project: Lieberman invents new classics and reintroduces old favorites

For decades the Seattle Symphony Orchestra Pops Series was one of its most reliable standbys. Costs were reasonable and box office very, very good. Then, those attending the concerts got older, then older still and inevitably ticket sales began to fall.

The symphony experimented with new programs, new soloists, new conductors in an effort to hold onto the lucrative past and propel it into a lucrative future. Marvin Hamlisch became part of that new world order upon his appointment at the beginning of this season as principal pops conductor.

Continue reading Seattle Symphony Ends Its Pops season with a Gershwin marathon this weekend at Benaroya Hall

Music of Remembrance’s concerts are always thought provoking, but Monday night’s stellar performance seered heart and mind.

From the first work, which felt as though it should be the final one on the program, to the the last which could not have gone anywhere else, this was a painful program of bearing witness. It was almost too much, but there were a couple of works which brought peacefulness or a change of attention.

True to its mission, to make sure we never forget what happpened in the Holocaust through the music and poetry written around it then and since, MoR chose settings of poems written by Shmerke Kaczerginski from the Vilna Ghetto in 1943, and others by Israeli poet Yaakov Barzilai who was in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as a child. The Northwest Boychoir and the young men of Vocalpoint! sang the former: grieving poems, the first accompanied by the mournful sound of the basset horn (like a very low clarinet) played by Laura DeLuca with her customary expressive artistry; and with added harp (Valerie Muzzolini) and baritone Erich Parce for the second. The boys caught the feel of the poems and conveyed it with the beautiful singing for which they are known, conducted by their director, Joseph Crnko.

Continue reading Mirror of Memory: Music of Remembrance bears witness