Month: October 2009

Champions of new choral music, The Esoterics celebrated the culmination of their third annual commissioning competition with two concert performances on October 17 and 18.  In keeping with the expansive ambition of everything undertaken by The Esoterics, each year the competition commissions not just one new choral work but three: one by an U.S. composer, one by a non-U.S. composer, and one by a composer under age 30.  This year’s prescribed theme, “Mysterium: Uncovering secrets of this life and the next,” gave the newly composed works a unity of style and substance consistent with the two other works on the program.

The winning American composer, Shawn Allison of Chicago, set a portion of Walt Whitman’s poem, The Sleepers, one of the most talked-about Whitman poems of the past century.  Employing a number of contemporary choral techniques, Allison’s setting emphasized the mysterium aspect of the text with extended harmonies that achieved murkiness if not mystery.  A sequence whistled over sung voices was most effective, particularly in its return near the end.

Continue reading The Esoterics: Mysterium – October 17th and 18th

The Seattle Symphony Orchestra is now in earnest looking for a music director to replace Gerard Schwarz in 2011. All sorts of conductors are lined up this season and next in a kind of elaborate, public audition for the post.

The official line of the symphony, rather witty in fact, is that every guest conductor this season and next is a candidate and none is a candidate. In other words no one is talking on the record. It is too early for any buzz on the street but eventually there will be plenty. Well-known conductors, like Lawrence Renes, who have led the orchestra with distinction in the past, are not being invited on the theory their talents are already familiar in the city. I hope they don’t get lost in the formal process. They deserve better.

Continue reading Parade of Guest Conductors at the Symphony Is Well Under Way

Ludovic Morlot is in town this week guest conducting the Seattle Symphony.  It is the first time the young, French conductor has conducted the Seattle Symphony, but not the first time he has conducted a major American orchestra.  In fact, while Morlot may not be on the tip of many Seattleite tongues, Morlot has been wining over audiences and critics across the country.  He has guest conducted at the United States’s top orchestras — Boston, Chicago, and New York — while also maintaining a robust European career.

Morlot has also been winning over musicians as well with his podium temperament and clear sense of the music.  This isn’t always the case with conductors as young as Morlot.  Morlot is in his mid thirties.  Older than Gustavo Dudamel in Los Angeles but younger than Alan Gilbert in New York.

The story of Morlot’s rise is familiar.  In 2006 he stepped in, with only a few days notice, for an ailing Christoph von Dohnanyi and led the New York Philharmonic in a program of Brahms, Schumann, and Carter.  Yes, Elliott Carter.  The notoriously difficult to play and difficult to hear Elliott Carter.  Morlot had never conducted Carter before, and as the New York Times said in their review of that concert “you never would have known it.”  Morlot’s career has been accelerating every since.

There isn’t any Carter on this week’s Seattle Symphony program.  There is, however, Prokofiev, Haydn, Dvorak, and Martinu.

This is the first post in a series profiling guest conductors with the Seattle Symphony.  Future installments will incorporate video, audio, and some other types of media.  You can read my Q&A with Morlot after the jump.

Continue reading TGN’s Zach Carstensen chats with Ludovic Morlot

As regular readers — and not so regular readers — know, the Seattle Symphony is looking for a new music director.  Officially, the music director search committee is taking the posture that every guest conductor has the potential to be the orchestra’s new music director.  Starting this week with Ludovic Morlot, I will be questioning, writing about, filming, or recording each and every guest conductor that passes through the Emerald City.

I need your help, however.  I need you to tell me what I should be asking.  What do you want to know about the people in the running to be the next music director of the SSO? Leave the questions you think I should be asking these potential candidates in the comments section.  Or, if you feel more comfortable, email me directly at zach@gatheringnote.org.

Framed by Wagner’s “Ring” last summer and the premiere of “Amelia” in the spring, Seattle is spending the rest of its resources this season on a short Verdi survey. “La traviata” was the opening gesture over the weekend at McCaw Hall with “Il trovatore” to follow in January and “Falstaff” in February and March.

The company’s general director Speight Jenkins did not choose lesser-known works but standard bearers of the Verdi canon. It would have been interesting to explore some less frequented byways of the composer, but in these perilous economic times, the need to fill the house is imperative. This weekend it looked as if Seattle Opera accomplished that, at least in the first two of nine performances.

Continue reading La Traviata Opens Saturday night at McCaw Hall

Picture a low platform at the side of the Meany Theater stage with four musicians on sitar—the long-necked Indian lute, tabla—hand drums, an instrument with bellows and keys working the same as an accordion, and voice, plus other small percussion like finger cymbals. A man comes on dancing lightly just with his bare feet, carrying a small tray with incense, which he reverently puts down and then heads to center stage. He talks to the audience, explaining some of what he will be doing doing, and then proceeds to dance.

This is not like any dance most of us have ever seen, even those from southern India, as this comes from the north.

Continue reading Kathak: Classical Dance from Northern India