Robert Spano (who was here in April) . The four composers Spano has championed – Jennifer Higdon, Osvaldo Golijov, Michael Gandolfi, and Christopher Theofanidis — have been dubbed the “Atlanta School,” and all have seen their profiles rise as a result of Spano’s efforts. The most encouraging aspect of Spano’s work is what it has done for audience development and ticket sales. I’ve excerpted the most interesting section of article, one that should be read by every arts administrator struggling to augment audiences.
“The most significant aspect of the Atlanta School project may be the trust it is building for new music in general. A semi-staged version of the opera “Dr. Atomic” by American composer John Adams sold at 88% of paid capacity during the depths of the economic recession. In a reversal of usual box-office patterns, concerts with music by Atlanta School composers typically sell at about 84% of capacity, says marketing vice president Charles Wade, versus an average of 78% for other classical events.”
Our performance Friday night at the Moscow Conservatory was truly a wonderful experience. It was an honor to play at such a venerable institution. Founded in the 1860’s, it has been the training ground for countless great Russian musicians. Tchaikovsky, who presided over the Conservatory for a time, is represented by a gorgeous statue in front of the main entrance to the big hall. We performed in the smaller hall, which seats about 400. This beautiful venue was filled to capacity with musicians and friends of the performers and composers as well as the general public and students. The acoustic is incomparable and it was a joy to make music in a space that just keeps giving back.
This was a two part program, featuring the music of our friend Pavel Karmanov and a man named Sergei Zagney. Zagney’s music is absolutely in the style of the baroque and he had a wonderful ensemble of period instrument specialists, including a small complement of singers along with the strings, sackbuts and organ.
After Pasha Karmanov heard us play our Philip Glass quartet at Dom, he agreed that it really should be performed in the bigger venue, so he substituted the Glass for his own string quartet (a piece we love, by the way, and will be playing in Seattle in October) that we were to have performed at the Conservatory, thereby giving the Glass the real public premiere it deserves. What a mensch. The second part of the program therefore consisted of Karmanov’s “Cambridge Music” for piano quartet and “Innerlichkeit” for two pianos, bass, string quartet and flute, both of which were performed by wonderful Moscow-based musicians, and ODEONQUARTET playing the Glass and the aforementioned “Forellenquintet” albeit without the frying fish. I never did get the story straight as to the fish’s absence.
After the performance I met a composer named Baganov who had evidently played at the Good Shepherd Center last fall. He loved the concert and the Glass and is also a minimalist composer looking to move to the US. He is deciding between New York and Seattle. Let’s hope he chooses our fair city. The world is indeed small.
I am so grateful to everyone who made this trip happen: Pasha, Artur and Gennady, and all the people who run these great performance venues. Thanks, also, to Zach, for inviting me to post to the blog. It has been really fun!
Last night we played at a small venue called “Dom” (means “house”). This is apparently the only place in Moscow where contemporary, avant-garde, or unusual music is performed. Folkloric acts come through and we heard that our friend Carla Kihlstedt, the violinist who improvised with ODEON at Benaroya Hall in November on Wayne Horvitz’ “These Hills of Glory” had also played there. It’s about the size of the Good Shepherd Center Chapel, the big difference being the bar at the back (guarded by a papier mache troll who would have felt quite at home in Fremont). The owner is adamant that it is not a club, but rather a cultural center. We had about 30 or so mainly youngish people show up, which was a nice feel for the size of the space…folks availed themselves of the bar throughout the show, but mostly while the music wasn’t going on. There was definitely the vibe of a concert space, but people were clearly out on the town having a good time with friends. Definitely a concert venue to keep in mind as classical musicians reimagine performance spaces for the 21st century.
Pasha Karmanov announced the program from the stage, translating when necessary our comments about the pieces. Though only one of our works (Philip Glass’ Quartet No. 5) was an official Russian premiere, it was evident that no one had heard any of these pieces before. I think the Golijov “Tenebrae” was especially effective and moving, and the Glass is a real winner. At the end of our program the audience brought us out several times with unison clapping. I’ve never experienced that in the States. It was so sweet.
We also played all three of Karmanov’s pieces, including the two piano quintets (with the spectacular Peter Aidu at the keyboard): Michael Music and Forellenquintet, which are accompanied by film. Forellenquintet is, in fact, a fish story – set in a fish factory, it follows the life and times of a trout whose fate is sealed from the beginning. When we perform it this evening at the Moscow Conservatory, there will be an actual trout being fried on stage as we play. Or maybe in the lobby beforehand. I’m not sure which, but Moscow Conservatory evidently is more lax about such things than Benaroya Hall.
Under the steady baton of Stephen Rogers Radcliffe, the energized playing of the Seattle Youth Symphony, and a heavenly contribution from the Seattle Choral Company (Fred Coleman, the Seattle Choral Company’s music director is a SYSO alum), Mahler’s Second Symphony (Resurrection Symphony) thundered across the heavens this past Sunday. Those of us who made it to Benaroya Hall for the concert knew we were in for a sonic treat when a small statured first violinist took a microphone and described Mahler’s last movement as “cool.”
Seattle is lucky to have a youth orchestra program as large, talented as the Seattle Youth Symphony. With public schools squeezing arts education and interest waning in classical music generally, youth orchestras like the SYSO could be essential to ensuring classical music doesn’t wither away like many people predict will happen.
After a very long flight from Seattle to San Francisco to Los Angeles to Moscow, ODEONQUARTET finally arrived in Russia on a rainy Tuesday. We had time the next day before our rehearsal to take the Metro to Red Square and see the incomprehensibly huge square and its famous Basilica as well as the Kremlin. Probably on account of the rain, there was no line to get into Lenin’s mausoleum, so we took the opportunity to view the preserved and rather waxy-looking remains of the revolutionary leader in leisurely fashion. We had heard it would normally involve hours of waiting and we therefore hadn’t counted on visiting Mr. Lenin, but we were glad to have had the opportunity as it rated very high on he strangeness scale.
Following an afternoon of practice and much-needed rest, Pavel Karmanov, composer of three of the works we’ll perform on Friday, came to pick us up at our hotel to drive us to the Moscow Conservatory for rehearsal with our pianist. We had the chance to experience Moscow traffic at dinner hour – evidently there is no such thing as rush hour, the streets are generally packed except in the middle of the night – and arrived at our destination (about 2 miles away) in a brisk 35 minutes or so.
We didn’t know what to expect from pianist Peter Aidu, who is performing Karmanov’s two piano quintets with us, as we’d heard he’d only received the music recently, and we were absolutely delighted with his brilliant playing. In a nice coincidence, after finishing our rehearsal, we went to look at the concert hall and ran into none other than Ivan Sokolov, known to many Seattleites from his collaborations with the Seattle Chamber Players, most recently at On The Boards in February where he premiered a new work with cellist David Sabee. The music world is truly small and is was wonderful to see him on the other side of the planet. Vanya had a complex array of percussion instruments laid out on the stage of the concert hall for his percussion composition that will be premiered tomorrow night. Sadly we’ll miss it as we have our own performance at the House of Music at the same time. Our program will feature the Russian premiere (amazingly, since it was written in 1991) of Philip Glass’ Quartet No. 5, Marcelo Zarvos’ “Nepomuk’s Dances” and Osvaldo Golijov’s stirring “Tenebrae”.
Our Moscow Conservatory performance featuring Pavel Karmanov’s three works will be on Friday evening.
A performance by the American String Project is like chamber music on steroids. The Project beefs up the concept of the string quartet, bringing together fifteen musicians from across the country to perform arrangements of great works from the string quartet repertoire. But the size of the ensemble is not the only thing that’s been amplified here. The effect of adding more musicians to each part (and including a double bass) results in performances that crackle with the heightened energy and vivid colors of a large ensemble, but retain the intimacy and close communion of a string quartet. This is exciting music-making that has a lot to offer, whether you’re new to string quartet repertoire or can hum the opening bars of each of the Beethoven quartets from memory. Continue reading Second night of American String Project features Mendelsson & Beethoven
What Barry Lieberman, and the American String Project do – taking well known and sometimes not so well known – pieces for string quartet, quintet and arranging them for an orchestra of fifteen string instruments isn’t new or even that unique. Composers and musicians have always tinkered with their own music and the music of others in this way. Sometimes they improve the product other times they don’t. Just this morning I was listening to Gideon Kremer’s orchestration of Shostakovich’s Viola Sonata. I can report, it isn’t an improvement on the original sonata.
What is unique, is that the string project, now in its ninth season, isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. This season alone, five of the six pieces to be performed are new arrangements by Lieberman. The sixth, Johannes Brahms’ String Quintet Op. 111 was first arranged in 2003, but for this season Lieberman went back to his arrangement, adjusting the piece for Sunday’s performance. All in all, Lieberman has created an impressive repertory of sixty arrangements for string orchestra. Continue reading Barry Lieberman’s American String Project returns for a ninth season with five new arrangements
In its more than 20 years of business around the world, Cirque du Soleil has spawned all sorts of children seeking some of its mystique and popularity. Cirque Dreams, descended from Cirque Productions, is among them with shows in theaters, casinos, arenas and parks. Its current show, Cirque Dreams Illumination, runs through Sunday evening at the Moore Theatre.
This somewhat dowdy theater, which has hosted all sorts of events, high and low, for a good share of the past 100 years, the Moore is a good place to present a show that is part circus, part vaudeville, part glossy entertainment. The current production is all of the above. The best parts are the circus performers and the worst is the shlock in which they must perform. There are nearly 30 artists all of whom perform multiple roles. They are amazingly diverse in national origin, with some from Mongolia, Russia, Uzbekistan, Ukraine and Belarus in the Old World and the United States, Canada, Argentina, Cuba and Trinidad in the New. They bring years of training and experience to their circus roles, defined in the program as magicians, wirewalkers, vaudevillians, cube aerialists, chair climbers, foot manipulators, percussion jugglers, perch balancers and perch aerialists, ring rollers, paint can stackers, hand balancers and strap flyers. Most of the acts have a novel twist that makes them unique. Continue reading Cirque Dreams returns to Seattle
Time passes. Is it possible that the Mark Morris Dance Group has been visiting Seattle for 25 years? It is. Morris is now middle-aged, as is everyone else still around from those days, at the very least. On the Boards was the first to bring the company here in its funky space off Yesler. Then, Morris outgrew that for Meany Hall, which presented the company for years until it got too expensive. For the past there years, the Seattle Symphony and Paramount Theatre have co-produced the annual visit. Thank goodness. Who does not want to see the Morris company on a regular basis?
Sometimes he brings new work. Not this year. On Friday night there was “Gloria,” his first major work from the 1980’s. The other two works were only slightly younger: “A Lake,” premiered at Wolf Trap near Washington, D.C., by the White Oak Dance Project, which Morris co-founded with Mikhail Baryshnikov, in 1993, and “Jesu, meine Freude,” commissioned by Dance Umbrella in Boston and premiered in that city two years later. Continue reading Mark Morris Dance Group makes its annual Seattle visit Friday night at the Paramount
Stephen Rogers Radcliffe, the Seattle Youth Symphony’s music director, sat perched on a stool looking out over his orchestra. He flipped through the pages of his score to Mahler’s Second Symphony, searching for a good place in the music to start rehearsal. This was only the symphony’s second rehearsal of the symphony. Press were invited to attend to watch and hear how the orchestra was approaching the piece in advance of their May performance.
Gathering Note 