Category: Seattle

MOR commissions Vedem; receives world premiere next week

Composer Lori Laitman

By Peter A. Klein

The poetry of teenaged Jewish boys imprisoned in the Terezín concentration camp will be given new life in the oratorio “Vedem,” by composer Lori Laitman and librettist David Mason. “Vedem” will receive its world premiere at Music of Remembrance’s spring concert on Monday evening, May 10 at 8:00 PM in Benaroya Recital Hall.

Laitman believes that these lines of Mason’s express the essence of the piece:

We lived for what we wrote and painted,

as if imagination were a jewel.

Terezín (aka Theresienstadt) is an old Czech fortress town which the Nazis turned into a transit camp during the Holocaust. 144,000 Jews were sent to Terezín, including many from the arts and letters. One-quarter of the prisoners died there, and two-thirds were later killed in the death camps. Yet they created an astounding cultural life in Terezín, which existed right alongside starvation, cold, overcrowding, disease, and death.
Continue reading MOR commissions Vedem; receives world premiere next week

May Day! May Day! part three

May Day! May Day! has come and gone. Thanks to everyone who attended. But I’d also like to thank the musicians who made it possible. The whole day a quote from Robert Spano was ringing through my head “there is no ghetto for new music.” By taking Seattle’s vibrant new music scene and putting it in a venue like Town Hall for 12 hours, I believe we helped the cause of new music. But I also think the performances helped too the cause too.

If you think new music is only noisy and unapproachable then this was the festival for you. It would have definitely changed your view of what constitutes new music in our city.

In my sets, there was the Odeonquartet’s performance of Nat Evans’ Candy Cigarettes. You can hear the piece, as performed on Saturday .

The composer says about the piece:

“One idea I keep coming back to is one particular may day event when I was in elementary school. every year on may day the whole school went out to the front lawn and had lunch, then went to the big field in the back for various events and games. everyone always looked forward to this day because it was a day away from class, and after may 1 you could wear shorts to school! anyway, one particular year, in first grade, Victor Merril — the class bully and general rabble rouser — was overjoyed and ecstatic to discover that he had candy cigarettes in his lunch! I was entranced by them and wanted one, as did everyone else. victor wouldn’t share…but then, just as the whole class was running in a rush out to the field after lunch victor (who was wearing cowboy boots, cut off jeans shorts and had a mohawk) secretly gave me one! I was overjoyed at this sudden act of generosity, and as I went around to the different may day stations out on the field I felt great knowing i’d been acknowledged by the class bully and gotten a candy cigarette.”

Continue reading May Day! May Day! part three

May Day! May Day! part two

May Day is still going at Seattle’s Town Hall. I finished my last two hour set. Highlights for me were Stuart Dempster’s moving tribute to double bassist Matthew Sperry; Byron Au Yong’s Kidnapping Water: Bottled Operas; and Michael Lim and Melia Watras’ improvisations on S.O.S. Alas, wifi problems are continuing. Sometimes the network works, other times not so much.

Still to come: The Esoterics; Christina Valdes and friends play Louis Andriessen’s Workers Union; Paul Rucker playing Call, a piece he wrote for cello; and to close the night the Seattle Chamber Players do Nicolai Korndorff’s Get Out.

Hearing and helping emcee this festival has been a tremendous experience.  I’ll be remembering and processing the music a few days.  I am looking forward to hearing Byron Au Yong’s CD of 24 of his bottled operas.  I’m curious about the trial and execution of Joe Hill thanks to Wayne Horvitz.

I hope it happens again next year. In the meantime, here are some pictures from the the afternoon and evening:

May Day! May Day!

Julia Tai and friends before performing Tehillim

Technological problems are preventing me from posting from inside Town Hall so I’ve stollen away to the cafe in the lobby for a quick post.

We are now more than three hours into the festival and we just heard two sections from Steve Reich’s Tehillim by Julia Tai and friends. Tai and her friends will be doing the entire piece later this spring in Magnolia. Look for more information here and elsewhere. It is well worth seeking out.

My two hour emcee block was…well…interesting. It was hard being first and it was hard to draw energy from a crowd that was still coming together. A short piece by the Affinity Chamber Players put everything ahead of schedule by a little bit.

Continue reading May Day! May Day!

Quarter notes: May Day! May Day!

I’ll be up at Town Hall tomorrow from 1 pm until 1 am co-hosting May Day! May Day’s! new music festivities along with Dave Beck (KUOW) and Gavin Borchert (Seattle Weekly). I assure you, it will be a lot of fun. In addition to being fun, it only costs $5. When was the last time you were able to hear 12 hours of new music in Seattle for $5? Probably never.

If you absolutely cannot attend, even for 2 hours, check back here through the day. I hope to be posting, doing a little live blogging, and sharing different media (photos, video, sound recordings, etc).  There will be some tweetting as well (www.twitter.com/gatheringnote).

Speaking of tweeting. The Seattle Opera is tweeting the entire libretto of their new opera Amelia (@AmeliaLibretto) in the run up to opening night on May 8th. If Twitter isn’t your thing, do check out Seattle Opera’s library of . Seattle Opera has everything (and more) you need to get the most out of Amelia. I’ve posted some of the videos here, but there are many more to see.

Come for the Rachmaninov, stay for the Adams

Robert Spano

Robert Spano’s debut with the Seattle Symphony at Benaroya Hall started with Jean Sibelius’ Pohjola’s Daughter and ended with John Adams’ Harmonielehre. In between, Dejan Lejic, a rising, young Croatian pianist joined the orchestra for Sergey Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2. In the build-up to the concert, the orchestra’s marketing emphasized Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto (“Before there was Rock there was Rachmaninov” explains a poster outside Benaroya Hall) but the orchestra could have just as easily emphasized the two seldom played pieces on the program. “Come for the Rachmaninov, stay for the Adams” – maybe?

Strangely, Robert Spano, currently the music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra never conducted the SSO at Benaroya Hall until this week. He is, however, a familiar face to many of the orchestra’s members and Seattle’s classical music community through his long relationship with the Seattle Opera. Seattle Opera has turned to Spano for two Ring cycles and Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd. These three projects presented challenges more cautious conductors would pass up. Spano, on the other hand, seems to live for difficult musical projects. On Thursday evening, Spano was given yet another challenging assignment – corralling an orchestra unfamiliar with Harmonielehre and Pohjola’s Daughter. Fortunately for the audience, Spano’s podium ability and command of the music guaranteed an exciting night.

Continue reading Come for the Rachmaninov, stay for the Adams

Quarter Notes: May Day, Higdon, and Hadelich

One of the Seattle Chamber Music Society’s newer festival musicians – Augustin Hadelich – was earlier this week.

A new classical music review mega site is being launched by Chicago based critics Lawrence Johnson. endeavors to be a one stop review site for people seeking out concert and record reviews. The emergence of an online presence for classical music has shifted the debate (for me at least) from will arts journalism be able to survive in the 21st Century to what is the best model for arts journalism in the 21st Century?

in music for her Violin Concerto. Most classical music buffs know this by now. I am in the process of editing an interview I did with Robert Spano (who is in Seattle to conduct the Seattle Symphony in John Adams’ Harmonielehre) and we talked at some length about Higdon. Spano is one of Higdon’s most ardent supporters on the podium. Spano says in the interview that it took time to build Higdon’s relationship with the Atlanta Symphony (his home orchestra) but now she is mobbed in the lobby by music lovers who treat her like a classical music rock star. Congratulations Ms. Higdon! And, look for my video with Spano tonight.

Another reminder, this Saturday is . For 12 hours and $5 you can come hear the city’s best contemporary and new music acts and advocates. Some of the highlights include: the Pacific Rims Percussion Quartet playing John Cage’s Living Room Music; music by Fredric Rzewski played by Christina Valdes; Steve Reich’s Tehilliam; and Henry Cowell’s String Quartet No. 4 performed by the St. Helens Quartet. I’ll be introducing acts from 1-3 pm and 7-9 pm. Hope to see you there.

Update
The NY Times finally has finally run an .

O death where is thy sting?

Seattle Choral Company

The two pieces of sacred music I turn to most often are W.A. Mozart’s Requiem – the first piece of music I ever fell in love with – and J. Brahms’ German Requiem – the first Brahms piece I heard in its entirety. These two pieces shaped my formative listening years and instilled in me an admiration and (minor) obsession with sacred music. After Brahms came Handel, Verdi, Haydn, Bruckner, Bach, and of course more Mozart. But even with a catalog of masses, motets, and cantatas at my disposal, Mozart’s and Brahms’ signature sacred pieces always stimulate my God Spot.

On Saturday, Fred Coleman and the Seattle Choral company ended their 2009/2010 season with half of my sacred music top two – the German Requiem. But, before I could get to the Brahms, I first had to go through Dvorak’s Te Deum.
Continue reading O death where is thy sting?

Northwest Puppet Center opens “Pulcinella Vendicato”

By R.M. Campbell

Every spring the Northwest Puppet Center presents an opera at its intimate, charming space in North Seattle. Spring would not be spring in Seattle, it would seem, without an opera by the Carter family at the center. This weekend a wonderfully amusing and endearing production of Giovanni Paisiello’s “Pulcinella vendicato” opened its Seattle run. The set of performances, through May 8, represents not only the opera buffo’s Seattle premiere but its American one as well.

Continue reading Northwest Puppet Center opens “Pulcinella Vendicato”

Menotti and more at Music Northwest’s final recital of the season

Gian Carlo Menotti

As the fates would have it, a volcano burping and spewing ash over continental Europe, prevented Xavier Philips (the Seattle Symphony’s scheduled soloist for the past weekend’s concerts) from performing a recital on Friday evening of French cello works. Even as one recital came apart, another, at Olympic Hall in West Seattle came together.

Music Northwest’s 2009/2010 chamber series came to a close on April 23rd with a recital for combinations of cellos and piano. Music Northwest’s chamber series is a gem in Seattle’s growing classical music community. The series distinguishes itself for the quality and diversity of repertory Jane Harty (Music Northwest’s artistic director) chooses and the quality of the musicians who perform each concert.
Continue reading Menotti and more at Music Northwest’s final recital of the season