Farewell, Lakeside

On Friday evening Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Summer festival held its final performance in the serene surroundings of Lakeside School. No more leisurely picnics beside the playing field, no intermissions under the evening sky in the little courtyard outside St. Nicholas Hall.

But hold on. This coming week and the one after you can still have all that ambience if you drive to The Overlake School in Redmond, which has an equally lovely campus including a picnic area and a small jewel of a concert hall, to hear another five recital/concert performances.

SCMS has known for sometime that it would have to leave Lakeside, and has been looking everywhere for a similar venue. There hasn’t been one, or not one which was available at the right times in the right place and which had a concert hall a tad bigger than the one at Lakeside (SCMS has been bursting out of that for several years).

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The role of the critic: part II

Virgil Thomson: composer and critic should have opinions.
Virgil Thomson: dead composer and critic should have opinions. But no one else.

My thoughts on the role of critics and arts journalism have struck a chord with AC Douglas the proprietor of the blog Sounds & Fury. Douglas takes issues with my belief that critics should do more than tap out a few hundred words in a concert review and that the way forward for maintaining a critical dialogue about art and specifically classical music is to engage the audience. Douglas makes a number of startling pronouncements.

Douglas says:

“For arts organizations to look to and take in earnest the opinions of the arts world equivalent of pop culture’s Joe Sixpack to assess how well they’re doing artistically is a perfect prescription for artistic suicide. Joe Sixpack may be entitled to an opinion, but it’s entirely worthless to anyone but himself and his kind. To say the thing less generously, Joe Sixpack is not entitled to an opinion beyond expressing that he liked or disliked whatever it is he heard and/or saw, and, given the source, we all know just how worthless that sort of judgment is except to the one declaring it.”

Continue reading The role of the critic: part II

SCMS musicians face Wednesday’s record breaking heat with cool-headed playing

Festival violinist Erin Keefe joined Stefan Jackiw for a performance of Prokofiev's Sonata for two Violins.

Before last night’s Seattle Chamber Music Society recital and concert got underway the festival’s stage manager gave the audience welcome news – Saint Nicholas Hall was air conditioned. Unlike the concerts from earlier in the month, Wednesday evening was unpleasant weather-wise. Seattle suffered under 100 degree temperatures and it seemed, based on my observation of the lawn and dinner crowd, the heat persuaded many long-time fans of the festival to stay home.

Wednesday’s concert demonstrated once again what the festival does well – marrying expert musicians with diverse repertoire.

Continue reading SCMS musicians face Wednesday’s record breaking heat with cool-headed playing

Music of Haydn, Brahms and Bartok opens the final week of the Seattle Chamber Music Festival at Lakeside

It may be a little early to get out the handkerchiefs to say goodbye to Lakeside School, which has been home to the Seattle Chamber Music Festival for nearly 30 years. At the time of its beginnings, this quasi-pastoral setting in north Seattle was as much a novelty in the summer cultural life of Seattle as the festival itself. The setting and concerts established all sorts of local precedents. From that modest two-weeks of concerts, the festival grew to include a winter festival and an Eastside branch at Overlake School in Redmond.

Continue reading Music of Haydn, Brahms and Bartok opens the final week of the Seattle Chamber Music Festival at Lakeside

Two years ago

When I started blogging in 2007 I was writing for myself. I joke with friends and colleagues that I am just a guy with a computer who loves music. I suspect most, if not all bloggers start this way. I was writing about the concerts and ensembles I was interested in. I was interviewing musicians who interested me. Two years later, I would like to think I am still writing for myself. And I am still talking to the people, musicians, and conductors I am interested in hearing from. But in the two years since I began this blog a strange thing happened; The Gathering Note, formerly Classical in Seattle, became the center of classical music writing in Seattle and the Puget Sound.

Continue reading Two years ago

The Tallis Scholars and The Tudor Choir sing ageless music

Almost half a millenium ago, at the cathedrals of Seville, or Segovia, or Salamanca in Spain, you could have heard choristers singing music in praise or prayer. Sunday night, you could hear that same music at St. James Cathedral here in Seattle. Now, that’s longevity.

The music of Francisco Guerrero and his younger compatriots Sebastian Vivanco and Tomas Luis de Victoria has never gone out of style. Their music, and that of colleagues from other European countries for the next few centuries comprises the huge flowering of magnificent sacred music in the Renaissance, and at any given time, today, some of it is being sung somewhere.

Continue reading The Tallis Scholars and The Tudor Choir sing ageless music

Chamber Music Northwest closes summer festival with some fireworks and a fond farewell

elmar o

Elmar Oliveira did it again. On Sunday afternoon (July 26) the virtuoso violinist lifted the spirits of the Chamber Music Northwest audience at Kaul Auditorium with a galvanizing performance of Ernst Bloch’s “Baal Shem,” Three Pictures of Hassidic Life for Violin and Strings. As if he were a rhapsodic cantor, Oliveira weaved a tale of lamentation that plumped the depths of the human spirit before erupting in spasms of joy. His backup band, an ensemble that consisted of violinists Kyu-Young Kim and Min-Young Kim, violist Melissa Reardon, cellist Raman Ramakrishnan, and double bassist Peter Lloyd, contributed superbly to the overall effect, especially when the sound almost throbbed with melancholy. A standing ovation immediately followed this fantastic performance, and Oliveira had a smile on his face that could’ve beamed for miles. Continue reading Chamber Music Northwest closes summer festival with some fireworks and a fond farewell

Tchaikovsky sextet brings down the house at Chamber Music Northwest concert

Photo of Elmar Oliveria by Tucker Densley
Photo of Elmar Oliveria by Tucker Densley

Tchaikovsky really knew how to create a barn burner when he wrote the String Sextet in D Minor “Souvenir de Florence,” Op. 70, and it really brought down the house at Thursday (July 23) evening’s Chamber Music Northwest concert. Even the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s gem, which started in electrifying fashion, succeeded to build tension, and then concluded with whirling dervish panache, took everyone’s breath away. I could actually hear the audience at Kaul Auditorium, which was filled to the brim, inhale collectively. Continue reading Tchaikovsky sextet brings down the house at Chamber Music Northwest concert

Three fine works and one forgettable one at Lakeside

The evening weather was glorious—again—and the lawn and auditorium at Lakeside School were packed—again—as the ninth recital and concert of Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Summer Festival got under way. It’s getting almost old hat to say that performance and ambiance shone, but they did.

Only one work on Friday’s program was quite familiar and that mostly from recordings: Brahms’ Trio for horn, violin and piano in E-Flat major. The Seattle Symphony’s Jeffrey Fair took the hornist’s part, with Stefan Jackiw playing violin and Jeremy Denk, piano, and it was fascinating to hear the juxtaposition of those very different instrumental timbres. Violin and horn can both create a rich smoothness and depth, but where Fair’s horn is velvet, Jackiw’s violin is silk and he can, and did, achieve an extraordinary range of nuance not as available to the horn.

Continue reading Three fine works and one forgettable one at Lakeside

Elizabeth Harcombe talks about the art of page turning

harcombeTurning

Elizabeth Harcombe grew up in Roseburg, Oregon where she began playing piano at the age of 5. She was the pianist at the church where her mother served as organist. Harcombe studied music at Biola University and later got a Master of Music Education degree with an emphasis in piano pedagogy from University of Oklahoma. Harcombe has served as the rehearsal pianist at the Oregon Bach Festival for Helmut Rilling and for the Oregon Repertory Singers under Gil Seeley. She currently teaches piano at Lewis and Clark College and is the program and operations director at Chamber Music Northwest. She joined the staff at Chamber Music Northwest in 2006 and has been turning pages for visiting pianists ever since.

Do you like to turn pages?

Harcombe: Yes, I love to turn pages. I began “turning” while in Canada where I was studying piano but not allowed to work. I’m never nervous turning pages. Every musician I talk to is completely freaked out about turning pages, but for me, page turning is a natural thing because I’m a strong sight reader. You do a lot of sight reading as a page turner. I guess I could take the time to study the score, but it’s more fun to see it all go by on the stage. Continue reading Elizabeth Harcombe talks about the art of page turning