Stephen Llewellyn is one cool dude!

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Stephen Llewellyn, Portland Opera’s official blogger and a lawyer by trade, recently won the #Operplot’s twitter contest, claimed the top prize and then gave it to a music teacher he has never met. How cool is that!

Today’s Washington Post has the entire scoop, plus quotes from Llewellyn and the Washington D.C. schoolteacher who will receive his prize.

In case you don’t have time to read it, here’s the outcome as quoted from the article:

Priscilla Barrow, who has taught music in D.C. public schools for 22 years, learned Monday, out of the blue, that she will be going to the final performance of “Turandot” at the Washington National Opera on June 4 and, the next night, the company’s annual Opera Ball at the German Embassy. In a ball gown provided by the opera’s costume shop.

Llewellyn has also posted his account of how this all happened. Click here.

Hats off to a fellow whose generosity is an inspiration to the rest of us!

Portland Symphonic Choir sings spirited Rachmaninov Vespers

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The Portland Symphonic Choir gave a sumptuous performance of Sergei Rachmaninov’s “Verpers” on Sunday afternoon (May 17). Standing in the apse of St. Mary’s Cathedral , the 120-vloice choir, under the direction of Steven Zopfi, created waves of warm, rich sounds with excellent tonal blend. Impressive especially were crescendos that reached massive proportions and the many passages in which the basses reached notes that came from the subterranean levels of the Russian soul.

Highlights also included the bell-like sounds from the sopranos and tenors in Movement 7 (“Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, good will among men”) and the exposed notes held by various sections of the choir in Movement 9 (“Blessed art thou, O Lord”). Mezzo-soprano Sherry Olson sounded terrific during her solo in Movement 2 (“Bless the Lord, O my soul”), but the vibrato in tenor soloist Scott Tuomi’s voice seemed way out of control.

The choir sang the entire 15-movement, hour-long, a cappella piece in Russian with a break between movements 8 and 9 for intermission. I think that the singers were starting to run out of steam in the last movement, because their sound started to lose some of the best colors. Yet before singing the final notes they gathered their artistic might and ended the concert gloriously. The audience responded enthusiastically with a standing ovation and sustained applause.

This concert repeats at St. Mary’s Parish Church in Mt. Angel (575 E. College St.) on Sunday, May 31 at 4 pm.

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Caveat emptor: I have sung with this choir for many years, but I’ve taken my critic’s oath to not let that experience affect my objectivity in this review.

The search has begun

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.

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

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String Project musicians answer audience questions after Saturday's concert.

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

Joshua Bell’s Mendelssohn shimmers;Oregon Symphony scales heights and depths of Bruckner’s 7th

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Joshua Bell, one of the hottest names in classical music, maxed out the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall and drew a standing room only crowd at the Oregon Symphony’s concert on Saturday evening (May 16), but it was the orchestra’s playing of Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 that soared and brought listeners to something in the neighborhood of heaven.

Continue reading Joshua Bell’s Mendelssohn shimmers;Oregon Symphony scales heights and depths of Bruckner’s 7th

Third Angle creates upbeat concert of music by Jennifer Higdon

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It has got to be a little nerve-wracking to play the music of living composers when they are in the audience, but the stakes are even higher when a two-time Grammy winning composer is sitting in the front row, alert as a robin in spring time. Yet members of the Third Angle New Music Ensemble stepped up and played their hearts out last night (May 15) at the Old Church in a concert that primarily featured the music of Jennifer Higdon.

Things started off sort of like a rock concert when the audience (which almost filled the hall to capacity) enthusiastically greeted the performers as they walked onto the stage even though their appearance was somewhat tardy. In a short preparatory remark, Higdon told how the first number on the program, “Celestial Hymns” had been played at the Angel Fire, New Mexico, which is at a very high elevation, and that she had worried that the ensemble there might pass out because of the demands of the music. I got a sense of what she was referring to because clarinetist Todd Kuhns had to breathe life into a note that he sustained for a very long time right at the beginning of the piece. Supported by crisp playing from his comrades, violinist Ron Blessinger, violist Brian Quincey, cellist Hamilton Cheifetz, and pianist Susan Smith, Kuhns used superior breath control to get the most out of this evocative work, and together the ensemble took us to a higher plain that was soothing and satisfying.

Continue reading Third Angle creates upbeat concert of music by Jennifer Higdon

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

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

Quarter notes: upcoming

The University of Washington is staging Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” (May 15-17).  The Rainier Symphony takes on Mahler’s Symphony Nr.2 “Resurrection” this weekend (May 16-17).  The American String Project is presenting their annual series of concerts this weekend too (May 14-17).  This year, Barry Lieberman has arranged Prokofiev’s String Quartet Nr. 2 and Robert Schumann’s String Quartet Nr. 3 for string orchestra.

Continue reading Quarter notes: upcoming

Jennifer Higdon chats about life as a composer

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The Third Angle New Music Ensemble will play several works by Jennifer Higdon in its upcoming concert this Friday at 7:30 pm at the Old Church in downtown Portland. Higdon’s music has been much in demand by vocal and instrumental ensembles, and she has garnered a couple of Grammys as well. I talked with Higdon last week about her life and work.

You have done many residencies over the past few years; so where do you call home?

Higdon: I’ve lived in Philadelphia for the past 22 years; so I think of it as my home base. This is the first year in a while that I haven’t been in residence with an orchestra. I couldn’t squeeze it into my schedule.

Continue reading Jennifer Higdon chats about life as a composer

Mirror of Memory: Music of Remembrance bears witness

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