Photo: Rodrigo Pérez Tallis Scholars, Peter Phillips, director Church of St. Mary the Virgin December 9, 2023 NEW YORK – It is the fiftieth anniversary of the renaissance ensemble the Tallis Scholars, directed during that entire time by Peter Phillips. Their annual December visit to St. Mary the Virgin Church in midtown often consists of a predominantly Marian program, both to suit that setting and church calendar. This year, there were two large pieces devoted to Mary – settings of Salve Regina by Jacob Obrecht (1457-1505) and Peter Philips (1560-1628; the early baroque composer, not the eponymous conductor
Read moreNew York Philharmonic, Susanna Mälkki, conductor Jenõ Lisztes, Cimbalom David Geffen Hall November 4, 2023 NEW YORK – Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (1851) is such a challenging barnstormer of a piece that one often wonders how ten fingers suffice. On Saturday evening, Jenõ Lisztes, making his New York Philharmonic debut, used two mallets on a cimbalom to realize the rhapsody. His arrangement replicated the work in its entirety, and he played it with extraordinary virtuosity. Liszt was known to improvise a cadenza at the end of the piece, and Lisztes improvised one of his own, improbably one-upping the
Read moreOn Sunday, October 1, 2023 the Pasadena Conservatory of Music presented Shred, the first of two Wicked GOAT programs scheduled for the 2023/24 season in their Contemporary Music for Young People concert series. Barrett Hall was filled with a capacity crowd that included a gratifying number of well-behaved youngsters. A variety of contemporary compositions, dating from from 1959 to 2020 were presented, including pieces by John Adams, John Corigliano, Jennifer Higdon and Andrew Norman. Top Los Angeles area musicians were on hand to perform the seven pieces that were accessible, lively, abstract and engaging. All were thoughtfully programmed and constituted
Read moreFestival of Contemporary Music Chamber Music Sunday, July 30, 2023 LENOX – There were a number of firsts on the July 30th chamber music concert. I have never seen the stage at Ozawa Hall require several minutes of vacuuming up bits of wood, but Malin Bång’s Arching, for amplified cello, amplified tools, and electronics, created considerable, if entertaining, mayhem. Another first: hearing “The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round,” paired in fugal counterpoint with the Brahms lullaby. The find for me at FCM was Tebogo Monnakgotla, a Swedish composer who curated Sunday’s concert. The aforementioned nursery
Read moreBoston Symphony Orchestra, Anna Rakitina, conductor Joshua Bell, violin Eliza Bagg, Martha Cluver, and Sonja Dutoit Tengblad, vocalists July 30, 2023 LENOX – The Boston Symphony’s offerings on the weekend of the annual Festival of Contemporary Music dovetailed with its curation, lifting up female composers and, on Sunday, a conductor. Leading the orchestra on Saturday, July 30th was Anna Rakitina, who has served as the ensemble’s Assistant Conductor until this Summer. She is a rising star and led the orchestra with assuredness, providing detailed interpretations of all of the scores on the program. The orchestra, for their part, were
Read moreBoston Symphony Orchestra, Dima Slobodeniouk, conductor Avery Amereau, mezzo-soprano July 29, 2023 LENOX – This year’s Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood spotlighted female composers. Four created self-curated concerts, and others were featured on BSO concerts. Agata Zubel’s In the Shade of an Unshed Tear, originally composed for the Seattle Symphony, was on the program Saturday night in the Shed. Before its performance, conductor Dima Slobodeniouk talked briefly with Zubel onstage. Prominent among their remarks were the stipulations of the original commission. Seattle was pairing Zubel’s piece with works by Beethoven and wanted her to compose for a classical-sized
Read moreOn June 16 -17, 2023, the Grammy Award-winning PARTCH Ensemble presented two performances of The Wayward, a concert of music by Harry Partch. The Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater – REDCAT – was completely sold out for both nights, a testament to the great popularity of Partch’s music. The stage was filled with exotic Partch instruments: the Adapted Viola, Kithera I, Bass and Diamond Marimbas, the Chromelodeon, the Castor and Pollux Canons, among others. All of the most popular Partch pieces were in the program as well as some of those lesser performed. The program notes quoted Harry Partch,
Read moreThe Saturday morning concert at the 2023 Ojai Music Festival was titled The Willows Are New and featured the work of contemporary Asian composers. This was inspired by the centennial next month of the birth of Chou Wen-Chung, whose influence is strongly felt even as he is largely unknown outside of Asian musical circles. The concert program consisted of four pieces, two from Chinese and two from the Persian/Iranian traditions. The music presented in this program reflects the on-going efforts of composers to synthesize contemporary musical sensibilities with long-standing cultural influences. The first piece was Veiled, by Niloufar Nourbakhsh, and
Read moreThe Ojai Music Festival began on Thursday, June 8, 2023 at 6:30 PM with an informal ‘Pop Up’ performance of Moon Viewing Music (2016), by Peter Garland, presented at the gazebo in Libbey Park. Percussionist Steven Schick, a familiar figure at Ojai over the years, was the solo performer, and he brought along an impressive array of gongs and tam-tams gathered for the occasion from various museums and personal collections. Moon Viewing Music consists of six short pieces, each inspired by a Japanese haiku or short poem. As described by Peter Garland’s concert notes, “This music is low and slow
Read moreOn May 14, 2023 the Ventura College Performing Arts Center was the venue for The Sounds of Springtime, a concert featuring the Ventura College Chamber and Symphony Orchestras. The program included music by Tchaikovsky, Duke Ellington and Aaron Copand. The highlight of the concert was a much-anticipated performance of Mariachitlán (2016) and the composer, Juan Pablo Contreras, was in attendance. Full disclosure – I was a member of the trumpet section of this orchestra in the early 1990s, so I was curious to see how they were getting along under the direction of Conductor Ashley Walters. The Chamber Orchestra took
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