One Night Only concert features new music “Alive”

By Peter Alexander

The clarinetist says the hardest part is standing still. The violinist also plays the piano because she has a “lust for bass.”

It should be an interesting concert.

Carter Pann

Saturday, March 4, the Dairy Arts Center will present “Alive,” a program of new music as part of its One Night Only concert series. The program will feature two world premieres, as well as the regional premiere of The Mechanics: Six from the Shop Floor for saxophone quartet by CU music professor Carter Pann, a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2016.

“Alive” is the first of six One Night Only concerts scheduled for the spring. Those and other upcoming performances are listed on the Dairy Center website.

Black Diamond Quartet

The Mechanics, performed by the Black Diamond Quartet, will close the program. Pann’s suite of six short movements was written for the Capitol Quartet, a group that Pann heard when they played on tour at Grusin Hall on the CU campus.

The “Alive” program opens with Serenity Diptych, a multi-media work for violin, tape and still images by Lithuanian composer Ziboukle Martinaityte. It was composed for violinist Karen Bentley Pollick, who will perform with photographic and video imagery by Philip VanKeuren.

Deborah Marshall

Pollick switches to piano to play the world premiere of the Andante for Contrabassoon and Piano by Russian composer Ivan Sokolov, with contrabassoonist Michael Christoph of the Boulder Bassoon Quartet. The program’s second world premiere will be Danse for solo clarinet by Dirk-Michael Kirsch, performed by Deborah Marshall.

Also on the eclectic program are Etudes for Piano by David Rakowski, played by Amy Briggs; Briggs and Pann playing the Study No. 6 for player piano by Conlon Nancarrow; and the Boulder Bassoon Quartet accompanying ALT, a short film starring Abby Brammell.

Read more in Boulder Weekly.