Daily Archives: November 16, 2022

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November 16, 2022

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Grace Notes: Music from America

Concerts by Sphere Ensemble and the Longmont Symphony

By Peter Alexander Nov. 16 at 2:50 p.m.

The Sphere Ensemble, a string ensemble formed by professional string players in the Denver area, will present a kaleidoscope of many American musics at the Mercury Café in Denver Friday (7:30 p.m. Nov. 18) and the Canyon Theater of the Boulder Public Library Saturday (7:30 p.m. Nov. 19; details below).

Under executive director Alex Vittal, a longtime violist and arranger with the group, Sphere has brought educational programming to marginalized audiences, including people in homeless shelters, juvenile detention centers, women’s shelters, children’s hospitals and assisted living facilities.

Sphere characteristically includes both concert music written for string orchestra and arrangements of works drawn from popular and other vernacular genres in their programs. In the case of the “Kaleidoscope” concert, that ranges from music by 20th-century African-American composer Florence Price, to the contemporary Chickasaw composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate, to the Pulitzer Prize-winner Carolyn Shaw, to a medley of music by Prince.

Tate’s Pisach has been arranged for Sphere through a special agreement with the composer, and several of the pop pieces were arranged specifically for the ensemble. Vittal’s arrangement of the Prince Medley has been particularly popular in past performances. The concert announcement from Sphere states, “This concert program focuses on the wide range of what ‘American’ music is: with composers from diverse backgrounds, genres from classical to pop, and arrangements written by Sphere musicians.”

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“Kaleidoscope”
Sphere ensemble

  • Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate: Pisach. (adapted with permission of the composer by Alex Vittal and Alejandro G. Gullien)
  • Caroline Shaw: Entr’acte
  • Florence Price: “Juba” from Second String Quartet
  • Tan Dun: Symphony for Strings
  • Gordon/Warren: “At Last,” arr. Chris Jusell
  • Prince: Prince Medley, arr. Alex Vittal
  • Randy Newman: “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” arr. Sarah Whitnah
  • Scott Joplin: “Wall Street Rag,” arr. Alex Vittal
  • Louis Moreau Gottschalk: Souvenir de Porto Rico, arr. David Short

7:30 pm. Friday, Nov. 18
Mercury Café, 2199 California St., Denver

7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 19
Canyon Theater, Boulder Public Library

TICKETS 

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The Longmont Symphony Orchestra and conductor Elliot Moore will focus on America in two of their subscriptions concerts this year. The first of these, “Trail of Tears: America—Part 1” will be presented Saturday at the Vance Brand Auditorium (7:30 p.m. Nov. 19; details below).

The concert takes it title from composer Michael Daugherty’s “Trail of Tears” Flute Concerto, which will be performed by soloist Brice Smith and the orchestra. Smith teaches flute at Adams State University in Alamosa, Colo.

The concerto is named for the route that Cherokees and other Native Americans were forced to travel from their ancestral homes in Southeastern states to reservations in present-day Oklahoma. In his program notes, the composer has described the piece as “a musical journey into how the human spirit discovers ways to deal with upheaval, adversity and adapting to a new environment.”

Other works on the program are the Overture to The Song of Hiawatha by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and the Symphony No. 8 in G major by Dvořák. Coleridge-Taylor was a mixed-race British composer and conductor who had a significant career in both England and the United States, where he was known as “the African Mahler.” 

His trilogy of cantatas The Song of Hiawatha was written 1898–1900. The first part to be performed, Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, became popular world-wide and earned praise from leading English musicians including Sir Arthur Sullivan.

Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony is one of the composer’s most popular and joyful pieces. It was composed in 1889, soon before the composer’s famous and fateful trip to the United States in 1892. More than any of the Dvořák’s symphonies, it draws on the music of the composer’s homeland, giving it a uniquely relaxed and folkish quality.

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“Trail of Tears”
Longmont Symphony Orchestra, Elliot Moore conductor
With Brice Smith, flute

  • Samuel Coleridge Taylor: Overture to Song of Hiawatha
  • Michael Daugherty: Trail of Tears
  • Dvořák: Symphony No 8 in G major

7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 19
Vance Brand Civic Auditorium, Longmont

TICKETS

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Central City Opera plans season of three Mainstage shows

Summer 2023 will feature Shakespearean subjects, June 24–Aug. 6

By Peter Alexander Nov. 16 at 10:50 a.m.

Central City Opera returns to their pre-COVID schedule of three Mainstage productions in their main house for the 2023 summer festival season, with three different works all based on Shakespeare: Roméo et Juliette by Charles Gounod, Otello by Rossini, and Kiss Me Kate, Cole Porter’s 1948 Broadway spinoff from Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew.

Central City Opera House. Photo by Ashraf Sewailam.

The six-week summer season also features the return of CU graduate Ashraf Sewailam to Central City, but in this case as the stage director of Otello, rather than as a singer. Another CU graduate, bass Wei Wu who was recently featured in the CU Eklund Opera production of La Bohème, will have a role in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette. 

The season will open June 24, 2023, with the three productions running in rotating repertoire through Aug. 6. All three will be sung in their original language: Otello in Italian, Roméo et Juliette in French, and Kiss Me Kate of course in English. Season tickets will go on sale Dec. 1. Single ticket sales will begin March 1, 2023. Visit the Central City Opera Web page for more details, including cast and production credits. 

Written in 1816, when the composer was only 24, Rossini’s Otello is the earliest of the three works on the 2023 season. It is not often performed today, partly because of the difficulty of casting three difficult tenor roles: Otello, Iago and Rodrigo.

The interior of Central City Opera’s theater

Unlike Shakespeare’s play and the Verdi’s better known opera on the same subject, Rossini’s Otello takes place entirely in Venice. In another departure from the other works, in Rossini’s opera Rodrigo is a major character, the son of the Doge of Venice. He had been promised Desdemona’s hand in marriage, but before the curtain she and Otello had been married in secret. A major dramatic turning point is her father’s disapproval of the marriage.

As in Shakespeare and Verdi, Iago deliberately uses Rodrigo to stir up Otello’s suspicions of his wife. All three versions end with Otello stabbing Desdemona, and then his own death when Iago’s treachery and his wife’s innocence are revealed.

Gounod’s opera was premiered in Paris in 1859, and had  more than 300 performances by 1868, including its first performance in the US. The story and the incidents are similar to Shakespeare’s well known play, with Roméo and Juliette falling in love and getting secretly married. There is a duel between Roméo and Tybalt, who is killed by Roméo. The story ends with the familiar scene at Juliette’s tomb.

The story of Porter’s Kiss Me Kate is less a re-telling of Shakespeare than it is a comedic spinoff. The plot revolves around a company presenting musical version of The Taming of the Shrew, with ongoing feuds between the actors playing Petrucchio and Katherine, who are also ex-spouses. The musical includes portions of the play set to music, but also rehearsals, backstage scenes, a side-plot involving gangsters, and a happy ending with lovers united and re-united. Among the songs remembered from the show are “Another Openin’, Another Show,” “Where is the Life that Late I Led,” “Always True to You in My Fashion” and “Brush Up your Shakespeare.”

Kiss Me Kate is considered Porter’s response to Rodger and Hammerstein’s groundbreaking, fully-integrated musical Oklahoma! The winner of the very first Tony Award for Best Musical in 1949, Kiss Me Kate was Porter’s only show to run more than 1000 performances. Although very much a show of its time it has never lost its popularity, and has been revived several times to great success. The most recent Broadway revivals were in 1999 with Brian Stokes Mitchell and Marin Mazzie, and 2019 with Will Chase and Kelli O’Hara.

CORRECTION: 11/21 The automatic spell corrector change of Ashraf Seawila’s name to “Ashram” was corrected. The correct spelling of his given name is Ashraf.