Soundscape Series will offer adventurous programs

By Peter Alexander

The Dairy Center for the Arts is building a new matinee music series, and they have brought in a two-by-four.

No, not a wooden 2×4; a concert featuring two quartets. The performance, “Music for Four,” will be at 2 p.m. Wednesday (March 18) in the Dairy’s Performance Space. The program will be shared by the Boulder Bassoon Quartet, playing music from their album “From the Opposite Shore”; and the Altius String Quartet, playing music by Joseph Haydn and György Ligeti.

The Dairy’s intriguing and adventurous Soundscape series of monthly concerts started in January, and so far has featured programs of “Women in Classical Music” and “Jazz in Classical Music.” The current series will continue through June, then take two months off before resuming in the fall. You can learn about the remaining concerts through the Spring, featuring the Austin Piazzolla Quintet, “Classical Music Unbuttoned” and the Miami String Quartet with composer Bruce Adolphe on the Dairy Center Web page.

The 2015-16 series will be announced by June, director James Bailey says.

Bailey started the series to fill an unmet need that he saw. “I have held the belief for a long time that there are many people in the Boulder area, and in the Denver area, who either cannot go out at night, or who don’t like to go out at night,” he says.

“I’ve often thought there was a need for a good, broadly diversified, highly professional matinee series, so people who go during the day could be out before the traffic got bad. They could be home for dinner and have had a wonderful artistic experience during the early afternoon.”

Bailey, who has organized concert series in Denver at Dazzle and Lannie’s Cabaret over the past four years, was able to sell his idea to Bill Obermeier, executive director of the Dairy. Obermeier liked the idea and gave Bailey the go-ahead for the Soundscape matinee series last fall.

“I think that the key (to programming the series) is a lot of variety,” Bailey says. “In terms of the genres of music, there’s going to be a lot of modern music. But I personally believe that people will get off their sofas and come out to hear contemporary music. There is an appetite for modern music, particularly modern chamber music, that is not being met.”

Bailey said that the performers will all be professionals, from young freelancers from the various universities, to university professors, to freelance professionals who perform with the Boulder Philharmonic, the Colorado Symphony and other groups around the state. Occasionally, groups who are traveling in Colorado will also be featured. The musicians will be paid modestly.

“They aren’t doing it for the money,” Bailey says. “What they are going to be able to do is perform alongside other professional musicians, doing music that they really want to do.”

Boulder Bassoon Quartet

Wednesday’s concert is a perfect example of Bailey’s approach. It features two young ensembles, playing music they love to perform. Members of the Boulder Bassoon Quartet are graduates of CU who met as students. Today they are freelance musicians who also perform as a quartet.

“It’s an unusual type of group,” Bailey says. “(But) they are brilliant performers, and they’re a lot of fun. They play music that is alive, it’s exciting, and in the performances that I’ve heard, they stole the show.”

The quartet will play two works that they commissioned, a quartet that American bassoonist/composer Paul Hanson wrote while living in Japan, and one that Japanese composer Rica Narimoto wrote while living in New York City. Both are on the quartet’s debut album, “From the Opposite Shore.”

Brian Jack, one of the members of the quartet, explains that Hanson is a virtuoso bassoonist and composer whom they really wanted to work with. “He’s not only a classical musician, he’s a jazz musician and a funk bassoonist, an electric bassoonist,” he says. “He’s an amazing pioneer with the instrument.

“He went to Japan because he was invited by Cirque de Soleil to create his own role at the new production in Tokyo. So the guy’s music is very worldly and eclectic and of super high quality. And his quartet is all about his time in Japan.”

The Japanese composer, Narimoto, spent several months on a grant living in New York, so the quartet members asked her to write a piece about her time there. “Her piece is quite different from what we got from Paul Hanson, but they are both really high quality,” Jack says. “Her musical language is modern, but it’s written in a way that really captures all these experiences that everybody has had, (such as) running through sudden rain and hearing subway announcements.”

Altius String Quartet. Photo by Jon Hess.

The Altius String Quartet is the graduate string quartet-in-residence in the CU College of Music. They are mentored by the renowned Takács String Quartet, but they also perform widely as a professional quartet in their own right. They are resident quartet of the Western Slope Concert Series in Grand Junction and have coached chamber music and performed at Music in the Mountains Conservatory in Durango.

“This is a young group that has already won a number of competitions,” Bailey says. “They are really, really good. And they are going to perform what I think is one of the best string quartets of the 20th century: the Ligeti String Quartet, ‘Metamorphoses Nocturnes’. That is just an amazingly good piece of music.”

The Hungarian composer György Ligeti composed his First String Quartet, titled “Metamorphoses Nocturnes,” in 1953–54, but his music was banned at the time by the Communist regime in Hungary. It was not performed until 1958, after Ligeti had moved to the west. In addition, Altius will play a movement from a string quartet by Joseph Haydn, and both groups will show their lighter side by playing arrangements of rock music.

With a program that will appeal to Boulder’s adventurous audience, this is a concert to be relished. And Bailey is sure that you will hear about both groups in the future.

“This is one of those instances where we’re going to be able to say, ‘Wow, I heard those guys when they were (getting started)’,” Bailey says. “In fact sometimes, I joke that I really want to book both of these groups as much as I can now, because some day I won’t be able to afford them!”

Tickets for Wednesday’s Soundscape performance are available here.

Performance “merges two fabulous works of art”

By Peter Alexander

Renée Jeanne Falconetti as Joan in The Passion of Joan of Arc. Photo courtesy of Alliance Artist Management.

Cynthia Katsarelis has conducted many concerts, but her next program with the Pro Musica Colorado Chamber Orchestra is unique and exciting in many ways.

“It’s fab,” she says. “It’s just fab!”

She is referring to Voices of Light by Richard Einhorn, which Pro Musica Colorado will perform with a screening of the 1928 silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc, directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer. An oratorio for small orchestra, chorus and soloists, Voices of Light was composed in 1994 specifically to accompany Dreyer’s film, which is considered one of the greatest silent films ever made.

Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 13, in St. John’s Cathedral, Denver, and Saturday, March 14, in First United Methodist Church, Boulder. Soloists appearing with Pro Musica and the St. John’s Cathedral Choir will be soprano Ashley Hoffman, alto Marjorie Bunday, tenor Steven Soph and bass David Farwig.

“The Passion of Joan of Arc is a masterpiece,” Katsarelis says. “The acting by Renée Jeanne Falconetti [as Joan] is just amazing.”

Read more at Boulder Weekly.

Boulder Bach Festival singers and players. Courtesy of the Boulder Bach Festival

By Peter Alexander

Bach’s B-minor Mass is one of the most studied, most well known works of music there is.

But have all the answers been found to performing this monumental work? Zachary Carrettin, the music director of the Boulder Bach Festival, who will conduct the B-minor Mass this weekend (Friday at Montview Presbyterian in Denver and Saturday at First United Methodist in Boulder, both at 7:30 p.m.), doesn’t think so.

“The great choirs all over the world have been performing the B-minor Mass for over 200 years,” he says. “Each one of those masterful renditions differs greatly in tempo, in the sense of the musical line, in the dramaturgy of the text and the music. So there is still room for us to re-examine the music and what it means to us today.”

Zachary Carrettin

Carrettin has invited vocal soloists and other performers to join the Boulder Bach Chorus and Players. The guest artists will be soprano Josefien Stoppelenburg from the Netherlands; American mezzo-soprano Melissa Givens; alto Julie Simson, who returns to Boulder where she taught at CU; tenor John Grau from Minneapolis, who also taught at CU; and American bass-baritone Michael Dean. Violinist Kenneth Goldsmith will be concertmaster.

“I have chosen such autonomous musicians that a lot of my work will involve listening to them, watching them and learning from them,” Carrettin says. “Bringing together the wealth of experiences and the distinct relationships that we all have to Bach and the B-minor Mass—it’s a great honor and a great thing to be part of.”

Read more in Boulder Weekly.

# # #

J.S. Bach: Mass in B minor
Boulder Bach Festival and soloists
Zachary Carrettin, conductor

7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 27
Montview Blvd. Presbyterian Church
1980 Dahlia St., Denver

7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 28
First United Methodist Church
1421 Spruce St., Boulder

Tickets

By Peter Alexander

Posts on this blog have been rather few so far in 2015, due partly to pressing family and personal business that has taken a great deal of my time. But the classical music world spins on, and, in case you missed them, here are some the more intriguing topics of the past month, with links to more extensive stories.

As reported in the Denver Post on Monday, Colorado was ranked No. 1 nationally for visits to theaters, museums and concerts hall in a new report from the National Endowment for the Arts. Many will be surprised by the ranking, but it has been clear to me that all the arts are alive and well in Boulder.

Danish National Chamber Orchestra

Elsewhere around the world, it is struggling musical organizations that are generating headlines. The Danish National Chamber Orchestra came to world-wide attention when the Danish government suddenly cancelled their funding on short notice. Scheduled to be disbanded on Jan. 1, the orchestra decided to fight back. Their most notorious stunt—or imaginative publicity gesture, depending on how you look at it—was their hilarious and ridiculous “Hot Chili Challenge,” where they filmed themselves playing after eating hot peppers.

According to the latest reports, the orchestra has been saved by a crowd-funding campaign that started with Kickstarter and ended up with donations from Danish businesses. Read the article in the Guardian—and if you haven’t seen it before, be sure to watch the Chili Challenge video at the end.

The Ulster Orchestra in Northern Ireland has been facing a similar crisis. In their case, the orchestra has secured a reprieve, but their long-term future is far from assured. Read about it in the Guardian.

The San Diego Opera’s production of “La Boheme” (with Sara Gartland as Musetta). Photo: Ken Howard

Another arts company that nearly went under but bounced back at the last moment was the San Diego Opera. With a change of general mangers and an outpouring of public support, the opera is back in business, and this review from the San Diego Union Times is good news for everyone.

At least none of these companies had their chief executives charged with corruption—unlike the Valencia Opera in Spain, where former director Helga Schmidt was both fired and arrested. You can read this story at Valencia Today.

Finally, we can end with some good news. Down in Texas, the Houston Opera has exceeded their fundraising goal of $165 million, raising a total of $172.9 million for “world premieres, new productions of established operas and the company’s first staging of Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung.” You can read the whole story in the Houston Chronicle.

Conrad Tao will be both soloist and composer Saturday evening

By Peter Alexander

Conrad Tao. Photo by Vanessa Briceno.

Conrad Tao can do it all.

Saturday with the Boulder Philharmonic, the talented young pianist will be the soloist for Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto. And he will play in the orchestra. And he composed one piece on the program.

“And he could sweep up afterwards, too,” Michael Butterman, the orchestra’s music director, says with a laugh.

“When one thinks of composers in Beethoven’s days, they were very often the performers as well,” he continues. “So here we have somebody doing something in a way that harkens back to that earlier time.”

Before the Beethoven concerto, Tao will play the prominent orchestral piano part for Darius Milhaud’s jazzy ballet score Creation du Monde (Creation of the world). Tao the composer is represented by Pangu, an orchestral piece inspired by another creation legend. The concert, titled “Creative Legends,” will open with Beethoven’s Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus, which will be followed by a piece inspired by the Biblical story of creation: “Chaos” from Haydn’s oratorio The Creation.

For more, see Boulder Weekly.

# # #

“Creative Legends”
Music of Beethoven, Haydn, Milhaud and Conrad Tao
Boulder Philharmonic, Michael Butterman, conductor
Conrad Tao, pianist
7:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 17, Macky Auditorium

Tickets

Distinguished conductors lead the list, along with legendary singers, players, composers

By Peter Alexander

New Year’s Eve is a time for reflections, not least of those who we could celebrate at the beginning of the year, but who are no longer with us.

A surprising number this year were conductors, but there were several legendary opera singers from past generations and other performers who have left their mark. And of course each and every one will be missed by families, by friends, by colleagues, and by the thousands who made up their audiences.

Below is a partial list of great musical artists who died during the year. This is a highly personal list: it includes great classical artists, but also other musicians who have touched me in some way. This should be more than a sad chronicle; perhaps it will help us remember to celebrate those great artists who give us so much, while they are still among the living.

To the memory of each person below, I can only express undying gratitude for the dedication, the love of music, and the incredibly hard work that each put in over a lifetime to bring us the music we treasure.

Claudio Abbado, conductor, 80
Licia Albanese, soprano, 105
Carlo Bergonzi, tenor, 90
Frans Brüggen, recorder player, conductor, scholar, 79
George Christie, manager of Glyndebourne Opera, 79
Buddy DeFranco, jazz clarinetist, 91
José Fenghali, pianist, 53
Claude Frank, pianist, 89
Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, conductor, 91
Alice Herz-Sommer, pianist and Holocaust survivor, 110
Christopher Hogwood, conductor, harpsichordist, organist, scholar, 73
Joseph Kerman, musicologist, 89
Lorin Maazel, conductor, 84
Manitas de Plata, flamenco guitarist, 91
Gerard Mortier, opera director, 70
Stephen Paulus, composer, 65
Julius Rudel, conductor, 93
Peter Sculthorpe, composer, 85
Pete Seeger, folksinger, songwriter, activist, 94
John Shirley-Quirk, baritone, 82
Elaine Stritch, Broadway singer and great interpreter of Stephen Sondheim’s music, 89
Laszlo Varga, cellist, 89

May you rest in peace. You will be remembered.

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“A Night on the Danube” will channel European New Year’s celebrations

By Peter Alexander

Boulder Chamber Orchestra in a Holiday Mood (Photo by Keith Bobo)

Bahman Saless and the Boulder Chamber Orchestra offered their first New Year’s Eve concert two years ago. Saless saw an open niche and decided to fill it.

“I always felt like on New Year’s Eve, the only game in town in classical music is the Colorado Symphony,” he says, speaking of the CSO’s annual “Night in Vienna” (6:30 p.m. New Year’s Eve in Boettcher Concert Hall). “I thought, it’s kind of a far thing to go all the way to Denver. Why don’t we have something around here?”

Because of the difficulty of finding an available space in Boulder on New Year’s Eve, Saless decided to perform in the attractive Lakewood Cultural Center (470 S. Allison Pkwy. in Lakewood). Timed not to interfere with later New Year’s Eve events, the Boulder Chamber Orchestra’s concert, “A Night on the Danube,” will begin at 6:30 p.m.

That is same time as CSO’s “Night in Vienna,” and no, the similarity of names is not accidental, either. Musically, the New Year celebration is widely associated with Viennese music—especially waltzes and polkas from the Strauss family—because of the Vienna Philharmonic’s annual New Year’s Day concert. That event has become so popular that tickets are distributed by lottery and the television broadcast is seen in 90 countries.

Bahman Saless. Photo by Keith Bobo

Saless says such European concerts are an inspiration for the BCO. “You know, in Europe all the countries have some interesting New Year’s Eve event, which we don’t,” he says. “We have the New York Times Square type of thing and we sit in front of the TV.

“At some point I’d love to just get people out of the house, and go do something else.”

Apparently he is succeeding, since the BCO New Year’s Eve concerts have nearly sold out each year. The only problem Saless sees is that most of the sales come from Lakewood and Denver.

“I would love for more Boulder people to come,” he says. “It’s set up at a good time so you’re out by 8 o’clock.”

To further help people with their celebrations, the BCO will have what Saless calls “a wall of wine” on sale during intermission. “People can actually buy their wine for the evening right at the concert, and then head home and celebrate,” he says.

The Danube in Budapest

Of course, people mostly come to the concert for the music. This year, the BCO will perform music from countries that border on the Danube River as it flows through central Europe. From Austria there will be Johann Strauss Jr.’s Pizzicato Polka and—inevitably—The Blue Danube.

Hungary will be represented by two composers: Johannes Brahms with his Hungarian Dances and Franz Liszt with the popular Second Hungarian Rhapsody. And Slovakia comes in with two of the Slavonic Dances of Antonín Dvořák.

“The program is sort like my favorites,” Saless says, “It’s stuff that I would always love to do but can’t do with a chamber orchestra.”

Announcements of the concert promise all that, “and much more.” But when asked about the “much more,” Saless just says, “I’m not going to say. We are doing some surprise pieces, which may or may not include one of our favorite singers.”

Soprano Szilvia Schranz

The singer at least is not a secret: soprano Szilvia Schranz, who has impeccable Danubian credentials, is listed on the program. In keeping with the theme of the concert, she will sing—well, “some Hungarian pieces” is all Saless will admit to.

Schranz was born in Budapest—on the banks of the Danube—and moved to Boulder when her father, second violinist of the Takacs Quartet, came to CU with the other members of the ensemble.

The playing style of music from Central Europe has some challenges for players who have not grown up with the different national traditions. The Viennese waltz, for example, gets its lilt from a slight displacement of the second beat, which is played a fraction early and lightly stressed in the accompanying parts. Think of the first “pah” as just ahead of the beat in the “Oom-PAH—pah” parts.

As a conductor, Saless is prepared for the waltzes. “There a trick to it,” he says. “I have been fortunate enough to have a teacher that showed me how to do it, because he does a lot of Viennese waltzes.

“What you do is you add a new dimension to the baton. You actually move the orchestra on the second beat by moving the baton toward them. And they’ll do it naturally. It’s a really cool thing.”

NOTE: This article was originally published in the Dec. 25 edition of Boulder Weekly.

# # #

New Year’s Eve on the Danube (Photo courtesy of Boulder Chamber Orchestra)

“A Night on the Danube”
Boulder Chamber Orchestra, Bahman Saless, conductor
Szilvia Schranz, soprano

6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 31
Lakewood Cultural Center
470 S. Allison Pkwy., Lakewood

Tickets

By Peter Alexander

The King’s Singers. Photo by Alex Nickolaus.

It’s all about the blend.

No, not coffee. Blend is how countertenor Timothy Wayne-Wright explains the unique and unmistakable sound of the King’s Singers, who bring their men’s a capella singing to Macky Auditorium for “Christmas With the King’s Singers” next Thursday (7:30 p.m. Dec. 11).

“At the core of everything we do is the blend [of the voices],” Wayne-Wright says. “We say that we go on stage as six voices but we want the audience to hear just the one voice.”

Read more in Boulder Weekly.

# # #

Here is a partial listing of other holiday events in the area:

A Broadway Christmas Carol
CU Theatre and Dance
Dec. 4–21, University Theatre

Nutcracker Ballet
Boulder Ballet and Longmont Symphony Orchestra
4 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 6
2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 7
Vance Brand Civic Auditorium, Longmont

December Reflections
Christmas with Ars Nova Singers
7:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 6 and Friday Dec. 12
St. John’s Episcopal Church, Boulder

4 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 7, St. Paul’s Lutheran, Denver
2 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 13, Bethany Lutheran, Cherry Hills Village

Candlelight Concert
Longmont Symphony
4 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 14
First United Methodist Church, Longmont

The Gift of Music
Boulder Chamber Orchestra and Seicento Baroque Ensemble
7:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 19, First United Methodist, Boulder
7:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 20, Montview Presbyterian, Denver