Filed under: photography
November 9, 2014 • 9:27 am Comments Off on Top o’ the World
Top o’ the World
Filed under: photography
November 8, 2014 • 11:03 am Comments Off on Sublime Salonen from the Seattle Symphony and Jennifer Koh
Sublime Salonen from the Seattle Symphony and Jennifer Koh
Jennifer Koh; © Juergen Frank
My latest review:
It’s not unusual for Ludovic Morlot to offer a spirited brief introduction to a particular piece. But at the top of last night’s Seattle Symphony concert, the maestro was eager to elucidate a rationale threading together the motley menu of Samuel Barber, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and a Tchaikovsky warhorse: essentially, the proposition that all three works represented personal responses to periods of challenge or even crisis.
Filed under: new music, review, Seattle Symphony, Tchaikovsky
November 7, 2014 • 1:39 pm Comments Off on Transfiguring the Night: Music of Remembrance
Transfiguring the Night: Music of Remembrance
Rehearsal photos by Leo V Santiago photography.
My preview of the upcoming world premiere by choreographer Donald Byrd for Music of Remembrance:
The event that Music of Remembrance (MOR) will commemorate at this Sunday’s fall concert at Benaroya Hall on Sunday, November 9, is a grim one: the 76th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass” during which the Nazis fomented a wave of violent pogroms targeting Jews across Germany and the recently annexed Austria and Sudetenland. But MOR’s focus has always been on the triumphant creativity of the human spirit that defies oppression and hatred — against the most terrifying odds.
Launching its 17th season with this Benaroya concert, the organization remembers the work of composers who were silenced by the Holocaust not only by presenting their music but through a vigorous commissioning program showcasing artists of the present. The result has been to build what founder and artistic director Mina Miller calls “ a living bridge between Holocaust artists and artists today.”
The lineup here is especially attractive, featuring the world premiere of Seattle-based choreographer extraordinaire Donald Byrd’s new dances created for Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (“Transfigured Night”).
November 4, 2014 • 12:01 am Comments Off on A Glimpse of the Full Monte(verdi)
A Glimpse of the Full Monte(verdi)
Claudio Monteverdi was nearly an exact contemporary of Shakespeare, but his lifespan stretched almost thirty years beyond the playwright’s death—so long that he led the sea change from the High Renaissance into a dramatically new musical era. Even in his final decades, Monteverdi remained a revolutionary composer who forever changed expectations about what music is capable of expressing.
This Friday at Nordstom Recital Hall, Pacific MusicWorks opens their new season with an opportunity to experience just what makes Monteverdi such a musical icon—not the long-dead pioneer of the music history textbooks, but an unbelievably imaginative poet of sounds who can still stir your soul to its core.
Filed under: early music, Monteverdi, Pacific MusicWorks
November 3, 2014 • 9:32 am Comments Off on A San Francisco Halloween
MEMETERIA by Thomas May 