BUCHAREST, Romania — Romania has a long record of defying the catastrophes history has served up, so it certainly would not allow the pandemic to derail the George Enescu International Festival, devoted to its premier musical native son, which ended on Sunday. At stake was not only the 25th edition of this country’s largest cultural event, but also the renewal of a global artistic exchange that this still-marginalized part of Europe considers essential to its development…
Donald Runnicles conducted the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra in Britten’s ‘Four Sea Interludes,’ Elgar’s ‘Enigma Variations,’ and Carl Vine’s ‘Five Hallucinations’ for trombone and orchestra. (Photo by J. Gustavo Elias)
JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — Even when obscured by smoke drifting in from distant wildfires, the Grand Tetons’ towering peaks command awe. The tallest cluster, which dominates the promotional posters for this summer’s Grand Teton Music Festival, has been dubbed “the Cathedral Group.”
For MaerzMusik 2021, Bang on a Can has curated a special edition of its online Bang on a Can Marathon: four hours of live performances from both sides of the Atlantic. Bang on a Can Marathon Live Online – MaerzMusik Edition will be presented by Berliner Festspiele on Sunday, 21 March 2021 from 3pm-7pm ET.
The Bang on a Can Marathon is one of many events taking place during the MaerzMusik Festival 2021, running March 19-28. MaerzMusik 2021 aims at providing a variety of online experiences: world premieres recorded with state-of-the-art 360° camera and 3D sound technology, binaural audio streams, live-streamed concerts, pre-produced concert films, music videos, documentaries, lectures and talks.
In addition to the artists of the Bang on a Can marathon, works by Jessie Cox, Halim El-Dabh, Jessica Ekomane, Beatriz Ferreyra, Carlos Guitérrez, Sofia Jernberg, Marisol Jiménez, Hannah Kendall, Daniel Kidane, Tania León, Bernard Parmegiani, Éliane Radigue, Manuel Rodríguez Valenzuela, and many others can be experienced.
These digital productions are connecting the physical locations Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Chamber Music Hall of the Philharmonie, Zeiss-Großplanetarium, SAVVY Contemporary, silent green, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Université du Québec à Montréal, and Schloss Rheinsberg, as well as private apartments and studios around the world where music, language, and moving images are being created for this festival. The full festival programming is available here: www.berlinerfestspiele.de/maerzmusik-en
The Bang on a Can Marathon is free to watch, but viewers are encouraged to consider purchasing a ticket. Doing so helps Bang on a Can and MaerzMusik to pay more players, commission more composers, and make more music.
Bang on a Can Marathon Live Online – MaerzMusik Edition
Set times are approximate and subject to change.
3PM NEW YORK | 8PM BERLIN
Daniel Bernard Roumain Why Did They Kill Sandra Bland? performed by Arlen Hlusko
Arnold Dreyblatt
Mazz Swift
Rohan Chander△ or THE TRAGEDY OF HIKKOMORI LOVELESS from FINAL//FANTASY performed by Vicky Chow
4PM NEW YORK | 9PM BERLIN
Kristina WolfeListening to the Wind performed by Molly Barth
Miya Masaoka
Aeryn Santillandisconnect. performed by Ken Thomson
Adam Cuthbert
5PM NEW YORK | 10PM BERLIN
Ken ThomsonBirds and Ambulances performed by Robert Black
Tomeka ReidLamenting G.F., A.A., B.T., T.M. performed by Vicky Chow
Steve ReichVermont Counterpoint performed by Claire Chase
[clip from the earlier incarnation of the James Ehnes Quartet, which launches Seattle’s Virtual Summer Festival this week]
The Seattle Chamber Music Society launches its Virtual Summer Festival this evening. This isn’t just a visit to the archives but a 12-concert series of all brand-new live performances that will be taped before being released to the public as streams.
The concerts will be made available on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule at 7pm PST. These will be “on-demand”: in other words, you won’t have to view them at the specific streaming time but can access all concerts for which you have purchased a pass through 10 August 2020 — as many times as you like.
This is an experiment and a risk. How many will pay for internet performances, as opposed to free streams? Each concert costs $15, or you can purchase a pass to all 12 programs for $125. For the first time, SCMS’s Chamber Festival is thus available to anyone anywhere with internet access, and performances cannot be “sold out.”
I wrote about the planning that went into this approach for the Seattle Times.
Artistic Director James Ehnes and his quartet will perform part two of their complete Beethoven quartet cycle in the three concerts on offer this week. This continues and concludes the journey they began in January — under normal circumstances — at the shorter Winter Festival.
Meanwhile, Ehnes put his quarantine time to use at his home in Florida by recording the solo partitas and sonatas of J.S. Bach and the corresponding Ysaÿe sonatas. He will be releasing these in a series, starting here.
Du Yun’s “Angel’s Bone,” in its premiere production in the People’s Republic of China (photo credit: Beijing Music Festival)
Earlier this month, I visited the 22nd annual Beijing Music Festival. Here’s my report for Classical Voice North America, with a focus on BMF’s emphasis on new music under the dynamic leadership of Shuang Zou (now in her second year as the festival’s artistic director):
“Golden Week” is the name for the national holiday period held in the People’s Republic of China at the beginning of October. This year, it also signaled an earlier-than-usual start to the annual Beijing Music Festival (BMF) — the country’s largest and most extensive festival devoted to classical music…
Marc-André Hamelin performed both Brahms piano concertos at the Bellingham Festival. (Photo: Catherine Fowler)
I spent a lovely day in Bellingham on Sunday. Here’s my review of Marc-André Hamelin’s program of the two Brahms piano concertos at the Bellingham Festival of Music for Classical Voice North America.
BELLINGHAM, Wash. – Rhapsodizing about his summer getaway in the lakeside resort of Pörtschach, Brahms observed that “the melodies fly so thick you must watch out not to step on one.” It’s easy to imagine the composer armed with a melody-catching butterfly net and setting out for a stroll through the idyllic campus in coastal Washington, where the Bellingham Festival of Music takes place over three weeks each July.
From artistic director Berno Odo Polzer’s statement on this year’s program:
Music offers time a centre. – This trope by John Berger puts the two main concerns of this festival – music and time – into a generative relation. Such a centre – in motion, elusive, non-geometric, plurimodal as it must be – would allow for a different point of view. From such a musical centre, one may sense the divergent temporalities each of us inhabits simultaneously, and draw relations to the ongoing fundamental transformations happening around us.
Yet the trope allows for another reading. The frozen self-image of Western art music places music outside of time as well as outside of its own time: by claiming avant-gardism – being ahead of its time, and by clinging to abstractions – timelessness, universality, structure. Contrary to this (Berger seems to suggest), music – all sorts of music – may in fact be a centre for and a portal to things temporal, may grant access to time in varied modalities.
More than ever, time – as a political category – is of the essence when it comes to learning to make sense of the erratic commotions of the present. Maybe music can help us find ways to do so. This is a time for listening.
Last summer, Early Music Vancouver inaugurated an annual Bach Festival, and this year’s edition focuses on the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation.
A number of prominent Seattle-based artists are heading north to perform: Stephen Stubbs, Byron Schenkman, and Tekla Cunningham. The festival’s 14 concerts run August 1-11, 2017 (most of them at Christ Church Cathedral downtown).
Along with music by J.S. Bach, the program spans the historical spectrum from Renaissance polyphony, Latin American Baroque, 18th century opera to Romantic composers, along with contemporaries like Philip Glass featured on cellist Matt Haimovitz’s “Overtures to Bach” concert.
The complete lineup:
Overtures to Bach
August 1 at 6pm and 9pm
Renowned as a musical pioneer, Canadian cellist Matt Haimovitz performs four of Bach’s beloved Cello Suites preceded by new commissions written by composers including Philip Glass and David Sanford that anticipate, reflect, and transform the originals.
Schumann Dichterliebe and Brahms Four Serious Songs
August 2 at 1pm
Internationally acclaimed Canadian baritone Tyler Duncan and pianist Erika Switzer, playing an original 19th century fortepiano.
Songs of Religious Upheaval: Byrd, Tallis, Tye – Music from Reformation England
August 2 at 7:30pm (Pre-concert talk 6:45pm)
Cinquecento sings music of William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, and Christoper Tye Lutheran Vespers: Songs for Troubled Times
August 3 at 1pm
Eleven Vancouver-based performers offer a complete Lutheran vespers written to provide comfort and consolation following the Thirty Years’ War and its aftermath Bach’s Italian Concerto
August 3 at 7:30pm (Pre-concert talk 6:45pm)
The French Overture and the Italian Concerto performed by harpsichordist Alexander Weimann. Swiss baritone and founding musical director of Gli Angeli Genève Stephan MacLeod joins Weimann for cantatas by Handel and Bach Conversions: Mendelssohn, Moscheles, and Bach
August 4 at 1pm
Fortepianist Byron Schenkman & cellist Michael Unterman perform works by Mendelssohn and Moscheles, two Jewish artists who converted to Christianity to conform to social norms. Handel in Italy: Virtuosic Cantatas
August 4 at 7:30pm (Pre-concert talk 6:45pm)
Terry Wey and Jenny Högström perform cantatas and love duets by Handel from his early Italian period, along with a duet by Agostino Steffani (one of Handel’s mentors) Playing with B-a-c-H: Sonatas for Violin by Telemann, Pisendel and J.S. Bach
August 8 at 1pm
Baroque violinist Tekla Cunningham performs a solo Bach partita, a Pisendel
solo sonata, and two solo Telemann fantasias Before Bach: “The Fountains of Israel” by Johann Schein (1623)
August 8 at 7:30 pm (Pre-concert talk 6:45pm)
European vocal ensemble Gli Angeli Genève sing Johann Schein’s Israelis Brünnlein Bach for Two Flutes
August 9 at 1pm
Janet See and Soile Stratkauskas play Baroque flutes, with Christopher Bagan on harpsichord Heavenly Love: Sacred Arias for Counter-Tenor
August 9, at 7:30pm (Pre-concert talk 6:45pm)
Alex Potter sings music by Buxtehude, Schütz, Purcell, and Strozzi Bach Transcriptions – Victoria Baroque Players
August 10 at 1pm
Bach’s trio sonatas for organ transcribed for chamber ensemble
Music of Missions and Mystery: Latin American Baroque
August 10, at 7:30pm (Pre-concert talk 6:45pm)
Pacific MusicWorks and director Stephen Stubbs J.S. Bach St. John Passion at the Chan Centre
August 11, at 7:30 pm (Pre-concert talk 6:45pm)
The Pacific Baroque Orchestra, the Vancouver Cantata Singers, and a cast of seven soloists led by Alexander Weimann
To complement the artist lineup, EMV will offer an array of thought-provoking film screenings and expert talks
My feature for the Cal Performances/Ojai at Berkeley edition is now online:
Any portrait of Vijay Iyer is necessarily a group portrait. A composer, pianist, bandleader, teacher, and thinker, Iyer channels his insatiable curiosity into innovative acts of collaboration with like-minded artists—across genres and disciplines. So when the chance came to serve as music director of the 2017 Ojai Music Festival …
MEMETERIA by Thomas May 