The Festival Finale to this year’s edition of Musicus Fest brings together musicians from Hong Kong and Austria as the Camerata Salzburg is joined by the emerging star violinists Fan Hiu-sing and Jeremy Hao as duo soloists in Mozart’s Concertone in C major, K. 190. Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony is also on the program, which begins with Joachim Raff’s Sinfonietta in F major. To close the program and festival, students from Musicus Society’s Ensemble Training take the spotlight to play Leó Weiner’s Divertimento No. 1 in D major.
The performance takes place at 3pm on Sunday, 26 November, at Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall.
The last of the festivals presented by Lucerne Festival in the calendar year, Forward is a fall weekend devoted exclusively to contemporary music and begins today.
Designed and performed by the young musicians of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO), this year’s edition of Forward features the work of such composers as Julius Eastman, Fausto Romitelli, Rebecca Saunders, Liza Lim, Ragnheiður Erla Björnsdóttir, and Charles Uzor (who discusses his new composition commemorating George Floyd, Katharsis Kalkül, in the video above.
PostClassical Ensemble (PCE) begins its 20th-anniversary season on 16 November at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater with a concert titledBouncing off the Walls: Music and Architecture. Exploring the complex relation between these two art forms, the program will juxtapose music written for particular buildings with early-20th-century Modernist efforts to reduce both forms to their elemental materials. Tickets here.
Beginning with Beethoven’s Consecration of the House Overture, written to celebrate a newly remodeled theater and opera house in Vienna, the concert includes music by Gabrieli composed for the Basilica of San Marco in Venice; the “palindrome” minuet from Haydn’s Symphony No. 47 in G from 1772, Anton Webern’s Five Pieces for Orchestra, and Rossini’s William Tell Overture “reassembled to maximize the acoustic possibilities of The Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.”
Projections of hand-drawn architectural sketches by Centennial Medal winner Hany Hassan FAIA will accompany the music, which PCE music director Angel Gil-Ordóñez will conduct. Guest curator and cultural critic Philip Kennicott will offer commentary on the relationship between music and architecture.
Here’s an excerpt from an interview between Gil-Ordóñez and Kennicott:
Philip, you’ve written about both music and architecture; can you talk about how you see the two as interrelated?
PK: I started with the vocabulary they share. Words like harmony and dissonance, form, structure and ornamentation, make sense to both musicians and architects. There’s been a long history of assuming that because music and architecture are both dependent on mathematics and ideas of proportion, and because they also share a language, that they must be fundamentally connected. Think of that famous line by Goethe everyone loves to quote: Architecture is frozen music. I love the poetry of that thought and it will be our starting point for the concert. But then we’re going to move on and try to look a little more deeply about both the similarities and the differences between these two realms of creativity. Consider this obvious difference: A badly constructed piece of music may be boring, or annoying or forgettable, but a badly built building can fall down and kill people. So, clearly, there are some distinctions to be made.
Aaron Zigman’s Émigré is a 90-minute oratorio that tells the story of refugees finding a home and community in Shanghai; the libretto is by Mark Campbell. On Friday 17 November, Long Yu and the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, along with musicians from the New York Philharmonic, will give the world premiere at the Jaguar Shanghai Symphony Hall.
In the late 1930s, Jewish refugees escaping Nazi Germany found a home and a community in Shanghai, China — one of only two countries in the world that would accept them. While Shanghai had previously served as a haven for Jews escaping persecution, the many refugees who fled to the city directly after Kristallnacht arrived on the shores of a country affected by the occupation of Japan and the atrocities of the Nanjing Massacre committed less than a year before.
This moment in history is the backdrop of Émigré, an oratorio in two acts that dramatizes the experiences of two Jewish brothers who arrive in Shanghai as refugees in 1938. As the young men navigate their new life, bonds are formed between the Jewish and Shanghainese communities that test the social boundaries and traditional ideas of both. Émigré reaches its tragic conclusion in a love story that mirrors the larger world, its message emerges: that our survival as a race depends on diverse communities learning to embrace our shared humanity. See detailed synopsis below.)
Commissioned by Long Yu, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic, Émigré calls for nearly 150 musicians, including members of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic Chorus, and Lanzhou Concert Hall Choir, as well as seven soloists. The solo parts will be sung by Matthew White, Arnold Livingston Geis, Huiling Zhu, Meigui Zhang, Shenyang, Diana Newman, and Andrew Dwan. The Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and Long Yu will also record the oratorio for Deutsche Grammophon, with a release date scheduled in 2024. The New York Philharmonic will give the US premiere of Émigréon 29 February 2024.
Long Yu, Music Director of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, said: “Émigré will shed light on humanity and provide a valuable lesson to us through the immense kindness and tolerance this city once released in history. From working on the draft idea to finally premiering the work this week, this new production has been carefully crafted over four years. We have musicians of different races and beliefs gathered in Shanghai to collaborate on the stage, and the piece will be performed by other orchestras in years to come, further conveying this message of love and hope to the world. This is the power of art.”
Aaron Zigman is a classically-trained American composer who has written scores for films and TV shows including The Notebook, Wakefield, Bridge to Terabithia, and the Sex & The City franchise whilst also writing, arranging and producing songs for top recording artists such as Ray Charles, Sting, Tina Turner, Seal, and more. Zigman has also composed a number of chamber, orchestral, and vocal works. His -award-winning Tango Manos has been touring the world with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet.
Mark Campbell is a Pulitzer Prize-winning librettist who has created 40 opera librettos alongside lyrics for 7 musicals and the text for 9 song cycles and 4 oratorios. The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, an opera featuring libretto by Campbell, received a 2018 GRAMMY Award for Best Opera Recording.
Synopsis of Émigré
Act One
Two brothers—Josef and Otto Bader—have escaped Nazi Germany in 1938 and arrive at Shanghai harbour on a ship with other Jewish refugees. They express their sorrow at having to suddenly leave their parents and their homeland but find hope as they approach the city that has welcomed them. Josef, a medical doctor, urges Otto, a rabbinical student, to look ahead to their new life in Shanghai.
Several weeks later, Josef seeks to expand his knowledge of Eastern medicine and visits Wei Song’s herbal medicine shop where he meets two sisters, Lina and Li Song. Josef and Lina immediately feel an attraction to each other, but their flirtation is interrupted by the sudden entrance of Wei, the sisters’ father, who has been attacked by soldiers. Wei rails against the devastating effects of the Japanese occupation of his beloved Shanghai.
Yaakov, a rabbi and Josef and Otto’s uncle, leads a class, including Otto, in a lesson at the yeshiva. After the lesson is done, Tovah, a woman who volunteers at the yeshiva, engages in a conversation with Otto. Otto reveals his anguish at the disappearance of his parents in Germany. Tovah invites him to the Jewish Relief Fund dance and attempts to cheer him by musing on what the world might be like if women were allowed to be in power.
A few months later, while lighting candles at Longhua Temple, Lina and Josef discover parallels between their lives and cultures, deepening their relationship. Otto and Tovah attend the Jewish Relief Dance when Josef and Lina enter as a couple. Wei enters looking for his daughter and both he and Otto assail them for crossing cultural lines. Tovah, Lina and Josef counter their attack by asking for tolerance. As the argument escalates, Japanese soldiers enter the dance hall and announce that members of the Jewish community are to move to the Hongkew District in Shanghai.
Act Two
As Tovah, Otto and Yaakov move from the yeshiva and Lina and Josef look for a place to take them in, all affirm their need to hold on to hope. Josef and Lina visit the Song household and Josef asks Wei for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Wei angrily refuses and Josef leaves. Lina ardently expresses her love for Josef, then defies her father and runs after her fiancé.
Josef and Line are married and attempt to return to the Song home, but Wei shuts them out. Li implores her father to reconsider and both she and Wei go outside to search for Lina. Not long after, Josef and Lina appeal to Otto and Yaakov to shelter them at the yeshiva, but they refuse. After they leave, Tovah argues with Otto and runs into the street. A bomb explodes.
Several months later, Otto mourns the death of Tovah and Wei laments that of Li, both of whom died in the bombing. With Josef, Lina and Yaakov, they vow to preserve the memory of the two women and live in hope again.
Cappella Romana has created an extraordinary and rare program on the theme of the endurance of Byzantine chant traditions near the end of the Ottoman Empire that were preserved by the diaspora of Greek-speaking refugees from the city once known as Smyrna (now İzmir). Performances will be in Seattle (10 November at 7.30pm at St. Demetrios Greek Cathedral) and Portland (11 November at 8pm at St. Mary’s Cathedral and 12 November at 3pm at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral). You can also access the performance online a week after the premiere.
In 1922, one of the worst episodes of “ethnic cleansing” reached its climax with the Burning of Smyrna and the massacre of Greeks and Armenians in this multicultural center. Cappella Romana’s John Michael Boyer writes in his program essay of the violence, all too familiar from current events, which overtook this “most important commercial port in the Eastern Mediterranean … the image of an international cosmopolitan city with the Greek element paramount in a modernized economy and an urbane society”:
According to American eye-witnesses, on the 13th of September at noon, the Kemalists set fires in the Greek and Armenian districts of the city, forcing its 400,000 Greeks to run toward the wharf. At night, on the narrow strip of the Quai, the inhospitable night sea ahead and flames approaching behind, the Greeks were in a living Hell. Ships of the allied fleet in the open sea, following orders which they had received from their countries, observed “systematic political neutrality.”
The program presents chants from psalmody and hymnography from the Smyrnean tradition, including chants associated with the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman (St. Photeiní) and from the Divine Liturgy from Smyrna, Asia Minor, and the diaspora. Among the composers are Kosmás Evmorphópoulos of Madytos (1869-1901), Nikólaos Georgíou, Protopsáltis of Smyrna (ca. 1790-1887), Pétros Philanthídis (1840-1915), Christóoulos Georgiádis of Kessáni (19th c.), Triandáphyllos Georgiádis (1865-1934), Michael Perpiniás (1903-1975), and Pétros Manéas (1870-1950), and Panyiótis Gerogiádis Kiltzanídis of Prousa (1815-1896).
Seattle Baroque Orchestra offers a program this weekend of J.S. Bach cantatas. Titled Jubilation and Redemption, the concert features the Portland-based soprano Arwen Myers as the soloist in Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen, BWV 51, and Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut, BWV 199, with SBO’s Baroque trumpet expert Kris Kwapis directing the ensemble. Part of the Early Music Seattle season, the concert takes place Saturday 4 November at 7.30pm at Bastyr University Chapel and Sunday 5 November at 2pm at Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya Hall.
Kris Kwapis on Bach’s cantatas as a “treasure trove for trumpet”:
While a fair number of monumental works written by J. S. Bach are among the typical Baroque canon, at least among the reach of the enthusiastic readers of this blog, specific works among the catalog of cantatas tend to be lesser known and subsequently not as frequently programmed. Most attentive audience members are at least familiar with the larger pieces such as the Mass in B Minor, Magnificat, and Christmas Oratorio, which, of course, are outstanding works of art that also happen to have wonderful (and delightfully challenging!) trumpet parts. But the cantatas, perhaps because Bach wrote around 300 during his lifetime, are sometimes overlooked….
from left: Jordan Nobles, who received the Azrieli Commission for Canadian Music; host Sylvia L’Écuyer; Jason van Eyk, Managing Director of the Azrieli Centre for Music, Arts and Culture; Ana Sokolović, Chair of the Advisory Council for the Azrieli Music Prizes and Juan Trigos, who won the first-ever Azrieli Commission for International Music;(c) Tam Photography for Danylo Bobyk
The biennial 2024 Azrieli Music Prizes (AMP) laureates have just been announced by the Azrieli Foundation. They include Yair Klartag, who received the Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music; Josef Bardanashvili, who won the Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music; Jordan Nobles, who received the Azrieli Commission for Canadian Music; and Juan Trigos, who won the first-ever Azrieli Commission for International Music — a prize created to promote greater intercultural understanding. View a recording of the livestream of the announcement here.
Each Laureate will receive a prize package valued at over CAD 200,000, including a cash award of CAD 50,000; a world-premiere performance of their prize-winning work in Montréal by the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal Chorus at the AMP Gala Concert on October 28, 2024; two subsequent international performances; and a professional recording of their prize-winning work.
Each cycle of AMP’s four music prizes focuses on an instrumentation category. The 2024 Laureates will compose choral works for a cappella choir and up to four additional instruments and/or vocal soloist(s).
This year, three distinguished panels of luminaries and experts selected the winning submissions, including Chaya Czernowin, Tania León, Dr. Neil W. Levin, Samy Moussa, Gerard Schwarz, and Ana Sokolović.
The Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music is awarded to a composer who has written the best new undiscovered work of Jewish music. Josef Bardanashvili won for his Light to My Path Choral Fantasy for Mixed Choir, Saxophone, Percussion, and Piano. Each movement in his composition grows from one of the various states of belief – supplication, ecstasy, doubt, gratitude – outlined in the Book of Psalms.
In selecting Bardanashvili, the Jury noted that his “music is beautiful. It is clear the composer is putting his own inner musical and sacred world on display and, in so doing, inviting the listener to enter it.”
The Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music is awarded to encourage composers to creatively and critically engage with the question, “What is Jewish music?” It is given to the composer who displays the utmost creativity, artistry, technical mastery and professional expertise in their response to this question.
For the Commission, Yair Klartag will create The Parable of the Palace, an 18-minute work for choir and four double basses. The work will draw on Jewish philosopher Maimonides’s (1138-1204) famous parable to investigate the limits of logic and reason in explaining reality and the metaphysical. The Parable of the Palace will divide the choir and double basses into four smaller ensembles, in which each choir approaches–but never quite reaches–the pitch of the double bass.
The jury praised Klartag for “meeting a very high standard in how his music clearly connects at all levels and yet manages to evade our expectations.”
The Azrieli Commission for Canadian Music is offered to a Canadian composer to create a new musical work that engages with the complexities of composing concert music in Canada today. Jordan Nobles’s proposal – Kanata for Large Choir – will be a 15-minute tribute to the Canadian landscape inspired by travel across Canada. Each section of the new work will be composed on the land as Nobles travels through it. The work will feature the modern and First Nation names of the rivers, lakes and mountains from each province.
The jury credited Nobles as “a strong composer who writes music that is unashamedly honest and clearly in his voice. His compositions are elemental, expansive and engaging, pulling you into his sound world.”
The Azrieli Commission for International Music is offered to a composer who engages with the world’s diverse cultural heritage. 2024 laureate Juan Trigos will honour the pre-Hispanic culture of his native Mexico with his commissioned work Simetrías Prehispánicas. The 20-minute composition for chorus, amplified flute, trombone, percussion, and keyboards will incorporate text by anonymous and major Aztec poets from the 15th century in their original Nahuatl and Spanish translations.
Reviewing Trigos’s proposal, the jury praised him as “a gifted composer whose music is polished, rhythmic, original, well-orchestrated and directional.”
More details about the AMP Gala Concert, featuring the premiere of all four Prize-winning works by the OSM Chorus, conducted by Andrew Megill, will follow in 2024.
Cappella Romana has created an extraordinary and rare program on the theme of the endurance of Byzantine chant traditions near the end of the Ottoman Empire that were preserved by the diaspora of Greek-speaking refugees from the city once known as Smyrna (now İzmir). Performances will be in Seattle (10 November at 7.30pm at St. Demetrios Greek Cathedral) and Portland (11 November at 8pm at St. Mary’s Cathedral and 12 November at 3pm at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral). You can also access the performance online a week after the premiere.
In 1922, one of the worst episodes of “ethnic cleansing” reached its climax with the Burning of Smyrna and the massacre of Greeks and Armenians in this multicultural center. Cappella Romana’s John Michael Boyer writes in his program essay of the violence, all too familiar from current events, which overtook this “most important commercial port in the Eastern Mediterranean … the image of an international cosmopolitan city with the Greek element paramount in a modernized economy and an urbane society”:
According to American eye-witnesses, on the 13th of September at noon, the Kemalists set fires in the Greek and Armenian districts of the city, forcing its 400,000 Greeks to run toward the wharf. At night, on the narrow strip of the Quai, the inhospitable night sea ahead and flames approaching behind, the Greeks were in a living Hell. Ships of the allied fleet in the open sea, following orders which they had received from their countries, observed “systematic political neutrality.”
The program presents chants from psalmody and hymnography from the Smyrnean tradition, including chants associated with the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman (St. Photeiní) and from the Divine Liturgy from Smyrna, Asia Minor, and the diaspora. Among the composers are Kosmás Evmorphópoulos of Madytos (1869-1901), Nikólaos Georgíou, Protopsáltis of Smyrna (ca. 1790-1887), Pétros Philanthídis (1840-1915), Christóoulos Georgiádis of Kessáni (19th c.), Triandáphyllos Georgiádis (1865-1934), Michael Perpiniás (1903-1975), and Pétros Manéas (1870-1950), and Panyiótis Gerogiádis Kiltzanídis of Prousa (1815-1896).
This sounds like a Halloween event you won’t find anywhere else: Carnevolar XI: DéComposition combines choreographed acrobats with live orchestral music such as Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain and Saint-Saëns’s Danse Macabre.
Seattle Modern Orchestra has just launched a collaboration with Emerald City Trapeze, whose Halloween performances attract hundreds of people from all over the Pacific Northwest every year. Remaining performances are Friday October 27 and Saturday October 28; doors and bar open at 7:00 PM, show begins at 8:00 PM. Saturday, October 28th (Halloween-themed dance party): Party begins after the show and ends at 2:00am.
The show and dance party are both 21+ only. Bring a valid ID for entrance.
Bows (l to r): Georgia Mann, Pouyan Biglar, Iman Habibi, Jessika Kenney, Sharon Azrieli, Steven Mercurio, Zhongxi Wu, Rita Ueda and Naomi Sato (photo: Chris O’Donovan Photography)
Launched a little less than a decade ago, the Azrieli Music Prizes (AMP) have already grown to become Canada’s largest competition devoted to music composition. The biennial initiative has expanded to embrace an international scope and last weekend made its London debut at Cadogan Hall with a programme of all three prize-winning works from the 2022 rounds. Steven Mercurio, a member of the AMP Jewish Music jury, led the Philharmonia Orchestra and guest soloists.
MEMETERIA by Thomas May 