Cal Performances presents the Takács Quartet in a program Sunday afternoon 12 November at 3pm including the world premiere of Flow by the California-based violist and composer Nokuthula Ngwenyama (shown above discussing her music), along with Haydn’s Sunrise Quartet and the second of Beethoven’s Op. 59 Razumovsky quartets.
My program notes include an introduction to Flow :
The string quartet, according to composer Nokuthula Ngwenyama, “is considered a ‘perfect’ ensemble. It inspires delicacy, sensitivity and adventure. The core range is smaller than that of the piano, yet its timbre allows for beauteous interplay.” For the first of its two Cal Performances appearances this season, the Takács Quartet presents the world premiere of Ngwenyama’s debut in the genre, which the ensemble commissioned “because of our admiration for her as a virtuosic violist and performer who understands the dramatic and sonorous possibilities of a string quartet.”
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….
My review of Starlighter, the latest Brooklyn Rider release featuring the quartet’s collaboration with clarinetist/composer Kinan Azmeh, is in the November issue of Gramophone:
Ever since they formed nearly two decades ago, Brooklyn Rider have been reimagining the string quartet’s potential both in their playing style and in their devotion to new repertoire. …
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.
I wrote about the young Danish clarinetist Jonas Frølund for Musical America:
The layered musical personality that emerges from Jonas Frølund’s debut portrait album,Solo Alone and More, is cause enough to sit up and take notice. That it consists almost entirely of solo clarinet playing by a newcomer who only completed his training last year (at the Paris Conservatoire) makes the achievement genuinely astonishing….
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).
I had the pleasure of covering the Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s latest concert in Edinburgh, which featured two guest artists in remarkable sync:
Although the most recent work on this weekend’s Royal Scottish National Orchestra programme dates from 1952, audiences are still just beginning to make its acquaintance. The ongoing reappraisal of the twentieth-century African American composer Florence Price would not be possible without the contributions of performers who have championed her music….
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 