February 28, 2024 • 8:47 am 2
My latest for Seattle Times:, on Conrad Tao’s upcoming Playlist concert with Seattle Symphony:
For Conrad Tao, playing Mozart is like a homecoming.
“The close relationship I have to Mozart is from childhood,” he said during a recent Zoom interview from his home in New York City. “It’s not only a return. Some of it is just a matter of being honest about where I come from.”
Filed under: Conrad Tao, Mozart, piano, Seattle Symphony
February 19, 2024 • 7:15 pm Comments Off on <i>Bark of Millions</i>: Fantasy and Mystery, Rooted in Queerness
My essay on Taylor Mac and Matt Ray’s latest epic, Bark of Millions, for Cal Performances:
“All we do is sing songs,” says Taylor Mac about Bark of Millions, the new show he and composer Matt Ray have created together with their team of like-minded collaborators. “But there’s something about the ritual of song after song after song inspired by different queer people from world history that is really liberating” …
Filed under: American music, Cal Performances, theater
February 12, 2024 • 8:57 am Comments Off on Melos and Mischief in a Provocatively Varied Seattle Symphony Program
While the search for a permanent music director continues, versatility has been in high demand at Seattle Symphony in recent seasons. Week after week, the musicians have had to adjust to the remarkably varied styles of a revolving door of guest conductors. But the latest visitor to the podium, the German conductor Christian Reif, brought the added challenge of a program calling for drastic shifts in style from one work to the next ….
Filed under: conductors, Mozart, review, Seattle Symphony, Shostakovich
February 9, 2024 • 10:32 am Comments Off on Sound Salon: Sweeter than Roses
Sound Salon (the series formerly known as Byron Schenkman & Friends) has a lovely program coming up Sunday evening: English Baroque love songs for voice, oboe, viol, and harpsichord. Sweeter than Roses (the title of the program, taken from a Henry Purcell song), presents soprano Grace Srinivasan, oboist Curtis Foster, Adaiha MacAdam-Somer on viol, and artistic director Byron Schenkman on harpsichord in music not only by Purcell and Handel but by such less-familiar figures as Elisabetta de Gambarini, John Stanley, and William Babell (all associated with Handel’s work), as well as by Thomas Arne and Ignatius Sancho, who escaped enslavement and became “a successful businessman, published author and composer, and champion for the abolition of slavery,” as Schenkman notes.
The concert is on Sunday 11 February at 7 pm at Benaroya Hall.
Program
Sonata in C Minor for oboe and continuo
“Behold and listen” from op. 2
“I feel new passions rise” from op. 9
“Come away death”
The Complaint “Take, oh take, those lips away”
Hornpipe in B-flat Major
“Sweetest Bard”
“Oh let me weep”
Suite in D Minor for harpsichord
Sonata no. 1 in B-flat Major for oboe and continuo
“Sweeter than roses”
“Halcyon days”
Filed under: Byron Schenkman, early music, music news
February 7, 2024 • 7:29 pm Comments Off on As Composer Reflects On Life Of His Mother, Memory Meets Music
SEATTLE — “Slipping into sepia” is Steven Mackey’s phrase for a composer’s process of signaling an act of memory. “Ostensibly odd musical grammar in the present tense can be understood as an artifact of the past tense when it accompanies a remembered event, like a film’s sepia hue telling us that the scene is meant to be a recollection,” he writes in his commentary on Mnemosyne’s Pool (2014), a symphonic saga that is paired with his violin concerto Beautiful Passing (2008)on the most recent recording of Mackey’s music….
Filed under: Octave 9, review, Seattle Symphony
February 5, 2024 • 6:15 pm Comments Off on Heavy Metal Meets Classical: Rachel Barton Pine Finds a Common Ground
My latest for Strings magazine: meeting up with the insatiably curious Rachel Barton Pine.
Stickers for Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax are emblazoned on the case that contains Rachel Barton Pine’s signature “ex-Bazzini, ex-Soldat” Joseph Guarneri del Gesù from 1742. The charismatic violinist doesn’t just defy categories. Her life as an artist is fueled by omnivorous curiosity, which Pine combines with searing musical intelligence and an impeccable virtuosity—all in the service of finding a deep connection to her audience….
Filed under: commissions, Strings, violinists
February 2, 2024 • 5:59 pm Comments Off on Kevin John Edusei at Seattle Symphony
An impressive Seattle Symphony conducting debut last night with Kevin John Edusei on the podium. Absolutely captivating account of Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben, exquisitely tailored to give full weight to the more introspective moments — and reminding us that there’s even a touch of self-doubt in this score. The gorgeously shaped solos from concertmaster Noah Geller were especially thoughtful, while Jeff Fair and the horn section made a spectacular contribution. Overall I found this showcase of sonic theater more moving than usual in its effect.
Scottish pianist Steven Osborne emphasized poetry over heroics in Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto — sheer loveliness in the slow movement, where Edusei’s placement of the strings (basses and cellos to his left) enhanced the finely veiled sound. Osborne played the transition into the finale as if snapping out of a dream. The unannounced encore was apparently music of Keith Jarrett — an unexpected but beautiful choice.
A clever bit of Beethoven-related programming for the opener: German composer Jörg Widmann’s Con brio, a deliciously paradoxical parody-of-pastiche that is serious and original, never actually quoting Beethoven yet evoking his personality at every turn through abstract gestures — as if trying to recuperate what it all once meant…. Two more chances to hear this excellent concert (Sat evening and Sunday matinee).
Filed under: Beethoven, conductors, Jörg Widmann, review, Richard Strauss, Seattle Symphony
January 30, 2024 • 3:36 pm Comments Off on Wall-to-Wall Reich at The Hallé
In my interview for Bachtrack, Colin Currie discusses the large-scale Steve Reich Festival he has organized with The Hallé (running 1-3 February 2024):
Colin Currie vividly recalls the moment he first met Steve Reich in person. The occasion was a concert at London’s Southbank Centre in 2011 featuring Reich’s landmark early work Drumming (1970–71), in a performance by Currie’s own ensemble. Though he had previously received encouragement from Reich, this was the first time that the eminent American composer’s gruelling schedule made it possible for him to hear the Colin Currie Group live….
Filed under: concert programming, percussion, Steve Reich
January 26, 2024 • 2:23 pm Comments Off on Celebrate Asia with Seattle Symphony
This year’s edition of the Celebrate Asia concert presented by Seattle Symphony marks the 16th season of this annual tradition. Associate Conductor Sunny Xia will helm the orchestra in a program of works by two very special composers with Seattle connections, as well as classics by Beethoven and Grieg. The concert takes place on Sunday 28 January 2024 at 4pm at Benaroya Hall. Tickets are available to purchase here. There will also be a Celebrate Asia Market starting at 3pm before the concert and after the performance, featuring the Seattle International Lion Dance Team (at 3pm) and CHIKIRI and The School of TAIKO (post-concert).
The extraordinarily precocious Korean American composer August Baik is a graduate of the 2022-2023 SSO Young Composers Workshop, where his Chuseok Overture for Orchestra was first introduced. The Young Composers Workshop is a unique program that give students the opportunity to workshop compositions with an experienced local composer and Symphony musicians.
The wonderful Paul Chihara‘s new Piano Concerto-Fantasy will receive its US premiere, with Vietnamese American pianist Quynh Nguyen as the soloist. Chihara was born in 1938 in Seattle (and was forced with his family to live in an internment camp in Minidoka, Idaho, during the Second World War as a result of Executive Order 9066). Chihara wrote Piano Concerto-Fantasy for Quynh Nguyen as part of an intensive recent collaboration involving her recording of his complete piano works on the Naxos label. She gave the world premiere in October 2022 with the Vietnamese National Symphony at the Hanoi Opera House as part of a concert commemorating normalization of US-Vietnam diplomatic relations.
Chihara found inspiration for Piano Concerto-Fantasy “in traditional Vietnamese melodies and modes, as well as his own experiences composing scores for television and film about the Vietnam War,” according to Quynh Nguyen. The music, she adds, “embodies a sense of longing for the peaceful past and for the future and its possibilities. The piece is virtuosic and intensely melodic with French and Eastern harmonies and jazz-tinged sections, and phrases reminiscent of Russian classical works. These elements are juxtaposed within the story, reflecting my personal journey of studying music in Vietnam, Russia, France, and the United States, and how their diverse cultures have shaped my life. The concerto reinforces how music transcends politics, language and culture.”
The program will also include Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3 and Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite.
Filed under: music news, new music, Seattle Symphony
January 21, 2024 • 12:23 pm Comments Off on Seattle Chamber Music Society’s 2024 Winter Festival
Two blissful weekends of intimate music-making are about to start as Seattle Chamber Music Society’s 2024 Winter Festival kicks off on Friday, 26 January. Artistic Director James Ehnes will appear in all six programs over the festival’s two weekends. On opening night, he’ll join colleagues Amy Schwartz Moretti, Che-Yen Chen, Cynthia Phelps, Edward Arron, and Efe Baltacıgil for Brahms’s String Sextet No. 1 in B-flat major, Op. 18; the program also includes Ravel’s Violin Sonata No. 2 in G major and British composer Rebecca Clarke’s Piano Trio — part of this winter edition’s focus on 20th-century British composers.
Jan. 26-28 and Feb. 2-4; Benaroya Hall, 200 University St., Seattle; $30-$65; subscriptions and streaming options available; free prelude recital starts an hour before each concert; seattlechambermusic.org
Filed under: chamber music, James Ehnes, Seattle Chamber Music Society
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