The Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin just completed its customary January week devoted to Schubert’s art song, with Thomas Hampson as guide and mentor.
The entire week’s worth of daily concerts, workshops, and conversations, which was streamed live from the hall, remains available online for another 30 days. The digital format also includes extended behind-the-scenes content on the songs and poems as well as interviews with some of the artists.
The music world is still reeling from Simon Rattle’s recently announced curtailment of his tenure with the London Symphony Orchestra in favor of the Symphonieorcehster des Bayerischen Radiofunks. And now we learn that the young Lithuanian star conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla will step down from her post helming the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra at the end of the 2021-22 season. What hath Brexit wrought?
Gražinytė-Tyla stated: “I have decided to give up my position of Music Director of the CBSO at the end of the 2021-22 season and have happily accepted the orchestra’s invitation to become Principal Guest Conductor in the 2022-23 season. This is a deeply personal decision, reflecting my desire to step away from the organizational and administrative responsibilities of being a Music Director at this particular moment in my life and focusing more on my purely musical activities.”
On Tuesday 19 January at 12pm EST, the Hope & Harmony Ensemble will give alivestream performance in honor of the upcoming Inauguration. Led by Marin Alsop, they will play Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Manand Joan Tower’s Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman*.
The Hope & Harmony Ensemble brings together 14 brass and percussion players from all around the United States: one musician each from the Atlanta Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, National Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Pacific Symphony, Peabody Institute, South Asian Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, and Utah Symphony.
This tribute is the brainchild of Neeta Helms, founder and president of the DC area-based tour company Classical Movements. Helms conceived the idea over a dozen years ago and sees it as an offering to unite a bitterly divided country through the power of music. The Hope & Harmony Ensemble was chosen to reflect the diversity of the American people.
“I am elated to be able to finally celebrate our first female Vice President. I am deeply inspired by Kamala Harris – and as an Indian-born American, I feel particular personal pride that her mother was Indian and in her archetypically American background,” says Neeta Helms. “In this time of difficulty and hardship, it is also fitting that we celebrate Joe Biden, an example to us all for his ideals of decency and hope and his perseverance in the face of hardship and tragedy. Filling a unique and vital role in the music industry that has been hit so hard by the pandemic, it was essential to us to create an ensemble that represented and celebrated our nation’s diversity, featuring women and men equally.”
In addition to footage of each musician, recorded in their homes and on site across the country, the presentation incorporates photographs and video illustrating “America the Beautiful” and the context of the struggle for civil rights and equality for women in the United States. Classical Movements has partnered with video and sound engineers Arts Laureate to produce these videos.
*My profile of Joan Tower starts on p. 27 here. And here’s a little background I wrote on Tower’s Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman No. 1:
Tower alludes in several ways to Copland’s 1942 Fanfare for the Common Man, which had been commissioned as one of a series of fanfares to support the Allied struggle in World War Two. Tower similarly scores for a brass and percussion ensemble but uses a much more extended array of percussion instruments. With its mix of tuned and untuned instruments, this section actually resembles a miniature orchestra of its own. Tower also packs a greater variety of thematic material and textural contrast into her fanfare.
Third Coast Percussion celebrates this momentous week of change on Inauguration Day, 20 January 2021, at 8pm ET. The group will perform repertoire new to the musicians, share news about upcoming projects, engage in live Q&A with viewers after the show, and more. Watch on Facebook and YouTube. Program: “Press” by Devonté Hynes “Halo” by Joe W. Moore III “Kodama” by Rodrigo Bussad “Death Wish” by Gemma Peacocke
This afternoon at 5pm ET, tune in to the Violin Channel for the final round of the 7th annual Getting to Carnegie competition. It will be streamed live and audiences across the globe can cast their vote for the winner (after registering to vote): 50% of the vote comes from the audience, the other half from a jury of professional musicians including the past six winners (Haeji Kim, violin; Chae won Hong, cello; Emily Helenbrook, voice; Nathan Meltzer, violin; Rachel Siu, cello; Brianna Robinson, voice) and violinist Dmitri Berlinsky. The voting will be open for 48 hours and the winner will be announced Jan 14 at 5pm EST on the Violin Channel’s Facebook page.
The competition rotates annually between violin, cello, and voice. This is the year of the violin, and the four young finalists are from Spain, South Korea, Hong Kong, and the United States, respectively: Maria Dueñas (age 18), Sory Park (20), Angela Chan (23), and Sophia Stoyanovich (24).
The competition is the brainchild of pianist and composer Julian Gargiulo, whose mission is to make classical music “relevant and fun” for younger generations. For this year’s final round, Gargiulo has written a new violin sonata; each finalist will perform one movement from the sonata with him on piano via split screen, giving its world premiere performance, with commentary and interviews in between.
In the middle of these turbulent days, there is some major classical music news: Sir Simon Rattle is stepping down from his post heading the London Symphony Orchestra and will return to Germany to lead the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, effective with the 2023-24 season. (See clip above for an example of his collaboration with the BRSO.)
The official statement released from the LSO gives this explanation from Rattle: “My reasons for accepting the role of Chief Conductor in Munich are entirely personal, enabling me to better manage the balance of my work and be close enough to home to be present for my children in a meaningful way. I love the London Symphony Orchestra. I remain committed to the LSO, and we have plans for major projects in the coming years. I am thrilled that we will be making music together far into the future.”
But as Joshua Barone notes in The New York Times, Rattle “has been a vocal critic of Brexit, which was voted on after he accepted the London Symphony post in 2015. And progress has been sluggish on the Center for Music, the much-desired new home for the orchestra that was conceived alongside Mr. Rattle’s appointment.”
Barone adds: “In Munich, Mr. Rattle won’t have to contend with those Brexit woes, but he will once again find himself involved in the building of a new concert hall, in the Werksviertel-Mitte area — a modern contrast to the neo-Classical Herkulessaal in the city center. “
Grammy Award-winning Third Coast Percussion (TCP) presents a re-broadcast of the world premiere performance of Metamorphosis, originally presented by La Jolla Music Society at the Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center on November 7, 2020. The stream is being made available free-of-charge on Friday, 8 January 2020 at 8:30 p.m. ET via TCP’s YouTube channel.
Metamorphosis offers a dynamic artistic collaboration by blending street dance and percussion ensemble performance. Choreography by Movement Art Is co-founders Jon Boogz and Lil Buck is featured alongside new music composed by Jlin and Tyondai Braxton and TCP’s acclaimed arrangements of Philip Glass’s Aguas da Amazonia. Movement artists Ron Myles and Quentin Robinson joined TCP members on stage for the debut of this program, which had been in the making for more than a year.
Program:
Philip Glass (arr. by Third Coast Percussion) – Metamorphosis Jlin – Perspective Tyondai Braxton – Sunny X Philip Glass (arr. by Third Coast Percussion) – Amazon River
Movement by Ron Myles and Quentin Robinson Choreography by Movement Art Is (Jon Boogz and Lil Buck) Lighting design by Joe Burke Stage direction by Leslie Buxbaum Danzig
Recently released on New Amsterdam Records and performed by his ensemble Numinous, The Grey Land is a “mono-opera” by Joseph C. Phillips Jr. to a libretto by the composer. It tells the story of, in his words, “a Black mother trying to survive the reality in this land that doesn’t fully see her continued hope: that the great American experiment will one day become a belonging place where anyone can dream of ‘stillness and stars’ free from fear and want; a place where the beautiful promise of happiness, liberty, and life may yet manifest true to finally include her family too.”
Phillips, who started work on The Grey Land in 2011, incorporates texts from Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Isaac Butler, Frederick Douglas, and Mothers of the Movement (founded to fight police and gun violence in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s murder and the acquittal of George Zimmermann).
The birth of his first child in 2014 inspired him to focus on the opera, as Phillips recalls: “I was already deep into researching and thinking about what the opera was going to be when the events of Ferguson, Missouri, happened in that beautiful summer of nesting in upstate New York. My conflicting emotions—joy of anticipation married to the anxiety about the world our future child would inhabit—moved me to want to more directly address the systemic issues long plaguing the U.S., particularly for Black and Brown people.”
Phillips uses the term “mixed music” to characterize his style: “Mixed music is an organic fusing of various elements from many different influences forming compositions that are personal, different, and new.”
TRACKLIST: 1. The People Get Tired of Dying 2. Ferguson: Summer of 2014 3. Tender Sorrow 4. One Side Losing Slowly 5. We Wear the Mask 6. Don’t 7. Agnus Bey 8. Legion of Boom 9. I Should Have Been Mother****ing Black Mamba 10. Injustice 11. Liberty Bell 12. The Sunken Place 13. Streets of Sighs
Numinous: Katie Cox – Flute, Piccolo Sammy Lesnick – Bb Clarinet, Eb Clarinet Chris Bacas – Alto Saxophone Sara Schoenbeck – Bassoon Alicia Rau – Trumpet, Flügelhorn Lis Rubard – Horn JC Sanford – Trombone Amanda Monaco – Electric and Acoustic Guitars Mike Baggetta – Electric and Acoustic Guitars Sebastian Noelle – Electric and Acoustic Guitars Magdalena Abrego – Electric and Acoustic Guitars Deanna Witkowski – Yamaha Electric Piano Andrea Lodge – Rhodes Electric Piano Kate Sloat – Harp Aubrey Johnson – Voice Tammy Scheffer – Voice, Bells Sara Serpa – Voice Bogna Kicińska – Voice, Bells Emilie Weibel – Voice, Bells Amy Cervini – Voice, Bells Ana Milosavljevic – Violin, Viper/Electric Violin solo (“…Black Mamba”) Josh Henderson – Violin Frederika Krier – Violin Libby Weitnauer – Violin Hannah Levinson – Viola Brian Lindgren – Viola Matt Aronoff – Electric Bass Mariel Roberts – Cello Solo (“Tender Sorrow”) Joseph C Phillips Jr – Composer/Conductor/Bells/Co-Producer Oded Lev-Ari – Bells/Co-Producer Michael Hammond – Electronics/Drum Programming (“…Black Mamba”) Joseph C Phillips Jr – Electronics/Audio Collage (“One Side Losing Slowly” & “The Sunken Place”)
Titled Listening to the Future, it chronicles the Carnegie Hall debut of the CCOM Symphony Orchestra on 13 December 2019. Led by CCOM president Feng Yu, the program presented works by contemporary Chinese composers blending Chinese and Western instruments.
The documentary focuses on these eight composers — Danbu Chen, Guoping Jia, Jianping Tang, Ping Chang, Weiya Hao, Wenchen Qin, Wenjing Guo, and Xiaogang Yealong — who discuss their pieces and share their thoughts on contemporary Chinese music. Commentary by the music critic Linda Holt assesses their achievements.
Other highlights of the film include details of the long-term partnership between Edition Peters and Central Conservatory of Music Publisher (CCMP). Together, they launched the Edition Peters Silk Road Libraryproject in April 2019 and plan to release the international version of CCOM’s score collection in 2021. The result will make it easier for orchestras, conductors, and performers to present the works of Chinese composers outside China and forge unprecedented links between East and West.
Another topic the documentary covers is the Chinese Music Composition Center’s upcoming performance tour in Europe in 2021. Comprised of musicians from the symphony orchestras of the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (MDW) and the Central Conservatory of Music, the ensemble will perform at the Grosser Saal of the Vienna Konzerthaus and Festsaal. Ulrike Sych, Rector of the MDW, explains the long and intensive collaboration between MDW and CCOM, two of the largest and most renowned music universities on opposite sides of the world.
Tune in for Bach & Baroque Virtuosity from Byron Schenkman & Friends on Sunday, 27 December (7:00pm PST). The concert features Rachell Ellen Wong, Andrew Gonzalez, and Byron Schenkman and will remain available for the foreseeable future on the BS&F YouTube channel.
For this concert harpsichordist Byron Schenkman is joined by violinist Rachell Ellen Wong and violoncello da spalla (“cello of the shoulder,” an unusual Baroque instrument rediscovered in recent years) player Andrew Gonzalez. The program journeys through music by Antonio Vivaldi,; Jean-Marie Leclair; Johann Sebastian Bach (the Partita in D Minor, which includes the famous Chaconne); and Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, who was one of the most-celebrated French composers of her time. In addition to music for violin and harpsichord we offer a rare opportunity to hear the violoncello da spalla (cello of the shoulder), an unusual Baroque instrument only rediscovered in recent years.
MEMETERIA by Thomas May 