My latest story for Seattle Times, on a new, COVID-era staging of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore by Seattle Opera:
The course of true love never did run smooth.”
Shakespeare’s observation applies as much to effective artistic strategy as to human psychology. Even the sunniest of love stories needs complications to get the audience to invest its attention. But the COVID-19 pandemic has made Seattle Opera confront some unprecedented curveballs in order to realize its new production of Gaetano Donizetti’s lighthearted, seductively tuneful opera The Elixir of Love….
Watch Ludovic Morlot’s reunion with Seattle Symphony on Thursday 5 November at 7.30pm PT. You can watch the livestream on Seattle Symphony Live* here.
The program includes THOMAS ADÈS/Three Studies from Couperin; DEBUSSY: Danses sacrée et profane; MARTIN/Ballade for Flute and Orchestra; and HONEGGER/ Symphony No. 2.
*Monthly passes to Seattle Symphony Live are $12.99/monthand include a free 7-day trial with no commitment required.
The American Youth Symphony will present its virtual gala this Sunday Nov. 1 at 7pm ET. Tickets are free.
The program includes: Igor STRAVINSKY: Symphonies of Wind Instrument AYS Virtual Wind & Brass Ensemble Jessie MONTGOMERY: Starburst AYS String Ensemble Carlos IZCARAY: Bloom, WORLD PREMIERE Percussion Trio (Carlos Izcaray is the Music Director of AYS) Benjamin BRITTEN: Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge AYS String Ensemble
Carlos Izcaray on his new piece, Bloom: “Bloom is a piece for two percussionists and a keyboardist who operates both a synthesizer and pre-recorded electronic sounds. Wanting to highlight potent messages from the Black community, the sounds include recorded poetry readings by authors Gwendolyn Brooks (We Real Cool) and Lucille Clifton (won’t you celebrate with me), as well as extracts from George Washington Johnson’s 1890’s recording of The Laughing Song, early recordings from descendants of slaves, statements from recent student protests, and songs from Zulu singers that I recorded during a visit to South Africa. Shaped more or less as an arch, the first section, played by two marimbas, is optimistic and hopeful, but it is interrupted by a much darker synth-sounds middle section that reminds us of unresolved issues regarding equity and social justice. This middle episode erupts into a frenzy that points us towards a bright resolution.”
Another round of bad news begins. While musical life with restrictions was continuing this fall in Europe, the coronavirus pandemic is far from over and is now causing a new round of cancellations. Today Lucerne Festival announced that it has been forced to cancel the “Beethoven Farewell” Fall Festival originally planned for late November.
From the press release:
We had been so looking forward to celebrating our “Beethoven Farewell” with you at the end of November and thus to concluding the difficult year 2020 in a spirit full of hope.
But the coronavirus pandemic has caught up with us again, and the second wave is frustrating our wonderful plans. After the latest decisions by the Swiss Federal Council, which were taken on 28 October 2020, it is unfortunately no longer possible to hold this Fall Festival. Therefore, with a heavy heart we must inform you that the five concerts we had planned cannot take place.
We are in close contact with Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Igor Levit, the two protagonists of “Farewell Beethoven,” and are already discussing how we might reschedule these projects and make up for lost time. We will keep you informed about all further developments – and hopefully come back to you soon with better news.
Seattle Modern Orchestra has announced a thoughtful season of online concerts, which opens Friday evening (23 October 2020) at 7.30pm PST. Tickets are priced at a highly reasonable $10 to view online.
The season-opening virtual program includes the world premiere of Simultaneously Solitary composed by Tom Baker specifically in response to our socially distant experience. There will also be pieces for solo instruments by Lou Harrison, Edison Denisov, and Cornish faculty member Jarrad Powell. The Concert conclude withs In Memoriam Muhal Richard Abrams by Tyshawn Sorey.
More on the program from SMO:
ABOUT OUR FEATURED COMPOSER:
Tom Baker, Composer/Guitarist/Improviser/Electron-icist/Educator
Tom Baker has been active as a composer, performer, and producer in the Seattle new-music scene since arriving in 1994. He is the artistic director of the Seattle Composers’ Salon, co-founder of the Seattle EXperimental Opera (SEXO), an advisory board member of the Washington Composers’ Forum, founder of the new-music recording label Present Sounds Recordings, and is currently professor of composition at Cornish College of the Arts.
Tom has received awards and grants for his work from many organizations, including Meet The Composer, the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, 4Culture, and Artist Trust. He has been an artist-in-residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida and the Montalvo Arts Center in California. His works have been performed throughout the United States, in Canada, and in Europe.
Tom is also active as a performer and improviser, specializing in fretless guitar and live-electronics. He has recorded seven albums, including two solo records. Triptet, a trio with Michael Monhart and Greg Campbell, recently released its third album, Figure in the Carpet, on Brooklyn-based Engine Records. Tom has worked with many innovative musicians, including Stuart Dempster, William O. Smith, Christian Asplund, Chinary Ung, Ellen Fullman, Matana Roberts, and Henry Threadgill.Copyright 2010-2020 Seattle Modern Orchestra. All rights reser
Here’s a link to my latest story for the New York Times, which is about the extraordinary composer Yotam Haber. He is the recipient of the 2020 Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music — one of three biannual Azrieli Music Prizes. Haber’s new piece, Estro Poetico-armonico III, will receive its world premiere on 22 October at 8pm ET via free livestream on medici.tv and the Azrieli Facebook page.
aThe latest production from PostClassical Ensemble explores a side of Bernard Herrmann that is scarcely acknowledged today. Herrmann is best known for his chilling score to Psycho and six other Alfred Hitchcock films, as well as his collaborations with Orson Welles. But he started out as a conductor at CBS, becoming music director of the pioneering Columbia Workshop.
As a significant contributor to the medium of radio drama, Herrmann in 1944 composed music for Whitman, a drama focusing on Leaves of Grass. The half-hour show was produced by Norman Corwin with a contemporary aim: to boost morale back at home during the Second World War. Those were the days when millions of Americans tuned in to radio drama — in this case, a drama about a poet, with a first-rate, fresh score as accompaniment.
Angel Gil-Ordonez conducts the ensemble and William Sharp as the poet in this newly restored version of Whitman released on Naxos. In conjunction with the release, PCE has also produced the documentary Beyond Psycho– The Musical Genius of Bernard Herrmann. The film features commentary by Joseph Horowitz (who regards Hermann as “the most underrated 20th-century American composer”), Gil-Ordonez, Karen Karbiener (a Whitman scholar), Murray Horwitz (an expert on radio drama), Dorothy Herrmann (the composer’s daughter), and Alex Ross.
I had meant to post a link to my program essay (starts on Ins2) for the Met’s recent Wagner Week, which culminated in François Girard’s darkly visionary production from 2013, starring Jonas Kaufmann, Katarina Dalayman, Peter Matei, René Pape, and Evgeny Nikitin, with Daniele Gatti conducting.
When I was researching material for my cover story Secular Requiems for the recent issue of Chorus America’s magazine The Voice, I came across so many relevant contemporary compositions that it was painful not having the space to cover more of them.
The American composer Sarah Kirkland Snider‘s Massfor the Endangeredoffers yet another angle on the concept of a requiem, though it doesn’t use that term. Kirkland collaborated with the poet Nathaniel Bellows, who crafted a libretto juxtaposing parts of the traditional Ordinary Mass with elegiac meditations on our era of extinction and the threat humanity poses to the natural world.
“I wanted to open the gates in my mind between centuries-old European vocal traditions and those of more recent American vernacular persuasion, and write from a place where differing thoughts about line, text, form, and expression could co-exist,” says Kirkland.
Mass for the Endangered was commissioned by Trinity Church Wall Street as part of a project curated by Daniel Felsenfeld. It was premiered there in April 2018 and was recently released as a collaboration between New Amsterdam Records, which Kirkland cofounded, and Nonesuch Records.
The new recording features the English vocal ensemble Gallicantus and instrumentalists, with Gabriel Crouch conducting. Scored for SATB chorus, piano, string quintet, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, harp, and percussion, Mass for the Endangered is something of a departure for a composer whose aesthetic outlook has been characterized as “post-genre.”
Kirkland explains: “The origin of the Mass is rooted in humanity’s concern for itself, expressed through worship of the divine—which, in the Catholic tradition, is a God in the image of man. Nathaniel and I thought it would be interesting to take the Mass’s musical modes of spiritual contemplation and apply them to concern for non-human life—animals, plants, and the environment. There is an appeal to a higher power—for mercy, forgiveness, and intervention—but that appeal is directed not to God but rather to nature itself. As someone not traditionally religious who draws enormous spiritual and artistic inspiration from the natural world and is deeply concerned about climate change, the text spoke to me on a personal level.”
“[B]ecause of the global crisis we’re facing and the losses we’ve already suffered, the music can’t just be a celebration—it has to also be an elegy, and a plea. I tried to let the music acknowledge some of that, even in its most exuberantly joyous moments.”
MEMETERIA by Thomas May 