The great musician on technique, from an interview in 2014:
“All my technique – on the guitar, the lute, the baroque guitar, and not forgetting the vihuela, was totally homemade. I’ve never really been taught how to play these plucked instruments. Therefore, I have an ideal of sound in my head and I get as near as I can to realizing that sound. So I use any stroke or method of playing that gives me satisfaction first, that also realizes my ambition in matters of sound and articulation.”
The wonderful Seattle-based pianist Judith Cohen will given a recital on Zoom titled Mighty Miniatures on Sunday 16 August at 4.30pm PST. The program — including music by Beethoven, Scarlatti, Ravel, Debussy, and Prokofiev — is a benefit for the Washington State Governor’s Mansion Foundation, an all-volunteer, non-profit and non-partisan organization.
Judith Cohen is the Artistic Director of the Governor’s Chamber Music Series, which is held at the mansion. She programs two of GMF’s four concerts each season, which runs annually from October through May.
More information on the program and registration here.
Time for live performances to begin again in Lucerne. On Friday Lucerne Festival launches “Life Is Live”, a ten-day-long series of events that invite audiences back into the KKL Concert Hall and other venues.
The Opening Concert also marks a belated debut for the 93-year-old Herbert Blomstedt, who will conduct the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA for the very first time.
Here’s a list of ways to hear programs being broadcast via livestreams and radio. For example, the Opening Concert (with Martha Argerich as the soloist in Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto) will be transmitted with a short time-delay, starting at 2pm EST on 14 August on SRF2.
Other notable events: two all-Beethoven recitals with Igor Levit, an all-Schumann recital by the young tenor Mauro Peter, a recital by the saxophonist Valentine Michaud, and Cecilia Bartoli and friends in the Handel-inspired program “What Passion Cannot Music Raise”.
This Thursday at 3pm EST, join John Adams and conductor David Robertson for a real-time discussion of Doctor Atomic Symphony. They’ll give a close reading of the score, using a recording by the Juilliard Orchestra conducted by Adams himself. This is part of the live-score chat series hosted by Boosey & Hawkes.
On Thursday, 13 August, at 6pm MT, Tippet Rise continues its monthly streaming series, Tippet Rise & Friends at Home, with a recital featuring pianist StephenHough. His program: Stephen Hough/Sonata No. 4 (Vida Breve); Franz Liszt/Funérailles, S. 173; Bach/Gounod/Hough: C. Gounod Meditation on the Prelude by Bach (Ave Maria); Frédéric Chopin/Nocturne Op. 9, No. 2.
Cast
Don Giovanni: Tuomas Pursio
Donna Anna: Hanna Rantala
The Commandant: Koit Soasepp
Donna Elvira: Tamuna Gochashvili
Don Ottavio: Tuomas Katajala
Leporello: Markus Suihkonen
Masetto: Henri Uusitalo
Zerlina: Olga Heikkilä
The extraordinary composer, performer, and writer Kate Soper has completed an opera titled Romance of the Rose, which was to have had its world premiere in April at Montclair State University’s Peak Performances.
Romance of the Rose is named after a medieval French poem. As Soper explains, the opera and poem “start off pretty much the same way: a narrator warns us not to underestimate the significance of dreams.” See her latest discussion of the work here, which includes two sneak peeks of the music.
The clip above, meanwhile, is the first part of her five-part web series SYRINX, which is “about a woman who wakes up one day with an unusual affliction.”
Happening today at 2pm EST from 92Y.
The concert stream will be available to ticket buyers (just $10) for one full week from the time of broadcast. View it live, or at your convenience.
The program:
Selected Three-Part Inventions (Sinfonias), BWV 787-801
French Suite No. 3. In D Minor, BWV 812
Partita No. 6 in E Minor, BWV 827
Italian Concerto in F Major, BWV 971
It’s startling to realize that the last time the AIDS Memorial Quilt could be displayed on the National Mall in its entirety was 24 years ago. It returned in 2012, but with smaller sections displayed each day over a two-week period. The Quilt has grown far too vast to be shown all at once on the Mall, as it was in 1996. But all 48,000 panels are now accessible online.
While zooming out conveys the immensity of the overall project, focusing on specific panels shows the care and craftsmanship in each one. Many of the individual patches are color-coordinated within each panel, and some panels are even coordinated with their surroundings. Conducting broad keyword searches — like school, church, and prison — leads to panels contributed by collective groups and organizations affected throughout the years. Many of these memorials feel like time capsules from a previous crisis, particularly salient as COVID-19 cases continue to rise in the US.
Reports Smithsonian magazine: “The newly launched digitization commemorates the International AIDS Conference, which was held virtually this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 40th anniversary of the first reported HIV cases in the United States. When viewing the interactive quilt, users can either appreciate the enormous mosaic in its entirety or zoom in on specific panels, which often include individuals’ names and messages of love. Additionally, virtual visitors can search the quilt for specific names, keywords or block numbers.”
MEMETERIA by Thomas May 