Classical Voice North America: Blazing New Pathways In Washington, Oregon
PERSPECTIVE — A lot of attention has been directed to the out-migration from cities like San Francisco in recent years. This phenomenon is turning out to be more complex than the cliché of “urban exodus” offered by pandemic-related stories. All of that redistributed energy has to flow somewhere — and with it the impetus to improve the cultural institutions of the destination cities.
Like Boise, Vancouver in southwest Washington State presents another striking example of a smaller city that has become a magnet by offering increased affordability along with a less-stressful lifestyle. Vancouver’s leaders want to establish the city’s identity as not just a bedroom community to Portland but a desirable alternative on its own merits.
Vancouver and the surrounding region rank among the fastest-growing areas in the state. This newfound attractiveness is stimulating a fresh sense of promise and ambition for the arts. As the city’s largest performing arts organization, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra USA has been a presence for decades.
Classical Voice North America
Thomas May
Editor’s Note: This is the second report in a two-part series about regional orchestras in America’s Northwest.
PERSPECTIVE — A lot of attention has been directed to the out-migration from cities like San Francisco in recent years. This phenomenon is turning out to be more complex than the cliché of “urban exodus” offered by pandemic-related stories. All of that redistributed energy has to flow somewhere — and with it the impetus to improve the cultural institutions of the destination cities.
Like Boise, Vancouver in southwest Washington State presents another striking example of a smaller city that has become a magnet by offering increased affordability along with a less-stressful lifestyle. Vancouver’s leaders want to establish the city’s identity as not just a bedroom community to Portland but a desirable alternative on its own merits.
Vancouver and the surrounding region rank among the fastest-growing areas in the state. This newfound attractiveness is stimulating a fresh sense of promise and ambition for the arts. As the city’s largest performing arts organization, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra USA has been a presence for decades.
Read more here.
Classical Voice North America: After Covid, A Renewed Commitment To Music
PERSPECTIVE — The performing arts sector has been in crisis mode for nearly three years. Predictions of doom for classical music’s infrastructure, never in short supply to begin with, spiked to unprecedented levels with the arrival of the pandemic.
There’s even been speculation about how Covid’s long-term disruptions have taken a toll on our personalities, with negative effects hitting the younger generation particularly hard. If these concerns have any validity, how much more difficult will the goal of courting new audiences become?
Yet encouraging signs of revitalization can be found across the spectrum of classical music institutions. The situation with regard to regional orchestras is especially noteworthy, since during the pandemic’s early stages smaller ensembles seemed even more vulnerable than bigger orchestras with sizable endowments.
But the drastic need to rethink priorities has also yielded renewed purpose. “In the midst of these seemingly endless obstacles that come our way, you have a group of musicians who play together with such a sense of community and empathy,” said Eric Garcia about his experience as music director of the Boise Philharmonic.
Classical Voice North America
By Thomas May
Editor’s Note: This is the first installment of a two-part report on the post-pandemic outlook of regional orchestras in America’s Northwest.
PERSPECTIVE — The performing arts sector has been in crisis mode for nearly three years. Predictions of doom for classical music’s infrastructure, never in short supply to begin with, spiked to unprecedented levels with the arrival of the pandemic.
There’s even been speculation about how Covid’s long-term disruptions have taken a toll on our personalities, with negative effects hitting the younger generation particularly hard. If these concerns have any validity, how much more difficult will the goal of courting new audiences become?
Yet encouraging signs of revitalization can be found across the spectrum of classical music institutions. The situation with regard to regional orchestras is especially noteworthy, since during the pandemic’s early stages smaller ensembles seemed even more vulnerable than bigger orchestras with sizable endowments.
But the drastic need to rethink priorities has also yielded renewed purpose. “In the midst of these seemingly endless obstacles that come our way, you have a group of musicians who play together with such a sense of community and empathy,” said Eric Garcia about his experience as music director of the Boise Philharmonic.
Read more here.
Washington Classical Review: Pine, Fairfax Symphony give worthy advocacy to revived Price concerto
Florence Price composed her Violin Concerto No. 2 in 1952. As violinist Rachel Barton Pine remarked before performing it with the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra led by Christopher Zimmerman Saturday night, its creation seems to have been driven by a pure personal need to write a concerto. Price had not received a commission, and no one performed it before she died a year later. Price never had a publisher, a circumstance likely explained by the prejudices she had to contend with as a black woman.
This concerto was lost to history until its manuscript was found in a trunk in an abandoned house in 2009, along with many other Price compositions. It was a fortuitous discovery, as Saturday’s performance at the George Mason University’s Center for the Arts showed.
Washington Classical Review
By Andrew Lindemann Malone
Florence Price composed her Violin Concerto No. 2 in 1952. As violinist Rachel Barton Pine remarked before performing it with the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra led by Christopher Zimmerman Saturday night, its creation seems to have been driven by a pure personal need to write a concerto. Price had not received a commission, and no one performed it before she died a year later. Price never had a publisher, a circumstance likely explained by the prejudices she had to contend with as a black woman.
This concerto was lost to history until its manuscript was found in a trunk in an abandoned house in 2009, along with many other Price compositions. It was a fortuitous discovery, as Saturday’s performance at the George Mason University’s Center for the Arts showed.
Cast in one movement, the concerto features two recurring themes: a stern fanfare, broken up by delicate celeste, and a soulful melody tinged with gospel harmonies. The music in between doesn’t develop the themes so much as ruminate on them; thoughts wander in intriguing ways before returning to the main themes, which themselves undergo subtle transformations. Price demands a lot of the violinist, but the virtuoso techniques serve the contemplative mood. It’s a work that makes you want to hear it again, to see what glimmering texture or striking phrase catches your ear next, and to find out more about how they connect.
Read more here.
Blogcritics: Exclusive Interview: Luke McEndarfer, National Children’s Chorus Artistic Director, on Ukraine Concert at Disney Hall
“When you live from the truth of your purpose, you need not worry, and can know with certainty that you are always headed in the right direction.” Those words of wisdom come to us from Luke McEndarfer, Artistic Director of the the National Children’s Chorus (NCC).
Maestro McEndarfer will lead the NCC in a concert with the American Youth Symphony at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles on Feb. 25. Dedicated to the people of Ukraine, the concert, co-led by Maestro Carlos Izcaray, is dubbed “Voices of Peace.” It will feature a performance of Benjamin Britten’s challenging War Requiem.
Blogcritics
By Jon Sobel
“When you live from the truth of your purpose, you need not worry, and can know with certainty that you are always headed in the right direction.” Those words of wisdom come to us from Luke McEndarfer, Artistic Director of the the National Children’s Chorus (NCC).
Maestro McEndarfer will lead the NCC in a concert with the American Youth Symphony at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles on Feb. 25. Dedicated to the people of Ukraine, the concert, co-led by Maestro Carlos Izcaray, is dubbed “Voices of Peace.” It will feature a performance of Benjamin Britten’s challenging War Requiem.
Read more here.
Violin Channel: 2024 Azrieli Music Prizes Now Accepting Applications
For its fifth competition, AMP is seeking scores and proposals for a cappella choral works
Established in 2014, the Canada-based Azrieli Music Prizes (AMP) is comprised of four categories: The Azrieli Commission for Canadian Music, The Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music, The Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music, and the inaugural Azrieli Commission for International Music.
The latter category is new to the competition and invites composers worldwide "to creatively engage with the richness of humanity’s diverse cultural heritage," according to AMP.
The 2024 competition is seeking submissions for a cappella choral works that will match the force of its Performance Partner, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal Chorus (OSM Chorus), including up to four additional instruments and/or soloists.
Violin Channel
For its fifth competition, AMP is seeking scores and proposals for a cappella choral works
Established in 2014, the Canada-based Azrieli Music Prizes (AMP) is comprised of four categories: The Azrieli Commission for Canadian Music, The Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music, The Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music, and the inaugural Azrieli Commission for International Music.
The latter category is new to the competition and invites composers worldwide "to creatively engage with the richness of humanity’s diverse cultural heritage," according to AMP.
The 2024 competition is seeking submissions for a cappella choral works that will match the force of its Performance Partner, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal Chorus (OSM Chorus), including up to four additional instruments and/or soloists.
Open to the international music community, AMP accepts nominations for works from individuals and institutions of all ages, genders, nationalities, faiths, and backgrounds.
Read more here.
WETA: The Music of Florence Price with Rachel Barton Pine and the Fairfax Symphony
Violinist Rachel Barton Pine will be featured with the Fairfax Symphony performing Florence Price's Violin Concerto No. 2 in a concert on February 11 at the Center for the Arts at George Mason University. I reached out to her to ask about this performance and its place in the context of her career.
WETA
By Evan Keely
Violinist Rachel Barton Pine will be featured with the Fairfax Symphony performing Florence Price's Violin Concerto No. 2 in a concert on February 11 at the Center for the Arts at George Mason University. I reached out to her to ask about this performance and its place in the context of her career.
Evan Keely: You’ve had a long relationship with Cedille Records. Tell us about that, and the genesis of the 1997 album Violin Concertos by Black Composers of the 18th and 19th Centuries (and its 25th-anniversary counterpart, Violin Concertos by Black Composers Through the Centuries).
Rachel Barton Pine: When I was new on the scene back in 1996, Jim Ginsburg – the founder of Cedille Records and my longtime producer, who is Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s son – approached me after one of my performances and said that it would be great to start working together. My career was still in such an early stage that I didn't yet feel quite ready to record the major concertos. Of course, since then, I've recorded all the most popular ones including Brahms, Beethoven, Bruch, and Mendelssohn. But to start with, we wanted to do something that was more repertoire-oriented – where people might buy the album, even if they hadn’t yet heard of the soloist.
Read more here.
American Kahani: Indian American Conductor Sameer Patel Has a Busy Year Ahead in the Western Classical Music Circuit
Indian American conductor Sameer Patel has a lot to look forward to this year. He makes his debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Princeton Symphony; as well as return appearances with the Florida Orchestra and La Jolla Symphony and Chorus.
The 40-year-old has been conducting western classical music orchestras for the past 20 years. As artistic director at the San Diego Youth Symphony, he works for an organization that serves “close to 600 students, beginning through pre-professional student musicians annually in 13 full orchestras and large ensembles.”
American Kahani
By Bhargavi Kulkarni
Indian American conductor Sameer Patel has a lot to look forward to this year. He makes his debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Princeton Symphony; as well as return appearances with the Florida Orchestra and La Jolla Symphony and Chorus.
The 40-year-old has been conducting western classical music orchestras for the past 20 years. As artistic director at the San Diego Youth Symphony, he works for an organization that serves “close to 600 students, beginning through pre-professional student musicians annually in 13 full orchestras and large ensembles.”
Patel previously worked as an associate conductor at the San Diego Symphony for four years. He left that position in 2019, and over the last couple of years, “especially when things picked back up over the pandemic, and performances started to resume,” he started traveling and working as a guest conductor. With his current job in San Diego, where he lives with his wife and two kids, Patel continues to have one foot in both worlds — “the performance world which is conducting orchestras like in Princeton and in Chicago and elsewhere” — as well as “sharing music with young musicians.”
Read more here.
The Spokesman-Review: Spokane Symphony review: Leonard Slatkin conducted a visual and auditory masterpiece
Unless they had attended other performances led by Leonard Slatkin, ticketholders at this weekend’s concerts by the Spokane Symphony received something more for the price of admission than they expected, something that they should, and probably will always remember.
The Spokesman-Review
By Larry Lapidus
Unless they had attended other performances led by Leonard Slatkin, ticketholders at this weekend’s concerts by the Spokane Symphony received something more for the price of admission than they expected, something that they should, and probably will always remember.
They expected, and certainly received, very fine performances of three works for orchestra: “Double Play”, by Cindy McTee, “Francesca da Rimini,” by Piotr Tchaikovsky and the Symphony No. 1 in C minor of Johannes Brahms. What they could not have expected was an emotional, and even visual journey of such variety, intensity and breadth.
Read more here.
NPR: Marc-André Hamelin: Tiny Desk Concert
Marc-André Hamelin has a marvelous, curious mind. While we chatted before his Tiny Desk concert, he snooped around the CD shelves near my desk, commenting on a few rarities and sharing his own eclectic tastes, including a crazy YouTube mashup of all 15 Shostakovich symphonies stacked on top of each other.
The Boston-based Montreal native is regarded as one of his generation's most technically astounding pianists, but he's no empty virtuoso. His interpretations are probing, precise and warm — keen to bring out humor when necessary. He routinely performs the world's most treacherous repertoire with his characteristic ease. I've witnessed him practically reduce a concert grand to matchsticks, and I've heard him tenderly caress a late Schubert sonata.
NPR
By Tom Huizenga
Marc-André Hamelin has a marvelous, curious mind. While we chatted before his Tiny Desk concert, he snooped around the CD shelves near my desk, commenting on a few rarities and sharing his own eclectic tastes, including a crazy YouTube mashup of all 15 Shostakovich symphonies stacked on top of each other.
The Boston-based Montreal native is regarded as one of his generation's most technically astounding pianists, but he's no empty virtuoso. His interpretations are probing, precise and warm — keen to bring out humor when necessary. He routinely performs the world's most treacherous repertoire with his characteristic ease. I've witnessed him practically reduce a concert grand to matchsticks, and I've heard him tenderly caress a late Schubert sonata.
Hamelin's colossal breadth of repertoire is on display in this smart set of pieces. He begins in the 18th century with the off-kilter antics of C.P.E. Bach — a rondo that stops, starts and swerves with the spirit of improvisation. His limpid rendition of William Bolcom's "Graceful Ghost Rag" (from 1970) emphasizes the bittersweet harmonies with unhurried elegance.
Read more and watch here.
Seen and Heard International: Hometown hero Jonathon Heyward returns to Charleston in triumph
Jonathon Heyward, newly anointed as music director of the Baltimore Symphony, was greeted with warmth and energy, cheers and whistles when he came out on the Gaillard Hall stage to conduct the Charleston Symphony for the first time, an authentic hometown hero. When he turned around to lead the audience in the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’, it seemed like everybody in the sold-out hall was singing with a full-throated musicality that made this one of the best performances of the anthem I had ever heard.
From the first bars of Florence Price’s 10-minute ‘Dances in the Canebrakes’ in William Grant Still’s colorful orchestration, Heyward elicited detail while maintaining momentum and showed great tempo choices, always organic and natural. The clarity and precision of his conducting was reflected in the exuberant playing by the combined forces of the Symphony and the Youth Symphony, in which Heyward had once played cello. He was keen on articulation and integrated small bits into the whole without ever seeming rushed. With his back to the audience, he monitored the proceedings with marionette-like moves on the podium.
Seen and Heard International
By Laurence Vittes
Jonathon Heyward, newly anointed as music director of the Baltimore Symphony, was greeted with warmth and energy, cheers and whistles when he came out on the Gaillard Hall stage to conduct the Charleston Symphony for the first time, an authentic hometown hero. When he turned around to lead the audience in the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’, it seemed like everybody in the sold-out hall was singing with a full-throated musicality that made this one of the best performances of the anthem I had ever heard.
From the first bars of Florence Price’s 10-minute ‘Dances in the Canebrakes’ in William Grant Still’s colorful orchestration, Heyward elicited detail while maintaining momentum and showed great tempo choices, always organic and natural. The clarity and precision of his conducting was reflected in the exuberant playing by the combined forces of the Symphony and the Youth Symphony, in which Heyward had once played cello. He was keen on articulation and integrated small bits into the whole without ever seeming rushed. With his back to the audience, he monitored the proceedings with marionette-like moves on the podium.
Read more here.
Photo Credit: Alyona Photography