The 'A Musical Feast' Spring 2013 concert season begins!

The Center for 21st Century Music will be co-sponsoring two events with 'A Musical Feast' for their Spring 2013 concert season at the Burchfield Penney Art Center. 'A Musical Feast' has been putting on high-quality performances and concerts of contemporary music, as well as music from all periods, for many years now at the Burchfield Penney. The press release below offers some great background and information on the first concert, on Sunday, March 10th:

   ‘A Musical Feast’ Sunday March 10 @ 2:00 PM

                                           

Snapshot of a Century of Music

      ‘A Musical Feast’ offers a taste of music spanning the last 100 years

On Sunday, March 10, at 2:00 p.m., the independent, cutting-edge musical group known as ‘A Musical Feast’ offers its winter concert, in its home in the acoustically superior Peter & Elizabeth C. Tower Auditorium of the Burchfield Penny Art Center. Western New York lovers of classical music have come to expect every musical program put on by ‘A Musical Feast’, the chamber music group founded by Charles Haupt, the now retired, longtime concert master of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, to offer something out of the ordinary, an expectation that the group has never failed to fulfill.

The wide-range of represented composers range from Belgian composer Eugène Ysaÿe, whose 1895 romantically elegant Poème élégiaque, will be performed by Eastman School of Music virtuoso violinist Charles Castleman, and Buffalo’s favorite pianist Claudia Hoca, to SUNY at Buffalo distinguished professor David Felder, whose work A Garland (for Bruce) received its premiere just this past September. Also on the program are works by Debussy, Stravinsky, Hindemith, Piazzolla and J.T. Rinker. Charles Castleman and Claudia Hoca will also perform “Minstrels”, a violin and piano version of the 12th and last of the Preludes (Book I) by Claude Debussy. Pianist Claudia Hoca will be joined by UB professor of cello Jonathan Golove in a performance of selections from Stravinsky’s “Suite italienne”, derived from the music for the neo-classical score of his later 1920 ballet Pulcinella. Wildy Zumwalt, professor of saxophone at the Fredonia School of Music will be joined by Diane Hunger, a native of Kiel, Germany, who is currently pursuing her Doctorate at the Eastman School of Music, in a rare concert performance of Hindemith’s 1933 Konzertstück für Zwei Altsaxophone. The late Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla can be justly credited with bringing the attention of the classical music world to the tango, the quintessential dance form of his native land. Saxophonist Wildy Zumwalt, pianist Claudia Hoca, and cellist Jonathan Golove will be joined by Moshe Shulman playing the bandoneón, or Argentine concertina, and instrument essential to a tango ensemble, in Three Dances by Piazzolla, including the irresistible “Oblivion”.

Tom Kolor performs J.T. Rinker's Frigate

Moving up to the present, UB professor of percussion Tom Kolor will perform Frigate by J.T. Rinker. The 2008 piece is written for crotales, a percussion instrument made up of small, tuned brass disks, as well as electronic sounds – the delicate filigree of sound produced is pleasantly surprising.

David Felder, coordinator of composition at the UB Department of Music wrote A Garland (for Bruce) in 2012 as, he says, “a small tribute work for cello and electronic sound with photo images shot by Bruce Jackson. It is dedicated to Bruce Jackson in friendship and with admiration!” Cellist Jonathan Golove will perform the piece honoring Jackson, whose works are currently on view in the “Being There: Bruce Jackson, Photographs 1962-2012” exhibit at the Burchfield Penny Art Center.

The full program for the concert follows: 

                   ‘A Musical Feast’ Sunday March 10 @ 2:00 PM

Frigate  (2008)                                                          J.T. Rinker (1974)

Tom Kolor, percussion

Konzertstück für Zwei Altsaxophone (1933)             Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)

I. Lebhaft

II. Mäßig langsam   

III. Lebhaft

Diane Hunger, saxophone, Wildy Zumwalt, saxophone

A Garland (For Bruce) (2012)                                  David Felder (1953)

Jonathan Golove, cello

"Minstrels"                                                                 Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

From Preludes (December 1919/January 1910)

12 Minstrels

Claudia Hoca, piano, Charles Castleman, violin

Poème élégiaque, Op. 12 (1895)                               Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931).

Claudia Hoca, piano, Charles Castleman, violin

                                               --Intermission--

"Suite italienne" (from Pulcinella, 1932)                   Igor  Stravinsky (1882- 1971)

Claudia Hoca, piano, Jonathan Golove, cello  

Three Dances                                                            Astor Piazolla (1921 – 1992)

Invierno Porteño

La Muerte del Àngel

Oblivion

Wildy Zumwalt saxophone,  Claudia Hoca piano,

Jonathan Golove cello, Moshe Shulman, bandoneon

David Taylor on the cover of
"Trombone" magazine

The second 'A Musical Feast' concert of the Spring 2013 season, on Friday, April 12th, at 8:00 p.m., will feature long-time friend of the Center David Taylor, a veteran and explosive New York trombonist with over four decades logged into performances, recordings, and tours. This concert will feature original compositions by David Taylor, as well as a piece by recently graduated UB composer John Bacon. The evening will also feature David Taylor's arrangement of Franz Schubert's Der Doppelgänger, arranged for bass trombone. The concert will conclude with Karlheinz Stockhausen's Signs of the Zodiac. The program follows:

                  ‘A Musical Feast’ Friday April 12 @ 8:00 PM                             

Song and Dance                                                           David Taylor (1944)

1. song

2. dance  

David Taylor, bass trombone, Michael McNeill, piano

Waves at Matsushima (2011)                                        John Bacon

Rin Ozaki, marimba  

Der Doppelgänger                                 Franz Schubert (1797-1828)/Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)  

David Taylor, bass trombone                                                 arranged by David Taylor (1944)  

                                                      --Intermission--

Tierkreis (Signs of the Zodiac) (1975)                           Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007)

 Rin Ozaki, marimba    CAPRICORN

Dave Taylor, bass trombone   GEMINI

John Bacon, drums, percussion, vibes   AQUARIUS

Michael McNeill, piano   ARIES

Jonathan Golove, cello   LEO

Both concerts will be in the Burchfield Penney Art Center at Buffalo State College. Look forward to seeing you there!         

'A Musical Feast' Spring 2013 season

Burchfield Penney Art Center

Peter & Elizabeth C. Tower Auditorium      

Buffalo State College         

1300 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14222

716-878-6011

burchfld@buffalostate.edu

Tickets: $20; Burchfield Penny members/students: $10.

Phone: 716-878-6011.

Information: www.amusicalfeast.com, or: www.BurchfieldPenny.org

Link to this post here.

A Musical Feast 2012-2013 season opens with Julia Bentley, Kuang-Hao Huang, and the LehrerDance Company!

We at the Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music are happy to be co-sponsoring Child’s Play for Adults, the opening concert of the 2012-2013 A Musical Feast season in the Peter & Elizabeth C. Tower Auditorium of the Burchfield Penny Art Center, on Friday, November 9, at 8:00 p.m. The evening will showcase members of Western New York’s very own LehrerDance Company, who have been called "Stunning" by the Buffalo News, and "Breathtaking" by Dance Magazine, and are getting ready to embark on their Russian tour next month. Mezzo-soprano and longtime friend of the Center Julia Bentley will also be featured extensively throughout the concert, alongside pianist Kuang-Hao Huang. The concert has an exciting program of music and dance works by John Cage, André Caplet, Edward Lear, Oskar Morawetz, and Buffalo-based composer John Bacon.

Artistic Director: Charles Haupt, Prof. Ann Colley
 Jon Lehrer and LehrerDance Company

The Buffalo Artvoice’s Jan Jezioro provides some background on Bacon’s piece, The (Electronic) Playground, which will appear in the concert’s program notes, “While The (Electronic) Playground was composed in 2007 for a sound improviser/performer, who may also be a percussionist, it may also be performed by more than one artist, as in the case of this performance by the Fredonia Faculty Percussion Quartet. The score is a colored time grid, with the colors corresponding to the construction of the instrument, or means of sound production. The musical ideas that are played on the instruments are the performers' choice. The piece is titled The ‘Electronic’ Playground, if electronic sounds or electronic manipulation of the sounds are used in a particular performance.”

Check out the complete press release for Child’s Play for Adults below, we look forward to seeing you there!

LehrerDance Company in action

Child’s Play for Adults

Enjoy a slice of ‘Amblongus Pie’: Music, Dance, Verse and Song

The independent, cutting-edge musical group known as ‘A Musical Feast’ launches its 2012-2013 season on Friday, November 9 at 8pm, co-sponsored by the University at Buffalo’s "Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music" in its home in the acoustically superior Peter & Elizabeth C. Tower Auditorium of the Burchfield Penny Art Center. With this program, which features a decidedly high whimsical content, ‘A Musical Feast’ may well surpass its well-earned reputation for presenting uniquely eclectic combinations of music from a very wide range of eras, along with poetry and dance. Special guests for the concert include the Chicago-based mezzo-soprano Julia Bentley and her collaborative pianist Kuang-Hao Huang, along with the members of the LehrerDance Company, the finest interpreters of modern dance in Western New York, just prior to their Russian tour this December.

This event is focused on celebrating the undying spirit of childhood, both in children and adults, and also honors the bicentennial of the birth of the English author, illustrator and poet Edward Lear (1812-1888), best remembered for well-loved examples of nonsense poetry and prose. SUNY Distinguished Professor Ann C. Colley is the literary advisor for this event which will include Julia Bentley offering her own interpretation of examples from Lear’s ‘Nonsense Cookery’ including recipes from his 1870 ‘Nonsense Gazette’, such as “Take 4 pounds (say 4 1/2 pounds) of fresh Amblongusses, and put them in a small pipkin.”

This year also marks the centennial of the birth of composer John Cage (1912-1992), a genuine American maverick, who, it is safe to say, never lost the spirit of childhood during his long and very influential career. Cage’s 1942 work, Four Dances was originally composed for wordless tenor voice, prepared piano, handclap and percussion. The piece was subsequently re-titled Four Dances, and this rare performance of the re-titled work by mezzo-soprano Julia Bentley and pianist Kuang-Hao Huang will feature an original choreographic interpretation by the LehrerDance Company.

Bentley and Huang will also perform three other sets of songs, including Cage’s Songs for Contralto and Piano, an early work from 1938 based on the poetry of the iconoclastic American poet ee cummings, as well as French composer André Caplet’s 1919 work Trois Fables de Jean de la Fontaine, a setting of texts by the French Renaissance fabulist Jean de la Fontaine (1621-1695). Rounding out the vocal portion of the program will be an area premiere performance of Czech-born Canadian composer Oskar Morawetz’s 1984 work, Souvenirs of Childhood, based on poetry from Robert Louis Stevenson’s beloved collection A Child's Garden of Verses. Also on the program, appropriately enough, Buffalo-based composer John Bacon will perform his 2007 work  “The Electronic Playground” with the Fredonia Faculty Percussion Quartet, Kay Stonefelt, Tiffany Nicely. Matthew Wilson, percussion and electronics.

Tickets: $20; Burchfield Penny members/students: $10. Phone: 878-6011. Information: www.amusicalfeast.com, or: www.BurchfieldPenny.org

Link to this post here.

Synaesthesia

Many's the listener for whom a musical experience conjures visual images. For some, however, the experience is involuntary: different pitches and chords consistently give rise to specific colors, a phenomenon known as synesthesia. Alexander Scriabin, Olivier Messiaen, and Michael Torke are among the composers who have reported these correspondences, and it has inevitably influenced their music.

This Friday (Feb. 11) at 8 pm at the Burchfield-Penney Art Center, the Center for 21st Century Music is co-sponsoring a concert by A Musical Feast, titled "Sensory Crossovers: Synesthesia in American Art." The program includes Robert Muczynski's Gallery: Suite for Unaccompanied Cello; Kreisler's Coat by Jonathan Golove for cello and piano; Sequence pour un hymne à la nuit by Alain Margoni (1979); Ruth Wiesenfeld's stories still for cello and pre-recorded tape with voice; and Kodály's Duo for violin and cello. Golove, Fang Hew, and Carter Enyeart perform (in different pieces) on cello, while Claudia Hoca plays piano, and A Musical Feast's founder, Charles Haupt, joins in on violin for the Kodály.

While none of these pieces are by synesthetic composers, nearly all of them are inspired by visual images. Muczynski's Gallery was suggested by Burchfield's watercolors; a recording of Carter Enyeart playing the piece has recently been issued on the Centaur label. Golove took his cue for Kreisler's Coat from a description by E. T. A. Hoffmann (of the eponymous Tales) of a character who wore "a coat the color of C-sharp minor with an E-major colored collar." French composer Margoni was a student of Messiaen; Golove, who performs the work, finds echoes of Messiaen's "color chords" in it.

An enigmatic image - "a rotating lamp, illuminating for a moment only what happens to be within its beam of light" - spurred Wiesenfeld's piece, which makes use of a text by Samuel Beckett. Full program notes are available here.

Kodály's Duo completes the program, and while it doesn't have any specific visual genesis, it's always worth a listen. Here it is in a fine performance by violinist Kurt Nikkanen and cellist Daniel Gaisford.