The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music education: Just a reminder that next Saturday afternoon and evening is the pared down Chamber Music Marathon – five hours, NOT 24 – by the Sound Ensemble Wisconsin to benefit music education and local food.

ALERT:  This Sunday, Dec. 9, at 3 p.m. in the Madison Children’s Museum, the Black Marigold Wind Quintet (below) will perform a family concert that is FREE with museum admission. For information, visit: Madison Children’s Museum. The program includes favorites such as Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” and Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker.” The concert is free with museum admission. You can also visit the group’s website for more information. www.blackmarigold.com, where the spring concert series has been scheduled. 

By Jacob Stockinger

Readers may recall that the recently organized and outstanding Madison-based chamber music group, Sound Ensemble Wisconsin (below), originally announced that it would hold an inaugural 24-hour chamber music marathon from next Saturday morning, Dec. 8, to Sunday morning, Dec. 9, from 9 a.m. to 9 a.m.

It was even presented as a possible alternative to Wisconsin Public Radio’s 4^th annual Bach Around the Clock noon to midnight Bach marathon in mid-March, which has been canceled for 2013.

The purpose was and remains to benefit the Wisconsin School Music Association and local food providers. A minimum $5 donation is suggested. The public is free to stop by and attend at any time for however long.

Here is a link to the original story:

https://welltempered.wordpress.com/?s=SEW

But SEW director and violinist Mary Theodore (below) has just told The Ear that the firsta annual event is being downsized from 24 hours to five hours: from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. next Saturday.

The five-hour event will still be held at the Wisconsin Center for Music Education in Waunakee (below), not far from Waunakee High School.

The curtailed version might even be preferable.  Imagine it is very hard to line up both performers and audiences for, say, 11 p.m.  or 3 a.m. But maybe another year will allow for sufficient time to expand it to six or seven hours with some piano students and other amateurs and professionals on the roster.

Even in the scaled-down version this year some fine performers will perform some fine repertoire.

The performers include Con Vivo, SEW, Madison pianist and piano teacher Gloria Chuang and others. The repertoire includes a Haydn Piano Trio; Bartok’s Duos for Two Violins (at bottom); Prokofiev’s “Overture on Hebrew Themes”; two movements from Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet; rags by Scott Joplin; a string quartet by Margaret Brouwer; works for clarinet, viola and piano by Max Bruch; music for viola and piano by UW composer Joseph Koykkar (below) and a talk about musicianship through performance.

Here is a link with complete details of the marathon’s schedule.

http://sewmusic.org/chamber-music-marathon-schedule/