The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: The acclaimed Kronos Quartet performs an eclectic program of classical, rock, jazz and blues music on Saturday night at the Wisconsin Union Theater. Plus, a free art song recital takes place on Friday at noon. But pianist Marco Greco’s recital at Farley’s House of Pianos on Friday night has been CANCELLED due to visa problems.

ALERTS:

This week’s FREE Friday Noon Musicale – which takes places from 12:15 to 1 p.m. in the Landmark Auditorium of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed First Unitarian Society of Madison at 900 University Bay Drive – features tenor J. Adam Shelton (below) and pianist Rayna Slavova in music by George Bizet, Benjamin Britten, Joaquin Turina and Richard Strauss.

Plus, the Friday night recital by pianist Marco Grieco at Farley’s House of Pianos has been CANCELLED due to visa problems.

By Jacob Stockinger

This is another “train wreck” weekend for classical music, as the Wise Critic likes to say.

Saturday night especially has a lot of competing events. They include:

At 7:30 p.m. in Old Music Hall, a performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute” by University Opera.

And a FREE cello recital in Mills Hall at 8 p.m. by UW-Madison professor Parry Karp – with pianist mother Frances and pianist brother Christopher — that features music by Benjamin Britten, George Crumb and Ludwig van Beethoven (two violin sonatas as transcribed for cello by Parry Karp.)

But one non-local event stands out.

The San Francisco-based, Grammy-winning Kronos Quartet (below top) — which since 1973 has pioneered crossover genres and in so doing popularized chamber music — performs on Saturday night at 8 p.m. in Shannon Hall (below bottom) at the Wisconsin Union Theater.

The program features the typical eclectic mix of the Kronos Quartet, which plays string quartet versions of jazz, rock and blues music as well as contemporary classical music. (At bottom,  in a historic YouTube video, is the classic Kronos performance of “Purple Haze” by rocker Jimi Hendrix.)

Included is music by Laurie Anderson, Jelly Roll Morton, Thelonius Monk and Charles Mingus as well as works by Maru Kouyoumdjian, Vladimir Martynov, Komitas, Michael Daugherty and Dan Becker.

Here is a link with the program, ticket prices, biographies of the players, critical reviews and videos.

http://www.uniontheater.wisc.edu/season14-15/kronos-quartet.html

MASTER CLASS: Violist Hank Dutt of the Kronos Quartet will be giving a master class in Mills Hall, on Friday, from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. It is open to the public. The menu includes J.S. Bach’s  Suite No. 6 and Chaconne for four violas, Elliott Carter’s “Figment IV” and the String Quartet by Maurice Ravel.