The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: Go behind the scenes of the NEW Sunday Afternoon Live From the Chazen concerts with audio engineer Buzz Kemper. There is a song recital this Sunday at 12:30 p.m. to be attended or streamed.

By Jacob Stockinger

The Ear got a request from audio engineer Buzz Kemper. He wanted to write about streaming live the NEW monthly format of Sunday Afternoon Live From the Chazen.

It is a timely topic because the once-a-month live chamber music concerts run from February through December on the first Sunday of the month. That means there is one this Sunday at 12:30 p.m. It offers a song recital of Mozart, Haydn, Schubert and Brahms with soprano Chelsea Morris (below top) and fortepianist Trevor Stephenson (below bottom) of the Madison Bach Musicians.

At bottom you can hear a YouTube video of Chelsea Morris singing an aria from the opera “Giulio Cesare” by George Frideric Handel that helped her win first prize in the 2014 Handel Aria Competition at the Madison Early Music Festival.

The concert is FREE and OPEN to the public.

It will also be streamed live at: http://www.chazen.wisc.edu/about/news/in-the-news/listen-to-sunday-afternoon-live-at-the-chazen-live-stream-4.5.15

and also at:

www.audioforthearts.com/afa-live.html

Here is the essay by Buzz Kemper (below):

By Buzz Kemper

Traditions change and evolve, sometimes disappearing completely.

One long-running Wisconsin musical tradition has been saved from extinction, and indeed will not only continue, but will do so in a newer, more contemporary form.

Last spring, Sunday Afternoon Live From the Chazen (below) — the much-loved, statewide live broadcast chamber music series – was abruptly canceled by Wisconsin Public Radio after a 36-year run. The cancellation looked very much like the death knell of this very long-running and vital live music showcase.

Public reaction was swift and strong, and almost completely negative, as you can see from the announcement on this blog:

https://welltempered.wordpress.com/?s=Sunday+Afternoon+cancelled

The leadership at the Chazen, however, had a larger vision: Could the series be continued in some form, even without a broadcast outlet?

Museum Director Russell Panczenko (below) met with me and Steve Gotcher — my business partner at Audio for the Arts– as well as representatives from the Chazen and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music to discuss possibilities. The obvious solution was to do a series utilizing a more contemporary means of public distribution: live streaming via the Internet.

While the cancellation of the broadcasts was unwelcome news to me, the opportunity to be involved once again in this series was quite welcome indeed.

I have a unique history with Sunday Afternoon Live. From 1983 until 1998, I served as Technical Director continuously, and had a long stint as host as well.

On one Christmas edition of the show, I even appeared as a performer, singing a real duet by a fake composer, “Please, Kind Sir” by PDQ Bach, with fellow engineer Richard Moses. We discovered after the fact that Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Harbison and his wife, violinist Rose Mary Harbison (below), were in attendance. (I’m glad we didn’t know this ahead of time.) The Harbisons had very kind words for our musical shenanigans.

With such a long and varied history with the show, I was delighted that Audio for the Arts, the audio company of which I am co-owner, would be involved in the new incarnation of the series. (Below is a photo of Buzz Kemper in his commercial recording studio.)

Along with the changes, there are several aspects that remain the same: Lori Skelton (below top), longtime producer and host of the series, has signed on once again. Also, the concerts will, as before, take place in Gallery III (below bottom), though on a monthly rather than weekly basis, and on the first Sunday of the month.

The dedication and commitment to this series by Lori Skelton, the Chazen Museum of Art and the musical community — in particular the UW School of Music — is commendable. Gratitude is also due to Kato Perlman, who provided a generous gift to get us started.

Here’s hoping for another 36 years.