The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: The Wisconsin Chamber Choir celebrates 20 years with a retrospective concert and alumni singers this Saturday night
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By Jacob Stockinger
This Saturday night, the Wisconsin Chamber Choir (below) will celebrate its 20th anniversary with a retrospective concert that includes alumni.
The performance is at 7:30 p.m. in the Atrium Auditorium (below, in a photo by Zane Williams) of the First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Drive.
The program features favorite works from the choir’s history.
Founding conductor Gary McKercher (below top) will join current artistic director Robert Gehrenbeck (below bottom) – who directs choral activities at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater — to lead the choir in this special performance.
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Familiar composers such as Felix Mendelssohn, Sergei Rachmaninoff and Franz Joseph Haydn share billing with Jean Belmont Ford (below), whose Sand County, a setting of Aldo Leopold’s words, will be performed.
Also on the program are a set of pieces by Howard Helvey (below top) that the WCC commissioned in 2002, and the U.S. premiere of Utyos by longtime WCC member Albrecht Gaub (below bottom).
Alumni of the choir will participate as guest singers in the final two works on the program: Haydn’s humorous Eloquence; and Gregg Smith’s serene Now I Walk in Beauty, which is based on a Navajo prayer and can be heard in the YouTube video at the bottom.
Immediately following the performance, audience members are invited to join the singers for cake and refreshments to celebrate this milestone in the history of one of Madison’s premiere music ensembles.
Founded in 1998, the Wisconsin Chamber Choir has established a reputation for excellence in the performance of oratorios by Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johannes Brahms; a cappella works from various centuries; and world premieres of commissioned works.
Artistic director Gehrenbeck has been hailed by critics for his vibrant and emotionally compelling interpretations of a wide variety of choral masterworks.
Advance tickets for the April 13 performance at are available for $15 ($10 for students) from www.wisconsinchamberchoir.org, via Brown Paper Tickets.
Tickets are also available in Madison from Orange Tree Imports, all three Willy Street Co-op locations, and from members of the choir. Tickets at the door will be available for $20 for adults and $10 for students.
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Classical music: The Wisconsin State Capitol will mark Earth Day this Saturday and next Wednesday with music by Wisconsin composer John Harmon plus words by Wisconsin figures responsible for the environmental tribute. Plus, the Edgewood College Chamber Orchestra performs Mozart, Debussy and Stravinsky this Sunday afternoon. And don’t forget about WYSO’s “Art of Note” fundraiser Saturday night and two performances on Friday night and Sunday afternoon of Rameau’s opera-ballet “Pygmalion” by the Madison Bach Musicians.
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REMINDERS: This Saturday night from 6 to 10 p.m., the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras (WYSO) will hold its annual “Art of Note” fundraiser at CUNA Mutual. Auctions, fine food and live music will be featured.
For more information visit: http://wyso.music.wisc.edu/artofnote/ and https://welltempered.wordpress.com/2015/03/24/classical-music-education-wysos-art-of-note-benefit-on-april-18-seeks-to-raise-50000-to-benefit-music-education-in-greater-madison-area/
Also: The Madison Bach Musicians presents two performances of “Pygmalion” by Jean-Philippe Rameau It’s a 1784 Baroque opera-ballet done in the Atrium Auditorium (below, in a photo by Zane Williams) of the First Unitarian Society of Madison.
The first performance is tonight with a 6:45 p.m. lecture and 7:30 p.m. concert. The second is on Sunday afternoon with a lecture at 2:45 p.m. and a 3:30 p.m. concert.
Internationally recognized UW-Madison early-music specialist Marc Vallon will direct a full baroque orchestra, dancers and an outstanding vocal cast as they tell the tale of a sculptor who falls in love with his beautiful creation—and then, through the power of Venus, the statue comes to life. Tickets are $25 in advance, $30 at the door.
For more information, go to: http://madisonbachmusicians.org/concerts/current-concert-season/
ALERT: At 2:30 p.m. this Sunday afternoon, in the St. Joseph Chapel, 1000 Edgewood College Drive, the Edgewood Chamber Orchestra will give its Spring Concert.
Admission for the public is $5 and will benefit music scholarships. Admission is FREE with an Edgewood College ID.
The Edgewood Chamber Orchestra will play under the director of Blake Walter (below, in a photo by John Maniaci). Included on the program are the Symphony No. 32 in G by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; the “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” by Claude Debussy and the Pulcinella Suite by Igor Stravinsky.
Also being performed is the first movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 19, K. 459, featuring pianist Stephanie Crescio (below), the winner of the Edgewood College Music Department Student Concerto Competition.
By Jacob Stockinger
Madison-based music publicist and activist Jon Becker writes:
Wisconsin’s Earth Day Heritage will be celebrated in music and words this Saturday, April 18, and on next Wednesday, April 22. (You can hear a short history of Earth Day in a YouTube video at the bottom.)
Music broadcasts will feature the voices of the descendants of John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and Earth Day Founder U.S. Senator and former state Governor Gaylord Nelson, set to the symphonic music of Wisconsin composer John Harmon.
There will be several opportunities to hear a “sneak preview” of Earth Day Portrait, music celebrating Earth Day values, before its international release on CD later this year.
For the third year, the music will be “broadcast” in the Rotunda of Wisconsin’s State Capitol building (below). Listeners should gather at the bust of “Fighting Bob” La Follette (the East Gallery entry is closest).
On Saturday, April 18, the music will be broadcast 10 times on the half hour, starting at 9 a.m. and ending at 2 p.m.
On Wednesday, April 22 — which is Earth Day — there will be broadcasts at 4:30 p.m. and 5 p.m.
Earth Day Portrait is a symphonic setting of eco-moral texts of John Muir, Aldo Leopold and Earth Day founder, former Wisconsin Gov. and U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson (below). For the CD recording, the words of these environmental legends were read by their descendants: William (Muir) Hanna, great-grandson; Nina Leopold Bradley, daughter; Gaylord Nelson Jr., son; and Kiva Nelson, grand-daughter.
Patty Loew, an enrolled member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, narrated connecting texts that paint intimate, personal portraits of Muir, Leopold, and Nelson, while recalling their unique mutual connection to Madison, Wisconsin.
All this is woven together by the story of the passenger pigeon’s extinction. Members of the Madison Youth Choirs (below, in a photo by Karen Holland) recorded a call-and-response part that -– at concert performances -– is spoken by audience members.
Earth Day Portrait was composed in 2001 by John Harmon (below), who graduated from Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis., and who makes his home on the Wolf River, near Winneconne.
Harmon’s music was recorded in Glasgow by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, led by conductor Marin Alsop, the first conductor to win a MacArthur “genius” Fellowship. London’s EMI-Abbey Road Studios produced the master recording. Voiceovers were recorded at Audio for the Arts in Madison and at Umbrella Studios in Los Angeles.
For the forthcoming Earth Day CD, Harmon’s composition will be paired with Hymn to the Earth, by American composer Edward Joseph Collins (1886-1951, below). Composed in Door County, and inspired by Wisconsin’s seasons and landscapes, Collins’s ode to nature also may well be the first Western classical composition to refer to our home planet as “Mother Earth.”
Tags: Abbey Road, Activism, Aldo Leopold, Arts, ballet, Blake Walter, Bob La Follette, choral music, Classical music, Compact Disc, composer, concerto, Debussy, Earth, Earth Day, Edgewood College, Edward Joseph Collins, environment, Gaylord Nelson, genius grant, Glasgow, global warming, Jacob Stockinger, Jazz, Jean-Philippe Rameau, John Harmon, John Muir, Lawrence University, Lawrence University Conservatory of Music, London, Los Angeles, MacArthur Foundation, Madison, Madison Youth Choirs, Marin Alsop, Mozart, Music, ode, opera, Orchestra, Piano, Piano concerto, planet, Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, Pulcinella Suite, Pygmalion, Rotunda, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, state Capitol, Stravinsky, symphony, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Wisconsin, YouTube
Classical music: Is Rameau the French Bach? UW-Madison faculty players and Baroque scholar Charles Dill will explore Rameau throughout this season. The first two FREE events are this Thursday and Friday nights.
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By Jacob Stockinger
For some musicologists and audiences, the French Baroque composer Jean-Philippe Rameau (below) is wholly misunderstood, under-performed and underappreciated. Some even see him as the French counterpart to Johann Sebastian Bach.
But a year-long project by the University of Wisconsin School of Music aims to correct that lack of knowledge and appreciation.
That effort starts with two FREE concerts this week.
Here is a link to a Q&A about Rameau done with UW-Madison musicologist Charles Dill for the UW-Madison School of Music blog:
http://www.music.wisc.edu/2014/10/16/rameau-dill/
THURSDAY
On Thursday night, Nov. 13, at 7:30 p.m. in Room 180 of Science Hall, at the intersection of Langdon Streets and North Park Street, the FREE program “Rameau and Musical Expression” will take place. The subject is the French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau. The 250th anniversary of his death is being marked this year around the world.
Music of the mid-18th century can strike modern audiences as stilted or dispassionate, but composers of the time, like society at large, thought about the passions a great deal — how to describe them, what their physical properties were, and how to depict them on stage for the benefit of audiences.
David Ronis (below top, in a photo by Luke Delalio), a stage director who has specialized in Baroque staging practices, and Anne Vila (below bottom), a scholar specializing in 18th-century theories of the emotions, will discuss passion in the thought of Rameau’s contemporaries, suggesting cues for listening to Rameau’s music. The evening will include a performance of cantata Les Amants trahis by Paul Rowe, Chelsie Propst, John Chappell Stowe and Eric Miller.
FRIDAY
Then on this Friday might, Nov. 14, at 8 p.m. in Mills Hall, UW-Madison bassoonist and native Frenchman Marc Vallon (below, in a photo by James Gill) will present a FREE all-French program that highlights his own works and arrangements as well as the music of Jean-Phillippe Rameau in one of his most well-known works, “Les Indes Galantes.”
![Marc Vallon 2011 James Gill (baroque & modern)[2]](https://welltempered.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/marc-vallon-2011-james-gill-baroque-modern2.jpg)
Vallon will be joined by other performers and period instruments will be used in historically informed performances.
Here is the program:
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) Pièce en forme de Habanera for bassoon and piano
Marc Vallon (b.1955) Serbian Songs for viola and bassoon – Tuzbalica-Harvest Song-Trezkavica
Marc Vallon Ami for Baroque flute
Jules Massenet (1842-1912) (arr. M. Vallon) La Lettre
Georges Bizet (1838-1875) (arr. M. Vallon)
Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894) L’Invitation au Voyage
INTERMISSION
Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764), Les Indes Galantes, a 45-minute version. Ouverture; Menuets 1 & 2; Musette en Rondeau; Air; L’Amour “Ranimez vos Flambeaux”; Ritournelle, “Le Turc Généreux,”; Air, “Osman Il faut que l’amour s’envole”; Récit et Orage; Choeur des Matelots; Emilie; Rigaudons; Air pour les esclaves Africains; Tambourins; “Les Incas du Pérou,” Scène 1; Air “Le calumet de la Paix”; Air et Choeur “Traversez les plus vastes mers.”
(At the bottom is a concluding movement from “Les Indes Gallantes” in a popular YouTube video that more than one million hits. It is performed by Marc Minkowski directing Les Musicians du Louvre.)
Marc Vallon has split his impressive performing career between the modern and baroque bassoons. In addition to appearances with many of Paris’ orchestras and celebrated contemporary ensembles, Vallon has played baroque bassoon with leading early music ensembles such as La Chapelle Royale, Les Arts Florissants, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and Tafelmusik. In this recital, Marc Vallon will bring his skill on both instruments and thorough knowledge of and feeling for baroque music to works by Jean-Philippe Rameau and J.S. Bach, two great masters of the late baroque period.
Other participants include: Thomas Kasdorf, piano; Sally Chisholm, viola; Nathan Giglierano, Ilana Schroeder, Gene Purdue, baroque violins; Micah Behr, baroque viola; Martha Vallon, Andrew Briggs, baroque cellos; Jeanne Swack and Mili Chang, baroque flute; Konstantinos Tiliakos, baroque oboe; Brian Ellingboe, baroque bassoon; John Chappell Stowe, harpsichord.
Mesdames singers: Elizabeth Hagedorn, Chelsie Propst, Christina Kay.
Messieurs singers: Paul Rowe, Dennis Gotkowski, Antonio De Souza.
There will also be an Introduction to the second half by UW-Madison School of Music musicologist Charles Dill (below, in a photo by Katrin Talbot), who has been speaking about Rameau in the U.S. and France.
This concert is part of the school’s year-long retrospective of the work of Rameau. Click here for more information.
Tags: 17th-century French art, A Whiter Shade of Pale, Aldo Leopold, Amazons, Anna Magdalena Bach, Arts, Bach, Baroque, Baroque music, Bassoon, BBC, Beverly Hills, Billboard Hot 100, Bizet, California, Chabrier, Chamber music, Classical music, Early music, flute, Jacob Stockinger, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Johann Sebastian Bach, Les Arts Florissants, Les Indes galantes, Les Musiciens du Louvre, Ludwig van Beethoven, Madison, Marc Minkowski, Marc Vallon, Massenet, Maurice Ravel, Music, Oboe, opera, Orchestra, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Piano, Ravel, singers, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Viola, vocal music, Western concert flute, Wisconsin, YouTube
Classical music: The UW-Madison School of Music has a busy weekend, including a FREE orchestra concert for the Wisconsin Academy’s marking of the centennial of the extinction of the passenger pigeon plus a FREE cello recital and a voice faculty showcase.
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By Jacob Stockinger
It will be a busy weekend at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music.
Events include a FREE orchestra concert on Sunday afternoon for the Wisconsin Academy’s marking of the centennial of the extinction of the passenger pigeon.
But there is also a FREE cello recital on Saturday night and a voice faculty showcase concert on Sunday evening.
Here are details.
SATURDAY
At 8 p.m. in Mills Hall, cello Professor Parry Karp (below left), who also plays in the Pro Arte Quartet, will play a FREE recital with his longtime pianist partner Eli Kalman (below right), who teaches at UW-Oshkosh and did his doctoral work at the UW-Madison School of Music.
The program includes the Sonata in C Minor for Piano and Violin, Op; 30, No. 2 (1802), by Ludwig van Beethoven as transcribed for cello by Parry Karp, who also transcribed all the violin sonatas by Johannes Brahms; the Sonata in E-flat Major for cello and piano (1922) by Ettore Desderi; and the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, Op 22 (1945) by Samuel Barber.
REMEMBERING THE PASSENGER PIGEON
On Sunday, Nov. 2, at 2 p.m. in Mills Hall, the UW Symphony Orchestra will perform the Wisconsin premiere of “The Columbiad,” preceded by a talk by acclaimed emeritus wildlife professor Stanley Temple (below).
The music program is: A. P. Heinrich, “The Columbiad, or Migration of American Wild Passenger Pigeons”; the Concerto for Orchestra by Witold Lutoslawski; and the “Tragic” Overture by Johannes Brahms.
The concert is part of a two-day symposium on the 100th anniversary of the demise of the fabled passenger pigeon. It features a short talk by Stanley Temple, Beers-Bascom Professor Emeritus in Conservation, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Senior Fellow, Aldo Leopold Foundation.
Learn more here.
On the occasion of the 2014 centenary of the extinction of the passenger pigeon, the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters and the UW-Madison Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology invite the public to join in an exploration of the sobering story of the passenger pigeon (below is a photo of a stuffed real passenger pigeon) and what it can tell us about the ongoing extinction crisis and our relationship with other species.
Events include the Wisconsin premiere of The Columbiad, a symphony by Anthony Philip Heinrich, performed by the UW Symphony Orchestra. The Columbiad created a sensation at its premiere in Prague in 1858 and will be performed once again this fall at UW-Madison and Yale University. (You can hear the beginning of the work as performed at Yale in early October in a YouTube video at the bottom.)
Heinrich was inspired by witnessing vast flocks of passenger pigeons in 1831. Known in his day as “the log cabin composer” and “the Beethoven of America,” Anthony Philip Heinrich is the only important composer of the early 19th century to have experienced the North American frontier as he did. He saw Niagara Falls, he encountered Native Americans and slave musicians, and he witnessed the astonishing migration of giant flocks of passenger pigeons.
To learn about the national effort, please see Project Passenger Pigeon.
Here are related events and links:
A staged reading of a new play about the passenger pigeon by The Bricks Theatre
Saturday, November 1, 2014 from 7 to 9 p.m.
UW-Madison Biotechnology Auditorium, 425 Henry Mall
From Billions to None (Documentary)
An afternoon documentary screening and panel discussion on the demise of the passenger pigeon
Saturday, November 1, 2014 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
UW–Madison Union South, Marquee Theater
1308 W. Dayton St.
Stanley Temple: “A Bird We Have Lost and a Doubt We Have Gained” (Fellows Forum).
Stanley A. Temple is the Beers-Bascom Professor Emeritus in Conservation in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology and former Chairman of the Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development Program in the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at UW–Madison. For 32 years he held the academic position once occupied by Aldo Leopold, and during that time he won every teaching award for which he was eligible. Temple has a PhD in ecology from Cornell University where he studied at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. (below is a photo of one mass shooting of passenger pigeons.)
VOICE FACULTY SHOWCASE CONCERT
At 7:30 p.m. on Sunday night, Nov. 2, in Mills Hall the UW-Madison voice faculty presents an evening of chamber music featuring the solo voice. Featuring a premiere, “White Clouds, Yellow Leaves,” written by composer and saxophone professor Les Thimmig (below).
Participants includes: Mimmi Fulmer and Elizabeth Hagedorn, sopranos; Paul Rowe, baritone; with Karen Atz, harp; Thomas Kasdorf, piano; Marc Vallon, bassoon; Parry Karp, cello; and many students and faculty from the UW-Madison School of Music.
Tickets are $10 with students getting in for FREE. Tickets will be available at the door as well as online or at the box office. Please see this link.
Here is the full program:
“Don Quichotte à Dulcinée” (1934) by Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) Chanson Romanesque; Chanson épique; Chanson á boire with Paul Rowe, baritone, with Thomas Kasdorf, piano.
“La lettre” by Jules Massenet (1842-1912)
“Absence” by Georges Bizet (1838-1875)
“L’invitation au voyage” by Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894) with Elizabeth Hagedorn, soprano; Marc Vallon, bassoon, with Thomas Kasdorf, piano, and Karen Atz, harp.
“Barcarolle” by Charles Gounod (1818-1893) with Elizabeth Hagedorn, soprano; Paul Rowe, baritone, with Thomas Kasdorf, piano.
INTERMISSION
“Long Pond Revisited” (2002) by Lori Laitman (below, b. 1955). From poetry by C.G.R. Shepard: “I Looked for Reasons,” “The Pond Seems Smaller,” “Late in the Day,” “Days Turn,” “Long Pond Revisited” with Paul Rowe, baritone; Parry Karp, cello.
“White Clouds, Yellow Leaves” (2013) by UW-Madison composer Les Thimmig (b. 1943) fromTexts derived from 8th- and 9th-century Chinese poetry with Mimmi Fulmer: mezzo-soprano; Mi-Li Chang: flute, piccolo, alto flute; Kostas Tiliakos,: English horn; Marc Vallon: bassoon; Sean Kleve: percussion; Karen Atz, harp; Paran Amirinizari: violin; Rachel Hauser: viola; Andrew Briggs: violoncello; and Les Thimmig: conductor.
Here is a link to the full program with program notes:
http://www.music.wisc.edu/events/voice-faculty-recital/
Tickets are $10 for the public; students get in free.
Tags: Aldo Leopold, Anthony Philip Heinrich, Arts, baritone, Bassoon, Baudelaire, Beethoven, biology, Bizet, Cello, Chabrier, Chamber music, Charles Gounod, Classical music, Columbiad, composer, concerto, Cornell University, ecology, English horn, Ettore Desderi, extinction, flute, Gounod, Jacob Stockinger, Johannes Brahms, Les Thimmig, Lori Laitman, Madison, Massenet, Maurice Ravel, Music, Native American, ornithology, passenger pigeon, Paul Rowe, Piano, piccolo, pigeon, Prague, Pro Arte Quartet, Samuel Barber, Saxophone, Singing, slave, Sonata, song, soprano, Stanley Temple, Sunday, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, UW-Madison School of Music, Violin, vocal music, voice, wildlife, Wisconsin, Witold Lutoslawski, Yale University, YouTube
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