The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: The Madison Early Music Festival’s 20th anniversary Grand Tour includes a silent movie and rare books as well as lots of varied music to mark its success after 20 years. Part 2 of 2
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By Jacob Stockinger
A big anniversary deserves a big celebration – and that is exactly what the organizers of this year’s Madison Early Music Festival, which is marking its 20th year, have come up with.
All concerts include a pre-concert lecture at 6:30 p.m. The concerts begin at 7:30 p.m.
Here’s the link for all the information about MEMF: https://memf.wisc.edu/
Tickets are $90 for an all-event pass. Individual concerts are $22, $12 for students. Tickets are available for purchase online and by phone at 608-265-ARTS (2787) with a $4 service fee; or in person at the Campus Arts Ticketing Box Office @ Memorial Union.
Co-artistic director Cheryl Bensman-Rowe recently wrote about the festival in a Q&A for this blog. Yesterday she spoke about the overall concept and the first weekend’s concerts. Here is a link to Part 1:
Here is Part 2 of 2:
What events take place next week?
The concert on Tuesday, July 9, is going to be a unique experience for MEMF audiences. HESPERUS creates the soundtrack for the 1923 silent film “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” with music (below) from 14th- and 15th-century France. (The cathedral was started in 1163 and finished in 1345.)
Compositions include French and Burgundian music from 1300 to 1500, featuring Guillaume de Machaut, Jehan l’Escurel, Guillaume Dufay, as well as lesser-known composers such as Vaillant, Morton and Borlet.
On Friday, July 12, the vocal ensemble Calmus (below) performs “Faith and Madness,” a program of a dialogue between sacred music masterpieces followed by madrigals that portray madness, love, war and loneliness.
Composers include Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Heinrich Schütz, Claudio Monteverdi, Carlo Gesualdo, Clement Janequin and others.
All of the singers are graduates of Leipzig’s renowned St. Thomas Church Choir School. Calmus was founded in 1999. This a cappella quintet embodies the rich choral tradition of its hometown, the city associated with Johann Sebastian Bach and Felix Mendelssohn.
To hear a preview of their arrangement of Bach’s “Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland,” BWV 659, visit: https://youtu.be/WNzzUU0GcF4
Can you tell us about the program and performers for the All-Festival concert on Saturday, July 13?
The All-Festival Concert includes all of our workshop participants and faculty. We work together to prepare the concert all week and it is truly a MEMF community project. Grant Herreid (below) has created the All-Festival program this year. Grant is a genius at designing a program that tells a musical story featuring MEMF’s faculty and participants.
“Musical Postcards from The Grand Tour” features a narrator, loosely based on Thomas Coryat (below, at sea and in the Alps), the English 17th-century century travel writer, who, as a young man, travels throughout Europe in search of music. Beginning in London, 1641, the musical itinerary continues to Venice, Rome, Naples, Dresden, Paris, and back to London.
The program features so many wonderful composers, and the large ensemble pieces are: the Gloria from Monteverdi’s Selva morale et spirituale; the beautiful Miserere of Gregorio Allegri; Nun danket alle Gott by Heinrich Schütz; Domine salvum fac regem setting by Jean-Baptiste Lully; and, as an ending, This point in time ends all your grief from Ye tuneful muses by Henry Purcell.
Are there other sessions — guest lectures, certain performers, particular works — that you especially recommend for the general public?
All the planning that goes into each festival leads me to encourage the general public to attend everything! The concert series, lectures and workshops have so much to offer.
The special moments that I’m looking forward to are singing in the All-Festival concert and performing Allegri’s Miserere,a stunning piece that I have never heard performed in Madison. (You can hear it in there YouTube video at the bottom.)
I also look forward to hearing the fantastic musical soundtrack created by HESPERUS for the silent movie “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and the Calmus singing connection back to Bach through their musical education in Leipzig, plus experiencing all the different travelogues of the past as they come to life through narrations and music.
Special events include a dance with a live band drawn from the MEMF Faculty with dance instruction by Peggy Murray, Grand Tour Dance Excursions, at the Memorial Union in the Great Hall on Thursday, July 11, at 7:30 pm. https://memf.wisc.edu/event/07-11-2019-2/
The lecture series features some well-known Madisonians like J. Michael Allsen (below top), who writes program notes and lectures for the Madison Symphony Orchestra and Maria Saffiotti Dale (below bottom), curator at the Chazen Museum of Art.
There will be a special exhibit created for MEMF in the lobby of Memorial Library by Jeanette Casey, the head of the Mills Music Library and Lisa Wettleson of Special Collections at Memorial Library. This curated display includes materials about the Grand Tour, including one of the oldest travelogues from 1611 written by Thomas Coryat.
The exhibit will be in the lobby of Memorial Library (below) and open to the public from Saturday, July 6, through Thursday, July 18, with a special talk about the exhibit during the festival on Monday, July 8, at 11:30 a.m.
This partnership allows the library to display rarely seen original and facsimile publications, some dating back to the 15th and 16th centuries within the context of the MEMF theme.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
In 1611 Thomas Coryat, the author of the travelogue Crudities foretold what you will hear at MEMF in 2019:
“…I heard the best musicke that ever I did in all my life…so good that I would willingly goe an hundred miles a foote at any time to heare the like…the Musicke which was both vocall and instrumental, so good, so delectable, so rare, so admirable, so superexcellent, that it did even ravish and stupifie all those strangers that never heard the like”.
Get your tickets for the concert series. Attend the lectures. Take some classes. See a movie. Come and dance with us. Join us to experience the ultimate musical gap year at our 20th anniversary celebration!
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Classical music: The Oakwood Chamber Players celebrate the holidays this weekend with two performances of seasonal music
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By Jacob Stockinger
This weekend the Oakwood Chamber Players (below) continue their 2018-2019 season series “Vignettes” with a holiday concert on this Saturday night, Nov. 24, at 7 p.m. and Sunday afternoon, Nov. 25, at 2 p.m.
On the program is a range of musical styles and a charming story set for chamber ensemble and narrator.
The cheery holiday-themed program will include familiar seasonal music, treasured classical composers, entertaining arrangements, and some delightful musical storytelling.
Both concerts will be held at the Oakwood Center for Arts and Education, 6209 Mineral Point Road, on Madison’s far west side near West Towne Mall.
Tickets can be purchased with cash or personal checks at the door: the cost is $25 for general admission, $20 for seniors, and $5 for students. For more information, go to: www.oakwoodchamberplayers.com or call (608) 230-4316.
The program includes music from two beloved classical composers: “Joseph, dearest, Joseph mine” from “Geistliches Wiegenlied” by Johannes Brahms; and Suite of Christmas Songs, Op. 72, by Felix Mendelssohn.
In 1927, “The Adoration of the Magi” (below) by Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli, who did many scenes of that subject, inspired Italian composer Ottorino Respighi to create an evocative composition that weaves traditional carols into his musical response to the famous painting. This version has been arranged for chamber ensemble of flute, harp and cello. (You can hear the orchestral version in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
The group will be joined by special guest artist baritone Robert “Bobby” Goderich, who has appeared with the Madison Opera and the Four Seasons Theatre. He will sing an upbeat version of the traditional Welsh Gower Wassail as well as performing Silent Night set for the intimate combination of voice, clarinet and harp.
Central to the program, Goderich (below) will narrate Sweep Dreams, an enchanting tale about a lonely man who falls in love with an enchanted broom that dances in the moonlight.
The story by the late and prize-winning author Nancy Willard (below top) was set to music by the late and renowned American choral composer Stephen Paulus (below bottom), who lived in Minneapolis and created the piece while he was composer-in-residence for the Minnesota Orchestra.
Additional works on the concert are “A Winter’s Night” by American composer Kevin McKee (below) for flugelhorn and harp, Australian composer Percy Grainger’s warm-hearted setting of “Sussex Mummers’ Carol,” and two sunny woodwind quintet settings of beloved holiday songs.
The Oakwood Chamber Players will be joined by a significant array of guest artists: Margaret Mackenzie, harp; Wes Luke, violin; Ariel Garcia, viola; Brad Townsend, bass; Jennifer Morgan, oboe; John Aley trumpet and flugelhorn; Robert “Bobby” Goderich, singer/narrator; Nicholas Bonacio, percussion; and Carrie Backman, conductor.
Regular members, who play with the Madison Symphony Orchestra, the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra and other local groups, include: Maggie Darby Townsend, cello; Marilyn Chohaney, flute; Nancy Mackenzie, clarinet; Anne Aley, horn; and Amanda Szczys, bassoon.
This is the second of five concerts in the Oakwood Chamber Players’ 2018-2019 season series entitled Vignettes. Remaining concerts will take place in 2019 on Jan. 12 and 13; March 2 and 3; and May 18 and 19.
The Oakwood Chamber Players are a group of Madison-area professional musicians who have rehearsed and performed at Oakwood Village for over 30 years.
The Oakwood Chamber Players are a professional music ensemble proudly supported by Oakwood Lutheran Senior Ministries and the Oakwood Foundation.
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Classical music: The Madison Choral Project will feature holiday music and seasonal texts at its concerts this Friday night and Sunday afternoon. A local Lawrence University alumni event follows the Sunday afternoon performance
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Madison Choral Project has sent the following announcement to be posted:
PLEASE NOTE: WE’VE CHANGED VENUES!
The fifth annual holiday concert by the Madison Choral Project (below) is called “Old Lessons and New Carols” and features a carefully curated selection of vocal music and readings.
The intent is to lead the listener along a sublime journey of music and text, perfect for this reflective season. (Sorry, The Ear has received no word about specific composers, authors or works on the program.)
Performances are: Friday night, Dec. 15, at 7:30 p.m.; and Sunday afternoon, Dec. 17, at 3 p.m.
Both concerts are located at the CHRIST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 944 East Gorham Street.
Tickets are $24 for adults and $10 for students, who must show an ID.
For more information, go to: Old Lessons and New Carols
In addition, the Lawrence University Club of Madison will hold a gathering of alumni and prospective students after the concert on Sunday afternoon.
A special Lawrence reception will be held after the performance that will include a Q&A with Lawrence alumna and Madison Choral Project soprano Rachel Edie Warrick ’99 (below top), as well as the choir’s artistic director and conductor, Albert Pinsonneault (below bottom).
General admission is $24 per adult in advance, and $28 at the door. Admission for students, who must show ID, is $10 either in advance or at the door.
For tickets and more information about the Madison Choral Project, go to: http://themcp.org
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Classical music: John W. Barker’s book on the history of UW-Madison’s Pro Arte Quartet to be published this fall
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By Jacob Stockinger
Local chamber music fans may recall that five or six years ago, the gala centennial of the Pro Arte Quartet, the string quartet-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was celebrated in many ways.
After all, the Pro Arte Quartet (below in a photo by Rick Langer) had by then become the longest-lived string quartet in the history of music.
Furthermore, the quartet and the UW-Madison established the model for chamber music group affiliations with universities, which has since become standard.
There were six commissions, later recorded in two volumes and three CDs (below) by Albany Records.
There were many free live concerts with the world premieres of the commissions.
There was a tour to Belgium (below is a concert at the Royal Conservatory), the home country of the quartet that was exiled in Madison while on tour in 1941, when Hitler invaded Belgium during World War II.
There was a terrific and impressive Pro Arte Quartet display at Dane County Regional Airport, put together with Tandem Press art publishers at the UW-Madison.
And there was a book, a complete history of the Pro Arte Quartet, commissioned from John W. Barker (below), a professor emeritus of Medieval history at the UW-Madison who is also the premier music critic in Madison. He writes for Isthmus and this blog.
Now his project, full of original research, has come to fruition and will be published in October.
Here is a link to information, including how to pre-order a copy, about the book and the author from the University of Rochester Press (Boydell and Brewer):
https://boydellandbrewer.com/the-pro-arte-quartet-hb.html
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Classical music: Award-winning University Opera performs Benjamin Britten’s “The Turn of the Screw” this Friday night, Sunday afternoon and next Tuesday night
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By Jacob Stockinger
The black-and-white poster (below) looks fittingly eerie, spooky and creepy for one of the most famous ghost stories ever written. Look carefully at the blurry outlines of people – or are they spirits? The ambiguity is deliberate.
The poster advertises the opera “The Turn of the Screw,” which was written in 1954 by British composer Benjamin Britten (below, in a 1968 publicity photo by Decca Records taken by Hans Wild) and is based on a famous gothic novella by the 19th-century American writer Henry James. (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear an excerpt from the production at the 2007 Glyndebourne Festival.)
The production of Britten’s last chamber opera promises to be exciting, engaging and innovative. That is thanks to the University Opera’s new permanent artistic director David Ronis (below, in a photo by Luke DeLalio), a transplanted New Yorker who recently won national awards for two earlier productions at the UW-Madison when he was the opera company’s guest interim director for two seasons.
Below is a link to the complete story, with links to the awards story and other aspects. It also contains information about the cast and about tickets ($25 for adults, $20 for seniors and $10 for students).
The Ear wants to point out just a few important highlights:
Performances are in Music Hall, at the foot of Bascom Hill, on this Friday at 7:30 p.m., this Sunday at 3 p.m. and next Tuesday night at 7:30 p.m.
After each performance, a talk-back for the audience to ask questions of the cast and the artistic staff will be held.
The running time is two hours with intermission.
The opera will be sung in English, but will also feature supertitles so the audience can easily understand the poetic libretto and follow the story.
The talented and experienced UW-Madison graduate student Kyle Knox (below) will conduct members of the UW Symphony Orchestra. Knox has conducted the UW Symphony and the University Opera many times before, and has also conducted for the Madison Opera and the Middleton Community Orchestra. Some mention him as a serious candidate to succeed his retiring and acclaimed teacher, Professor James Smith.
Here is the link to the full story, with many more details including cast members, on the UW-Madison Mead Witter School of Music’s website:
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