The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music education: The Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra ends as it began — with an impressive display of young talent in both classic and contemporary music
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By Jacob Stockinger
Here is a special posting, a review written by frequent guest critic and writer for this blog, John W. Barker. Barker (below) is an emeritus professor of Medieval history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also is a well-known classical music critic who writes for Isthmus and the American Record Guide, and who for 12 years hosted an early music show every other Sunday morning on WORT-FM 89.9 FM. He serves on the Board of Advisors for the Madison Early Music Festival and frequently gives pre-concert lectures in Madison.
By John W. Barker
On Friday evening, the Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra (MAYCO, below in a photo by John W. Barker) gave, in the Atrium Auditorium at the First Unitarian Society of Madison, the concert that concluded its sixth season.
Founded in 2011, it has been a remarkable venture that has given student musicians of high-school level the chance to enjoy full-scale orchestral experience.
But the group’s founder and director, the versatile and multi-talented Madison native Mikko Rankin Utevsky (below), is apparently irreplaceable in this effort; and he has found that he must move on in his career. So, this latest and 10th concert was also the orchestra’s last.
To mark the occasion, Utevsky, who just graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, is an enthusiastic champion of new music, and the orchestra commissioned a new composition, which then received its world premiere on Friday night.
The composer is the 25-year-old, Minneapolis-based avant-garde musician Ben Davis (below) who created a work with the not very helpful title of “is a is a is b is.” (I’m not making that up!) It is scored for a full ensemble of strings, winds and percussion plus an electronic screeching machine.
It is, in truth, not a piece of music at all, but a 20-minute experiment in the kinds of unusual — and not particularly pleasant — sounds that a group of orchestral players can make with their instruments. There are passages of repeated unison notes (the same one over and over) at goodly volume. And the last three minutes or so is an unaccompanied solo for the screeching machine on a single, piercing tone.
Whether this made a worthy valedictory salute to MAYCO’s audience and supporters is, I suppose, a matter of taste.
Fortunately, this new work was cushioned on either side by much more familiar material.
Opening the program was the beloved Overture to the opera The Barber of Seville by Gioachino Rossini. This was brought off with full-steam-ahead momentum by the players under Utevsky’s enthusiastic leadership.
And then, to conclude, came the same work that Utevsky included in the very first MAYCO program: Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
The players were clearly quite fired up at the chance to tackle this score and did themselves genuine credit. Utevsky provided fast and forceful leadership that stressed the dramatic power of this music—which was, in its day, as surprising and shocking as a lot of “new” music today, we must remember.
The audience shared with the performers a rousing experience.
Among his other functions, Utevsky also wrote admirably illuminating program notes for the Rossini and Beethoven works—contrasting with those contributed by Davis, which were as nose-thumbing as his composition.
It is sad to think that MAYCO is now a thing of the past. What a wonderful idea it has been, something that testifies to the remarkable quantity and quality of young musical talent here.
If his orchestra is now gone, we must certainly keep our eyes and ears open for what the gifted Utevsky moves on to next.
Tags: American Record Guide, Arts, avant-garde, Beethoven, Ben Davis, Cello, Chamber music, Classical music, commission, composer, Concert, conductor, contemporary music, Education, Fifth Symphony, First Unitarian Society of Madison, History, Isthmus, John Williams, lectures, Ludwig van Beethoven, Madison, Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra, Madison Early Music Festival, MAYCO, Medieval, Mikko Utevsky, Music, Music education, New Music, opera, Orchestra, Overture, professor, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Rossini, symphony, The Barber of Seville, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Viola, Violin, world premiere, WORT-FM 89.9
Classical music: The Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra (MAYCO) closes out its existence this Friday night.
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear notes with sadness the passing of a fine and inspiring institution that has fostered music education.
It is the Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra (below), also known as MAYCO, and this Friday night it will give its 10th – and final – performance.
The concert is this Friday night at 8 p.m. (NOT 7:30 p.m. as originally announced) in the Artrium auditorium of the First Unitarian Society of Madison (NOT Music Hall). Admission is $10 for the public, with students getting in for a free-will donation.
Much about the final concert follows a familiar pattern.
For one, old classics will be mixed with new music.
In this case, the old classics are the Overture to the operas “The Barber of Seville” by Giachino Rossini and the famously forceful Fifth Symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven. (You can get a taste of both the symphony and MAYCO in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
The new work is the world premiere of “is a is a is b is” by Ben Davis (below), a graduate of the UW-Madison.
Also in keeping with MAYCO’S past, it will conducted by its founder and music director Mikko Rankin Utevsky (below), who founded it while he was still a student at East High School in Madison.
Since then Utevsky graduated this past May from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, where he majored in viola, conducting and singing, even appearing in baritone roles in several University Opera productions and giving a lieder recital.
All that plus he proved a talented reviewer and writer for this blog, especially when he chronicled tour of Vienna, Prague and Budapest by the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras (WYSO) several years ago. You can read his writing by using the search engine in this blog. Just type in his name.
Why is MAYCO coming to an end?
Utevsky says simply and without bitterness that it is time for him to move on. He is taking off a year before pursuing graduate studies.
You can see what an achievement MAYCO provided – with lists of repertoire, composers and performers –by going to its home website:
http://www.mayco.org/#!concerts/cnnz
Tags: Arts, Bach, Barber of Seville, baritone, Baroque, Beethoven, Ben Davis, blog, Budapest, Cello, Chamber music, Classical music, composer, concerto, conduct, Education, Fifth Symphony, Franz Schubert, Graduate School, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Madison, Mikko Utevsky, Mozart, Music, Music education, New Music, opera, performer, Piano, Prague, repertoire, Rossini, sing, symphony, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, University Opera, Vienna, Viola, Violin, vocal music, Wisconsin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, world premiere, Writer, YouTube
Classical music: A FREE and PUBLIC choral and guitar concert this Sunday night at Edgewood College will explore the new St. John’s Bible musically and visually.
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ALERT: This Sunday night at 8 p.m in Mills Hall, a FREE concert by the local percussion group Clocks in Motion will give the world premieres of two new works by composers Ben Davis and Anthony Donotrio.
By Jacob Stockinger
This Sunday night, Nov. 22, at 7 p.m. the public will have the chance to explore musically and visually the modern Saint John’s Bible, a large mutli-volume work. which is beautifully illuminated with original contemporary art that is reminiscent of Medieval illuminated manuscripts.
The audio-visual event, “Illuminated Harmony,” will take place in the St. Joseph Chapel, 1000 Edgewood College Drive.
No tickets are required and the event is FREE. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m.
This musical and visual collaboration explores the themes of creation, incarnation and transformation. Inspired by illuminations from the Saint John’s Bible Heritage edition, choral selections will be accompanied by projected animations of the chosen illuminated images. It was on display this past year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison‘s Chazen Museum of Art.
Edgewood College officials say that this concert is an invitation to the community to tap into the deep spirituality of the music and the illuminations in the presence of the Gospels and the Acts volume of the Saint John’s Bible Heritage Edition.
Here is a link to the official website for the Bible, which was commissioned and cost $145,000 in 1998 and was finished in 2011:
http://www.saintjohnsbible.org
And here is a link to an online exhibition of the Bible at The Library of Congress, so you can explore it more before or after the concert:
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/stjohnsbible/stjohns-exhibit.html
The event will feature the Campus-Community Choir, the Chamber Singers, the Women’s Choir (below) and the Guitar Ensemble. Sorry, no word about the specific pieces or composers that will be sung and played.
Here is a link to a brief audiovisual sample of the Edgewood presentation:
In the YouTube video below, art director Donald Jackson talks about creating the new Bible:
Tags: acts, Anthony Donotrio, Arts, Ben Davis, Bible, Campus, Chamber music, chamber singers, Chazen Museum of Art, Choir, choral music, Christ, Christianity, Classical music, Clocks in Motion, community, Edgewood Chamber Orchestra, Edgewood College, gospels, guitar, Jacob Stockinger, Library of Congress, Madison, manuscript, Music, New Music, Orchestra, percussion, Piano, St. John University, The Saint John's Bible, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, vocal music, women, women;s choir, YouTube
Classical music: University of Wisconsin percussion group Clocks in Motion will give a FREE concert of unusual new music, including the world premiere of the winner of its first composing contest, this Sunday afternoon. Plus, on Saturday a harpsichord recital of Baroque masters will be given at the First Unitarian Society.
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ALERT: This Saturday night at 7 p.m. in the Landmark Auditorium at the historic Meeting House at the First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Drive, Stephen Alltop of Northwestern University will give a harpsichord recital. The program features the music of Johann Sebastian Bach (Toccata in E minor, Preludes and Fugues in D major and D minor from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I), Domenico Scarlatti (two sonatas), Jean-Philippe Rameau (Suite in A Minor), Franz Joseph Haydn (Sonata No. 6 in G Major) and George Frideric Handel (Suite in G Minor). A free will offering will be taken.
By Jacob Stockinger
Clocks in Motion, Madison’s cutting-edge new music ensemble, will present Unfamiliar Voices 1.0, an expansive program featuring music from both the heart of the established percussion ensemble literature and the forefront of modern percussion composition.
The FREE performance is this coming Sunday, Feb. 16, at 3 p.m. in Mils Hall. It will celebrate composer and UW-Madison student Ben Davis, the 2014 Clocks in Motion Call for Scores winner, with the world premiere of his exciting new work, “Night.”
The ensemble will also perform the meditative percussion quartet, “Threads,” by Paul Lansky and the grand percussion sextet, “Kryptogramma,” by Georges Aperghis.
Ben Davis (below), a composer, trumpeter and teacher from Richmond, Virginia, writes for unique instruments built by Clocks in Motion. His new work employs sixxen — large aluminum keyboard instruments that are tuned microtonally (vastly different from the standard repeating 12-tone scale in most western music).
The three sets of sixxen (below, in the foreground with other percussion instruments) in the piece are purposefully out of tune with each other, creating an entrancing sound cloud of beading frequencies for the listener. In contrast, the other three players in the piece each play a bombastic multi-percussion setup of tom toms, snare drums, kick drums, and china cymbals. Davis’ innovative work is sure to impress.
Paul Lansky (below) shares some insightful thoughts on his 2005 work: “Threads… is a half-hour long ‘cantata’ for percussion quartet in ten short movements. (You can hear it at the bottom in a YouTube video performance from the Peabody Conservatory of Music at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.)
Adds Lansky: “There are three “threads” that are interwoven in the piece: Arias and Preludes that focus on the metallic pitched sounds of vibraphones, glockenspiel and pipes; Choruses in which drumming predominates; and Recitatives made largely from John Cage-like noise instruments, bottles, flower pots, crotales, etc. The aim of the different threads is to highlight the wide range of qualities that percussion instruments are capable of, from lyrical and tender to forceful and aggressive, and weave them into one continuous ‘thread.’ The movements are performed without interruption.”
Georges Aperghis’ 1970 composition “Kryptogramma” is a massive undertaking. Puzzling instrumental combinations and bizarre rhythmic structures make this one of the most fascinating and complex percussion ensemble works ever written.
“Kryptogramma” means “concealed text/writing”. In the words of composer Aperghis (below): “Every cyptogram [in the piece] conceals a text or number sequence, behind which information is hidden…simple rhythms…are developed in a tapestry of soaring movements, and…subjected to a mass of variation.”
Clocks in Motion members are Dave Alcorn, Jennifer Hedstrom, Sean Kleve, Michael Koszewski James McKenzie, and Joseph Murfin. For the concert on Feb. 16, Clocks in Motion will welcome percussionists Vincent Mingils and Somali Wilson as guest performers.
All performers are either current or former students of the UW-Madison percussion studio.
Hailed as “nothing short of remarkable” (ClevelandClassical.com), Clocks in Motion is a group that performs new music, builds rare instruments, and breaks down the boundaries of the traditional concert program.
Formed in 2011, the ensemble is currently in residence at the University of Wisconsin School of Music. The individual members of Clocks in Motion’s unique skill sets and specialties contain an impressive mix of musical styles including, rock, jazz, contemporary classical music, orchestral percussion, marching percussion, and world music styles.
Among its many recent engagements, the group served as resident performers and educators at the Interlochen Arts Academy, Rhapsody Arts Center, University of Michigan, Baldwin-Wallace University, and the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.
Admission is free. For more information, including repertoire, upcoming events, biographies, and media, visit http://clocksinmotionpercussion.com.
Tags: Arts, Baldwin-Wallace University, Baltimore, Ben Davis, Chamber music, Classical music, Clocks, Clocks in Motion, Contemporary classical music, Domenico Scarlatti, First Unitarian Society of Madison, Franz Joseph Haydn, fugue, George Frideric Handel, Georges Aperghis, harpsichord, Interlochen Center for the Arts, Jacob Stockinger, Jazz, John Cage, Johns Hopkins University, Madison, microtone, Musical ensemble, New Music, Northwestern University, Paul Lansky, Peabody Conservatory of Music, Peabody Institute, percussion, Percussion instrument, Prelude, Rock, sixxen, Sonata, Suite, Sunday, toccata, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Well-Tempered Clavier, YouTube
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The Well-Tempered Ear 