The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: Middleton Community Orchestra and UW-Madison cellist Andrew Briggs perform music by Mendelssohn, Rossini and Dvorak this Wednesday night. Also, University Opera’s David Ronis discusses Benjamin Britten’s “The Turn of the Screw” at noon on Wisconsin Public Radio

ALERT: Today at noon on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “The Midday,” host Norman Gilliland will interview artistic director David Ronis about the University Opera’s production of Benjamin Britten’s “The Turn of the Screw,” which will be performed this Friday night, Sunday afternoon and next Tuesday night.

By Jacob Stockinger

The mostly amateur Middleton Community Orchestra (below, in a photo by William Balhorn), under the baton of Steve Kurr, will perform the winter concert of its seventh season on this Wednesday night, March 1, at the Middleton Performing Arts Center at 7:30 p.m.

The Middleton PAC is attached to Middleton High School and is attached to Middleton High School.

General admission is $15.  Students are admitted free of charge. The box office opens at 6:30 p.m. and the auditorium doors open at 7 p.m.

The program includes the “Turk in Italy” Overture by Gioachino Rossini; “Silent Woods” and Rondo in G minor, two rarely performed cello pieces by Antonin Dvorak; and the Symphony No. 5 (“Reformation”) by Felix Mendelssohn. (You can hear Dvorak’s “Silent Woods,” with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Seiji Ozawa conducting the Boston Symphony, in the YouTube video at the bottom.)  

Cello soloist Andrew Briggs (below), is returning to perform with the MCO for a second time. 

You can hear last season’s performance of the Dvorak cello concerto by Briggs with the MCO here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wc1WLWhtb4

Briggs (below) is completing his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this spring, so this may be your last chance to hear him in Madison.

SOMETHING NEW

This concert will open with a special guest, Middleton Tribune writer, Matt Geiger who will read two short stories from his new book (below).

Here is a sample from the cover of this book collection: “His little sister joins the circus. His parents buy a nerdy horse. He’s surrounded by hundreds of men dressed up as Ernest Hemingway. He tries to order a monkey through the mail. And now his baby is eating dog food.”

Matt Geiger’s award-winning stories reveal the sublime in the mundane and the comical in the banal. There is existential dread. There is festivity amid detritus. There are moments of genuine introspection on what it means to be human. And it’s all laugh-out-loud funny when told by a humorist who is determined to live an examined life, even if he’s not always entirely sure what he’s looking at.

Matt Geiger (below) was born in Brunswick, Maine, in 1979. He studied philosophy and religion at Flagler College and went on to write for newspapers and magazines in Florida, Wisconsin and the United Kingdom. He is the winner of numerous journalism awards. He currently lives in Wisconsin with his wife, his daughter, two dogs, a cat and a flock of chickens.

As always, there will be a FREE reception for the musicians and the audience after the concert.

For more information about the Middleton Community Orchestra, including its upcoming concerts and review as well as how to join it and support it, go to: http://middletoncommunityorchestra.org