The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: The Madison-based new music ensemble Clocks in Motion will perform John Luther Adams’ look at Arctic life in Alaska in “Earth and the Great Weather” on Saturday night for FREE at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Plus, “Sunday Afternoon Live From the Chazen” features an all-Brahms concert.

ALERT: Is there no end to the great music awaiting you this weekend? This week’s “Sunday Live From the Chazen” features clarinetist John Marco, pianist Eugene Alcalay and cellist Parry Karp of the UW-Madison‘s Pro Arte Quartet. They will perform an all-Brahms program. It will be broadcast LIVE from 12:30 to 2 p.m. on Wisconsin Public Radio (WERN 88.7 FM in the Madison area). The FREE concert is in Brittingham Gallery 3 of the Chazen Museum of Art on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. The Ear wishes he could tell you the specific works on the program, but WPR lists nothing about the concert and the Chazen only lists dates and performers plus reservation information (visit  http://www.chazen.wisc.edu/search/9254ec53aee7833b552dad8b6f5cda84/ and read from bottom to top. Please, webmasters, update your websites for the new semester in a reader-informative and reader-friendly way! Otherwise, what good is all the high technology?

By Jacob Stockinger 

We are not quite yet mid-winter in this season of sub-zero Polar Vortex slippages, and yet we have another chance to Hear the Cold this weekend.

You cay recall that this weekend the Oakwood Chamber Players will give two performances on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon of a “Nordic” program that features works by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, Danish composer Carl Nielsen and Sveinbjorn Sveinbjornsson of Iceland.  (For details, here is a link:

https://welltempered.wordpress.com/2014/01/29/classical-music-hear-the-cold-oakwood-chamber-players-will-perform-a-nordic-program-of-icelandic-finnish-and-danish-chamber-music-this-saturday-and-sunday/

But on SATURDAY night — NOT Sunday night as mistakenly listed in some press releases — there is also a chance to hear an unusual work by a contemporary American composer, John Luther Adams (below), who is not to be confused with the Minimalist John Adams, the composer of the operas “Nixon in China” and “Doctor Atomic” among many other works.

Here are more details about he work, drawn largely from a press release by the performing ensemble.

Clocks in Motion (below), Madison’s cutting-edge new music ensemble, will present the Madison premiere of John Luther Adams’ “Earth and the Great Weather,” a collaborative multi-media performance depicting the Arctic physical, cultural and spiritual landscapes of Northern Alaska. (An excerpt, “Drums of Winter,” can be heard at the bottom in a YouTube video.)

Percussion, strings, chorus, digital delay patterns, spoken texts and pre-recorded nature sounds will join forces in this ambitious and innovative work on Saturday, Feb. 1, in Mills Hall at 7:30 p.m.

Admission is free.

Each movement of the genre-defying piece focuses on a different element of Arctic life. 

According to the composer, “The landscape from which “Earth and the Great Weather” is drawn is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (below) …one of the last great wilderness regions of North America.  It also embraces the homelands of both the Gwich’in Indians and the Inupiat Eskimos.”

The 10 colorful and drastically different movements are meant to envelope the listener in a transcendental sound environment. In this YouTube video below, the composer explains his personal view of music.

Clocks in Motion has assembled a team of professional musicians to present this unique concert experience to the community.

Chelsie Propst (below top), Sarah Richardson, Cheryl Rowe, and Paul Rowe will comprise the vocal chorus, while Carol Carlson, Max Wollam-Fisher, Spencer Hobbs, and Mikko Utevsky (below bottom) will serve as the string quartet.

Steve Gotcher, audio engineer for Audio for the Arts, will control the complex electronic component of the performance.  Matthew Schlomer (below, in a photo by Laura Zastrow) will conduct.

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, the Rhapsody Arts Center, the University of Michigan, Baldwin-Wallace University, and the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.  

This project is supported by Dane Arts.

For more information, including repertoire, upcoming events, biographies, and media, visit:

http://clocksinmotionpercussion.com.

Here is a story about the concert (plus other news) on the UW School of Music’s outstanding blog “Fanfare”:

http://uwmadisonschoolofmusic.wordpress.com

And here is a link to a profile of Clocks in Motion that appeared in The Wisconsin State Journal:

http://host.madison.com/entertainment/music/music-the-fast-moving-hands-of-clocks-in-motion/article_d033d14e-b8cf-5257-bd09-f14f9e794526.html#ixzz2rp9u1KMw