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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the following announcement to post:
The Wisconsin Chamber Choir (WCC, below) with a special guest — Grammy Award-winning soprano and UW-Madison graduate Sarah Brailey – will perform this Saturday, May 15, at 7 p.m.
“Music She Wrote” is a celebration of music composed by a highly diverse group of women from many ages.
Choir members will sing from their individual cars using wireless microphones, listening to the sound of the whole choir via their car radios.
The audience is invited to listen in live on YouTube and to let us know they are interested by sending an RSVP to our Facebook event.
There is no charge to view the livestream, but donations will be welcome.
Here are the links to hear the performance LIVE on YouTube or Facebook:
The WCC had scheduled a regular concert with an all-female cast of composers for May 2020, which fell victim to Covid-19. As it became obvious that the pandemic would last longer, the WCC started exploring new ways of making and disseminating music.
From September 2020, we resumed activity in the shape of the Parking Lot Choir, generating local media coverage from WKOW-TV and Madison Magazine, whose story was headlined “Forget tailgates, parking lots are for choir practice.”
The result of this first rehearsal run was the widely acclaimed “Car Carols” concert in December 2020, whose format is the model for “Music She Wrote.”
In addition to the Parking Lot Choir, three smaller groups from the WCC assembled at the Edgewood College Amphitheater on Saturday mornings to rehearse (below) in widely spaced formations, wearing specially designed singer masks.
Another such group, made up of our members from southeastern Wisconsin, met in Whitewater on Sunday afternoons. Recordings by those four small groups will be aired during the May 15 broadcast in addition to live singing by the Parking Lot choristers.
The program includes: the Garden Songs by Fanny Hensel, née Mendelssohn (Felix’s sister, below), which were intended for outdoor performance; and Ethel Smyth’s March of the Women, the anthem of the women’s suffrage movement in the English-speaking world.
In addition to works by African American composers Ysaÿe M. Barnwell (below top) and Rosephanye Powell and by Cuban composer Beatriz Corona (below second), the program includes samples from outside the Western tradition — Lamma Badaa Yatathannaa, sung in Arabic, by Shireen Abu-Shader (below third), who hails from Jordan but received her academic education in the U.S. and Canada; and two pieces by Japanese composer Makiko Kinoshita (below bottom).
Western early music is represented by Italian composers Raffaella Aleotti (below top) and Chiara Cozzolani (below bottom), who lived in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Finally, there is singer-songwriter Judy Collins with her Song for Sarajevo, composed for the children of the war in Bosnia in 1994 and arranged by her longtime collaborator, Russell Walden. (You can hear it in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Sarah Brailey (below, in a photo by Miranda Loud), a native of Wisconsin, studied at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she has just completed her doctorate. A consummate musician and internationally acclaimed soloist, she recently won a Grammy Award in the Best Classical Vocal Solo Album category for her role as The Soul in the world premiere recording of Ethel Smyth’s The Prison.
She is familiar to Madison audiences not only as a performer and co-founder of Just Bach but also as the co-host of WORT’s Musica Antiqua show on FM 89.9 and the director of Grace Presents.
As a graduate student, she joined the WCC for two seasons from 2004 to 2006. We are thrilled to welcome her back! For more information on Sarah, see her website at https://sarahbrailey.com
IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST, PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD. FORWARD A LINK TO IT OR, SHARE or TAG IT (not just “Like” it) ON FACEBOOK. Performers can use the extra exposure to draw potential audience members to an event.
By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the followed announcement from Farley’s House of Pianos about its solo recital tonight.
“We are sad to announce that pianist Ya-Fei Chuang has sustained an injury that will prevent her from performing for us TONIGHT and teaching a master class on Sunday. It is our intent to reschedule her as soon as her health and schedule permit.
“In the meantime, we are very fortunate that James Giles (below), of Northwestern University, is able to step in and perform for us, and we are excited about the program and repertoire he has shaped for us.
“We apologize for this last-minute change, but are excited to introduce James Giles to our Salon Piano Series audience, and look forward to seeing you TONIGHT at 7:30 p.m. at 6522 Seybold Road, on Madison’s far west side near West Towne Mall.”
His recital at Salon Piano Series will include works of Johannes Brahms, Franz Schubert, Isaac Albeniz, Ignaz Jan Paderewski, Leopold Godowsky and others.
An artist’s reception will follow the concert.
Tickets are $50 in at the door ($10 for tickets) and $45 in advance at:
Giles has been praised as “a technically polished, elegant pianist” (Sibelius Academy, Helsinki), “with a riveting intelligence given to everything he play[s],” (Wigmore Hall, London), a “distinctive interpretive persona [and] beautiful pianism … direct and unmannered” (Alice Tully Hall, New York). His Paris recital at the Salle Cortot in 2004 was hailed as “a true revelation, due equally to the pianist’s artistry as to his choice of program.” (You can hear Giles playing the Humoresque by Robert Schumann in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Giles regularly performs in important musical centers in America, Europe, and Asia, in solo and chamber recitals and as concerto soloist. A native of North Carolina, he studied at the Manhattan School, the Juilliard School, Eastman School of Music, and at Oberlin College. He was awarded a Fulbright Grant to study in Italy with the legendary Russian pianist Lazar Berman.
Coordinator of the Piano Program and Director of Music Performance Graduate Studies at Northwestern University, Giles is director of the Amalfi Coast Music Festival during the summers, and was director of the 2017 American Liszt Society Festival.
IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST, PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD. FORWARD A LINK TO IT OR, SHARE or TAG IT (not just “Like” it) ON FACEBOOK. Performers can use the extra exposure to draw potential audience members to an event.
By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the following announcement to post:
The 16th annual Wisconsin Flute Festival will be held on this coming Saturday, April 6, at the Pyle Center, 702 Langdon Street, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The Wisconsin Flute Festival brings together flutists and music lovers of all ages from Wisconsin, the greater Midwest, and across the country, for an engaging and educational day celebrating everything flute.
The festival includes: workshops; lectures; performances; junior, youth, and collegiate artist competitions; master classes and an extensive exhibit hall.
This year’s festival will feature guest artist Bonita Boyd (below in a photo by Kate Lemmon), an internationally renowned performer and Professor of Flute at the Eastman School of Music. (You can hear a sample of her teaching in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
The festival will begin at 8 a.m. at the Pyle Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and will culminate in a FREE 90-minute public concert beginning at 5:30 p.m. in Music Hall, at the bottom of Bascom Hill and a short walk from the Pyle Center.
The free evening concert will be performed by featured guest artist Bonita Boyd with Madison guitarist Christopher Allen (below).
Workshop topics will include yoga for flutists, orchestral audition preparation, recording techniques, a repair clinic, piccolo techniques, and more.
Participants will also have the opportunity to participate in an interactive session with low flutes including; alto flutes, bass flutes, and a contrabass flute, and take part in two flute choir reading sessions.
Performances during the day will feature an eclectic mix of music performed by professional and student flutists.
Festival attendees will hear music by composers from around the globe and from a variety of periods. Compositions by living composers will feature prominently in many of the recitals at the festival. Solo flute, flute and piano, flute quartet, and flute with mixed ensemble can be heard.
For flutists shopping for an instrument, music or accessories, companies from across the U.S. will be on-site in the Festival’s exhibit hall. Technicians will be also available to evaluate instruments and conduct minor repairs. Confirmed exhibitors include Burkart Flutes and Piccolos, Flute Specialists, Inc., Flute World, the Geoghegan Company, Heid Music and Verne Q. Powell Flutes.
Tickets range from $30 to $40 for festival participants. Tickets for non-flutist family members of participants (parents, siblings, etc.) are available for at a special rate of $7. Registration is now open and information is available online at https://wisconsinflutefestival.org. Tickets can also be purchased at the festival.
The evening concert, beginning at 5:30 p.m., will be held in Music Hall at the UW-Madison and is FREE and open to the public.
The program will include Mountain Songs by Robert Beaser, Histoire du Tango by Astor Piazzolla, Canyon Echoes by Katherine Hoover, Entr’acte by Jacques Ibert and Pièce en form de Habenera by Maurice Ravel.
The 2019 Flute Festival – which is a program of the Madison Flute Club — is sponsored by Heid Music. Major funding is provided by Verne Q. Powell Flutes, American Printing, Eric and Tobi Breisach, Distillery Marketing and Design, and Karl Sandelin – in memory of Joyce Sandelin.
Additional funding is provided by Audio for the Arts, Breisach Cordell PLLC, Dr. Danielle and Jeffrey Breisach, Madison Classical Guitar Society, Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras, and Jessica and Jim Yehle.
ABOUT THE MADISON FLUTE CLUB
The Madison Flute Club was founded in 2002 and currently presents over 20 concerts each year to an audience of more than 1,500 community members. The club involves, on average, 35 active adult members and over 30 youth from the surrounding area.
To advance and achieve its mission, the Madison Flute Club has undertaken several large projects and partnered with numerous organizations and events in Dane County. These projects include the commissioning and world premiere of a work for flute choir for Design MMoCA, successfully fundraising for a contrabass flute — the first such instrument in Wisconsin — and performing at the National Flute Association Convention.
Madison Flute Club ensembles and members have been featured on Wisconsin Public Radio’s The Midday with Norman Gilliland, on WORT 89.9 FM in Madison and in the publication The Flutist Quarterly.