The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: Tuesday night brings concerts of band music as well as organ and violin duets

October 21, 2019
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By Jacob Stockinger

This Tuesday night, Oct. 22, will see concerts of band music and organ-violin duets.

Here are details:

ORGAN AND VIOLIN CONCERT

At 7:30 p.m. in Overture Hall, the Overture Concert Organ Series, sponsored by the Madison Symphony Orchestra and organized by MSO principal organist Greg Zelek, offers a concert of music for organ and violin.

The organist is Michael Hey (below right), a Wisconsin native who won first prize at an organ competition in Shanghai, China, and is the organist at the famed St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.

The violinist is Christiana Liberis (below left) who recently toured with the rock band The Eagles.

Tickets are $20.

The program includes music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Sir Edward Elgar, Maurice Ravel, Charles-Marie Widor, Giovanni Battista Vitali, Naji Hakim and Fritz Kreisler.

In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear the duo perform a haunting version of the popular “Gymnopedie No. 1” by Erik Satie

For information, including specific works on the program and detailed biographies about the performers, go to: https://madisonsymphony.org/event/organ-michael-hey-christiana-liberis/

UW-MADISON CONCERT BAND

At 7:30 p.m. in the new Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall of the  Hamel Music Center, 740 University Avenue, the UW-Madison Concert Band (below) will perform a FREE concert.

The band will perform under director Scott Teeple (below) and guest conductor Ross Wolf.

The program includes:

“Lux Arumque” by Eric Whitacre
“Firefly” by Ryan George
“Colonial Song” by Percy Grainger/ed. Mark Rogers
“Huntington Tower Ballad” by Ottorino Respighi
“George Washington Bridge” by William Schuman

For information, go to: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/uw-concert-band-and-winds-of-wisconsin/


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Classical music: The eclectic fusion group Mr. Chair plays music by Stravinsky, Satie and others on Monday night in Spring Green

August 17, 2019
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By Jacob Stockinger

The Ear has received the following announcement from the Rural Musicians Forum:

Mr. Chair looks like a jazz quartet, sounds sometimes like a rock band, but in actuality is a contemporary classical music group in the guise of a modern band.

Classically trained musicians who are well versed in jazz, the players in Mr. Chair create a new sound using both acoustic and electric instruments.(You can hear Mr. Chair perform the original composition “Freed” in the the YouTube video at the bottom.)

The Rural Musicians Forum audience will have the chance to enjoy the soundscapes of this fascinating eclectic fusion group on this coming Monday night, Aug. 19, at 7:30 p.m. at Taliesin’s Hillside Theater (below) in Spring Green.

Members of Mr. Chair (below) are Professor Mark Hetzler, trombone and electronics; Jason Kutz, piano and keyboards; Ben Ferris, acoustic and electric bass; and Mike Koszewski, drums and percussion. All have close ties to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music, where they also perform as an ensemble.

Mr. Chair’s compositions are long-form journeys, telling stories through sound by using and exploring the three pillars of music: melody, harmony and rhythm. Think cinematic, orchestral, surreal, romantic, emotional and gripping, and always equal parts dissonant and consonant. Their influences are far-reaching from classical, blues and rock to soul, funk, jazz and beyond.

For this concert, Mr. Chair will perform re-imagined excerpts from Igor Stravinsky’s Neo-Classical ballet masterpiece Pulcinella as well as music by Erik Satie and selections from their debut album, NEBULEBULA, which will be released on Thursday, Sept. 5, on vinyl, CD and digital streaming platforms.

The genre-bending quartet will perform in the beautiful Hillside Theater designed by Frank Lloyd Wright as part of his Taliesin compound. It is located at 6604 State Highway 23, about five miles south of Spring Green.

Admission is by free will offering, with a suggested donation of $15.


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Classical music: YOU MUST HEAR THIS – the “Meditation” for solo piano by Mexican composer Carlos Chavez

July 27, 2019
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By Jacob Stockinger

The solo piano repertoire is huge, but The Ear knows quite a lot of it.

Yet here is a piece he had never heard, live or recorded, until he finally did hear it this week on Wisconsin Public Radio.

It is the five-minute ”Meditacion” – or Meditation – by the 20th-century Mexican composer Carlos Chavez (below, in a photo by Paul Strand).

It is played beautifully and sensitively in a live performance by the unjustly neglected Mexican virtuoso pianist Jorge Federico Osorio (below), and was recorded — perhaps as an encore, given the applause at the end — with the Piano Concerto by Chavez for the nonprofit Cedille Records in Chicago and distributed by Naxos Records.

Listen to it and let The Ear know what you think.

Does anyone else hear echoes of the eccentric French composer Erik Satie in the music? Shades of other pieces or composers?

Do you like the Chavez piece?

The Ear wants to hear.


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