The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: The Pro Arte Quartet minus one plays string trios this Friday night and Sunday afternoon, then starts its Beethoven string quartet cycle on Friday, Nov. 22. Plus 3 UW profs premiere a new fusion work tonight
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CORRECTION: The all-Telemann concert by the Madison Bach Musicians on this Saturday night at the First Unitarian Society of Madison is at 8 p.m. — NOT 7:30 as it was mistakenly listed in the early version of yesterday’s post. The Ear apologizes for the error. The pre-concert lecture is at 7:15 p.m. There is also a performance on Sunday at Holy Wisdom Monastery in Middleton at 3:30 p.m., with a lecture at 2:45 p.m. For more information, go to: https://welltempered.wordpress.com/2019/10/02/classical-music-how-did-baroque-composer-telemann-get-overshadowed-and-why-is-he-being-rediscovered-trevor-stephenson-talks-about-his-all-telemann-concerts-this-weekend/
ALERT: TONIGHT, Thursday, Oct. 3, at 8 p.m., three UW-Madison music professors — Anthony Di Sanza (percussion), Tom Curry (tuba, keyboard and electronics) and Mark Hetzler (trombone and electronics) — will perform their new composition “Don’t Look Down” at the Arts + Literature Laboratory, located at 2021 Winnebago Street on Madison’s near east side. (Phone is 608 556-7415.)
The trio’s goal to showcase their instruments using a combination of electro-acoustic techniques, improvisation and traditional chamber music applications to create an array of sonic environments and musical languages.
The result is a work that looks at the impact of media and technology on society, while featuring shifting soundscapes and a variety of styles including classical, rock, jazz and experimental.
Tickets are $10 in advance at: https://dontlookdown.brownpapertickets.com; and $15 at the door. Student tickets are $5 off with a valid school ID. Advance ticket sales end one hour before the show. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.
By Jacob Stockinger
First, a news flash: The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s critically acclaimed Pro Arte Quartet (below, in a photo by Rick Langer) will begin its complete cycle of Beethoven’s 16 string quartets on Friday, Nov. 22.
The program, time and other dates are not available yet, but should be announced soon.
The performances are part of the 2020 Beethoven Year, which will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Stayed tuned for more details.
This Friday night, Oct. 4, at 8 p.m. in Mills Hall, three members of the Pro Arte will perform a FREE concert of string trios. Performers are second violinist Suzanne Beia, violist Sally Chisholm and cellist Parry Karp.
Featured on the program are: the Serenade in C Major, Op. 10 (1902), by the Hungarian composer Ernst von Dohnanyi (below top); the String Trio, Op. 48 (1950), by the Polish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg (below bottom); and the Serenade in D Major, Op. 8 (1796-97), by Ludwig van Beethoven.) You can hear the opening movement of the Weinberg Trio in the YouTube video at the bottom.
For more information about the quartet and the program, go to: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/pro-arte-quartet-5/
This Sunday afternoon, the Pro Arte Quartet will also perform FREE at the Chazen Museum of Art on Sunday Afternoon Live at the Chazen. The same program of string trios will be repeated. The performance will be held starting at 12:30 in the Brittingham Gallery 3.
For details about attending, go to: https://www.chazen.wisc.edu/index.php?/events-calendar-demo/event/sunday-afternoon-live-at-the-chazen9/
It will also be streamed live at the following portal: https://c.streamhoster.com/embed/media/O7sBNG/OS1C0ihJsYK/iqf1vBMs3qg_5
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Classical music: A FREE recital by the Del Sol string quartet on Monday night honors pioneering composer Ben Johnston
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has been asked to post the following announcement:
The San Francisco-based ensemble the Del Sol Quartet will give a FREE public recital on Monday night, May 21, in Madison in honor of pioneer composer, teacher and mentor Ben Johnston (below).
For more information about the composer, go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Johnston_(composer)
The recital is on the occasion of Johnston’s upcoming induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters: https://artsandletters.org/pressrelease/2018-newly-elected-members/
This FREE performance will be held in the new Atrium Auditorium (below, in a photo by Zane Williams) of the First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Drive, on Monday night at 7 p.m.
The program will feature Johnston’s two most popular string quartets: the Fourth Quartet (based on the beloved theme “Amazing Grace”); and the Tenth Quartet (also based on a popular folk melody). In addition there will be works by some of Johnston’s contemporaries. (You can hear the Fourth Quartet of Ben Johnston in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Johnston, 92, has made his home in the Madison area for the past 11 years, where he continues to advance the field of microtonal music composition and performance, most notably initiated in the U.S. by music legend Harry Partch, with whom Johnston studied for several years. Partch’s seminal work, “Genesis of Music,” was first published in Madison by the University of Wisconsin Press in 1949.
Winner of numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, Johnston spent most of his career at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. He had a significant role in some of the Contemporary Arts Festivals, which were annual events in the 1960s. His service, as composition teacher and mentor there, led to an honorary doctorate from that institution. He is also the author of “Maximum Clarity,” published by the University of Illinois Press.
Hailed by New York Times critic Mark Swed as “probably [America‘s] most subversive composer …able to make both radical thinking and avant-garde techniques sound invariably gracious,”Johnston’s diligent dedication recently resulted in the release of the third CD by the Milwaukee-based Kepler Quartet https://www.keplerquartet.com/ on the New World Music label https://www.newworldmusic.com/
The three CD series encompasses all of Johnston’s string quartets and took 14 years of painstaking collaboration to bring to fruition, receiving high acclaim internationally. Johnston has been well-known in experimental music circles since his second quartet came out on Nonesuch Records in 1969.
Hailed by Gramophone as “masters of all musical things they survey” and two-time winner of the top Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, the Del Sol String Quartet shares living music with an ever-growing community of adventurous listeners.
Del Sol (below) was founded in 1992 at Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada and is recognized as a “vigorous champion of living composers,” focusing on music that reflects the cultural diversity of the community, advocating works by both world-renowned and emerging composers, and collaborating across disciplines. Del Sol has commissioned and premiered over 100 works by a diverse range of composers.
The Quartet has performed on prominent concert series nationwide, including the Kennedy Center, Library of Congress, National Gallery of Art, Symphony Space, Cabrillo Festival, Other Minds Festival, and Santa Fe Opera.
The quartet conducts an active educational program in the San Francisco Bay Area, in addition to regular residencies at universities and music schools across the country.”
For more information, go to: http://delsolquartet.com/
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The Well-Tempered Ear 
Critics for The New York Times name their Top 10 online classical concerts for May
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PLEASE HELP THE EAR. IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST, SPREAD THE WORD. FORWARD A LINK TO IT OR, SHARE IT or TAG IT (not just “Like” it) ON FACEBOOK. Performers can use the extra exposure to draw potential audience members to an event. And you might even attract new readers and subscribers to the blog.
By Jacob Stockinger
Even as we wait to see whether concerts in the next season will be mostly streamed or live, the critics for The New York Times have named their Top 10 classical concerts to stream and hear online in May.
The Times critics have been doing this during the pandemic year. So perhaps if and when they stop, it will be a sign of returning to concert life before the pandemic.
Then again, maybe not, since The Ear suspects that many listeners have liked the online format, at least for some of the times and for certain events. So maybe there will be a hybrid format with both live and online attendance.
As the same critics have done before, they mix an attention to contemporary composers, world premieres and up-and-coming performers, including the Finnish conductor Susanna Maliki (below top) in a photo by Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times).
In a welcome development, the recommendations for this month also seem to mention more Black composers, performers and pieces than usual, including the rising star bass-baritone Davon Tines (below, in a photo by Vincent Tullo for The New York Times).
But you will also find many of the “usual suspects,” including Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Bartok, Benjamin Britten, Olivier Messiaen and Shostakovich. (On the play list is Schubert’s last song, “The Shepherd on the Rock,” which you can hear in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
You will also find dates and times (all are Eastern), links to the event and some short commentaries about what makes the concerts, programs and the performers noteworthy.
Here is a link to the story: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/29/arts/music/classical-music-streaming.html
Do you know of local, regional, national or international online concerts that you recommend? Leave word with relevant information in the Comment section.
Happy Listening!
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