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By Jacob Stockinger
How many of the composers’ names below do you recognize?
Probably very few, if you are like The Ear.
But here is your chance to explore new musical territory.
Over many years, the adventurous Oakwood Chamber Players (OCP) have built a reputation for first-rate performances of rarely heard repertoire, both old and new.
This year is no different.
The group will begin its new season — entitled Panorama— with performances on this coming Saturday night, Sept. 14, at 7 p.m. and Sunday afternoon, Sept. 15, at 2 p.m.
Both concerts will be held at the Oakwood Village Center for Arts and Education, 6209 Mineral Point Road, on Madison’s far west side near West Towne Mall.
Tickets can be purchased with cash or personal checks — no credit cards — at the door: $25 for general admission, $20 for seniors and $5 for students. Visit www.oakwoodchamberplayers.com for more information.
Members of the Oakwood Chamber Players (below) are: flutist Marilyn Chohaney; clarinetist Nancy Mackenzie; bassoonist Amanda Szczys; hornist Anne Aley; violinist Elspeth Stalter-Clouse; and cellist Maggie Darby Townsend.
Guest artists are: pianist Eric Tran; flutist Dawn Lawler; oboist Valree Casey; bassoonist Midori Samson; and trumpeter John Aley.
The ensemble is pleased to feature a new member at its opening concert. Violinist Elspeth Stalter-Clouse’s talents will be heard in two works: a fiery piano trio by Spanish composer Gaspar Cassado (below top); and as a soloist on the sweetly expressive Canzonetta for violin and piano by Italian-American composer Rosa Alba Vietor (below bottom). You can hear the Recitative movement, which takes about 10 seconds to start, from the Piano Trio by Gaspar Casado in the YouTube video at the bottom.
The program will include two larger wind works by French composers: Pastoral Variations in the Old Style by Gabriel Pierne (below top); and Octet for Winds by Claude Pascal (below bottom).
The ensemble will round out the program with two short contrasting works for winds and piano: the flute trio La Bergere des Brise de Vallee (The Shepherdess of the Valley Breezes) by American composer Margaret Griebling-Haigh (b. 1960, below top); and Suite for flute, oboe, clarinet and piano by Danish composer Johan Amberg (below bottom).
The Oakwood Chamber Players is a group of Madison-area professional musicians who rehearse and perform at Oakwood Village University Woods. Members also play in other area ensembles, including the Madison Symphony Orchestra and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, and have ties to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Mead Witter School of Music.
The Oakwood Chamber Players are a professional music ensemble proudly supported by Oakwood Lutheran Senior Ministries and the Oakwood Foundation.
ALERT: The Pro Arte Quartet, artists-in-residence at the UW-Madison School of Music, will give a FREE concert this Saturday night at 8 p.m. in Mills Hall. The program features: the String Quartet No. 1 in B-flat Major, Op. 18, No. 1 (1799-1800) by Ludwig van Beethoven; the Langsamer Satz (Slow Movement) for String Quartet (1905) by Anton Webern; and the String Quartet in E-flat Major, K. 428 (1783) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the following word from Clocks in Motion:
Clocks in Motion (below), Madison’s premier new music ensemble, welcomes the renowned bass clarinet and marimba duo Transient Canvas to Madison for a collaborative performance of new sounds, new instruments, and new music.
Featuring a world premiere by Italian-American modernist composer Filippo Santoro, as well as rarely heard works by Daniel T. Lewis, Matthew Welch, and Franco Donatoni, this concert offers a singular chance to experience the cutting edge of new music.
The performance is this Wednesday night, Nov. 4, at 7 p.m. in the DeLuca Forum (below bottom) of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery (below top), across from the Union South at 330 North Orchard Street.
It will feature Transient Canvas (below), which consists of the “dazzling” (Boston Globe) clarinetist Amy Advocat and the “expert and vivid” (Boston Musical Intelligencer) marimbist Matthew Sharrock performing thrilling repertoire commissioned for their distinctive instrumentation, as well as larger works in partnership with Clocks in Motion.
Tickets are $12 in advance and $15 the day of the show; $5 with a student ID. PURCHASE TICKETS
Advance tickets are available at https://www.artful.ly/store/events/7534
Praised by the Boston Globe as “superb,” Transient Canvas has been blazing its own trail in the world of contemporary music since 2011. In four years, they have premiered over 40 new works, essentially creating an entirely new repertoire for their unique instrumentation. Fearless in their programming and hungry for new collaborations, TC actively seeks out new composers who will stretch their instrumentation to its limits. (You can hear a sample in the YouTube video at the bottom)
Learn more about Transient Canvas at http://www.transientcanvas.com/
Hailed as “nothing short of remarkable” (ClevelandClassical.com), Clocks in Motion is a group that performs new music, builds its own instruments, and breaks down the boundaries of the traditional concert program. The group Clocks in Motion consistently performs groundbreaking concerts involving performance art, theater, and computer technology.
Featuring world premieres alongside rarely performed classic works, the ensemble strives to create a new canon of percussion repertoire.
Clocks in Motion works passionately to educate young audiences through master classes, residencies, presentations, and school assemblies. The ensemble’s unique skill sets and specialties contain an impressive mix of rock, jazz, contemporary classical, orchestral, marching, and world styles.
Clocks in Motion has served as resident performers and educators at the Interlochen Arts Academy, Casper College, the University of Michigan, Baldwin-Wallace University, VIBES Fine and Performing Arts, Traverse City West High School, Traverse City East Middle School, Rhapsody Arts Center, and the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.
Formed in 2011, Clocks in Motion began as an extension of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Graduate Percussion Group, and now serves as an affiliate ensemble of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music.
By Jacob Stockinger
Here is a special posting, a review written by frequent guest critic and writer for this blog, John W. Barker. Barker (below) is an emeritus professor of Medieval history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also is a well-known classical music critic who writes for Isthmus and the American Record Guide, and who for 12 years hosted an early music show every other Sunday morning on WORT FM 89.9 FM. He serves on the Board of Advisors for the Madison Early Music Festival and frequently gives pre-concert lectures in Madison.
By John W. Barker
For its 53rd annual summer production, Madison Savoyards Ltd. offered its eighth presentation of the brilliant Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Mikado. It was certainly the most problematical of those eight.
Badgered by threats of protest against the “stereotyping” of Japanese culture in this work, the Savoyards decided to slither away from “traditional” presentations, abandoning the creators’ very respectful use of Japanese setting and imagery as a mask for satirizing English life.
The group has this time engaged as stage director Melanie Cain, whose ventures with Fresco Opera Theatre here have shown her commitment to presenting works of the lyric stage in anything but their original character.
But changes should be made to add something; hers detracted and distracted. The result, visible in a two-week run at Old Music Hall on the UW campus, was pretty anarchic in visual terms.
Working on a set that was a simplified Japanese stereotype in itself, the cast was decked out in a wild disarray of ditsy costumes and crazy wigs to create a new stereotype of pop absurdity — all in the name of supposedly following current Japanese “anime” or animation graphics.
Only the elaborate costumes for the Mikado himself and for Katisha, his “daughter-in-law-elect,” in their wildness, catch something of their characters, while that for Pooh-Bah, the pompous power-grabber and egomaniac, conversely suggests British spoofing.
The staging had wide ups and downs. The individual movements and the ensemble action displayed good ideas, even if they were not always executed smartly, while the chorus was given sloppy direction with inadequate drilling.
The cast, likewise, was uneven, with only one or two soloists sub-par. Michael Ward’s Pish-Tush proved inept in both singing and movement, while Dennis Gotkowski as the romantic hero, Nanki-Poo (below left), was vocally weak and visually ridiculous — looking like a pirate.
As his beloved Yum-Yum, Angela Sheppard (below right) was visually disappointing but vocally strong. To her sidekick Pitti-Sing, Angela Z. Sheppard brought some good comic potential but her diction was uneven. Matt Marsland was too straightforward to be a successfully comic Ko-Ko.
Best were Anthony Ashley, who was excellent in both singing and acting as Pooh-Bah; Bill Rosholt as a majestic Mikado; and, despite some moments of blurred diction, Meghan Hilker as the dragon-lady Katisha (below center).
The chorus of eight or 10 women and only six men was pretty scrawny. The pit orchestra, on the other hand, was excellent under music director Blake Walter (below, in a photo by John Maniaci) of Edgewood College.
Alas, the needless use of projections during the overture (heard at bottom in a YouTube video) quite distracted the audience from listening to their fine playing of it.
Given the wackiness and color, the audience seemed generally entertained. But that is hardly the only proof of the pudding, when responsible fidelity to the character of the work is sacrificed for cheap effects.
As someone with my own long years of devoted involvement with Madison Savoyards, I find it painful to have to write so negatively. But let’s be frank: This was not one of the productions that, as so often otherwise, adds renewed honor to this proud company.
Will its production of The Gondoliers next summer be perverted by protests from Italian-Americans about stereotyping Venetians?