The Well-Tempered Ear
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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Classical music: Are American violins equal to or even superior to European ones? The Library of Congress thinks so and will buy 263 of them
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By Jacob Stockinger
Whether it is conductors or orchestras, singers or instrumentalists, Americans have often been viewed as inferior to Europeans.
And that goes for modern instruments, not just those that are centuries old.
But one collector felt otherwise. He is David Bromberg, a guitarist who played with Bob Dylan and Beatle George Harrison, and he ended up collecting some 263 American-made violins.
The violins are modern but some go back to the 19th century.
Now the American government – specifically, the Library of Congress – will raise $1.5 million to purchase the collection.
NPR, or National Public Radio, recently featured a terrific story about the phenomenon, which should help overcome any sense of cultural inferiority.
Here is a link:
Read it and see what you think.
Then let us know in the COMMENT section.
Does anyone else wonder about the quality of violins and string instruments made in Asia, in China and especially in Japan, which is the home of the Suzuki method that has trained so many string players?
The Ear wants to hear.
Tags: America, Arts, Asia, Baroque, Beatles, Bob Dylan, Cello, Chamber music, China, Classical music, conductor, culture, double bass, Europe, George Harrison, government, guitar, instrument, instrumentalist, Jacob Stockinger, Japan, Library of Congress, Music, NPR, Orchestra, singer, string instruments, strings, Suzuki Method, U.S., United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Viola, Violin, vocal music
Classical music: A FREE and PUBLIC choral and guitar concert this Sunday night at Edgewood College will explore the new St. John’s Bible musically and visually.
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ALERT: This Sunday night at 8 p.m in Mills Hall, a FREE concert by the local percussion group Clocks in Motion will give the world premieres of two new works by composers Ben Davis and Anthony Donotrio.
By Jacob Stockinger
This Sunday night, Nov. 22, at 7 p.m. the public will have the chance to explore musically and visually the modern Saint John’s Bible, a large mutli-volume work. which is beautifully illuminated with original contemporary art that is reminiscent of Medieval illuminated manuscripts.
The audio-visual event, “Illuminated Harmony,” will take place in the St. Joseph Chapel, 1000 Edgewood College Drive.
No tickets are required and the event is FREE. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m.
This musical and visual collaboration explores the themes of creation, incarnation and transformation. Inspired by illuminations from the Saint John’s Bible Heritage edition, choral selections will be accompanied by projected animations of the chosen illuminated images. It was on display this past year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison‘s Chazen Museum of Art.
Edgewood College officials say that this concert is an invitation to the community to tap into the deep spirituality of the music and the illuminations in the presence of the Gospels and the Acts volume of the Saint John’s Bible Heritage Edition.
Here is a link to the official website for the Bible, which was commissioned and cost $145,000 in 1998 and was finished in 2011:
http://www.saintjohnsbible.org
And here is a link to an online exhibition of the Bible at The Library of Congress, so you can explore it more before or after the concert:
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/stjohnsbible/stjohns-exhibit.html
The event will feature the Campus-Community Choir, the Chamber Singers, the Women’s Choir (below) and the Guitar Ensemble. Sorry, no word about the specific pieces or composers that will be sung and played.
Here is a link to a brief audiovisual sample of the Edgewood presentation:
In the YouTube video below, art director Donald Jackson talks about creating the new Bible:
Tags: acts, Anthony Donotrio, Arts, Ben Davis, Bible, Campus, Chamber music, chamber singers, Chazen Museum of Art, Choir, choral music, Christ, Christianity, Classical music, Clocks in Motion, community, Edgewood Chamber Orchestra, Edgewood College, gospels, guitar, Jacob Stockinger, Library of Congress, Madison, manuscript, Music, New Music, Orchestra, percussion, Piano, St. John University, The Saint John's Bible, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, vocal music, women, women;s choir, YouTube
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