The Well-Tempered Ear
Longtime friends organist Greg Zelek and Madison native and award-winning trumpeter Ansel Norris team up for a FREE live-streamed concert this Tuesday night
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By Jacob Stockinger
Two longtime friends and fellow musicians will team up this Tuesday night, April 27, to close this season’s organ concert series, sponsored in the Overture Center by the Madison Symphony Orchestra.
It will be live-streamed online because of the pandemic restrictions on attendance.
The concert features the critically acclaimed MSO organist Greg Zelek (below left) and Ansel Norris (below right), an award-winning trumpeter who is a native of Madison.
The program includes works by Bach, Vivaldi, Haydn and Samuel Barber among others.
The concert starts at 7:30 p.m. CDT. It is FREE but you must register. The concert will be available to registered listeners for unlimited access through May 31.
Here is a link to the MSO website where you can register. It also has more information about the program and biographies of the two performers: https://madisonsymphony.org/event/norris-zelek-2021-streamed/
Here is more background. It appeared in the latest issue of the email newsletter of the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras (WYSO), of which Norris was a member for many years:
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Ansel Norris and Greg Zelek first met in 2010 as high school seniors who had both been selected as finalists in the YoungARTS Awards. The YoungARTS Award is a big competition with just a small percentage of students selected for the $10,000 prize from the thousands of high school applicants. In classical music that year, 12 students became finalists and assembled in Miami for a week of master classes with internationally recognized arts leaders. “You know, there really is a synergy with trumpet and organ. The sounds are produced in a similar way and the way the sounds blend together is really special. Even then, I imagined a concert together.” Ten years later, the two friends were dreaming up this concert when Greg was in Miami in February, 2020. And then the world shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic. Norris has distinguished himself as a solo, orchestral and chamber musician. As Greg Zelek (below, in a photo by Peter Rodgers) writes: “Concerti of Bach and Haydn will bookend this program filled with music that is both written and arranged for this electrifying pairing of instruments. Mr. Norris’ remarkable technique and soaring lyricism will be on full display while our Mighty Klais both supports and shimmers in this exhilarating performance you won’t want to miss!” Register here for Tuesday’s concert!
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Classical music: Attention, adult music students and late-bloomers! Music-making by early starters amazes us, but music-making by late starters should startle us even more. Here is why from an NPR story about a writer who himself plays cello in an orchestra.
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By Jacob Stockinger
Last night, I heard a fine concert of works by Felix Mendelssohn and Franz Joseph Haydn performed by the Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra (MAYCO). The youth group was founded and is still directed and conducted by the young violist and conductor Mikko Utevsky, who is a scholarship student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music.
Mikko (below) is very accomplished and clearly started viola lessons when he was very young, as I suspect most of the outstanding orchestra musicians and the exceptional piano soloist Thomas Kasdorf did. By the time he was a student at Madison East High School, Mikko had founded MAYCO. He had also spent many years in the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras.
He is articulate and impressive, to be sure.
Truth be told, I am always impressed by the achievements of young musicians, whether they are pre-school or elementary school students in Suzuki classes or in piano recitals, or middle school and high school students.
But what about adult students?
The Ear knows many newly retired people who say they want to take music lessons but are reluctant and think it is simply too late to start and have any success.
Now, I will admit that feel lucky that I play the piano, which I think is easier to pick up again later in life, largely because the notes are there right under your fingers and you don’t need a great ear.
But other instruments — strings, winds and brass — can also be learned or resumed late in life.
As a way of encouraging such people, I offer this story from NPR. It is an interview with Ari L. Goldman (below top and in a YouTube video at the bottom), a journalism professor at Columbia University in New York City, about his new book, a first-person account of resuming cello studies and participating in “The Late Starters Orchestra” (below bottom), which is an orchestra made up of fellow late-starters, of older people and adult students.
Enjoy –- and start practicing if that is what you really want to do — because it is possible.
Here is a link to the NPR story and interview:
Tags: adult learners, Ari L. Goldman, Arts, Cello, Chamber music, Classical music, Columbia University, Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Joseph Haydn, Jacob Stockinger, Madison, Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra, Madison East High School, Music, music lessons, NPR, Orchestra, Piano, Suzuki, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Violin, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras, YouTube
Classical music Q&A: The Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra performs tonight even as founder and conductor Mikko Utevsky forges ties to several other local groups to ensure MAYCO’s future after he departs.
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear doesn’t normally run two posts on the same event in the same week or close to each other.
But it is a slow week in summer.
More to the point, I got a very intriguing response to my Q&A request from Mikko Utevsky, the founder and conductor of the Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra.
You may recall the MAYCO performs tonight at 7:30 p.m. in the new Atrium auditorium of the First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Drive.
The program includes the “Reformation” Symphony by Felix Mendelssohn; the Piano Concerto No. 11 in D Major by Franz Joseph Haydn; and the world premiere of UW-Madison graduate and local composer Olivia Zeuske’s “Experiment No. 1.”
Admission is $7 with donations asked from students.
For more information, here is a link to the other previous post:
But in his answers, Utevsky revealed some things that The Ear didn’t know, including the many links he is forging with other local music organizations so that MAYCO can continue when he has graduated and moved on.
Talk about being forward-thinking!
Here is the Q&A from violist-conductor Mikko Utevsky (below) about the Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra, which he founded when he was still a student at Madison East High School, before he started attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and the Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra (MAYCO), including its history and makeup?
I am a violist and conductor studying at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music. I founded MAYCO while a student at Madison East High School to provide a free summer opportunity for high school and college students to explore the chamber orchestra repertoire.
Members range in age from 13 to 30, and the specific composition of the ensemble varies from concert to concert based on the demands of the repertoire and individual students’ schedules. We focus on music of the Classical period, chamber works of the 20th century, and new music. We present a premiere each season.
What are MAYCO’s plans for the near future and further out, including partnerships with other music organizations and concerts, recordings and the like?
MAYCO is in a transitional period right now as we pursue institutional stability. For four years, it has existed more or less as a personal project of mine. But I believe strongly in its value as an educational opportunity, and I want to ensure its continued viability in the future, even after I finish my degree and leave for graduate school.
Luckily for us, Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras (WYSO) feels the same way. We have entered into a partnership starting this season to make MAYCO available as an official extension of WYSO, allowing us to preserve the institution that we have cultivated for Madison’s music community into the indefinite future.
We are also looking at relationships with programs for younger players (Music Makers and Music Con Brio). We try to introduce them to the world of orchestral playing and give them a taste of what they can accomplish as young musicians here or elsewhere.
We are very fortunate to have the support also of conductor Andrew Sewell and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra (below), the city’s professional chamber orchestra that is helping its younger counterpart.
As far as program offerings go, the season of two concerts seems to be working for us very well, although a third would not be out of the question. I am particularly excited for a program in the works for next summer about which I can’t say much yet (but when I can, you’ll hear it here first!).
We have been granted a degree of flexibility by the receipt of the UW Arts Enterprise Association’s 2014 New Arts Venture Challenge Grant this spring to support our programming, which will allow us to perform a wider range of music, including more 20th-century works that must be rented.
Our relationship with WYSO is now such that we can receive tax-deductible donations, so if you want to support our work, visit the Support Us page on our website to make a contribution:
http://www.madisonareayouthchamberorchestra.org
What can you tell us about the program for tonight, Friday, July 11? Does it have a theme or something to tie it together?
This week’s program is somewhat eclectic. The title, “Triumph and Delight,” is a bit nonspecific. Triumph refers to the “Reformation” Symphony by Mendelssohn, which ends with a victorious affirmation of faith and strength, and Delight to the Piano Concerto by Haydn, which is a nimble, playful and joyfully fun piece of music. (You can hear how Mendelssohn uses the Lutheran hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” in the symphony’s finale at the bottom in a YouTube video.)
What should listeners know about Olivia Zeuske and her “Experiment No. 1,” of which you will be giving the world premiere?
Olivia (below) is a gifted composer whose work caught my ear some time ago because of its characteristic, piquant sonorities and subtle rhythmic complexities. Her “Experiment No. 1” is a three-movement composition lasting about 20 minutes. This work was begun about a year and a half ago, and will represent her first large-ensemble composition. I am very excited to be presenting its premiere, having watched it take shape over many months.
How did you decide to choose Thomas Kasdorf (below) as a piano soloist and the Piano Concerto in D Major by Franz Joseph Haydn?
Thomas was an easy decision. I have heard him on countless recitals and in studios across campus, and most recently worked with him as a vocal coach and accompanist. He is a consummate musician — a sensitive accompanist and assertive soloist in one, with beautiful lyricism and technique to burn (with no need to prove it).
As a collaborative player, he is one of the few who will tackle a segment of the major repertoire renowned for the difficulty of its piano parts; pieces like Sergei Rachmaninov’s Cello Sonata demand a technique like his, and he plays them brilliantly.
The Haydn was Thomas’ choice as much as mine. I originally asked him to play something by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with an eye towards the operatic lines in many of those concertos, but we couldn’t pick one! There are 27, after all, and all of them are wonderful.
I mentioned the Haydn offhandedly, having heard Emmanuel Ax’s recording recently, and he told me it was a favorite of his. I had already decided to do some Haydn this season, whether a concerto or one of the symphonies, which I love so dearly, so it seemed a natural choice. The piece is delightful — playful, with a touch of the deliberately unrefined “country” sound one often finds in Haydn’s music and a lovely, singing slow movement in between.
The “Reformation” Symphony by Felix Mendelssohn is pretty well-known. But is there something special you would like the public to know about it or about your approach to it?
Mendelssohn’s own relationship with the symphony was somewhat complicated — I actually have a rather substantial historical note on it that will be made available on the orchestra’s website, though not in the printed program.
Mendelssohn (below) poured a lot of energy into it, holding high hopes for a performance at the grand tricentennial celebrations in Berlin of the Augsburg Confession (an important early Lutheran document). But it was not finished in time, and was not well-received when he sought other performances in the years following.
He eventually cooled to the piece, but kept the score around, perhaps moved by a lingering attachment to a work that, later in life, he described as deeply flawed. In any case, it was discovered after his death, and received its second performance and first publication about 20 years later.
In it, Mendelssohn tackles the programmatic ideas of A.B. Marx while also attempting to compose his own 20-year-old’s response to Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on a historical subject.
It’s a tall order, and one can understand why he felt it fell short (as anything aspiring to three massive demands must inevitably), but the piece is tremendously successful on its own.
The first movement is Beethovenian in scope and power, the scherzo delightful, the slow movement a tragic “Song Without Words,” and the Finale is a pillar of victory and might (again imagined on a Beethovenian level — think of the relationship between the outer movements of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and their journey from tragedy to triumph). I think it holds up well against any of his other popular works, and can be a tremendously powerful piece.
What else would you like to say or add?
Of course, there is another concert this summer – “Summer Magic,” featuring Spring Green soprano Caitlin Ruby Miller — below — who is a 2014 Metropolitan Opera National Council Audition finalist. She will sing one of my favorite pieces, Samuel Barber’s nostalgic deeply moving “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” on texts by James Agee.
That concert will also include the Overture to “The Magic Flute” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the Ninth Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich, and will take place in UW-Madison Music Hall, at the foot of Bascom Hill, on Friday, August 22, at 7:30 p.m.
Tags: A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, Arts, Barber, Beethoven, Cello, Cello Sonata, Chamber music, chamber orchestra, Classical music, Dmitri Shostakovich, Felix Mendelssohn, Fifth Symphony, finale, First Unitarian Society of Madison, Haydn, hymn, Jacob Stockinger, James Agee, Ludwig van Beethoven, Lutheranism, Madison, Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra, Madison East High School, Martin Luther, Metropolitan Opera, Mozart, Music, opera, Orchestra, Piano, Rachmaninoff, Rachmaninov, Samuel Barber, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Sergei Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, Sonata, symphony, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, WYSO, YouTube
Classical music: The Madison Area Youth Chamber Music Orchestra (MAYCO) performs music of Haydn and Mendelssohn plus a world premiere of a work by Madison composer Olivia Zeuske this Friday night at the First Unitarian Society.
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By Jacob Stockinger
Few young musicians, or older ones for that matter, lead a busier schedule than the young University of Wisconsin-Madison violist and conductor Mikko Rankin Utevsky (below).
Recently returned from a stay in Europe, Utevsky will show his latest ambitious achievement in a program this Friday night.
That is when the Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra (MAYCO, seen below in a performance last year in Mills Hall at the UW-Madison), which was founded by Utevsky while he was still a student at Madison East High School, opens its fourth season on Friday night at 7:30 p.m.
The concert will take place in the crisply designed Atrium auditorium of the First Unitarian Society of Madison (below, in a photo by Zane Williams), 900 University Bay Drive, on Madison near west side. Tickets are $7, with donations requested from students.
The gifted pianist Thomas Kasdorf (below), a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, where he studied with Christopher Taylor and where he will return as a graduate student this fall, joins the orchestra for the Piano Concerto No. 11 in D Major by Franz Joseph Haydn. (You can hear the legendary Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter play the concerto in a YouTube video at the bottom)
You may recall that this spring Kasdorf answered a Q&A for this blog when he performed the Piano Concerto in A Minor by Edvard Grieg with the Middleton Community Orchestra.
Here is a link to Kasdorf’s interview:
And here is a link to The Ear’s positive review of his performance of the Grieg concerto (below):
Also on the program are the “Reformation” Symphony by Felix Mendelssohn and the world premiere of the chamber symphony “Experiment No. 1” by Olivia Zeuske (below). Zeuske just graduated from the UW-Madison with a double major in English and music composition, which she studied with professor and composer Steven Dembski.
MAYCO’S NEXT CONCERT
MAYCO’s next concert this summer will be at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, August 22, 2014. Called “Summer Magic,” it features soprano Caitlin Ruby Miller. The program includes the Overture to “The Magic Flute” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” by Samuel Barber: and the Symphony No. 9 in E-flat Major, Op. 70, by Dmitri Shostakovich. The concert will be held in UW Music Hall, 925 Bascom Mall, at the base of Bascom Hill.
For more information about MAYCO, including background, concerts, programs, photos and how to support and join MAYCO, visit:
http://madisonareayouthchamberorchestra.org/
Tags: Arts, Barber, Bascom Hill, Chamber music, chamber orchestra, Christopher Taylor, Classical music, concerto, Dmitri Shostakovich, Edvard Grieg, Fanny Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn, First Unitarian Society of Madison, Franz Josef Haydn, Haydn, Jacob Stockinger, Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Madison, Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra, Madison East High School, Mendelssohn, Middleton Community Orchestra, Mozart, Music, Olivia Zeuske, Olivia Zueske, Orchestra, Piano, Piano concerto, Richter, Samuel Barber, Shostakovich, soprano, Sviatoslav Richter, symphony, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Viola, vocal music, voice, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, world premiere, YouTube, Zane Williams
Classical music Q&A: Conductor-violist Mikko Utevsky discusses his first year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music and the lessons he brings to the concert Friday night by the Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra. Plus, please leave word if you are going to play the piano at Friday’s “Make Music Madison” festival.
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REMINDER: This Friday is the Summer Solstice and the first-ever Make Music Madison citywide festival. If you plan to play on one of the four acoustic pianos being provided at fire stations around the city (no previous sign-up is required), or do other performances, please leave word in the COMMENT section with your name, the piece you will play, the place and the time. Here are links to previous posts about the event:
Friday is the Summer Solstice.
And that means there will be a lot of music performances in the Madison area since it is also the date of the inaugural Make Music Madison festival.
But once of the stand-out events is a performance by the Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra (MAYCO), which was founded a couple of years ago by Mikko Utevsky (below), a violist who at that time was a student at Madison East High School and a violist in the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras.
The MAYCO concert is at 7:30 in Old Music Hall, at the foot of Bascom Hill on the UW-Madison campus. The program features Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola, with soloists violinist Eugene Purdue and violist Deidre Buckley; Aaron Copland’s “Our Town” and Serge Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” with narrator Lori Skelton.
Admission to the concert, called “A Tribute to Educators,” is at the door and costs $5 for adults and donations for students.
Conductor Mikko Utevsky, who wrote posts for this blog from the WYSO tour last summer to Vienna, Prague and Budapest, and who just completed his freshman year the UW-Madison School of Music, recently gave an email interview to The Ear.
You just completed your first year at the UW-Madison School of Music. How did it go? What lessons do you bring to the upcoming concert by MAYCO?
I had an excellent first year – the faculty is superb, and it’s an exciting, collaborative environment. During the school year, I try to focus as much as possible on the viola. I am, after all, a performance major, and while I hope to make a career of conducting, right now I am first and foremost a violist.
When I first spoke with Professor Smith about studying conducting, his advice was to become the best violist I could. That’s what I’m doing. Prof. Sally Chisholm (below) is a wonderful teacher, and I am learning a great deal from her. The viola studio at the UW is great.
Over the summer, I have some more time to work on my conducting: I have been taking lessons with Prof. Smith (below), and spending more time with my scores, library work and much, much more time on the phone finding players.
I think out of the whole year, the greatest influence on my work with MAYCO didn’t come from lessons. In the past, I’ve been wary of the Classical repertoire; it poses particular stylistic problems that can be difficult to address with a youth orchestra. I am coming to it with a new appreciation and understanding founded in my music history class with Professor Charles Dill and Charles Rosen’s book “The Classical Style” (below).
I had the fortune to end up reading it during the class, and together it and Prof. Dill (below, in a photo by Katrin Talbot) opened my ears to a new way of hearing this music, a way that leaves much more room for growth than the way I was used to listening. That’s a large part of why we’re doing three Classical works this summer (one each by the Big Three — Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven).
Which direction do you want to pursue as a career — violist or conductor– and why?
My hope is to become a conductor, hopefully working with a university orchestra or youth symphony program. I love to teach, and want that to be a part of my work some day. I do not plan to give up the viola, of course; at the very least I will continue to play chamber music for as long as I can still hold my bow.
What would you like to say about the soloists and narrator?
Diedre Buckley (below top, in a photo by Katrin Talbot) was my first viola teacher, all through middle and high school. She and Gene Purdue (below bottom) both have thriving private teaching studios in Madison, and have several students in the orchestra — about half of the violins and violas are current or former students of theirs. They are both fantastic players and teachers, and bring a lot to the stage in terms of both experience and musicality. It’s been a real pleasure working with them this week, for me and the orchestra.
Lori Skelton (below) does a lot of the classical programming on Wisconsin Public Radio. I’ve been listening to her “Sunday Afternoon Live From the Chazen” since it was “Live From the The Elvehjem,” and frequently tune in for her Afternoon Classics when I’m not in school. She is a wonderful storyteller with a wonderful voice, and working with her on Peter and the Wolf has been a lot of fun. 
What would you like the audience to know about the pieces on the program?
This isn’t quite your typical Overture/Concerto/Symphony program. For starters, the symphony and the concerto are the same piece: Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola, and Orchestra, K. 364. This is probably the greatest piece in its genre, conceived on a more symphonic scale than most of Mozart’s middle concertos, and runs more than half an hour in length. (You can hear the opening in a YouTube video with Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman at bottom.) It has wonderful orchestral writing, more substantial than one would expect from a simple concerto, and it uses double viola sections to match the soloist.
We’re opening the program with music by Aaron Copland (below) to the 1939 film adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” — both the movie and the score got Oscar nominations, though they both lost. It’s a beautiful piece with a very characteristic Copland sound, depicting life in a fictional New England town.
Finally, we are playing the famous orchestral fairy tale, “Peter and the Wolf,” by Serge Prokofiev (below). This work usually gets programmed on children’s concerts, and is seldom appreciated for its musical value, which is considerable (despite the rather silly — if charming — story). Lori Skelton will narrate the work.
Can you tell us any news about MAYCO and its plans, and about the same for yourself?
We have another concert coming up on August 9, also at 7:30 in Music Hall, for which we are still accepting players. The program is “New Horizons,” and includes Beethoven’s First Symphony; Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto with Madison native and two-time National Trumpet Competition winner Ansel Norris (below top); and a new work by the local composer, singer and conductor Jerry Hui (below bottom).
We will be back next summer, of course. And while I have a pretty good idea of what we’ll be playing, I don’t want to spoil the surprise. As usual, I can promise variety of programming, some solid Classical works, and a spotlight on local artists.
As for me, I’ll be performing some solo Bach at the Madison Area Music Awards this weekend, taking a bike trip in July, camping, and preparing for our August concert.
Classical music review: High school musician and critic Mikko Utevsky praises the new opera “Wired For Love” by UW student Jerry Hui.
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ALERT: This week’s FREE Friday Noon Musicale, from 12:15 to 1 p.m. in the Landmark Auditorium (below) of the First Unitarian Society Meeting House, 900 University Bay Drive, features oboist Scott Ellington and pianist Ted Reinke, in music by Alex (Alec) Wilder, Gordon Jacob and Srul Irving Glick. For information, call 608 233-9774 or visit www.fusmadison.org.
By Jacob Stockinger
Earlier this week, I posted a a review of the world premiere of UW student Jerry Hui’s chamber opera “Wired For Live” by guest reviewer by John W. Barker, who normally reviews for Isthmus and who is veteran music critic as well as a distinguished retired UW-Madison history professor.
(By the way, “Wired For Love” has been recorded and there will be CDs available of it in the near future. I’ll pass along word when I get it.)
Here, for purposes on comparison is a link to that first review:
But I also heard from a loyal blog reader and a multi-talented young musician in Madison, Mikko Utevsky.
Mikko (below) is a senior at Madison East High School and a part-time music student at the UW-Madison. He also plays the viola in WYSO (Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestra) and the UW Symphony Orchestra and conducts the Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra (MAYCO). He has done a Q&A for this blog (link is below) and offered comments on other postings. But this is his first major review and I am pleased to offer a forum to such a discerning young musician. It is vital that we in classical music cultivate and encourage young talent.
By Mikko Utevsky
I was very impressed Jerry Hui’s new opera “Wired For Love.” I’ve known Jerry (below) for four or five years, but I’ve never heard much of his music before. It was well worth braving the cold on Friday night, though it is too bad it competed with the Madison Symphony Orchestra concert.
To speak of the opera itself, the synopsis helps a great deal with piecing the story together. The narration can become a tad fragmented, but having read the original emails that’s not terribly surprising.
The set was spare and showcased the action nicely, I thought, although it did bother me when the singers weren’t quite placed opposite each other on a stage so strikingly symmetrical.
The singing was good, particularly from tenor Daniel O’Dea (below right) as Bako Ndiovu. I’m no judge of vocal technique, but with the exception of a few diction issues in the very beginning, a few consonants missing from the rather demanding high writing for Ethel Wormvarnish (played beautifully by Jennifer Sams, below left) whose arresting voice and expressive physicality perfectly matched the role), and a few little discrepancies between the words and the supertitles (which often lagged behind the singers), I thought the vocalists carried their roles very well and brought the story across with wit and intelligence.
Peter Gruett’s countertenor was surprisingly nuanced (Gruett is below on the far right), despite the inherently comic feel of the register and writing. And while the voice of James Held (below, far left) felt a tad thin at one or two moments, I thought it more a character trait than a technical flaw — it made sense in context. The humorous cracks in “I have a cold” were carried off very well, and made it one of my favorites.
The cast’s unique voices all stood out well in ensemble numbers, so you could catch all the jokes – and there were quite a few (both textual and musical).
It’s certainly a funny opera; the painstaking transcription of the scammer’s poor English is hilarious, as are Ethel’s antics. The opening of the opera feels a little awkward (although the overture is seriously fun), but it soon finds its groove.
Only once did the transitions feel jarring – moving between the sweet “Please Call Me” and Ethel’s vicious aria “Serpent! Viper!” was a tad awkward, and one short passage in the latter (and a few others in other places) might benefit from a slight enlargement of the string sections.
By and large, I liked the soloistic sound, but sometimes the string lines weren’t quite prominent enough (or needed the mass of a section for confidence’s sake; which was generally not a problem regardless).
That aside, the orchestra (below) danced and sparkled through Jerry’s vivacious score, lingering sweetly where needed. Ching-Chun Lai did a marvelous job bringing out the colors of the nine-player ensemble. Bako’s aria “Where the rivers meet” was beautifully tender, showcasing both Jerry’s writing for voice and orchestra and O’Dea’s sweet tenor well.
The final number (“The Moral Lesson”) was my favorite musical joke of the opera, a Renaissance dance with all the wrong counterpoint. That is a nod to Jerry’s work in early music, certainly, and one that drew a few laughs from the audience, which was curiously subdued until Ethel’s first aria, at which point we finally started applauding. The music earlier certainly deserved more than it got, but we were cold.
Perhaps Saturday’s performance will draw a larger crowd once the streets are plowed. Jerry’s work deserves it.
(Editor’s Addendum: Jerry Hui will teach a Continuing Education class on singing Gregorian Chant at the UW. The class meets every Saturday from 2 to 3:30 p.m., and will begin next Saturday, Feb. 4. Registration is required and can be done online through the website of the UW-Madison Division of Continuing Studies: http://www.dcs.wisc.edu/classes/music.htm)
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