The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: A FREE concert of stripped down Opera Scenes takes place this Tuesday night at UW-Madison
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By Jacob Stockinger
It has been a busy week for students and staff in the opera program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Mead Witter School of Music.
Last week saw three sold-out and critically acclaimed performances of Benjamin Britten’s opera “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Here is a review: https://welltempered.wordpress.com/2019/11/23/classical-music-university-opera-succeeded-brilliantly-by-staging-brittens-a-midsummer-nights-dream-as-a-pop-project-of-andy-warhol-and-the-factory-in-the-1960s/
This week – on Tuesday night, Nov. 26, at 7:30 p.m. in Music Hall (below) at the foot of Bascom Hill – the UW-Madison Opera Workshop will present a concert that presents a series of stripped down, quasi-staged opera scenes. There is piano accompaniment instead of an orchestra, and sometimes a prop with the suggestion of a costume instead of full costumes and full sets.
Admission is FREE to the public and no tickets are required.
David Ronis (below top, in a photo by Luke Delalio) and Mimmi Fulmer (below bottom) are the directors, and Ben Hopkins is the Teaching Assistant
No specific roles, arias or works are listed.
But the program features scenes from: “Werther” by the French composer Jules Massenet; “Fidelio” by Ludwig van Beethoven; “Little Women” by American composer Mark Adamo (below top); “Eugene Onegin” by Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky; “A Little Night Music” by American Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim; “Dead Man Walking” by American composer Jake Heggie (below bottom); and “Hansel and Gretel” by German composer Engelbert Humperdinck.
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Classical music: This Sunday, Beverly Taylor retires as associate conductor of the Madison Symphony Orchestra. Kyle Knox will succeed Taylor starting this fall.
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Madison Symphony Orchestra (MSO) has announced that Associate Conductor Beverly Taylor (below) will retire from her current position after 22 years, effective this Sunday, July 1.
Taylor will continue to serve as Director of the Madison Symphony Chorus (below, in a photo by Greg Anderson).
She will also continue as the Director of Choral Activities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music, where she conducts many groups including the Choral Union (below) and the Concert Choir.
Kyle Knox (below) will become the MSO’s new Associate Conductor, effective in the 2018–2019 season.
“I am delighted that Beverly will continue to work with the Madison Symphony Chorus. The chorus has improved steadily under her direction and will sing some very difficult music in the coming seasons,” said MSO music director John DeMain (below, in a photo by Prasad). “I also want to thank Beverly for the outstanding help she has given me in the preparation of our concerts over the years.”
“I’ve loved my time as associate conductor of the symphony, and will continue as chorus director,” says Taylor. “But I’m looking forward to more time for guest conducting, visiting friends and family and finishing the two books I’m at work on. I also have a grant to write a basic conducting textbook, and I’m finishing a handbook on how to develop a musical interpretation.”
John DeMain says he looks forward to Knox joining the MSO. “I think Kyle Knox is a natural to step into the associate conductor position. He has distinguished himself in the past few years with his work at the University of Wisconsin, Madison Opera and the Middleton Community Orchestra (below, in a photo by John W. Barker). He also successfully led the MSO in last year’s Concert on the Green.
“His recent appointment as Music Director of the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras (WYSO) is a testament to his brilliant talent and will dovetail easily with his duties with the MSO. I so look forward to our working together and welcome him to our Madison Symphony Orchestra family.”
Knox is also very pleased with his appointment.
“My history with the MSO goes back a few years and I have long admired the work of Maestro DeMain and this wonderful group of musicians,” he says. “It is an honor to have been selected for this opportunity and I look forward to happy years of service and collaboration.”
BACKGROUND BIOGRAPHIES
Beverly Taylor has been the Associate Conductor of the Madison Symphony Orchestra and Director of the Madison Symphony Chorus since 1996 and Director of Choral Activities at UW-Madison since 1995.
Prior roles include conductor of the Boston Bar Association Orchestra, Music Director of the Back Bay Chorale, and Associate Director of Choral Activities at Harvard University.
Taylor has been a guest conductor at the Arthur Rubinstein Philharmonic Orchestra in Poland, the St. Louis Symphony Chorus, the Vermont Symphony, the Harvard Chamber Orchestra, the Madison Opera, the U.S. Air Force Band and Orchestra, the Harvard Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, and the Wellesley Chamber Singers.
She graduated from the University of Delaware and Boston University School for the Arts and received a fellowship with Chorus America and an orchestral fellowship at Aspen.
Kyle Knox will take over the dual positions of Music Director of WYSO and Associate Conductor of the Madison Symphony Orchestra beginning in the 2018–2019 season.
Past and upcoming conducting credits include Mark Adamo’s Little Women with the Madison Opera; Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring and The Turn of the Screw, and Transformations; with UW-Madison’s University Opera; the Madison Symphony Orchestra’s 2017 Concert on the Green; Johann Strauss Jr.’s Die Fledermaus and Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Gondoliers and H.M.S. Pinafore with the Madison Savoyards; as well as UW Music Clinic’s High School Honors Orchestra.
Other concerts include Carousel, Sunday in the Park with George, and Sweeney Todd (2018) with Middleton Players Theatre, Jon Deak’s The Passion of Scrooge with Oakwood Chamber Players, as well as regular appearances with the Middleton Community Orchestra.
He was formerly a clarinetist with Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the Santa Fe Opera and Philadelphia Orchestras, and was on the faculty at UW-Milwaukee. Festivals credits include Tanglewood, Spoleto (Italy), Santa Fe Chamber Music, and Bowdoin College, among others. His debut album, the first commercial recording of Conrad Susa’s chamber opera Transformations, will be released in the summer of 2018 on iTunes. He holds degrees from Juilliard School and the UW-Madison. He is married to MSO concertmaster Naha Greenholtz.
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