The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: The second LunART Festival will spotlight women in the performing and creative arts. Here is Part 2 of 2 with more about new music, comedy and a full schedule
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ALERT: The second Van Cliburn Junior Piano Competition resumes today — Monday, June 3 — in Dallas at 2:20 p.m. CDT. The young players range from 13 to 17 and come from around the world, and they are terrific. Plus the quality of the live streaming is outstanding, especially for the camera work of the keyboard. It’s all FREE. If you want to see it, here is a link: https://www.cliburn.org. You might also be interested to know that among the jurors are Alessio Bax, who has performed in Madison at Farley’s House of Pianos, and Philippe Bianconi, who has soloed several times with the Madison Symphony Orchestra. All that and you get to vote for the Audience Award too!
By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received a long and detailed announcement about the upcoming second LunART Festival. Here is Part 2 of two parts with more information about new music, comedy and a schedule of events. Yesterday was Part 1 — a link is below — with background and participants.
The LunART Festival, co-founded and co-directed by Iva Ugrcic and Laura Medisky, is back for its second season from this Wednesday, June 5, through Sunday, June 9, and will continue its mission of supporting, inspiring, promoting and celebrating women in the arts.
The 2019 season brings 10 events to eight venues in the Madison area, providing accessible, high-quality, engaging concerts and events with diverse programming from various arts fields.
The festival will showcase over 100 artists this season, including many familiar local artists and performers as well as guest artists hailing from Missouri to Texas, Minnesota to Florida and as far away as Peru.
LunART’s 2019 call for scores was open to women composers of all ages and nationalities, and received an impressive 98 applicants from around the globe. Scores were evaluated by a committee of 17 LunART Festival musicians and directors, and three works were selected to be performed at each of the Gala concerts.
The winning composers are Eunike Tanzil (below top), Edna Alejandra Longoria (below middle) and Kirsten Volness (below bottom). All three will be in attendance at the festival. (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear a piece for cello and piano, with the composer playing the piano, by Eunike Tanzil.)
The “From Page to Stage: Emerging Composers” educational program also returns, bringing six composers to Madison to work with flutist and composer-in-residence Valerie Coleman (below).
During the festival she will mentor participants in developing practical skills to express their creative ideas, cultivate relationships with performers and master the art of collaboration. The program culminates with a free public concert featuring their music on Saturday, June 8, at 2 p.m. in the Capitol Lakes Grand Hall, 333 West Main street, downtown and two blocks from the Capitol Square.
On Friday, June 7 at Overture Center in Promenade Hall, Meaghan Heinrich (below) presents her pre-concert lecture, “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman,” which explores what it means to be a woman artist in the 21st century, and how women’s experiences shape their artistic expressions.
Following the Friday gala concert is “Holding Court,” this season’s Starry Night event at Robinia Courtyard. This all-women comedy show features Midwestern comics Vanessa Tortolano (below top), Chastity Washington (below bottom), Vickie Lynn, Samara Suomi and Cynthia Marie who are blazing a trail of funny that will leave you gasping in their wake.
“The Multi-faceted Artist” panel discussion is for anyone interested in the ongoing trend and need for artists to wear multiple hats to succeed and thrive.
Coleman (composer and flutist) and Dr. Linda DiRaimondo (psychiatrist and aerial dancer, below top on top) serve as panelists along with Katrin Talbot (violist, poet and photographer, below bottom in a photo by Isabel Karp), and will lead the discussion on Saturday, June 8, at the downtown Madison Public Library’s Bubbler Room.
The festival wraps up on Sunday, June 9, from 10 a.m. to noon at Common Ground, 2644 Branch Street in Middleton, with “Mooning Around” poetry reading and artist mixer, featuring a performance of “One for Mileva Maric (Einstein)” by Andrea Musher, with special guests Sarah Whelan and Jackie Bradley, and poetry readings by The Line-Breakers: Andrea Potos (below), Eve Robillard, Rosemary Zurlo-Cuva and Katrin Talbot.
Everyone is welcome to come enjoy their morning coffee and pastries while making creative connections with other artists.
LunART Festival is supported by Dane Arts, the Madison Arts Commission, the Wisconsin Arts Board and the Open Meadows Foundation; it also won first place at the 2018 National Flute Association C.R.E.A.T.E. Project Competition and second prize at the 2018 UW Arts Business Competition.
Schedule of 2019 Festival events:
Wednesday, June 5
- 6-8 p.m.: “Women Against Hate United by Love” exhibition opening reception @ Rotunda Stage, Overture Center for the Arts (free event)
Thursday, June 6
- 9 a.m.-Noon From Page to Stage composition master class with Valerie Coleman @ First United Methodist Church (free event)
- 7 p.m.: Opening Gala Concert @ Maiahaus (402 E. Mifflin St.) (Tickets: $20 general/$10 students)
Friday, June 7
- 6 p.m.: “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman” pre-concert lecture by Meaghan Heinrich (free event)
- 7 p.m.: “Portraits of Josephine” Gala Concert @ Promenade Hall, Overture Center for the Arts (Tickets: $20 general/$10 students)
- 9 p.m.: Starry Night: “Holding Court” All-Women Comedy Show @ Robinia Courtyard (Tickets: $7 in advance/$10 at the door)
Saturday, June 8
- 10 a.m.-Noon: “The Multi-faceted Artist” Panel Discussion @ Madison Public Library Bubbler Room (free event)
- 2 p.m.: From Page To Stage: Emerging Composers Concert @ Capitol Lakes Grand Hall (free event)
- 7 p.m.: “Gaia” Closing Gala Concert @ First Unitarian Society of Madison Atrium Auditorium (Tickets: $20 general/$10 students)
Sunday, June 9
- 10 a.m.-Noon: “Mooning Around” poetry reading and artist mixer @ Common Ground, 2644 Branch St., Middleton (free event)
More information can be found at lunartfestival.org
video
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Classical music: A busy Sunday at the UW is highlighted by a FREE band concert and a public reception to mark the retirement of legendary band master Mike Leckrone
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ALERT: The Madison-based Avanti Piano Trio will give two FREE public concerts this weekend. The first one is TONIGHT at 7 p.m. at Capitol Lakes Retirement Community, 333 West Main Street, off the Capitol Square; the second one is on Sunday at 1 p.m. at the First United Methodist Church, 302 Wisconsin Avenue. Members of the trio are violinist Wes Luke, cellist Hannah Wolkstein and pianist Joseph Ross. The program includes works by Leon Kirchner, Ernest Bloch, Claude Debussy and Johannes Brahms.
By Jacob Stockinger
As the semester and academic year come to a close, concerts usually get packed into the schedule.
This coming Sunday, April 28, is no different – except that one event is clearly the headliner.
Mike Leckrone (below, in a photo by UW Communications) – the legendary and much honored director of bands and athletic bands at the University of Wisconsin-Madison – is retiring after 50 years.
Sunday marks a last appearance. He will conduct the UW Concert Band one last time and then be honored with a public reception.
The athletes and athletic fans love him. The students and band members love him. The alumni love him.
And, yes, the School of Music loves him. After all, not many band directors do what he did when he asked the late UW-Madison violin virtuoso Vartan Manoogian to perform the popular Violin Concerto by Felix Mendelssohn with a band instead of an orchestra. But Manoogian agreed — and said he loved the experience.
Also, not many band directors could start an annual spring concert in Mills Hall with an audience of some 300 and then saw it grow decades later into a three-night extravaganza that packs the Kohl Center with some 50,000 people and gets seen statewide on Wisconsin Public Television.
One time years ago, The Ear — who was then working as a journalist for The Capital Times — interviewed Leckrone. It was a busy year when he and the Marching Band were going with the football and basketball teams to the Rose Bowl and the March Madness tournament.
Mike Leckrone was charming and humorous, open and candid. The interview was so good, so full of information and human interest, that it was picked up by the Associated Press and distributed statewide and nationally.
That’s how big Mike Leckrone’s fan base is. Other schools and bands envied him.
All honor, then, to this man of action and distinction who was also creative and innovative.
Here is more information – but, alas, no program — about the FREE band concert on Sunday at 2 p.m. in Mills Hall:
https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/uw-concert-band-spring-concert-2/
For really detailed biographical background about Mike Leckrone and his achievements, go to:
https://news.wisc.edu/mike-leckrone-a-legendary-career/
And here is a statement by Leckrone himself about his approach to teaching and performing as well as his plans for retirement. (You can hear an interview Leckrone did with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
http://ls.wisc.edu/news/hitting-the-high-notes
Now you may think Leckrone can’t be followed.
But just this past week, the UW-Madison announced that Corey Pompey (below) is Leckrone’s successor. Here is a link to the official announcement, with lots of background about Pompey:
https://news.wisc.edu/new-marching-band-director-to-take-the-baton/
What else is there to say except: Thank you, Mike!
On, Wisconsin!
As for other events at the UW on Sunday:
At 4 p.m., in Mills Hall, University Bands will perform a FREE concert. Darin Olsen, O’Shae Best and Cole Hairston will conduct. No program is listed.
At 8 p.m. in Mills Hall, the Madrigal Singers (below top) will perform a FREE concert. Bruce Gladstone (below bottom, in a photo by Katrin Talbot) will conduct. No word on that program either.
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Classical music: The LunART Festival of women musicians will perform chamber music by all-female composers this Saturday night
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By Jacob Stockinger
The LunART Festival will be part of the Arts @ First Series when it performs “A Wintry Mix Chamber Music Collective” on this Saturday night, Feb. 23, at 7 p.m. at the First United Methodist Church, 203 Wisconsin Avenue.
The concert will features the Arbor Ensemble (below) and Black Marigold.
Admission is $15 for adults, $5 for students and free for children under 12. Advance tickets are $12 at: lunartwintrymix.brownpapertickets.com
The LunART Festival is dedicated to promoting and celebrating women in the arts through public performances, exhibitions, workshops and interdisciplinary collaboration. After a very successful inaugural season, the second LunART festival will take place in Madison, from June 6 through June 9.
While the main focus of LunART is a summer festival, LunART also presents events throughout the year, such as this midwinter collaborative concert.
The Madison-based ensembles Arbor Ensemble and Black Marigold (below, in a photo by Vincent Fuh) will perform an array of works for strings, winds and piano from the past 100 years, showcasing both historically notable women composers and introducing less familiar female pioneers of today.
The Arbor Ensemble will premiere their newly commissioned “Trio Cerulean” by Cherise Leiter (below top), in addition to their arrangement of the Piano Trio for flute, viola and piano by Germaine Tailleferre (below bottom).
Arbor members Berlinda Lopez (flute), Marie Pauls (viola) and Stacy Fehr-Regehr (piano) seek to connect with audiences through their personal sound and colorful instrumentation. Their innovative programming highlights lesser known chamber works, and the group has developed a niche promoting music of women composers.
The highly regarded, award-winning Quintet for Wind Instruments of Grazyna Bacewicz (below top) will be performed by Black Marigold (below bottom), a dynamic wind quintet known for their captivating and energetic performances. Members are Iva Ugrcic (flute), Laura Medisky (oboe), Bethany Schultz (clarinet), Juliana Mesa (bassoon) and Kia Karlen (horn).
Advocates of new music and living composers, Black Marigold fosters fresh perceptions of new music by programming pieces that are equally enjoyable for performers and audiences.
The ensembles will collaborate by mixing members and instrumentation, rounding out the program with Duo for Oboe and Viola by Hilary Tann (below top); “Doppler Effect” for flute, clarinet and piano by Adrienne Albert; “D’un Matin de Printemps” (From A Morning in Spring) by Lili Boulanger; and the Quartet for Strings, Op. 89, by Amy Beach (below bottom). You can hear the piece by Lili Boulanger in the YouTube video at the bottom.
Guest artists Laura Mericle (violin), Shannon Farley (violin) and Samantha Sinai (cello) will join Arbor violist Marie Pauls for the performance of the Beach. The quartet was a featured ensemble at the inaugural season of the LunART Festival this past summer.
For more information, go to:
firstunitedmethodistmadison.org/artsatfirst
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Classical music education: The all-student Madison Youth Symphony Orchestra scores another big success with music by Mozart, Copland and Grieg
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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 hosts an early music show once a month on Sunday morning on WORT-FM 89.9 FM. For years, he served on the Board of Advisors for the Madison Early Music Festival and frequently gives pre-concert lectures in Madison. He also took the performance photos.
By John W. Barker
The Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra (below, in a photo by Steve Rankin), founded and led by Mikko Rankin Utevsky is celebrating its fourth season of summer training sessions and public concerts.
I had to miss the first one of this summer, back in June, but I caught up with their second one, on last Saturday night, given at the First United Methodist Church on Wisconsin Avenue.
The church is now pursuing an active program of concerts, and this was the first one I have attended there. The hall (below) is a beautiful and spacious one, with fine acoustics. The fifty-odd people who attended were all but dwarfed by its amplitude.
The first half of the program was devoted to Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat, K. 271, often known by the name “Jeunehomme” for the student who inspired it. It is a boldly innovative work, even as it is the composer’s first truly mature essay in this form.
The soloist was Trevor Stephenson (below top and left in bottom photo), artistic director of the Madison Bach Musicians, playing his own fortepiano.
That instrument lacks the big and forceful sound of the modern grand piano, and Stephenson rightly shunned heroics for greater delicacy. Even with an orchestra of only 16 players, the instrument defined a balance that was fascinatingly different from what we usually hear. (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear the Mozart concerto played on a fortepiano by Malcolm Bilson, who was Trevor Stephenson’s teacher.)
After the intermission, Utevsky identified a policy now established by the organization, one that allows certain players in the orchestra to become podium “interns”, for training and for one performance opportunity.
This time cellist Elizabeth Strauss (below) was given a chance to conduct the familiar string arrangement that Edvard Grieg made of his song Våren (usually translated as “The Last Spring”).
Strauss seemed very confident. I did find her tempo a little faster than seems good to me, and a string group of only a dozen players could hardly achieve the polish and richness that most performances bring off. Still, the point is the wonderful experience given to such a trainee-conductor in these circumstances.
The concert concluded as Utevsky conducted the recast orchestra (below) in the suite for 13 instruments that Aaron Copland derived from his ballet Appalachian Spring.
This is a beautiful piece of Americana in music, and both conductor and players gave it their full devotion. The result was a handsomely well-balanced and nicely blended performance that obviously moved the audience greatly.
The MAYCO organization has made a real place for itself in Madison’s summer music, giving valuable experience to both the conductor and his student players, as they grow into mature orchestral musicians.
Long may it succeed!
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Classical music education: The all-student Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra (MAYCO) performs music by Mozart and Aaron Copland this coming Saturday night and Sunday afternoon
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By Jacob Stockinger
This coming weekend, the Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra (MAYCO, below in a photo by Steve Rankin) performs “Interplay,” featuring music by Mozart, Copland and Grieg.
There will be two performances.
The first is on Saturday, Aug. 4, at 7:30 p.m. at the First United Methodist Church (below), 203 Wisconsin Avenue, off the Capitol Square.
Then on Sunday, Aug. 5, MAYCO will perform at 12:30 p.m. in Brittingham Gallery 3 at the UW-Madison’s Chazen Museum of Art as part of the monthly “Sunday Afternoon Live at the Chazen” series, which can be STREAMED LIVE by going to: https://www.chazen.wisc.edu/index.php?/events-calendar-demo/event/sunday-afternoon-live-at-the-chazen-8-5-18/
Admission for the Saturday performance is $10 at the door; students by donation. The Sunday performance is FREE, and reservations can be made by going to the above link.
For more information, visit www.mayco.org or www.facebook.com/madisonchamberorchestra.
ABOUT THE ORCHESTRA
MAYCO is a free summer festival ensemble dedicated to providing an intensive small orchestra experience for advanced high school and college musicians.
Founded in 2010 by music director Mikko Rankin Utevsky, the orchestra prepares a full program over the course of each one-week summer session, culminating in a public concert (below is a photo by Dennis Gotowksi of the concert this past June).
For The Ear, Utevsky (below top) and his general manager and concertmaster-wife Thalia Coombs (below bottom) answered some questions about the concerts:
WHAT CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THE PROGRAM?
The orchestra will be joined by guest soloist Trevor Stephenson (below), who is the artistic director and keyboard player of the Madison Bach Musicians. On fortepiano, he will solo in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat Major, K. 271, sometimes nicknamed the “Jeunehomme” Concerto. (You can hear the lively, tuneful and infectious last movement of the Mozart concerto in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Stephenson has led workshops on historical performance practices with the orchestra in past seasons, and we’re delighted to work with him to bring one of Mozart’s weirdest and wildest youthful masterpieces to life.
The ballet suite from “Appalachian Spring” by Aaron Copland (below) is one of the defining works of his classic American sound, juxtaposing the pastoral beauty of the countryside with his trademark rhythmic vitality. We are performing the original chamber version, in which the clarity of texture illuminates the intricate internal structure of the piece.
Two high school students from our Conducting Apprenticeship Program will lead Grieg’s affecting miniature, “Last Spring,” for string orchestra. Cellist Elizabeth Strauss and violinist Monona Suzuki (below, in 2013) are this year’s Apprentices.
WHY IS THE CONCERT CALLED “INTERPLAY”?
We wanted to highlight the sense of conversation and interaction present in the two major works on this program.
The Mozart concerto is remarkable for the degree of interplay between soloist and orchestra. From the opening bars they are constantly interrupting each other, finishing each other’s sentences. It’s what gives the piece its unique sense of drama.
There’s a truism that Mozart made everything he wrote into an opera, and it’s certainly evident here: the melodies could have been lifted straight out of “The Marriage of Figaro.”
In the Copland work, it’s more about the intricacy of texture and the sense of playfulness in the way the various parts interact.
This project is funded in part by a grant from the Madison Arts Commission, with additional funds from the Wisconsin Arts Board; and by Dane Arts, with additional funds from the Endres Mfg. Company Foundation, The Evjue Foundation, Inc., charitable arm of The Capital Times, the W. Jerome Frautschi Foundation, and the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation.
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Classical music: Organist Greg Zelek, of the Madison Symphony Orchestra, will give a FREE celebratory recital at First United Methodist Church this coming Tuesday night
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the following announcement to post:
“Greg Zelek (below), the new principal organist of the Madison Symphony Orchestra and Curator of the Overture Concert Organ and Series, will present a FREE public organ recital on this coming Tuesday night, Nov. 14, at 7 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, 203 Wisconsin Avenue, in downtown Madison.
“The evening’s program of masterpieces includes: the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, by Johann Sebastian Bach; the Organ Sonata in F minor, Op. 65, No. 1, by Felix Mendelssohn; the Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 543, by J.S. Bach (heard performed by Zelek in the YouTube video at the bottom); and the Organ Sonata in D minor, Op. 42, No. 1, by Alexandre Guilmant.
“A public reception follows the recital where people can share their thoughts about the program and meet the artist.
“Zelek says he relishes the creative aspect of playing the organ. Because no two instruments are alike, every time he sits down at a new console he reinvents the repertoire that he has played thousands of times for that specific instrument and that specific space.
“Zelek adds: “It gives me the opportunity to be as creative as possible when it comes to the selecting of different sounds and colors for each individual instrument and composition.”
“The First Church organ console (below top), as well as the one (below bottom) at the Overture Center, is in front of the audience, offering the organist opportunities to interact and engage with them.
“I speak to the audience in between pieces,” Zelek explains. “Having a greater understanding of the music sheds light onto its immense beauty and enhances the listener’s appreciation of the performance.
“The organ is also such a physical instrument. When the audience can see what the organist is doing, it draws everybody in. There is so much going on. It’s not just the hands and the feet, but also the different buttons we’re pushing and sounds we’re generating from the instrument. It is a full body workout when I play! The audience should never be bored.”
“Zelek’s recital is part of the 180th anniversary celebration of First United Methodist Church as well as the 25th anniversary of its Austin organ.
“Admission for the recital is FREE with donation envelopes available to support The Arts program at First Church. The church has a deep tradition in featuring varied musical offerings and provides much needed rehearsal and performing space for local music and performing arts groups.”
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