The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: Starting this Friday, the Madison Early Music Festival will devote a week to exploring familiar and unfamiliar Iberian music during the age of Cervantes. Part 1 of 2
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By Jacob Stockinger
This coming Friday, when the Madison Early Music Festival (MEMF) starts its week-long exploration of Iberian music during the Renaissance Age of novelist Miguel de Cervantes (below) and his pioneering novel “Don Quixote,” much will be familiar but much will also be new.
To provide a look at what to expect, the longtime co-artistic directors of the festival – wife-and-husband singers soprano Cheryl Bensman Rowe and baritone Paul Rowe (below) – provided the following overview through an email Q&A with The Ear.
All-festival passes are $90 and tickets to individual concerts cost $20, $10 for students.
Click here to buy online, call 608-265-ARTS (2787), or visit the Campus Arts Ticket Box Offices in Memorial Union or Vilas Hall (click here for hours).
(Note: All MEMF Concert Series concerts and lectures are free for participants in the MEMF Workshop. There is a $4 transaction fee per ticket when purchasing online or by phone.)
How successful is this year’s festival compared to others in terms of enrollment, budgets, performers, etc.? How does this program of MEMF’s reach nationally or even internationally compare to previous years?
We will have about 100 students at our workshop this summer, which has been a steady number for the past five years. Our budget increased to cover the big Don Quixote project by Piffaro, which you can read about below.
We continue to attract workshop participants and performers from all over the United States and Canada, and this year our concert series will present Xavier Diaz-Latorre from Spain. For more information, go to: www.xavierdiazlatorre.com
What is new and what is the same in terms of format, students, faculty members and performers?
The following events are new to MEMF this summer:
The Historical Harp Society will be giving a conference before MEMF begins, from Thursday, July 6 through Saturday, July 8, with classes and lectures that will culminate in a concert of Harp Music from the Spanish Golden Age on Friday, July 7, at 7:30 p.m. in Morphy Recital Hall, which is FREE and open to the public. Go to www.historicalharpsociety.org
Master teacher and performer Xavier Diaz-Latorre will be giving a master class in Morphy Recital Hall on Saturday, July 8, from 10 a.m. to noon. It is free and open to the public.
We have a new partnership with the Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies (LACIS) Program at UW-Madison. LACIS has helped us translate materials and supported MEMF with two grants. www.lacis.wisc.edu
A new display in the Memorial Library foyer will celebrate the 2017 Madison Early Music Festival with a special exhibit of Don Quixote Through the Ages, featuring a selection of books, musical scores, and other materials from the UW-Madison Libraries. While viewing the exhibition, patrons can scan a QR code and listen to a Spotify playlist featuring music that will be heard at the MEMF 2017 Concert Series! This is a MEMF first, created by co-artistic director Paul Rowe.
We worked with several librarians to select the materials: Paloma Celis-Carbajal, Ibero-American Studies and Romance Languages Librarian; Jeanette Casey, head of Mills Music Library; and Lisa Wettleson from Special Collections at Memorial Library (below, in a photo by Brent Nicastro).
Dates: June 26 – August 10, 2017
Location: Memorial Library foyer | 728 State Street | Madison
Library Hours: 8 a.m.-9:45 p.m.
We have several new performers this year.
Xavier Diaz-Latorre, a vihuela player from Spain, and the ensemble Sonnambula from New York. Xavier is a world-renowned musician, and plays the vihuela, a Spanish Renaissance type of guitar, and the lute.
Xavier will perform a solo recital featuring music of the vihuela by composers Luis Narváez, Alonso Mudarra, Gaspar Sanz and Santiago de Murcia. The link below will give you more information about the predecessors to the guitar:
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~lsa/aboutLute/Vihuela.html
Daphna Mor and Kane Mathis will present a program featuring music from the geographic regions of Andalusia, North Africa, the Ottoman Empire and the Sephardic Diaspora. Based on the monophonic music of modes referred to as the Makam, the audience will be drawn to distinct beauty and great similarities of music from the courts, liturgical forms, dance airs and folk music.
Daphna Mor (below top) sings and plays several historical wind instruments, and Kane Mathis (below bottom) plays the oud, a lute type of stringed instrument with 11 or 13 strings grouped in 5 or 6 courses, commonly used in Middle Eastern music.
Percussionist Shane Shanahan (below) will join them. Shane is an original member of the Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma and a Grammy award winner. https://www.stepsnyc.com/faculty/bio/Shane-Shanahan/
And watch Shane play frame drum in the Cave Temples of Dunhuang at the Getty Museum:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQjC3y6CXQ8
Hear and read about Daphna Mor: http://www.daphnamor.com/
You can watch Kane Mathis play the oud at this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tHrxEohai8
Sonnambula (below), an ensemble of violins and viol da gambas, has performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and have a regular series at the Hispanic Society of America in New York. It played a sold-out program of Spanish Golden Age works drawn from the over 450 pieces in the Cancionero Musical de Palacio, a manuscript at the Royal Palace of Madrid. This same program will be presented at MEMF on Friday, July 14. (You can hear them perform Spanish music in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Why was the theme of the Spain’s Golden Age and The Age of Cervantes and Don Quixote chosen for the festival? What composers and works will be highlighted?
We liked the connection with last year’s theme, Shakespeare 400, because, although they never knew one another, Cervantes and Shakespeare (below) were contemporaries and share a “deathaversary,” as they both died on April 23, 1616. They led quite different lives, as Shakespeare was very successful throughout his lifetime and Cervantes wasn’t well known until the end of his life, when Don Quixote was published in 1605.
http://www.dw.com/en/shakespeare-and-cervantes-two-geniuses-and-one-death-date/a-19203237
Also, the Renaissance band Piffaro (below, in a photo by Church Street Studios) — an ensemble from Philadelphia that is well loved by MEMF audiences — suggested we explore this connection to Don Quixote and present their program The Musical World of Don Quixote, a huge project that they have been researching for several years.
They created a musical soundtrack to the novel in chronological order, and their program will open our 2017 concert series. This link from the Early Music America article “Piffaro Tilts At Musical Windmills” will tell you about their project in depth:
https://www.earlymusicamerica.org/web-articles/emag-piffaro-tilts-at-musical-windmills/
The other concerts in the series draw from the music that is mentioned in Don Quixote and from the Spanish Renaissance, known as Siglo de Oro, or the Century of Gold. Many composers from this time period will be represented: Tomás Luis de Victoria, Cristóbal de Morales, Francisco Guerrero, Luis de Milán and Alonso Lobo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Golden_Age
https://artsinstitute.wisc.edu/memf/concerts.htm
Check out our website for the most up-to-date information and how to get tickets:
Tomorrow: What makes Renaissance music in Spain different? What composers and music will be featured in concerts?
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Classical music: Let us now praise — and program — Lou Harrison, the prophetic American composer who pioneered both personal and professional diversity in music
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has heard the name of Lou Harrison.
But he doesn’t recall ever actually hearing any music by Lou Harrison (below).
Maybe that will change, now that the centennial of Harrison’s birth is being marked.
Perhaps the UW-Madison or a smaller local group will do something, since neither the Madison Symphony Orchestra nor the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra has programmed anything by Harrison in their next seasons.
The Ear certainly hopes to hear some of Harrison’s intriguing and prophetic music, which seems to be a harbinger of contemporary globalism and world music, performed live. Harrison’s work seems to presage Yo-Yo Ma‘s crossover and cross-cultural Silk Road Ensemble, but was way ahead of its time and without the commercial success.
In any case, it seems very few composers pioneered and championed both personal and professional diversity through Asian sounds and an openly gay identity. Completely genuine, Harrison seemed creative and imaginative in just about everything he touched and did.
If you, like The Ear, know little about the maverick Lou Harrison, an excellent background piece, recently done by Tom Huizinga of National Public Radio (NPR), is a fine introduction.
Here is a link to the story:
Harrison composed a lot of music, including concertos for piano and violin, that shows Asian influences and combines them with traditional Western classical music. Below is a YouTube recording of his Double Concerto for Violin and Cello with Javanese Gamelan from 1981-82.
Have you heard or performed Harrison’s music?
What do you think of it?
Would you like to hear it programmed for live performance more often?
Leave your opinion in the COMMENT section.
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: Superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma turns 60. NPR offers a capsule biography and generous sound samples from throughout his varied career.
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By Jacob Stockinger
Have cello. Will play.
Any style. Any place.
Last Wednesday, superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma, turned 60.
The unquestionable quality, astounding diversity and enviable longevity of his career will come as no surprise to Madison audiences.
After all, Ma (below, in a photo by Jason Bell for Sony Classical) has performed here many times, mostly at the Wisconsin Union Theater – he reopened the renovated Shannon Hall — but also at the Overture Center.
Ma has performed solo here. But he also has played with his longtime chamber music partner pianist Emanuel Ax and with the acclaimed Silk Road Ensemble and the bluegrass or roots music by violinist-composer Mark O’Conner.
And Ma has commissioned many works – including some by composers Osvaldo Golijov and John Adams – that have entered the mainstream repertoire. His influence on contemporary music will be felt for a very long time.
The Ear has met Ma in person a couple of times and found him to be as congenial and humorous as he is talented and original.
An iconic figure on TV and radio, Ma is a master of using the mass media although he never seems a crass self-promoter.
He is a veritable American cultural institution who also enjoys going on PBS for “Sesame Street” and “Live From Lincoln Center” as well as doing a cameo appearance playing unaccompanied Bach in the drama “The West Wing.” (You can hear him play the same piece in a YouTube video at the bottom that has more than 12 million hits.)
Perhaps you have also heard him live, maybe even more than once.
One thing is important but is overlooked by the NPR piece: The ever-reliable Ma is outstandingly successful at the box office. He is probably the most bankable and commercially successful American classical musician on the scene today. Ma’s career bodes well for the future of classical music that otherwise worries so many observers and participants.
You surely will appreciate the eminently readable and listenable post that Tim Huizenga wrote for the “Deceptive Cadence” blog on NPR or National Public Radio.
Here is a link:
http://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2015/10/07/446364616/the-diverse-world-of-yo-yo-ma
Do you have a birthday greeting for or memory of cellist Yo-Yo Ma?
Leave it in the COMMENT section.
The Ear wants to hear.
Tags: Arts, Avery Fisher Hall, Bach, Baroque, bluegrass, Boston, box office, Cello, Chamber music, Classical music, Compact Disc, concerto, Emanuel Ax, Johann Sebastian Bach, John Adams, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Live From Lincoln Center, Madison, mass media, media, Music, New York City, NPR, Orchestra, Osvaldo Golijov, PBS, Piano, public radio, Radio, roots music, Sesame Street, Silk Road Ensemble, Television, The West Wing, TV, United States, Violin, Wisconsin, Yo-Yo Ma, YouTube
Classical music: NPR explores the music soundtracks for movies that nominated for Academy Awards and could receive an Oscar at tonight’s ceremonies airing on ABC-TV.
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By Jacob Stockinger
Oscar would no doubt say that movie soundtracks deserve special attention and serious consideration as art music.
Of course purists will probably argue that movie soundtracks are not really classical music – except in certain cases like Roman Polanski’s “The Pianist,” “Shine,” “Amadeus” and such obvious fare.
And it would be hard to disagree with them.
Perhaps some would say that movies are the real operas of our day, except that the music plays a secondary or tertiary role.
Besides, more and more symphony orchestras are turning to concert programs that feature movie soundtracks, perhaps to attract new and younger audiences.
And radio stations seem to be mixing in and playing more and more movie music on their classical programs.
And more and more composers who aspired to be classical composers but who were forced earn a living in Hollywood –- Erich Wolfgang Korngold (below) comes immediately to mind –- are being increasingly programmed for their classical fare as well as their commercial Hollywood work.
Besides, “crossover” and “fusion” are the key words of the day in the classical music scene, as you can see with the success of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project (below top) and the “new tangos” by Astor Piazzolla (below bottom), to name but two examples.
So perhaps it is only natural that, in the run-up to the Academy Awards tonight, NPR and its terrific blog “Deceptive Cadence’ have featured several posts about the music that is featured in nominated movies, especially the story of Alice Herz-Sommer, the late 110-year-old pianist (below, in photo by Yuri Dojc) who survived Auschwitz by playing music, especially the etudes of Frederic Chopin -– and who just died last week. (You can hear her speak and play the piano at the bottom in a popular YouTube video that has almost a million hits.)
The Ear suspects her story, “The Lady in Number 6,” will win the Oscar for short documentary because she was the oldest survivor of the Holocaust and was a testament to the power of music, and therefore of all art and beauty, over evil and adversity. She embodied hope — a cherished value.
Here is a link to her fascinating and detailed obituary in The New York Times:
So as you prepare to watch the live broadcast on ABC-TV tonight starting at 6 p.m. CST (it will also be streamed live), here are links to consider when you think about music and films.
Here is the link to a story about music and documentaries:
http://www.npr.org/2014/02/28/283072030/music-takes-center-stage-in-oscar-nominated-documentaries
Here is an overview of several nominees, including William Butler (below) of Arcade Fire, for Best Score:
http://www.npr.org/2014/02/26/283026146/and-the-oscar-goes-to-mr-star-wars-or-arcade-fire
And here is a link to another story about quiet music — specifically, composer Alexandre Desplat and his score for “Philomena” starring Judi Dench (below) — and how hard it is to compose and perform:
Tags: Academy Award, Alexandre Desplat, Alice Herz Sommer, Arts, Auschwitz, Ástor Piazzolla, Chopin, Classical music, concentration camps, crossover, Dachau, documentary, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, etude, fims, Frédéric Chopin, fusion, Hollywood, Holocaust, Jacob Stockinger, Judi Dench, Movies, Nazi, New York Times, NPR, opera, Orchestra, Oscar, Philomena, Pianist, Piano, Poland, Roman Polanski, Silk Road Ensemble, Silk Road Project, soundtracks, symphony orchestra, Theresienstadt, Yo-Yo Ma, YouTube, Yuri Dojc
Classical music: Eclectic superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma says that culture and the arts are vital to our society and to education and he has Three Big Ideas about what we can do to help the in America.
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By Jacob Stockinger
Classical music organizations of all kinds are wondering what they can do to foster a better appreciation of the arts and to put the performing arts on a more solid financial footing with broader public and political acceptance.
Famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma (below top), who, in addition to his world-wide career as a recitalist, chamber musician and concerto soloist, has also been a creative consultant to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and who has performed with the eclectic Silk Road Ensemble (below bottom), thinks he has the answer.
At bottom is a YouTube video of Ma playing a movement of a solo cello suite by J.S. Bach that has had almost 10 million hits:
And the Harvard-educated Ma, who describes himself as a “venture culturalist” revealed his view about the need for diversity and his Three Big Ideas recently in the Nancy Hank Lecture on Arts Advocacy Day in the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C. He linked and emphasized the role of the arts in all education and in economic development.
And as always, NPR’s outstanding classical music blog “Deceptive Cadence” was on top of the story.
Here is a link with a story and a video of the complete speech. Spread the word and share it — his remarks deserve it:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2013/04/09/176681242/can-yo-yo-ma-fix-the-arts
Be sure to read some of the readers’ comments, which I find most enlightening –- especially the story about and quote by Winston Churchill.
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