PLEASE HELP THE EAR. IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST, SPREAD THE WORD. FORWARD A LINK TO IT OR, SHARE IT or TAG IT (not just “Like” it) ON FACEBOOK. Performers can use the extra exposure to draw potential audience members to an event. And you might even attract new readers and subscribers to the blog.
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 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:
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.
Ansel Norris attended as an outstanding trumpeter from Madison East High School and Greg Zelek attended as an outstanding high school organist from the New World School of the Arts in Coral Gables, Florida.
“We hit it off right away and it came to me later what a great story this was,” Norris (below) mused. “Greg had grown up in south Florida and now was living in Madison, and I had grown up in Madison and was now living in south Florida.
“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.
After graduating from East High School in Madison, he attended Northwestern University, from which he received a Bachelor’s degree in Music in 2016. From there he attended Rice University in 2019. Twice he was the first-prize winner at the National Trumpet Competition and a winner of the New World Symphony’s Concerto Competition. Then, at 26 years old, he became the first-ever American prizewinner in the International Tchaikovsky Competition’s Brass division. (You can hear Norris perform in the competition’s semi-finals in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Playing as soloist with orchestras is a special pleasure for Ansel, and he has enjoyed performances in front of the Mariinsky Orchestra, New World Symphony and his hometown Madison Symphony Orchestra, to name a few. Also a chamber musician, Ansel won a Bronze Medal at the Fischoff International Competition with his friends from the Lincoln Chamber Brass.
Ansel Norris currently resides in Naples, Florida, where he enjoys an eclectic musical career with the Naples Philharmonic. In a place without cold weather, the Naples orchestra could potentially play music safely outside all winter. But Ansel shook his head, “For the most part we’ve been indoors. The orchestra gets tested for COVID each week and we play on a stage with musicians spaced 10 feet apart. HEPA filters are positioned everywhere. Playing 10 feet apart is just crazy. You absolutely cannot depend on the musical cues you were trained to depend on.”
Norris remembers growing up in Madison where there was a “fine legacy for trumpet players. It was so great I didn’t want to go away to Interlochen, even with a full scholarship.” He studied privately with John Aley and attended WYSO rehearsals on Saturdays, which he absolutely loved.
And now this Tuesday, this 2009 Bolz Young Artist Competition finalist will be returning to the Overture stage with his good friend Greg Zelek, who are both amazing and accomplished young musicians.
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!
PLEASE HELP THE EAR. IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST, SPREAD THE WORD. FORWARD A LINK TO IT OR, SHARE IT or TAG IT (not just “Like” it) ON FACEBOOK. Performers can use the extra exposure to draw potential audience members to an event. And you might even attract new readers and subscribers to the blog.
By Jacob Stockinger
Legendary American cellist Lynn Harrell (below) died Monday at 76.
If his name sounds familiar, it could be because Harrell performed in Madison at least three times – twice with the Madison Symphony Orchestra (2007 and 2011), in concertos by Lalo and Victor Herbert, and a recital with pianist Yefim Bronfman at the Wisconsin Union Theater (1994).
No cause of death has yet been given, but various sources say it was unrelated to COVID-19 or the coronavirus pandemic.
Colleagues were quick to praise Harrell not only as a master musician – gifted with beautiful tone and sensitive, expressive interpretations — but also as a great teacher and a congenial man who made friends easily. He also cut promotional ads for National Public Radio (NPR) urging members to donate, as he himself did.
Here is an interview he did in 2011 with host Norman Gilliland for Wisconsin Public Radio:
A prodigy who made his Carnegie Hall debut at 17, Harrell, who studied at Juilliard and the Curtis Institute, was renowned internationally. He later taught at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
In 1994 he played a Papal Concert at the Vatican to mark the first commemoration and remembrance of the Holocaust. His performance there of Max Bruch’s “Kol Nidrei” for cello and orchestra can be seen and heard at the bottom in the most popular of Harrell’s many YouTube videos.
IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST, PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD. FORWARD A LINK TO IT OR, SHARE IT or TAG IT (not just “Like” it) ON FACEBOOK. Performers can use the extra exposure to draw potential audience members to an event. And you might even attract new readers and subscribers to the blog.
By Jacob Stockinger
The Rural Musicians Forum will present the New Milwaukee Consort in a program of Baroque love songs on this coming Monday, Aug. 5, at 7:30 p.m. at the Unity Chapel in Spring Green.
This group of professionals and experts in early music includes soprano Kristin Knutson (below top), who competed in the 2015 Handel Aria Competition in Madison (in the YouTube video at the bottom); cellist and viol player Charlie Rasmussen (below middle); and lutenist Tim Sterner Miller (below bottom). They will perform on period instruments, bringing audiences back in time to the courts and chambers of Italy, England and France.
The New Milwaukee Consort is dedicated to the music of the European Renaissance and Baroque eras, crafting intimate performances around stories in words and music that resonate across the centuries.
They particularly relish bringing lesser-known sounds of the 17th century to modern audiences, from the work of women composers such as Barbara Strozzi (below) to music from handwritten manuscripts documenting the early development of the cello and ongoing experiments on the lute.
This concert features music from the chamber cantatas of the Venetian singer and composer Strozzi to celebrate her 400th birthday as well as works by her compatriots Claudio Monteverdi and Taruinio Merula; Elizabethan songs by lutenist and composer John Dowland (below); and “airs de cour” (Court music) by French court composer Etienne Moulinie.
Interwoven with these vocal works are pieces for the lute by Dowland and his contemporary Nicholas Vallet; for the viola da gamba by Tobia Hume and Marin Marais (below); and for the cello by Giulio Ruvo, Francesco Supriani and Giuseppe Jacchini.
This is an opportunity to enjoy some of the most precious pieces of Renaissance and Baroque era in the beautiful Unity Chapel (below) designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
The Chapel is located at 6597 County Highway T in Spring Green.
Admission is by free will offering, with a suggested donation of $15.