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Forward Festival 2017 Features Acts Young & Old

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Parent Category: Other Festivals
Category: Music
Published on Thursday, 07 December 2017 23:02
Written by Brad Balfour

 

The third edition of the Forward Festival is happening this week on December 7th and 8th at ShapeShifter Lab (18 Whitwell Pl., Brooklyn). Featuring a mix of established and up and coming creative musicians in a showcase of some of the most exciting experimental music happening in NYC today.

The Forward Festival 2017:

  • Daniel Carter
  • Hilliard Greene
  • Federico Ughi
  • Kid Millions
  • Sarah Bernstein
  • Paul Flaherty
  • Matthew Putman
  • Andrew Lamb
  • Warren Smith
  • L’Rain
  • Patrick Holmes
  • Donald Sturge Anthony McKenzie II
  • A mystery guest guitarist
  • Jimmy Lee
  • Nick Dimopoulos
  • Micah Gaugh
  • Duane Eubanks
  • Greg Lewis
  • Gene Moore
  • Gene Janas

To learn more, go to: http://www.577records.com/forwardfestival/

Forward Festival
December 7 - 8, 2017

ShapeShifter
Lab 18 Whitwell Pl.
Brooklyn, NY 11215

Sibelius Academy Symphony Orchestra Delights at Lincoln Center

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Parent Category: Other Festivals
Category: Music
Published on Thursday, 07 September 2017 20:55
Written by Jack Angstreich

The new season at Lincoln Center of the excellent Juilliard Orchestra opened auspiciously on the evening of Tuesday, September 5th, at the splendid Alice Tully Hall, with a program where its members played alongside excellent musicians from the Sibelius Academy Symphony Orchestra of Helsinki, under the expert direction of the renowned Esa-Pekka Salonen, in the last of three collaborative concerts with the two ensembles in celebration of the centennial of Finnish independence.

 The unifying thread of the program was, aptly, the music of Jean Sibelius, whose Seventh Symphony influenced the first two works of the concert, beginning with the compelling Radical Light by the eminent, late composer Steven Stucky— who had joined the Juilliard faculty in 2014 —which was notable for its brilliant orchestration and was inspired by a poem by the greatly esteemed A.R. Ammons.
 
Also of interest was the Finnish conductor's own composition, the virtuosic cello concerto,Mania,dazzlingly performed by the Finnish-Dutch soloist, Jonathan Roozeman, who had received his early training at the Academy. He went on to present a delightful encore, the finale of Gaspar Cassadó’s Suite for Cello.
 
It was the second half of the evening, however, that proved to be the most extraordinary. The concluding work on the program was the very seldom performed, complete score of the wonderful Lemminkäinen Suite (Four Legends of the Kalevala)of Sibelius, which left a more vivid impression than anything that had come before. An enormously appreciative audience earned a fabulous encore, the same composer's unutterably lovelyValse Triste,closing an exceptional concert.

Lesser Known Classics at the Mostly Mozart Fest

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Parent Category: Other Festivals
Category: Music
Published on Wednesday, 02 August 2017 18:19
Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for Lincoln Center

The first program, entitled "The Singing Heart", in this year's Mostly Mozart Festival—which I attended on the evening of Wednesday, July 26th, at David Geffen Hall and which featured the house orchestra confidently conducted by the enthusiastic music director, Louis Langrée—proved to be an unusually memorable one.

The concert opened with the sublime Kyrie, K. 90, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, gorgeously sung by the appealing Young People's Chorus of New York City, under the direction Francisco J. Núñez. This was followed by a splendid account of the first movement of the same composer's excellent "Haffner" Symphony, with some of the movements interrupted by other works sung by the chorus, in accord with the practice of the time. These included the 19th century American hymn, "Hark, I hear the Harps Eternal", and the Brazilian "Three Indigenous Songs of the Kraó Tribe", as much performance art as beautiful music. After the final two movements of the symphony, the chorus performed the powerful black spiritual, "Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel".
 
The choral director's enjoyable arrangement of the children's song, "Ah vous dirai-je, maman" was a prelude to the thrilling finale, Ludwig van Beethoven's superb, rarely performed "Choral Fantasy". The Festival Orchestra and the Young People's Chorus were here joined by the fine Concert Chorale of New York —directed by James Bagwell—along with the precocious pianist, Kit Armstrong, and a sextet of wonderful singers: sopranos Janai Brugger and Brandie Sutton, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano, tenors Jack Swanson and Miles Mykkanen, and basso Adam Lau. An enthusiastic ovation elicited a magnificent encore, Leonard Bernstein's unforgettable finale to Candide,"Make Our Garden Grow".
 
The first week of the festival concluded with its second house orchestra program on the evening of Saturday, July 29th.
 
A lovely pre-concert recital featured Franz Schubert's lyrical, seldom heard Introduction and Variations on "Trockne Blumen" for flute and piano—based on one of the composer's songs from his extraordinary first cycle, Die schöne Müllerin—here effectively realized by flautist Jasmine Choi, accompanied by Roman Rabinovich.
 
After a brief introduction by guest conductor Edward Gardner, the concert proper began superbly with what proved to be the highlight of the evening: a moving account of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's rarely performed, glorious Masonic Funeral Music in C minor of 1785.
 
Acclaimed soloist Jeremy Denk then took the stage for a solid reading of Ludwig van Beethoven's ubiquitous Piano Concerto No. 4, in which he played the composer's own cadenza, which is standardly heard. Passionate applause was answered by a welcome encore, the exquisite Andante from Mozart's Sonata in C Major, K. 545.
 
The program concluded gracefully with an enjoyable performance of Schubert's lesser known, elegant Symphony No. 5.

MET Orchestra Perform the Cycles of Mahler

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Parent Category: Other Festivals
Category: Music
Published on Friday, 16 June 2017 13:15
Written by Jack Angstreich

Esa-Pekka Salonen

A glorious season of orchestral music at Carnegie Hall finished this month with three superb concerts featuring the excellent MET Orchestra under the inspired direction of Esa-Pekka Salonen, with each program devoted in part to a Gustav Mahler song cycle. The first performance, presented on the evening of Wednesday, May 31st, opened with selections from Mahler's sensuous Des Knaben Wunderhorn sung by two outstanding artists, renowned mezzo-soprano Susan Graham and the fine tenor Matthew Polenzani. Both singers unexpectedly sounded slightly underpowered but the orchestral playing was crystalline. The second half of the program was more impressive with probably the most extraordinary account I have heard in the concert hall of the same composer's frequently performed, magnificent Symphony No. 1, the apotheosis of all three programs.

The next concert—given on the afternoon of Saturday, June 3rd—merited comparable esteem, opening with a sterling reading of Robert Schumann's beautiful Symphony No. 3, the "Rhenish", a work surprisingly not much heard on New York stages lately. The latter half of the program surpassed the first with a stunning version of Mahler's sublime Das Lied von der Erde, showcasing two thrilling singers—the lovely mezzo-soprano, Karen Cargill, and the dynamic tenor, Stuart Skelton—both exquisitely accompanied by the ensemble in another pellucid realization.

The final program—which took place on the evening of the following Tuesday—also satisfied, beginning with an elegant account of Mahler's seldom performed, posthumously published, but gorgeous Blumine. Celebrated virtuoso Christian Tetzlaff then took the stage for a rewarding performance of the wonderful Violin Concerto of Jean Sibelius, a composer with whom the conductor has had a privileged relationship. Vigorous applause earned the audience an enjoyable encore from the soloist: the challenging Presto from the Solo Violin Sonata, BB 124, of Béla Bartók.

The second half of the concert started with the moving Mahler Kindertotenlieder, appealingly sung by the popular mezzo-soprano, Anne Sofie von Otter, who nonetheless seemed slightly underpowered. The event closed strongly with a compelling rendition of the idiosyncratic, mysterious Sibelius Symphony No. 7. One looks forward enormously to hearing these distinguished musicians again next season.

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