Donal Fox’s ‘Piazzolla to Bach’ inspires raves at the ICA
Donal Fox returned to the ICA/Boston last week, joined this time by guest cellist Maya Beiser. Fox inspired rave reviews once again in the same theater where he gave the ICA’s first ever public music performance in 2006.
Here’s what the critics had to say:
“What would the music of Johann Sebastian Bach sound like if the composer came back today? What would the music of Domenico Scarlatti sound like? Probably a lot like the music of composer/pianist/improviser Donal Fox… His playing on the classics is superb, and on the pianissimo of the Dowland his fingers touch the keys with the delicacy of a butterfly alighting on a flower…”
- Julie Hatfield, The Boston Examiner
“Pianist-composer Donal Fox is an audacious musician. Although one would expect that his recital would be designed to show the influence of Bach on the Argentinian composer of the “new tango,” Astor Piazzolla, Fox ends up reimagining both of them… and a half dozen other composers in between.”
- Michael Ullman, The Arts Fuse
“For those who, like me, are used to seeing Fox with a band, his opening 20-minute solo section was revelatory. In the Fox manner, he used pieces by Dowland, Brahms, Handel, and Monk as source material for improvisation. He took the first number, Dowland’s “Flow My Tears” fairly straight, but here were hints of what would impress for the rest of the night: his touch, tone, and sensitivity to dynamics, his compositional attention to chord voicings, his swing (even in non-swing material)…
By the time he got to Handel’s Passacaglia in G minor, all of Fox’s talents were on display - that rising and falling dynamic contrast, propulsive melodic variations in the right hand driven by rock-solid ostinatos in the left.”
- Jon Garelick’s Giant Steps
Coming up next:
Next, Donal Fox joins the Imani Winds at The Greene Space for Emancipation 150: All Ears with Terrance McKnight.
Monday, April 29, 2013 at 7:00pm
Emancipation 150: All Ears with Terrance McKnight
featuring Donal Fox and Imani Winds
The Greene Space
44 Charlton Street, New York, NY 10014
David Krakauer solos with NJ Symphony and at Carnegie Hall with Kronos Quartet
“Masterful technique… boatloads of pure adrenaline… like a roaring free jazz solo, laced with virtuosic multiphonics…”
- Jeremy Eichler, Boston Globe
Sunday, April 21, 2013 at 3pm
David Krakauer
with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra
at the New Jersey PAC
Newark, NJ
Friday, May 3, 2013 at 9pm
David Krakauer
with Kronos Quartet
at Carnegie Hall
New York, NY
Clarinetist David Krakauer will be the featured soloist with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra led by Stefan Sanderling on Sunday, April 21, 2013 at 3pm, at The New Jersey Performing Arts Center (One Center Street, Newark). This is a rare opportunity to hear Krakauer perform both classical and Klezmer music with an orchestra - he will play Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, as well as his unique arrangement of the traditional Klezmer tune Der Heyser Bulgar and his own Synagogue Wail. The concert also includes Copland’s Appalachian Spring. The performance, which is open to the public, is the 16th Annual United Jewish Appeal Federation Benefit Concert.
Then on Friday, May 3, 2013 at 9pm, Krakauer will join the Kronos Quartet at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall as part of Late Nights at Zankel Hall. Krakauer will be featured on the New York premiere of Aleksandra Vrebalov’s Babylon, Our Own. Also included on the program will be the world premiere of Missy Mazzoli’s You Know Me From Here, Laurie Anderson’s Flow (arr. Jacob Garchik), and the New York premiere of Valentin Silvestrov’s String Quartet No. 3.
Writes Vrebalov: “Babylon, Our Own is written for the Kronos Quartet and David Krakauer, and is inspired by their passionate and masterful playing of diverse styles of music. I wrote the piece having in mind their individual characteristics as performers: Krakauer’s ecstatic high register, David Harrington’s uncanny responsiveness in dialogue-like sections, John Sherba’s rare ability to carve the shortest phrase into a precise musical statement, Hank Dutt’s most soulful solos, and Jeffrey Zeigler’s powerful triple-stops and superhuman rhythmic precision. The result is a piece in which times, places, and cultures intersect to celebrate music as the language I feel most comfortable with, a language that has brought all of us together.”
ACME: Chamber Masterpieces by Weinberg, Shostakovich, Górecki at the Morgan Library
Thursday, April 18 at 7:30pm
ACME: Chamber Masterpieces
The Morgan Library & Museum
New York, NY
Described by San Francisco Classical Voice as “flawless urban sophisticates at their finest,” American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) pays homage to the late, largely unsung Polish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg with an elegiac chamber music program that includes his exquisite Piano Quintet Op. 18, plus works by Henryk Górecki and Dmitri Shostakovich.
Weinberg, Piano Quintet, Op. 18
Shostakovich, Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 67
Górecki, String Quartet No. 3, select movements
Presented in cooperation with the Polish Cultural Institute New York.
Lionheart at the Art Gallery of Ontario
“impressive clarity… ethereal beauty… seldom has a single, monophonic vocal line sounded so insinuating.”
- Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times
Saturday, April 6, 2013
Lionheart: Il Laudario di Cortona
at Art Gallery of Ontario
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
One of America’s leading ensembles in vocal chamber music, Lionheart is known for its soaring artistry as well as its masterful musical scholarship. Acclaimed for its “smoothly blended and impeccably balanced sound” (New York Times), the ensemble performs a thrilling program of songs from the illuminated pages of the Laudario of Sant Agnese.
Lionheart transcribed the music from this manuscript, whose pages were brought together for the first time in modern history on view at the Getty Museum in the exhibition Revealing the Renaissance: Stories and Secrets in Early Florentine Art, and now reprised at the AGO.
Paul Dresher’s Double Duo at Helena Presents and Mondavi Center
“…a chance to hear contemporary classical music at its best.”
- San Francisco Classical Voice
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Paul Dresher Ensemble: Double Duo
at Helena Presents
Helena, MT
Saturday & Sunday, April 6-7, 2013
Paul Dresher Ensemble: Double Duo
at the Mondavi Center
Davis, CA
The Paul Dresher Ensemble’s acclaimed Double Duo brings the finest in chamber music innovation to Helena Presents and back-to-back dates at the Mondavi Center. The program features contemporary works for acoustic, electro-acoustic and invented instruments by John Adams, Paul Dresher and Martin Bresnick.
Karen Bentley Pollick, Violin
Lisa Moore, Piano, Electronic Keyboard
Joel Davel, Marimba Lumina and Quadrachord
Paul Dresher, Quadrachord and Electric Guitar
ACME performs Muhly, Cage, Friedman, Andriessen & more
Wednesday, March 27 at 8pm
ACME: Brutal + Sublime
The CenterStage at Reston Community Center
Reston, VA
On Wednesday, March 27, the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) performs a new concert program called Brutal + Sublime that juxtaposes musical extremes in an ecstatic dance of dissonance and serenity.
The program includes Nico Muhly’s Big Time for percussion and string quartet, Timothy Andres’ I Found it by the Sea for piano quartet, Mick Barr’s ACMED, selections from Jefferson Friedman’s Grammy-nominated String Quartet No. 3, John Cage’s String Quartet in Four Parts, and Louis Andriessen’s iconic Workers Union.
ACME players for this concert include Caroline Shaw, violin; Ben Russell, violin; Caleb Burhans, viola; Clarice Jensen, cello; Peter Dugan, piano; and Chris Thompson, percussion.
David Krakauer & Matt Haimovitz at the Berkeley Jewish Music Festival
Saturday, March 9, 2013 at 8pm
Jewish Music Festival
Berkeley Repertory Theatre
2025 Addison Street, Berkeley, CA 94704
Clarinetist David Krakauer and cellist Matt Haimovitz take the stage for a special concert at the Berkeley Jewish Music Festival in memory of the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
The program includes Akoka - The End of Time, a haunting reframing conceived by Krakauer and Haimovitz of Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. Joining Krakauer and Haimovitz will be pianist Kathleen Tagg and violinist Kay Stern.
Paired with the quartet is the World Premiere of Vilna Poems, a song cycle based on six Yiddish poems by Holocaust poet Avrom Sutskever. Vilna Poems will be sung in the original Yiddish by soprano Lisa Delan, joined by Haimovitz, Krakauer and pianist Kristin Pankonin. The work was commissioned by Delan from composer David Garner, and will be released in April by PentaTone Classics on Delan’s CD The Hours Begin to Sing.
Donal Fox: ‘Mashups In Blue’ at the UVM Lane Series
Friday, March 22, 2013 at 7:30pm
University of Vermont Lane Series
384 South Prospect Street Burlington, VT 05401
Internationally acclaimed as a classical and jazz composer, pianist, and improviser, Donal Fox heads to the University of Vermont Lane Series with his reinventions of classical melodies and themes in a special solo piano program: “Mashups in Blue.”
Fox’s acclaimed “Monk and Bach Project” premiered at Jazz at Lincoln Center in 2005, and has led critics like Gary Giddins to say, “Donal Fox is a remarkable pianist who has positioned himself on the cutting edge of jazz by incorporating classical techniques and melhttp://www.bernsarts.com/fox/fox.htmlodies.”
For “Mashups,” Fox will feature works by and based on J.S. Bach, Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman, Radiohead, Astor Piazzolla, Robert Schumann, John Coltrane,Frederico Mompou, and more.
More upcoming tour dates for Donal Fox:
Saturday, March 9, 2013 at 6pm
The “Negro Spiritual” Scholarship Foundation
2013 World Premiere Gala Recital
The Peabody Orlando
9801 International Dr Orlando, FL 32819
Thursday, April 11, 2013 at 8pm
Donal Fox and Maya Beiser
at The Institute of Contemporary Art
100 Northern Avenue Boston, MA 02210
Lionheart with ACME: Wayfaring Stranger at Montclair State University Peak Performances
Lionheart Vocal Ensemble and the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) take the stage at Montclair State University Peak Performances with a special concert program: Wayfaring Stranger, featuring the East Coast Premiere of Ingram Marshall’s PsalmBook.
The evening sees the two groups offering an ode to wanderlust with a selection of works including Marshall’s iconic Fog Tropes, pieces by Phil Kline and Laura Nyro, vocal music from the 14th and 16th centuries, and the traditional Appalachian folk song from which the program draws its name. For PsalmBook, composer Ingram Marshall draws inspiration from early American psalmody. Writes Thomas Busse for San Francisco Classical Voice: “[Marshall’s] PsalmBook deserves serious consideration for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize.”
Saturday, February 9, 2013 at 8pm
Lionheart & ACME: Wayfaring Stranger
at Montclair State University Peak Performances
Montclair, NJ
Pablo Ziegler & Regina Carter at the Chan Centre and Laguna Beach Music Fest
Latin Grammy-winning pianist-composer Pablo Ziegler hits the West Coast with a pair of major engagements in February.
First, the Pablo Ziegler Classical Tango Quartet heads to the Laguna Beach Music Festival, playing a mainstage performance in the Laguna Beach Playhouse, a pair of community engagement events, and joined in a second mainstage performance by special guest violinist Regina Carter.
Next, Ziegler brings his acclaimed Tango Meets Jazz program to the Chan Centre in Vancouver, BC, joined again by guest violinist Regina Carter.
Upcoming tour dates for Pablo Ziegler:
February 7-10, 2013:
Pablo Ziegler Classical Tango Quartet
at the Laguna Beach Music Festival
Laguna Beach, CA
February 16, 2013:
Pablo Ziegler Quartet with Regina Carter: Tango Meets Jazz
at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
Vancouver, BC
March 8, 2013:
Pablo Ziegler Classical Tango Quartet
returns to the Beaches Fine Arts Series
Jacksonville, FL
March 28, 2013:
Pablo Ziegler Trio
at Portland Ovations! Hannaford Hall
Portland, ME
July 24, 2013:
Pablo Ziegler
guests at the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival
Bridgehampton, NY
July 30 - August 3, 2013:
Pablo Ziegler Classical Tango Quartet
at Birdland Jazz
New York, NY
