Alberta

Electric Earth presents Thoreau-inspired concert

September 1, 2013 by Alberta

from the Boston Globe, August 22

By David Weininger

“Henry David Thoreau was a great musician,” wrote Charles Ives in “Essays Before a Sonata,” his ruminative preface to his “Concord” Sonata. That was so, Ives held, not because of whatever facility Thoreau possessed in conventional music making, but because “he did not have to go to Boston to hear ‘the Symphony.’ The rhythm of his prose, were there nothing else, would determine his value as a composer. He was divinely conscious of the enthusiasm of Nature, the emotion of her rhythms and the harmony of her solitude.”

Oddly for such a dazzling musician of the written word, musical works inspired by Thoreau are rare. The most famous is the fourth movement of the “Concord,” the last of its evocations of New England transcendentalists. [Read more…] about Electric Earth presents Thoreau-inspired concert

Monadnock Region Resounds with Chamber Music

June 13, 2013 by Alberta

from the Boston Musical Intelligencer

Jaffrey Centre Meeting House

The ambitious, two-year-old Electric Earth Concerts presents an intriguing chamber program of two works this Saturday evening, June 15^th at 7:30 pm at First Church in Jaffrey NH: Russian violinist Dmitry Sitkovetsky’s string trio arrangement of Bach’s Goldberg Variations and American composer Stephen Hartke’s King of the Sun: Tableaux for piano and strings. The transcribed Bach features Horszowski Trio violinist Jesse Mills and cellist Raman Ramakrishnan joined by violist Jonathan Bagg, Electric Earth Concerts co-artistic director (and Duke professor). For the Hartke this threesome will be augmented by Horszowski Trio pianist Rieko Aizawa.

Bagg describes Sitkovetsky’s recasting of Bach’s “infinitely imaginative counterpoint” as a “vivid three-voice chamber music setting that has delighted audiences since it was published in the mid-’80s.” Even more vivid to some ears is “King of the Sun,” which is, as Bagg notes, “both whimsical and serious … derived from diverse inspirations, including an anonymous medieval canon and the painter Joan Miro.” [Read more…] about Monadnock Region Resounds with Chamber Music

Chamber music montage

June 13, 2013 by Alberta

[from the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript] By Dave Anderson Wednesday, June 12, 2013

The Horsowski Trio — Jesse Mills, left, Rieko Aizawa and Raman Ramakrioshnan — (pictured) will join Jonathan Bagg for a performance of Stephen Hartke’s “King of the Sun” on Saturday at First Church in Jaffrey.

From a masterpiece by J.S. Bach to an American roots music string band to a concert built entirely around the words and influences of Henry David Thoreau, Electric Earth Concerts is offering a summer series that can best be described as eclectic.

“Fine musicianship crosses all boundaries,” said Artistic Director Jonathan Bagg in a phone interview last week. “We’re more than just traditional classical music. We want to bring in other genres. We’re also trying to bring in the other arts. Building a concert around a poet or a writer, like Thoreau, gives an opportunity for audiences to think differently.”

Even many familiar classical works are being done in a unique way. The summer season opens Saturday with a performance of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” at the First Church in Jaffrey at 7:30 p.m. But this won’t be the traditional version for a single pianist. [read the full article on the Ledger-Transcript web site]

Jennifer Cano, mezzo-soprano | Peterborough

April 11, 2013 by Alberta

Bass Hall, Monadnock Center for History & Culture

Jennifer Cano

Blazing young star Jennifer Cano will be performing with her husband and collaborator Christopher Cano on September 21 at 7:30 in Peterborough. The two will present works by Korngold, Poulenc, Schubert, Britten, Vaughan-Wiliams, Glinka,Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, and others.

“Effortlessly likable, but in both her voice and her manner there is also character, individuality, a taste for risk, an honesty and assurance so impressive that you want to call it bravery.” – The New York Times

A 2012 Richard Tucker Career Grant and Opera Index Winner and 2011 Sara Tucker Study Grant Recipient, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano joined The Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at The Metropolitan Opera in 2008 and made her Met debut in 2009-2010. As First Prize winner of the 2009 Young Concert Artist International Auditions, she was awarded the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival and Princeton University Prizes and has given stunning recital debuts at Merkin Hall and the Kennedy Center, and in Boston, Philadelphia, Houston and Chicago.

Music in Every Sound: Reflections on Thoreau

March 17, 2013 by Alberta

Bass Hall, Monadnock Center for History & Culture (Peterborough Historical Society)

Walden Pond Photographed by Robert Sargent Fay

American naturalist and author Henry David Thoreau believed “there is music in every sound,” and held that the natural world was an ongoing miracle perceptible to anyone whose eyes were truly open. Electric Earth Concerts has built an entire evening’s entertainment around Thoreau’s persona and ideas, and the influence of his transcendental thought on the art of music. Several Thoreau-inspired pieces will share space on the program with utterances from the writer’s probingly poetic journals, and with a photographic essay on his New England haunts created by the late photographer Robert Sargent Fay. The mixed-media program is a multi-faceted journey infused with the spirit and ideas of America’s greatest natural philosopher.

Anchoring the program, Charles Ives’ “Concord” Sonata will be performed by acclaimed pianist Randall Hodgkinson. The evening begins with Toru Takemitsu’s 1981 “Toward the Sea,” which describes a visit to Cape Cod, set to Robert Fay’s images. “Talking to Vaseduva,” Nathan Davis’ uniquely conceived percussion work for a natural “xylophone” of found riverbed stones, is perfectly in sync with the evening’s theme. Two new pieces written for the occasion by composers Lawrence Siegel and Dominic Coles will then be heard for the first time. The program is threaded through with readings by actors Pamela White and Warren Hammack. A new soundscape commissioned from composer Nicholas Stoia completes the evening’s highly varied yet tightly woven experience.

Speaking about the event, co-Artistic Director Jonathan Bagg says: “We are excited to present an event that reaches beyond established notions of what a concert is; the mingling of Thoreau’s ideas with images and music look for something compelling built on the entirety of the experience. This is a one-of –a-kind evening, never to be repeated in this exact form.”

The program takes place in Bass Hall at the Monadnock Center for History and Culture in Peterborough, on Saturday, August 24, at 7:30 p.m.

Horszowski Trio

March 17, 2013 by Alberta

Congregation Ahavas Achim, Keene

The Horszowski Trio: Jesse Mills, Raman Ramakrishnan, Rieko Aizawa

The Horszowski Trio plays great works of Haydn, Tchaikovsky and Joan Tower, an American master.

Electric Earth Concerts continues it summer season with a program of three cornerstone piano trios by the versatile and dynamic Horszowski Trio. The concert is on Wednesday, July 10th at 7:30 at Congregation Ahavas Achim in Keene, NH.

Jonathan Bagg, Artistic Director of Electric Earth Concerts, describes the Trio, Electric Earth’s resident ensemble: “The Horszowski, comprised of Jesse Mills, violin, Raman Ramakrishnan, cello and Rieko Aizawa, piano, are American in the best sense- stylistically versatile, technically at the top of the chart, and wide-ranging in their taste, yet with a distinct point of view. Their repertoire ranges from Dvorak and Tchaikovsky to Ned Rorem and Joan Tower. They are among the most powerful performers I have encountered in my career.”

The program includes three works, each defining the style of its period: Haydn’s “Gypsy” trio in G Major, his most well known piano trio with its final Hungarian Rondo, followed by the preeminent American composer Joan Tower’s trio “For Daniel”, an intense and expressive single movement work composed in 2004 and dedicated to her nephew, Daniel MacArthur. Tchaikovsky’s trio in A minor, Op. 50, “In memory of a great man” rounds out the concert. Dedicated to the composer’s close friend and mentor, Nikolai Rubenstein, the piece is a vast and rich two-movement work comprised of an introspective and brooding first movement followed by a set of variations that build to a state of joy and ecstasy. Tchaikovsky’s piano trio is one of his few works of chamber music and is written in a highly virtuosic and emotional style – many pianists claim that this is one of the most difficult Romantic piano parts ever written.