News

An evening on Thorndike for Shelter from the Storm

May 17, 2013 by Jonathan Bagg

On Saturday evening, June 22, Electric Earth presented a performance of Sir John Tavener’s mini oratorio, “To a Child Dancing in the Wind” to benefit Shelter from the Storm, a vital community organization in Jaffrey that “gives homeless families the help they need to get back on their feet, with dignity.” The evening was hosted by Sam and Eileen Hackler at their home in Jaffrey. Pictured from left to right are Reverend Robert Kyte, Shelter board member; Eileen Hackler, Shelter board member; Jonathan Bagg, Electric Earth Concerts; Ilana Davidson, soprano; Stacey Shames, harpist; Laura Gilbert, Electric Earth; Linda Harris, Shelter Executive Director; Miki Osgood, Electric Earth. The next concert is this Saturday’s “Summer Serenade” at 7:30 pm in the air-conditioned Temple Town Hall. (Photo by Michael Kaye)

Shelter from the Storm Benefit2

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.

A Summer Serenade | Temple Town Hall

March 16, 2013 by Alberta

Temple Town Hall

(It’s Air Conditioned!)

We celebrate the approach of high summer with a concert that exudes the season’s joie-de-vivre. Virtuosity and the sheer joy of music-making are what knit the works on this program together, coming from France, Italy, Bohemia, Serbia, and Argentina. Guitarist Oren Fader and cellist Elizabeth Anderson join EEC’s Laura Gilbert, flute, and Jonathan Bagg, viola, in a program of music in a lighter vein.

Paganini: Terzetto Concertante, for viola, cello, and guitar
Bogdanovic: Intimate Pieces for cello and guitar
Roussel: Serenade for flute, viola, and cello
Schubert-Matiegka: Variations for flute, viola, cello, and guitar
Piazzola: Histoire du Tango for flute and guitar

Before the show: dinner at
the Birchwood Inn
Call 603-878-3285

The Goldberg Variations and Stephen Hartke’s “The King of the Sun “

March 16, 2013 by Alberta

First Church in Jaffrey

J.S. Bach’s late masterpiece, the Goldberg Variations, is re-interpreted by each generation of keyboard players. A transcription for string trio by Russsian violinist Dmitry Sitkovetsky recasts Bach’s infinitely imaginative counterpoint into a vivid three-voice chamber music setting that has delighted audiences since it was published in the mid-90s. Horszowski Trio violinist Jesse Mills and cellist Raman Ramakrishnan join EEC Director Jonathan Bagg in this performance.

The concert changes gears in the second half with American composer Stephen Hartke’s 1984 work “King of the Sun, Tableaux for piano and strings”. Horszowski Trio pianist Rieko Aizawa joins the string trio in a performance of one of Hartke’s best-known works; a piece he describes as “both whimsical and serious,” it is derived from diverse inspirations, including an anonymous medieval canon and the painter Joan Miro.