Merz Trio premieres Lines in Motion at Chamber Music Columbus

 

May 6th saw the Merz Trio premiere Lines in Motion at the concluding concert of Chamber Music Columbus‘ 75th anniversary season. Works by seven composers were commissioned by CMC over the course of their 2022-2023 season. (Lines in Motion was co-commissioned by Chamber Music Houston, where the work was played on January 17th.) The program, presented at the beautiful historic Southern Theatre, included works by Rachmaninov, Shostakovich and Schumann, and opened with a celebratory fanfare by Ching-chu Hu and poetry by poet laureate Jennifer Hambrick.

Parizade and the Singing Tree performed for Family Concert

Rice University’s annual “Family Concert” will present Parizade and the Singing Tree for narrator and ensemble. This tale from the 1001 Nights (or, so called “Arabian Nights”) will be narrated by singer and educator Rachel Buchman, and conducted by Michael Webster. Take your family on a thrilling adventure as a musical story unfolds before your ears! A brave and determined Parizade is on a quest to find a magical singing tree but encounters challenges (like a mysterious old dervish) along the way. Will she prevail in her journey?

Saturday, Jan. 28 | Stude Concert Hall at Rice University; Shepherd School Chamber Orchestra | Rachel Buchman, narrator| Michael Webster, conductor
• 10:30 a.m. — Meet the musicians and their instruments before the concert.
• 11 a.m. — Enjoy a family-friendly, 55-minute concert, featuring a living composer!
Best for ages 6 and up. Registration is recommended but not required. Park in West Lot 2 for $5.
RESERVE YOUR FREE TICKETS TODAY! MUSIC.RICE.EDU/FAMILY

Music for these Distracted Times

Music for these Distracted Times was a January 23rd concert featuring recent works connected by their shared commentary on recent times. From the program notes: “At this point, it’s difficult to describe the last few years in anything but glib catchphrases: “unprecedented events,” “the new normal,” “shocking but not surprising,” and so on… It has felt maddeningly absurd, impossible to escape, never-ending: health crises, political deceit, violent extremism, racial animus. Typically, the music I write isn’t reactive. But like many composers, my recent work has been inspired (if that’s the word) by the upheaval around us. Tonight’s program contains compositions written mostly over the last few years, a product of these distracted times. The pieces have a variety of moods and characters, but they share a kind of tattered anxiety—a sentiment that has perhaps become the temperament of our time.”


The concert featured guest appearances by Matthew Roitstein, Natalie Lin Douglas, Ally Smither, Ben Roidl-Ward, Mei Rui, Jon Kimura Parker, Brian Connelly, and students of the Shepherd School of Music. The program included Songs from the Post Truth Era (written in 2018 for the Pushback Collective, who reprised the work), Pattern Preludes, Book 4, Ignoble Dances (written in 2020 for Mathew Roitstein, but here receiving its LIVE premiere), Loop Studies (the premiere of this work for violin and looper pedal, written in 2021 for Natalie Lin Douglas) and Lamentation on The Disasters of War (a string sextet from 2006).

NEW ALBUM AVAILABLE from NAVONA RECORDS

Announcing a new recording from NAVONA records released on 9/9/2022, The Leader and other works. The album features the titular chamber opera (with a libretto by Eugène Ionesco), paired with several new instrumental works

The Leader | Six Bagatelles | Songs from the Post Truth Era | Capriccios Nos. 5 & 6

Personnel

Mark Diamond baritone | Aidan Smerud baritone | Megan Berti mezzo-soprano | Zach Averyt tenor | Lindsay Russsel Bowden soprano | Eiki Isomura conductor

Omri Barak cornet | Michael Clark piano | Matthew J. Detrick violin | Wesley Ducote piano | Thomas Frey clarinet | Alex Garde percussion | Max Geissler cello | Sonja Harasim violin | Mary-Grace Johnson violin |Julia Kirk viola | Andrew Laven cello | Natalie; Lin Douglas violin | John Mietus double bass | Sam Park violin | Ben Roidl-Ward bassoon | Jihong Son trombone | Alexandra Smither soprano | Chapman Welch mandolin | Willie Yeh flute/piccolo

NV6469 NAVONA RECORDS

Available on all major streaming services, or from NAVONA.

New Solo Organ Work: Let Down the Scale of Music from the Sky

Let Down the Scale of Music from the Sky is a major new work for solo organ commissioned by the American Guild of Organists for the 2023 Ronald G. Pogorzelski and Lester D. Yankee Annual Competition, written to be premiered on the Pogorzelski/Yankee organ at Indiana University Pennsylvania.

The work borrows music from Henry Purcell’s Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, the composer’s so-called “Evening Service,” written for mixed chorus. The beginning of the organ work presents two short and plaintive phrases, drawn from the Purcell, which together form a gently descending scale. This gesture is used as a sort of repeating refrain in the piece, a “ground.” The work’s title is taken from an encomium by poet John Dryden, written in 1695, entitled An Ode, On the Death of Mr. Henry Purcell:

The Heav’ly Choir, who heard his Notes from high,
Let down the Scale of Music from the Sky.

Strange Machines premiere

Strange Machines, a new work for the Balourdet Quartet, will be premiered in the group’s 2022–2023 season, including a performance at Wigmore Hall. The work is commissioned with support from a Chamber Music America Commissioning Grant

Strange Machines imagines three quirky musical automata. In Alberti Machine we encounter a steam-punk music box, its buttons, levers and dials adjusting a familiar accompanimental pattern until the machine breaks. Bach meets Rube in Goldberg Machine, a contraption that careens between variations in a musical chain reaction. Mannheim Machine is a cliché-bot, an unhinged device that furiously spits out distorted musical tropes from the dawn of the symphony.

Loop Studies premiere

 
Loop Studies was written during the covid-19 pandemic for violinist Natalie Lin Douglas. Chamber music performances during the pandemic have often relied on asynchronous multi-tracking as a necessity. Loop Studies is a duet, but is playable in real-time by a single musician with the aid of a loop pedal.

Each of its four studies uses an idiosyncratic musical fragment that is played, recorded and repeated. The first study, Berceuse, is a lullaby based on a gentle, rocking, cross-string figure. Lines is a short set of variations on a fragment by Luigi Dallapiccola, an improvisatory fantasy over a chromatic accompaniment drawn from the composer’s Quaderna Musicali. Straw Man Parade has the violinist using in turn various coloristic effects: pizzicato, harmonics, bowing near the bridge of the instrument—all heard over a bouncing figure performed with the wood of the bow. Tone Up/Tone Down features a syncopated, irregular groove underlying a vigorous and “athletic” foreground part. Natalie Lin Douglas will premiere Loop Studies in the 2022–2023 season in Boston and Houston.

Merz Trio to premiere new work for Columbus Chamber Music and Chamber Music Houston

A new piano trio, Lines in Motion, will be premiered in the 2022-2023 season by the acclaimed Merz Trio. The work is commissioned by Columbus Chamber Music (as part of their 75th Anniversary season) and by Chamber Music Houston.

Merz Trio is a dynamic young ensemble “praised for their “fresh and surprising interpretations,” … their passionate playing and uniquely artistic programming style, interspersing classic trio works with interdisciplinary elements and their own arrangements. The Trio have made a sweep of recent US chamber awards, taking top prizes at the 2021 Naumburg, 2019 Concert Artists Guild, 2019 Fischoff, and 2018 Chesapeake Competitions. Upcoming debut appearances include performances at NYC’s Merkin Hall, Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.”

Lines in Motion for violin, cello and piano, explores the relationship between music art, and is inspired by three striking line-drawings from the early 20th century: On the Open Sea [En pleine mer], a 1921 woodcut by French artist René Quillivic, Amerika [America], a 1922 line drawing by Flemish artist Frans Masereel, and Rhythms, a 1922 woodcut by American artist Wharton Esherick. The distinct technique used for each black and white illustration creates form and shape through linear motion: sweeping curled lines, dramatic vertical lines, and the sinewy lines of the human body. The three movement of Lines in Motion aim to project a similar effect in their musical character and atmosphere.