Shakespeare and Music

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices…

--The Tempest, William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare stands alone among playwrights, not just for his own work, but also for the creations he has inspired in others. In music alone, we have ballets, operas, incidental music, tone poems…by composers too numerous to mention. I suppose we could mention just a few: Purcell, Mendelssohn, Korngold, Prokofiev, and Carlson. Carlson—that would be Knoxville composer James Carlson, who has organized Sounds & Sweet Airs: Shakespeare & Music, an evening of music, theatre, and dance inspired by the Bard, including scenes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, and Macbeth.

Among the local artists performing on the program will be:
The Wild Thyme Players directed by Brandon Daughtry Slocum; Shake, Rattle & Role Stage Combat; Momentum Dance Lab; Lorraine DiSimone, mezzo-soprano; Patrick Harvey, piano; Hillary Herndon, viola; Rebekkah Hilgraves, soprano; Mark Hook, piano; Greg Horne, guitar/vocals; Julia Lawson, soprano; Lucie Novoveska, violin; Maria Rist, soprano; Thomas Tallent, lute; Daniel Stipe, organ; and Mary Weaver, alto.

That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.

Sleep not lest you miss this intriguing concert at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church on Saturday, March 28th at 7:30pm.

Sounds & Sweet Airs: Shakespeare & Music
Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church
2931 Kingston Pike
Knoxville
Tickets available at the door.

KSO 2009-2010 Season: A Feast!

The Knoxville Symphony Orchestra recently released the schedule of concerts for its 2009-2010 season, and it really looks interesting. Every concert seems to have intriguing elements—there are a lot of works here that I have been dying to hear but don’t get a chance to as often as I’d like. You are probably going to want to catch as many concerts as possible. Just for fun, though, here are a couple of highlights that jumped off the page at me.

In October, don’t miss Stravinsky’s Petrushka (I assume the concert suite); on the same bill is Dvorak’s Golden Spinning Wheel.

On the November Chamber Classics concert at the Bijou, KSO Resident Conductor James Fellenbaum takes the podium for three different Serenades for Strings by Elgar, Josef Suk, and Tchaikovsky.

In January, violinist Rachel Barton Pine returns to Knoxville to perform the Brahms Violin Concerto. Also on that program is Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4. Then at the Chamber Classics concert…Ah, some Haydn at last! That concert will include Haydn’s Symphony No. 16 in B-flat Major. And UT faculty pianist David Northington will be performing a Mozart piano concerto, although which one was not mentioned.

The February Masterworks concert will feature Felix Mendelssohn’s incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

I really adore the J.S. Bach secular cantatas—and the March Chamber Classics concert will include the charming Coffee Cantata of Bach as well as a virtually unheard and underplayed work, Pachelbel’s Canon. On the other hand, you may have never heard it performed live… outside of weddings and funerals, that is. The March Masterworks concert should be a real treat—the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 with pianist Adam Golka, and the Symphony No. 1 from the young Dmitri Shostakovich.

In April, the Mozart Requiem with the Knoxville Choral Society and some great local soloists—what else needs to be said? To conclude the season’s feast, the May Masterworks is a real treat: the Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2 (with Rachel Lee, violin) and Respighi’s Fountains of Rome and Pines of Rome.

However, a word of advice…once you get your KSO schedule brochure for 2009-2010, please try not to drool over the page, as that will make marking off your favorites more difficult.

Who is Jacob ter Veldhuis?

Who is Jacob ter Veldhuis?
That question will be answered in a few weeks as the Dutch avant-something composer appears in Knoxville for a week-long residency and festival, MARCH 30-APRIL 4, 2009, under the sponsorship of the University of Tennessee School of Music and UT's Ready for the World program.

The director of the festival is Dr. Connie Frigo, Assistant Professor of Saxophone in the UT School of Music.

Popularly known in the Netherlands as JacobTV, he has become a frequently performed composer in Europe by orchestras such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the Russian State Academy Orchestra and the Düsseldorf Symfoniker. Soloists who have gravitated to his works include Branford Marsalis, James Galway, Arno Bornkamp, Claude Delangle, Margaret Lancaster, Andrew Russo, Kathy Supové, Kevin Gallagher and Evelyn Glennie. What is remarkable is that classical, contemporary, jazz and rock musicians all find themselves keenly interested in his music--and audiences in Europe certainly do.

A three day JacobTV Festival entitled “Grab It! The Music of JacobTV” took place at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in May 2007. The New York Times' Anne Midgette had this to say about the first evening's concert.

In his “boombox" works, soloists or ensembles perform the scores to recorded audio collages that incorporate sound bytes from political speeches, commercials, interviews, talk shows, TV evangelists, and more. These are works that challenge the listener on one level, while simultaneously amusing and delighting them on another.

Some of these “boombox” works will be featured in a free concert on Friday, April 3rd – 8pm, in the Cox Auditorium on the UT campus. The concert will feature a wide array of performers including guest soloists from around the country, the New Century Saxophone Quartet, UT music faculty, and UT music students.

JacobTV’s Festival and Residency coincides with the UT Saxophone Project. More details are available on this UT Music information site. I will have more to say on Jacob ter Veldhuis in the coming days.