Aisle Be Seeing You

Standing Thanks

Even though The Standing Room is "In Hibernation," this blog is still churning new and interesting information via del.icio.us (look under Tasty Miscellany). They even found room for this humble blog amidst their churn - thanks!

Lying down and sawing wood with eighth blackbird at Sanders Theatre

What an amazing group eighth blackbird is. They really make new music/contemporary classical music/21st-century music/what-have-you...FUN. They consistently bring out the theater in the compositions they play. And while they play very well, you hardly notice how hard they're working - at least I didn't. I was too busy soaking in the composer's vision, made clear by the fine musicianship...

Richard Dyer gives us the low down in today's Boston Globe:
Blackbird Displays Dramatic Flair.

And here are a few photos from Sunday's Sanders performance:


eighth blackbird in flight: (Left to right) Lisa Kaplan, piano; Matt Albert, violin; Nicholas Photinos, cello; Molly Alicia Barth, flutes; Michael J. Maccaferri, clarinets; and Matthew Duvall, percussion (in rear)

Pianist Lisa Kaplan tickles the ivories in camouflage pants

Percussionist Matthew Duvall (left) and Lisa Kaplan (right) introduce the distinctive 65-note pattern around which Frederic Rzewski's Les Moutons de Panurge is built.

(Left to right) Molly Alicia Barth, flutes; Michael J. Maccaferri, clarinets; and Matthew Duvall, percussion

blackbirders horizontal for Gordon Fitzell's Lucid

More Fitzellian Lucidity

More as other reviews become available.

And since we mentioned this performance in an earlier post, here is Dyer's review of Frederic Rzewski's piano recital at Boston Conservatory last night.

Return of the Crocus

Belmont, Massachusetts, March 26, 2006

The London Philharmonic at Symphony Hall

The London Philharmonic came to Symphony Hall and the Celebrity Series on Friday evening. Things had changed since the performance was announced in our season brochure almost a year ago. For those of you in the dark about this, here is the short version: Kurt Masur fell ill and the Boston engagement was conducted by Yan Pascal Tortelier. Between Richard Dyer's review in today's Boston Globe and the audience reaction, I think it's safe to say the concert was a success.

Mr. Dyer on Maestro Tortelier:

Tortelier is the son of the great cellist Paul Tortelier, and he must have felt very emotional conducting in Symphony Hall; his father was principal cellist of the BSO in the 1930s. With his aureole of white hair, he was like a conductor from central casting. While his work is not about deep insight, it's musical, experienced, fiery, and theatrical; several times he levitated from the podium.

And here, with apologies to Alfred Stieglitz, are a few photos from the evening:


Yan Pascal Tortelier rehearses the orchestra


Pausing between selections


Waiting to go on

Either/Orchestra Orchestra

Nothing against the Akron Beacon Journal, but the Either/Orchestra shouldn't be listed under Classical Music....and by the way, E/O has finally gotten their chance at a live performance with Ethiopian singer Mahmoud Ahmed: Schedule (scroll to Paris show).

Repin and Lugansky in Seattle

Violinist Vadim Repin

R. M. Campbell of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer gave violinist Vadim Repin and pianist Nikolai Lugansky a quite favorable review for their March 22 recital in Benaroya Hall:

The musicianship was extraordinary for its depth of understanding and utter command. The phrases were unusually supple; the tone varied from sweet to edgy; the line long; the architecture coherent.

The pair played the same program they will bring to Boston and the Celebrity Series on Saturday, April 8: Bartók, Schubert, Pärt and Franck:

The program was invariably compelling, beginning with Schubert and ending with Arvo Part. Bela Bartok's First Rhapsodie opened the recital. Here the playing was almost harsh, decisive, propulsive. It moved with determination yet grace, capturing the composer's flirtation with folk music, 19th-century romanticism and 20th-century modern tastes. It is a remarkable piece, a staple of the violin literature, and Repin played it as such.

Boston's "First Lady of Opera" Sarah Caldwell dead at 82

Sarah Caldwell

Here is The Boston Globe coverage of Sarah Caldwell's passing from Friday, March 24.

UPDATE: Richard Dyer's page 1 obituary of Sarah Caldwell from the Boston Globe.

Biscuits and gravy, sleeping on church pews and barking like dogs...

...just another interview with a classical music ensemble. Eighth blackbird talks to the Boston Globe's David Weininger.

Kapilow on Nabokov, Nabokov on Nabokov

Rob Kapilow had a nice chat with Karen Campbell the other day, the results of which are in today's Boston Globe Calendar. The Q&A style write-up is an excellent, succinct overview of what Rob has been doing in Boston for, well, the last ten years (Happy Anniversary, Rob!) and elsewhere for longer. Here is Rob's take on what he's doing with Family Musik and What Makes It Great?:

"One of my real goals is that in the end, they hear the music differently. Nabokov wrote that a good reader is someone who writes in the margins, who folds down pages, who underlines, who has a conversation with the book. I’m trying to encourage active conversations with music."
Full text of the interview.

Something about this reference to Vladimir Nabokov triggered a memory - hadn't I read V.N. somewhere saying something about his own relationship to music? Well, rather than change buses and go straight to the library, I waited until I could get to a computer and click my way to the answer. And with almost no effort on my part, here is the sentiment I remembered, from a book of Playboy Magazine interviews of all things (as I recall, the Miles Davis and Ray Charles interviews in this same volume are terrific, too). The interview took place in 1964, here's V.N.:

"I have no ear for music, a shortcoming I deplore bitterly. When I attend a concert -- which happens  about once in five years --  I endeavor gamely to follow the sequence and relationship of sounds but cannot keep it up for  more than a few  minutes. Visual impressions, reflections of hands in lacquered wood, a diligent bald spot over a fiddle, these take over, and soon I am bored beyond measure by the motions of the musicians. My knowledge of music is very slight; and I have a special reason for finding my ignorance and inability so sad, so unjust: There is a wonderful singer in my family -- my own son. His great gifts, the rare beauty of his bass, and the promise of a splendid career -- all this affects me deeply, and I feel a fool during a technical conversation among musicians. I am perfectly aware of the many parallels  between the art forms of music and those of literature, especially in matters of structure, but what
can I do if ear and brain refuse to cooperate?"

Boy, Rob sure knows where to go for his analogies. It seems V.N. (that's him in the photo above, with friend) could have really used Rob's help. Lucky for any of you that might feel the same way, you have access to Rob. In fact, he will be here this weekend, at the Tsai Center with Crossing the Divide (part of Family Musik) and again on June 2 with a program on the songs of Stephen Sondheim (part of What Makes It Great?).

They Play Modern Composers

eighth blackbird

Keith Powers' article on the "new music" sextet eighth blackbird hits the streets today in several CNC Newspapers, one version, here carrying the headline Eighth Note: They Play Modern Composers, is from The Somerville Journal:

"When I tell people we specialize in contemporary music," says eighth blackbird pianist Lisa Kaplan, "they think I mean Yanni or Enya. I have to let them know that I mean classical music from living composers."

The article also runs in the Boston Herald this week. You can hear and see eighth blackbird at Sanders Theatre in Cambridge this Sunday, March 26 at 3pm.