Feast of Music

FREE TICKETS: David Lang's Collected Stories Series at Carnegie Hall

 

NOTE: This contest has ended.

David Lang's collected stories—an epic multigenre concert series comprising six uniquely themed performances showcasing musical storytelling—begins its run at Carnegie Hall next week, and FoM is giving away one pair of tickets to each show! 

Tuesday, April 22, hero: Storyteller and medieval harpist Benjamin Bagby does Beowulf and the Harry Partch Institute Ensemble performs an original work. 

Wednesday, April 23, spirit: Tuvan throat singing abounds with Huun-Huur-Tu, as well as Arvo Pärt's Passio. 

Thursday, April 24, love/loss: Aesop Rock, Kimya Dawson, and James Lynch explore the emotional extremeties of love and loss in works by Julia Wolfe and Nico Muhly. 

Saturday, April 26, travel: Pianist Louis Lortie undertakes Liszt's monumental 180-minute saga, Années de pèlerinage. 

Sunday, April 27, (post)folk: Alarm Will Sound presents a set of premieres that lace traditional folk styles into contemporary pieces. 

Tuesday, April 29, memoir: The series culmination couples the world premiere of Lang's own new work, mystery sonatas, with a trio of works by John Cage. 

 

For your chance to win:

*Include show preferences in your entry. One winner will be chosen for each show.* 

1. Email [email protected]    -OR-

2. Tweet #FreeTickets #CHStories @feastofmusic  (and don't forget to follow us!)   -OR-

3. Head to our Facebook page and COMMENT on our giveaway post! Note: "Likes" on their own will not be considered valid entries.

Broadway Chamber Players: "Black and Blue" at St. Malachy's

by Robert Leeper

Photo credit: Broadway Chamber Players

For the musicians that haunt the orchestra pits of some of New York's biggest theaters, versatility is key: These pros read like the New York Phil, swing like the Jazz Standard, and are constantly learning pieces on the fly for harried directors and hard-nosed producers. These characteristics are becoming increasingly common among chamber groups as well, making Broadway Chamber Players an organically occurring group in the New York chamber-music scene.

Monday's performance brought four of Broadway's top woodwind doublers to St. Malachy's – The Actors' Chapel for a program dubbed "Black and Blue"—named after the Broadway musical celebrating Jazz Age music and dance in Paris between the world wars. It was a promising performance and hopefully the sign of a group capable of equally polished and developed programming in its future. The loose conglomeration of pieces displayed a wide range of talents and areas of interests, but the rapid transitions from one piece to the next left little space for reflection during a piece and even less time to sink into any one mood.

The highlight of the evening was no doubt Billy Kerr's evocative arrangement of Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life" for saxophone quartet. The impressionistic, chromatic musings were enhanced by the saxophones timbres, which melded effortlessly into one another and added a haunting new angle to the beloved classic.

Preview: Broadway Chamber Players at St. Malachy's – "The Actors' Chapel"

After a fanstastic debut performance at St. Patrick's Cathedral in January, Broadway Chamber Players is bringing their musicians' Broadway chops to the classical scene once more, this Monday, April 14, at 5:30 p.m. Staying a bit closer to home than their last presentation, "Black and Blue" will bring the jazz-inflected music of Gershwin, Wiedoeft, Milhaud, and more to the Theater District's St. Malachy's—commonly reffered to as "The Actors' Chapel."

Tickets start at $10.00, and are available here. And frankly—you're not going to hear these accomplished reed doublers play their regular gigs in the pits of Wicked, Matilda, Aladdin, or Cinderella for any less than that!

The Tallis Scholars Proves Redundant at Church of St. Mary the Virgin

by Michael Cirigliano II

Photo credit: Matthew Murphy

For everything The Tallis Scholars has achieved in its niche market of Renaissance polyphony, it must also be terribly constricting to work within such a singular musical form. Founded by director Peter Phillips 40 years ago, the English group has become synonymous with the choral music of 15th- and 16th-century Europe, consistently setting the standards for the repertoire in terms of both musicological scholarship and performance style. But whereas other "period" ensembles can traverse a wide range of musical styles within a single period—think of John Eliot Gardiner's Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique, who perform works ranging from courtly Beethoven through to fiery Verdi—Renaissance polyphony isn't as diverse a genre, which can leave an entire program feeling a bit redundant.

Such was the case with The Tallis Scholars' performance at Times Square's Church of St. Mary the Virgin Saturday night, this season's final installment of Miller Theatre's Early Music series. With works from Josquin Desprez, Cipriano de Rore, John Sheppard, Michael Nyman, and the group's eponymous composer, Thomas Tallis, the two-hour-plus evening provided consistently high musical standards but couldn't produce the highs and lows needed for a true musical journey.

Desprez's Praeter rerum seriem, a Christmas motet written during the composer's late period, began the program, an interesting work that presents a simple plainchant melody before quickly morphing into ever-evolving permutations that leave the opening strain almost unrecognizable by the work's end. Despite the boomy acoustics in the church, the ensemble's sense of timing and articulation was pristine—no small feat given the dense construction of the material and the intricate canons laced throughout.

FREE TICKETS: Munich Philharmonic Orchestra at Carnegie Hall

NOTE: This contest has ended.

Fabio Luisi (of the Metropolitan Opera) conducts the Munich Philharmonic in an intensely romantic all-Strauss program this Saturday night at Carnegie Hall and FoM is giving away two free pairs of tickets to the show! 

The program includes the Der Rosenkavalier orchestral suite, Ein Heldeleben, and soprano Karita Mattila joins for Strauss' Four Last Poems. 

For your chance to win:

1. Email [email protected]    -OR-

2. Tweet #FreeTickets @carnegiehall @feastofmusic  (and don't forget to follow us!)   -OR-

3. Head to our Facebook page and COMMENT on our giveaway post! Note: "Likes" on their own will not be considered valid entries.