Serafin Ensemble Opens Trinity's Concert Season, Welcomes New Member

The Arts at Trinity proudly welcomes Serafin Ensemble to open its 10th Anniversary Season. Fresh from their season opening performances in October, the Serafins are honored to launch Trinity Episcopal Church’s performance season with a concert on Sunday, November 14, at 4:00pm. The performance is free of charge and open to the community. Donations are welcome.

Serafin Ensemble member, violist Amadi Azikiwe. Photo by Andre Lamar.

Featured in this concert are returning Serafin favorites: violinists Hal Grossman (in town from Oregon) and Kate Ransom; South African cellist (now residing in Baltimore) Jacques-Pierre Malan; and Wilmington’s own countertenor, Augustine Mercante. Also performing will be the newest Serafin roster artist, violist Amadi Azikiwe (in from New York City); and, new to Wilmington, harpsichordist Gabriel Benton who will join the Serafins for selections from the Baroque era by Georg Frideric Handel.

 

The other repertoire includes Little Suite for Autumn for Violin and Viola by Peter Schickele; Beethoven’s String Quartet in Eb Major, Op. 74 (Harp); and Terzetto for Two Violins and Viola in C Major, Op. 74 by Dvorak.

 

“We are thrilled to welcome Amadi Azikiwe to the Serafin roster this fall,” says artistic director, Kate Ransom. “He is a remarkable artist and an experienced chamber musician. His perspectives and approach to interpretation and collaboration have been inspiring for us to incorporate.”

 

Violist, Amadi Azikiwe has performed as a guest with the ensemble in past seasons and is participating in Serafin performances this fall throughout Delaware. He will also join Serafin Summer Music in June 2022. Azikiwe is a busy collaborative artist, in high demand for performances. He is a violist, violinist, and conductor who has performed throughout the United States, Israel, Canada, South and Central America, Switzerland, India, Japan, Nigeria, Hong Kong, and the Caribbean.

 

“We are also delighted that Gabriel Benton joins us for this performance,” Ransom added. “The harpsichord is essential to do justice to the works of Handel, and his expert playing in this collaboration with strings in supporting the gorgeous countertenor artistry of Augustine Mercante is exceedingly wonderful!”

 

“At Trinity, we can’t imagine a better way to open our 10^th anniversary season than with the Serafins,” said Trinity’s rector, Patricia Downing. “They helped us launch the first season and have been a mainstay and audience-pleaser since the beginning. We welcome the community to The Arts at Trinity this fall.”

 

About Serafin Ensemble

Serafin Ensemble, “The Serafins,” is a group of internationally acclaimed performing artists (string, wind, piano and vocalists) devoted to collaborative chamber music performances of repertoire for up to eight players. The ensemble evolved from the former Serafin String Quartet and continues the nearly two-decade-long Serafin legacy of passionate commitment to presenting exceptional performances of small ensemble repertoire. 

Serafin Ensemble roster artists are devoted to collaborative chamber music performance as an important aspect of their professional lives. They are bound together by mutual respect and camaraderie, and a shared passion for small ensemble repertoire and the collaborative process. The goal of the ensemble is to prepare and share with audiences, performances of great masterworks and lesser-known works for an unconducted ensemble of two to eight players. Occasionally, larger works or solo works are also included in the programming. 

Serafin Ensemble takes its name from master violin maker, Sanctus Serafin, who in 1728 crafted the violin currently played by Serafin founder and Artistic Director, Kate Ransom. Learn more at www.serafinensemble.org

Sensational Singing Steals the Stage at the Music School

By Christine Facciolo
What do you get when members of the voice faculty of The Music School of Delaware come together for an evening of song? A night of “Sensational Singing.”

Sopranos Joanne Ward and Marybeth Miller, alto/jazz vocalist Maria Rusu, countertenor Augustine Mercante and bass Colin Armstrong offered a program that spanned every conceivable genre and period: Baroque, Classical, Romantic, jazz, folk and Broadway.

Ward, who chairs the voice faculty, applied her strong, crystalline soprano to a set of contemporary songs that traced the journey of a couple from their courting days (Seymour Barab’s setting of James Stevens’ poem "The Daisies” from his song cycle The Rivals) to commitment (Norman Dello Joio’s setting of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s How Do I Love Thee) to their parting through death (Gwyneth Walker’s setting of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Crossing the Bar).

Ward lightened the mood with Sheldon Harnick’s contemporary madrigal The Ballad of the Shape of Things. Richard Gangwisch’s piano winked while Ward’s vocal — wisely — played it straight. Marvelous!

Ward and Miller then combined their very different sopranos in a rendering of Lucy Simon’s Clusters of Crocus/Come to My Garden from "The Secret Garden.”

Miller returned a bit later applying her ethereal soprano to John Corigliano’s Three Irish Folksong Settings: I. The Sally Gardens, II. The Foggy Dew and III. She Moved Through the Fair. Corigliano’s “otherworldly” approach evoked a journey through an alien landscape. The songs pitted Miller’s voice against the rhapsodic line of Melinda Bowman’s flute, placing these well-known folk tunes in a new environment.

Miller showed off her versatility joining with alto Maria Rusu in an energetic rendering of Wrong Note Rag from Leonard Bernstein’s Wonderful Town.

Countertenor Augustine Mercante offered two bittersweet selections with Schubert’s In Abendrot and Alec Wilder’s Blackberry Winter, countertenor David Daniels’ signature song. Although it is a song of joy, In Abendrot is a leave-taking song, moving us to tears as it reminds us of the fleeting beauty of a sunset — and of our own mortality.

Mercante does not just sing (albeit exquisitely) a lyric so much as he lives and loves it. That depth became evident in his emotional and mature exploration of Wilder’s Blackberry Winter with its pained realization of “I’ll never get over losing you/But I’ve learned that life goes on.”

Mercante opened his set with A Chloris by Reynaldo Hahn, who as ex-lover of Marcel Proust, has much to share about separations, sentiments and remembrance.

Bass Colin Armstrong treated the students of singing in the audience with a concert rendition of Amarilli, mia bella, the most well-known of Giullio Caccini’s solo madrigals and a staple of just about every vocal teacher. It was a nice change to hear it so beautifully delivered in performance.

Armstrong also offered a rendition of the nostalgic I’ll Be Seeing You. He decided to include the rarely heard chorus, which opens with the line “Cathedral bells were tolling/And our hears sang on/Was it the spell of Paris/Or the April dawn?” An eerie reminder of what had just happened in the City of Lights two days earlier.

Armstrong’s set also included J.S. Bach’s So du willst from Aus der tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir, BWV 131 which he performed with Maria Rusu.

Then it was Rusu’s time to shine and shine she did in a set of jazz classics, including On Green Dolphin Street and Tony Bennett’s signature The Good Life by Sasha Distel. Her scatting skills were amply displayed in Sandu, by trumpet great and Wilmington native Clifford Brown.

The evening concluded with an a capella performance of the soaring Make Our Garden Grow, from Leonard Bernstein’s Candide.

For more magic of music, see www.musicschoolofdelaware.org. 

Good Musical Vibes from Music School Faculty & Friends

Chris Dahlke, viola. Photo courtesy of The Music School of Delaware.

By Christine Facciolo
It’s a pretty safe bet that TheMusic School of Delaware didn’t anticipate 75-degree temps at concert time when it titled Wednesday night’s program “Good Vibes and Winter Winds.” But weather notwithstanding, this was a most interesting — and entertaining — program to come out for, no matter what Mother Nature was up to.

Indeed, it’s a rare event that gives an audience the opportunity to hear works by Stravinsky, Lennon & McCartney and Haydn performed by the School’s talented faculty plus one “rising star” student.

Trumpets heralded the opening of the program as Malcolm McDuffee and Jay Snyder performed Stravinsky’s Fanfare for a New Theatre, composed in 1964 to celebrate the opening of the New York State Theatre as part of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

Flutist Paula Nelson and Augustine "Gus" Mercante — this time using his voice to narrate — offered Alan Ridout’s The Emperor and the Bird of Paradise, a delightful tale of imprisonment, freedom and happiness.

McDuffee returned with pianist Donna Beech to perform Barat’s Andante & Scherzo with sensitivity and note-perfect accuracy. Beech, flutist Melinda Bowman and cellist Matthew Genders offered a colorful and incisive reading of Martinu’s charming Flute-Cello-Piano Trio. From the care-free Allegretto with its bird-like trills for the flute and attractive melodies, to the calm and restful Adagio and jaunty finale, the musicians gave a fresh and breezy interpretation of this joyful work.

McDuffee and Snyder once again inaugurated the opening of the second half of the program with a performance of Plog’s Fanfare for Two Trumpets.

Paula Nelson (flute), Jacob Colby (violin) and Rowena Gutana (cello) joined together to show why Haydn’s London Trios have endured despite falling out of vogue in the 19th Century. Their performance of the delightful Trio No. 1 in C major was full of zest and vitality, as they explored the composer’s wit and originality as well as his serious side, evidenced by the terse rigor of the development section of the sonata-form first movement.

Chris Dahlke then took the spotlight with accompanist Richard Gangwisch in a performance of the second movement of Walton’s Viola Concerto. Dahlke’s Vivo was energetic and incisive, bristling with jazzy syncopations reminiscent of Prokofiev, whom Walton admired. Dahlke also exhibited a mature and self-assured stage presence that belied his youth. This young man — a mere 16 years of age — has garnered a slew of awards for his playing and no doubt can look forward to a stunning future on the concert stage.

Vibraphonist Wesley Morton reached into the Lennon/McCartney songbook for his contributions. Morton gave sublime and understated renderings of the pop classic Michelle — dedicated to his wife to thank her for her patience in living with a musician — and Blackbird, which Lennon and McCartney composed to show the Beatles’ support for the American civil rights movement.

The Pegasus Trio, consisting of Melinda Bowman (flute), Christopher Braddock (guitar) and Jeanmarie Braddock (violin) capped off the evening with performances of two whimsical works by guitarist/composer Braddock. First, they captured the long history of tradition and variety that characterizes Scottish folk music in Braddock’s four movement composition The Hill Trow Prologues. This work tells the story of the Scottish Hill Trow, land-dwelling troll-like fairy creatures with a fondness for music and a reputation for kidnapping musicians or luring them to their Howes.

The Trio then generated a bit of audience participation with their final offering, Make a Hawk a Dove – a TV Heroine Retrospective, a medley of TV themes celebrating several small screen heroines of the '60s and '70s. Particularly touching was the hat toss the women gave in tribute to the late Mary Tyler Moore.

See www.musicschoolofdelaware.org.

A Mapcap Musical Romp Opens Brandywine Baroque's Season

By Christine Facciolo

There’s no denying Karen Flint’s contribution to the cultural life of our region.

Brandywine Baroque orchestra members rehearse "The Woodman."
Photo courtesy of Brandywine Baroque.

As founding artistic director of Brandywine Baroque, harpsichordist Flint consistently presents programs that feature works by the well-known and not-so-well-known — though no less worthy — composers of the period. Moreover, her collection of rare (and playable) harpsichords draws devotees and scholars from around the country and the world to the Centreville venue, The Barn at Flintwoods.

Flint and company opened the 2017-18 season with a performance of as rare a gem as any: The Woodman (1791) by English opera composer William Shield. This all-but-forgotten work is so obscure that Flint and fellow harpsichordist Janine Johnson had to prepare an orchestration from a piano/vocal reduction, the only existing score for the opera.

Shield is one of those composers whose legacy history seems to have erased. Born in 1748 in Swalwell, Shield arrived in London in 1772 to play the violin in the Coven Garden Orchestra. In 1791, he met Haydn who attended a performance of The Woodman. That meeting inspired him to compose more operas and stage works. Shield’s work as a composer got him noticed in royal circles and in 1817 he was appointed “Master of the King’s Musick.”

Like many of his contemporaries, Shield looked toward folk music for source material. In

fact, it was once thought that he wrote Auld Lang Syne, the melody of which appears toward the end of the overture to his Rosina opera. It is now thought that both he and Burns borrowed the melody — or at least the outline of it — from an old folk tune.

Shield’s work is considered to be the forerunner of the modern musical comedy. The Woodman contains features associated with later English comic opera, including spoken dialogue, a frothy theme and the use of popular and folk melodies. The music is pastoral, even bubbly, with flashes of coloratura.

The plot is a madcap thicket of love found, lost and recovered. Emily (Laura Heimes) has fallen in love with Wilford (Stephen Ng) but his nasty uncle does not approve and sends him off to Europe. When Wilford returns, Emily has fled to the forest where three other men fall in love with her. Mistaken identities and all sorts of mischief follow in this lively romp through the woods capped off by a female archery contest for a price heifer.

Flint assembled a stellar cast of singers and musicians for this superb rendering of this woefully overlooked gem. Heimes is vocally striking — as usual — in her portrayal of Emily. Ng brings a full-bodied tenor and lovelorn urgency to Wilford, her lost love.

Bass Daniel Schwartz excelled in his portrayal of the upright and kindly Fairlop, the woodman, while sopranos Abigail Chapman and Rebecca Mariman were convincing as his daughters, the steady Dolly and coquettish Polly, respectively.

Baritone James Wilson played the lecherous Sir Walter to the hilt accompanied by his ever-loyal sidekick Medley in the capable hands and voice of tenor Andrew Fuchs.Tenor Lawrence Jones displayed a much misplaced confidence as he assisted Wilford in his quest to find Emily.

But it was countertenor Augustine Mercante, wigged in bight orange ringlets, who elicited the most laughter in his portrayal of Miss Dinah “Di” Clackit. Mercante not only possesses a sumptuous voice but also impeccable comedic timing that never missed a beat.

Musicians from the ensemble also took part in the action with non-singing roles: flutist

Eileen Grycky, violist Amy Leonard, double bassist Heather Miller Landin served as archers (Grycky also played Bridget the maid). Violinists Martin Davids and Edward Huizinga played Filbert, the Gardener and Bob, respectively.

Imaginative costumes and props transported the audience from Centreville to an 18th Century English forest.

See www.brandywinebaroque.org.