UD's Master Players to Perform at Carnegie Hall

The content of this post originates from a press release from The University of Delaware...

University of Delaware Master Players Concert Series and Artistic Director Xiang Gao will perform “6-WIRE & Friends at Carnegie Hall” on Saturday, February 16, at 7:30 p.m. in Zankel Hall of Carnegie Hall in New York City.  Master Players celebrates its 15th year of bringing the world’s top musicians and ensembles to the University of Delaware.

The performance will be led by 6-WIRE (Xiang Gao, violin/director; Cathy Yang, erhu & Matthew Brower, piano), the Master Players Ensemble-in-Residence. 6-WIRE is inspired by the historical connection between the erhu, the Chinese 2-stringed violin, and the 4-stringed violin — both essential instruments in the East and West.  The ensemble mixes traditional romanticism and virtuosity with new chamber music.

6-WIRE ensemble. Photo courtesy of the artist. 

Founded and directed by Chinese-American violinist Xiang Gao, an award-winning concert presenter, composer and producer, 6-WIRE’s performances redefine traditional chamber music, delighting cross-generational audiences with forward-looking compositions and cutting-edge audio and video technology.  

The New York premiere of Clearwater Rhapsody for 6-WIRE and cello by MacArthur Genius Grant awardee Bright Sheng features the world-renowned composer at the piano. The concert will also feature the New York debut of compositions and arrangements by Xiang Gao. A composition titled 6th Sense for 6-WIRE and cello will feature UD faculty cellist Lawrence Stomberg in memory of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012.

Members of the UD Symphony Orchestra, under the leadership of UD Director of Orchestral Activities James Allen Anderson, open the program with the World Premiere of the 6-WIRE arrangement of Bach’s concerto for violin and oboe. 

In this performance, which includes guest harpsichordist Tracy Richardson, the erhu replaces the oboe part to bring a new sound to the masterpiece. Renowned Chinese violin-maker Yunkai Jiang created a violin-erhu hybrid cello called Gupinghu, and Master Players guest cellist Gabriel Cabezas will perform on the Gupinghu for the instrument’s New York debut.

Two World Premiere works on the program include Ealasaid, for 6-WIRE and UD Chorale, led by Paul D. Head, composed by Jennifer Margaret Barker and Meridian Flux by composer Mark Hagerty.

Mélomanie Opens with Two World Premieres & One Breathtaking "Stage"

By Guest Blogger, Christine Facciolo
Christine holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Music and continues to apply her voice to all genres of music. An arts lover since childhood, she currently works as a freelance writer.

Mélomanie opened its 2015-2016 season at The Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts on Sunday, September 13, with a celebration of the artistry of flutist Kimberly Reighley. The concert was held in the DCCA's Carol Bieber and Marc Ham Gallery, where the musicians performed directly underneath artist Amie Potsic's beautifully flowing piece, Endangered Seasons.

Reighley — co-artistic director (along with Tracy Richardson) of the ensemble known for its provocative pairings of baroque and contemporary music — was this year’s recipient of the coveted Masters Award for Solo Recital from the Delaware Division of the Arts. The award required her to perform a solo concert.

I once asked a flutist friend if the instrument was tough to play. She responded by saying it was easy to learn but hard to master. Anyone who hears Reighley’s incredibly beautiful playing will soon realize that she is a complete master of the flute.

The program featured various flutes — the piccolo, baroque, modern and alto —demonstrating the range of expression the instrument possesses and the skill Reighley brings to each.

The program was a mostly contemporary one, including the World Premieres of two works composed especially for the occasion: Two Moods by Chuck Holdeman and The Four Gifts of God by the Brazilian composer Sergio Roberto de Oliveira.

Holdeman is one of an increasing number of composers writing for solo piccolo. As its name suggests, Two Moods explores the acoustic possibilities of the instrument. The first employs the “whistle” tones demonstrating how an almost inaudible instrument can still make music. The second returns the instrument to its familiar sprightly self.

Reighley handled this often unpredictable little instrument with precision and grace. Especially impressive were her high notes, which can be difficult for the average flutist to sustain given the need for greater wind speed.

The Four Gifts of God paired Reighley on baroque flute with Richardson on harpsichord. Composer de Oliveira got the idea to identify four elements: common to all religions. He came up with the gifts of Breath, Light, Creation and Action. Reighley mined the instrument’s capacity for otherworldly tones in the primal character of the first section, quickly switching gears for the brighter musical ideas of Light and Action. Of special interest was the Creation movement, where the composer paid tribute to seven of his favorite composers, including Richardson’s husband, composer Mark Hagerty.

Speaking of Hagerty, his contribution to the program was a work titled Sea Level. Written especially for Reighley, the piece offers a soundscape of the burgeoning plant and animal life in and around the canals of the Dutch countryside during an unusually warm April. This work showcased Reighley’s mastery of the alto flute whose mysterious, picturesque tones ably conveyed the score’s changing colors and textures.

Reighley took up the standard concert flute accompanied by Richardson on harpsichord for Jennifer Margaret Barker’s Dumgoyne and Ingrid Arauco’s Florescence. Both demand the soloist to delineate the sharply contrasting musical ideas. Dumgoyne describes Barker’s childhood memories of the sights and sounds of her native Scotland’s most famous hill. Reighley’s playing effectively conveyed the experience of a climb culminating with the calm and peace of a lyrical Scottish song.

Arauco’s work is more abstract than Dumgoyne but nevertheless requires the flutist to engage some pretty aggressive rhythmic patterns as in the second movement which the composer describes as flowing in “an energetic stream of steady sixteenths punctuated by occasionally by assertive, rhythmically jagged figures.”

It wouldn’t be a Mélomanie concert without a Baroque offering, and Reighley and Richardson paired to offer Joseph Bodin de Boismortier’s Sonata II in G Minor.

The concert concluded with an encore performance by Richardson and Reighley of Hagerty’s Contexts, a short piece that looks at what can happen to a simple repeating motif when the harmony and other musical elements change around it.

The full ensemble returns to the DCCA for their next performance on October 18, where they will premiere a piece by guitarist and composer, Kevin J. Cope.

See www.melomanie.org.

Album Review: Excursions A Musical Trip with Mélomanie

By Guest Blogger, Christine Facciolo
Christine holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Music and continues to apply her voice to all genres of music. An arts lover since childhood, she currently works as a freelance writer.
 
Never underestimate the power of music to transport an audience to other states of mind and place. Mélomanie explores this potential with the release of its latest CD, Excursions.

As its name suggests, Excursions takes the listener on a journey through a variety of musical terrains and recollections via an eclectic range of compositions written for and performed by Mélomanie. 

For example, Jennifer Margaret Barker’s Dumgoyne (2012) evokes the sights and sounds a native Scot would experience during a climb of the hill for which the composition is named. In Angico (2009), Sergio Roberto de Oliveira celebrates the fulfillment of his mother’s lifelong dream: The construction of a family vacation home in the Brazilian mountains and the successful effort to save a cherished tree on the property. Mélomanie has built its reputation on its striking and evocative pairings of early and contemporary music. 

And while this collection features contemporary works by living composers, that mission continues. Both the title track by Roberto Pace (2009) and Ingrid Arauco’s Pavane-Variations (2009) combine 16th Century forms with modern tonalities, rhythms and melodic structures. Kile Smith also applies modern compositional language to Renaissance and Baroque dance forms as the sarabande, allemande, branle, musette and canario in his eight-movement suite, The Nobility of Women (2012). 

Mélomanie (L-R): Tracy Richardson, Christof Richter,
Doug McNames, Kimberly Reighley & Donna Fournier
Photo by David Norbut Photography

There are other “provocative pairings” as well. Two selections — Angico and The Nobility of Women — are scored for Baroque instruments, while the other three works feature the modern and Baroque playing side by side. These hybrid groupings feature guest artists Eve Friedman on the modern flute and Priscilla Herreid on oboe.

If you’ve heard Mélomanie perform, then you know the caliber of artistry and skill they bring to their music. If not, this recording provides a superb entrée and will no doubt whet your musical appetite for more!

Excursions is available for purchase at meyer-media.com or your favorite online music resource. 

See www.melomanie.org. 

Mélomanie Releases CD, Performs in Rio in November

Photo by David Norbut

Mélomanie, the five-piece chamber ensemble known for provocative pairings of early and contemporary works, celebrated the release of Excursions, their newest new CD — and takes an excursion of their own in November with a performance in Rio de Janeiro. They have been invited to perform at international the four-day festival, Compositores de Hoje (Composers of Today), November 20 through 23, 2014.

Excursions features pieces written for and premiered by the ensemble: Excursions: Fantasie Mélomanie (2009) by Roberto Pace; Pavane-Variations (2009) by Ingrid Arauco; Dumgoyne (2012) by Jennifer Margaret Barker; The Nobility of Women (2011) by Philadelphia-area composer Kile Smith and Angico (2009) by Brazilian composer, Sergio Roberto de Oliveira.

"We chose the title Excursions because the pieces take the listener on different journeys," says Mélomanie Co-Artistic Director Tracy Richardson. Barker's Dumgoyne describes her childhood memories of Scotland. Pace's Excursions explores multiple moods and musical terrain. Arauco's Pavane-Variations and Smith's The Nobility of Women give us a fresh visit to old dance forms, and de Oliveira's Angico tells the story of his family's home in the Brazilian countryside. 

"This trip is an exciting landmark for our ensemble!" Richardson says. "We're thrilled for the opportunity to share our music and serve as Delaware's 'musical ambassadors.'"

Mélomanie is: Donna Fournier, viola da gamba, Douglas McNames, cellos, Kimberly Reighley, flutes, Christof Richter, violins and Tracy Richardson, harpsichords.

The CD, Excursions, and other Mélomanie recordings are available for download at meyer-media.com or your favorite online music outlet.

Mélomanie's participation in Compositores de Hoje is supported by of Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation through USArtists International, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; the Delaware State International Trade Commission; Delaware Division of the Arts; Paul M. Angell Family Foundation; The Music School of Delaware; and A Casa Produções.

Changes in venue for Mélomanie

Mélomanie is opening their twentieth season with great fanfare at the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts.  This local ensemble has been commissioning new works and pairing them with baroque music for two decades and they are just about to launch a pairing with a hip arts center.  After playing for many years in historic Wilmington churches with great resonance and reverberation, the group is going to play in a venue which is more like a public center – a place to meet and greet.  This will present a less formal side of the ensemble and will draw attention to the fact that this group has been a prime mover in commissioning music in this area – an itinerant Delaware center for contemporary music.

The concert on Friday was at the Gore Recital Hall at the Roselle Center for the Arts – an intermediate-sized hall with a modicum of reverberation and, unfortunately, a very powerful and resonant air conditioning system.  Some of the audience who had been used to hearing the group play in stone churches felt that something was missing, yet the clear sounds of the articulation and ornaments in Tracy Richardson’s harpsichord playing was enhanced by the reduction of echo.  Her pristine performance of the Chaconne from Henry Purcell’s opera Dioclesian and the rapid ornaments in the French Suite in B Minor, BWV 814 provided a smooth beginning to introduce the world premiere Michael Stambaugh’s The machine comes to life for solo harpsichord, which Stambaugh introduced with comments on how the harpsichord differs from the piano in both mechanism and sound quality.  He did indeed do his homework for his harpsichord piece,  showing many features, including the harshness of the buff stop on Richardson’s Kingston harpsichord.

Kim Reighley, modern flute and Doug McNames, cello played Michael Colquhoun’s Three for two as one: a suite for flute and cello.  The use of percussive sounds, multiphonics, whistle tones and the weaving of parallel movement made this work particularly striking. 

And if there were any doubts about the acoustical possibilities in Gore Hall, they were dispelled after the intermission with the incredibly wide range of dynamics Christof Richter could produce on baroque violin.  At the beginning of a phrase, the sound was so soft that Mr. Richter’s bow moved before the audience could hear the sound swell in the Sonata in B Minor, BWV 1014 for violin and harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach.  And the colors of the sound Donna Fournier produced in the Carl Friedrich Abel Prelude and Allegro from the Suite in D Minor for viola da gamba were so rich and varied that a more resounding hall may have hidden some of those subtleties. 

Jennifer Margaret Barker introduced her world premiere of Le Passage du Temps as a re-composition of the third Bach French Suite which we heard in the first half of the program.  Her inventiveness in weaving the themes of Allemande, Courante, Sarabande and Gigue into an intricately orchestrated re-voicing of the beautiful solo keyboard work was a treat and an exemplary work by one of our local composition professors.  

Let us see what the sound at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts does to recast this concert on Sunday afternoon.   

See www.melomanie.org.