Tendrils ascend with Mélomanie

Peter Flint gave center stage to each of the instruments of Mélomanie in his piece, Ascending Tendrils, which premiered on February 19. The piece begins with a call for spring on modern flute (Kimberly Reighley) – haunting and inviting at the same time. The gamba (Donna Fournier) responds calling to mind a bullfrog and when the cello (Douglas McNames) joins in and the violin (Linda Kistler) makes a grasshopper’s entrance with the harpsichord (Tracy Richardson) buzzing like a swarm of insects – the pandemonium of spring and growth continues until…pause…unstructured measures tell the audience not to predict how growth works. The listener waits for the next cue - the flute tweets hesitantly, then more insistently-- the fledgling trying to fly. The piece builds up to a dancing, running pace and ends with a jaunty halt. Flint has inventiveness and can change style completely. The last work he premiered in Delaware (in November 2009) was Double-speaking for guitar and flute, had a gypsy, Vallanato style. And, now that he has covered birds with his Avian Orchestra, he has moved on to insects. Shall we call his new music group the Etymological Orchestra from now on?

Ascending Tendrils was preceded by Kimberly Reighley’s performance of the Bach Suite in A Minor for Solo Flute (BWV 1013). Reighley is so deft at the baroque flute (and what a treat to have that in our area) that she commands the flute through arpeggiated passages with no hesitation – running the gamut of tone color in the baroque flute – with soft but sonorous low notes and whisper-gentle higher notes in fast succession – resounding in the fairly live church acoustics.

The two Telemann quartets were played almost contemplatively – with the gentlest of tempi and extremely graceful ornamentation. The musicians have changed places, putting flute and violin on the audience’s right and cello and gamba on the left. The balance is good both ways.

Mélomanie treated us to an unusually romantic item in the Duo for violin and cello by Bohuslav Martinù. Linda Kistler and Douglas McNames pulled no punches on either tempo or expressiveness and the acoustics made the lush romantic prelude reverberate richly while the rhapsodic rondo seemed like a raucous round of dueling fiddles.

See www.melomanie.org

See www.peterflintmusic.com

Taggart-Grycky Duo at UD

On November 21, the Taggart-Grycky Duo of Christian Taggart, guitar and Eileen Grycky, flute, played a concert at Gore Hall on the UD campus. Eileen Grycky and Christian Taggart are gifted, gracious and have the magic coordination of a duo that comes only after the decades of practice and performance.

Taggart’s arrangement of the Valse from the Suite de trois morceaux, Opus 116 by Benjamin Godard and a selection of orchestral pieces from the ballet Gayane by Aram Khachaturian showed his ability to transform both piano and orchestra to guitar without compromise.

Since they are always looking for new repertoire, the Duo commissioned a Delaware native to write a piece for them. In his composition, Double-Speaking, Peter Flint used a medley of styles that dovetailed smoothly. The piece starts with a jazzy South American theme that Flint says was inspired by the Vallanato style of Columbia. The piece moved into a modern atonal section—the syncopation of which the duo handled clearly and securely. They worked hard, though, and I was delighted to hear Grycky’s accented flute lines and a sort of “Leadbelly-effect” on the guitar, with which Taggart played unpitched rhythms for a percussion line. The recapitulation brought the listener home again with a happy landing.

Flint’s group, The Avian Orchestra, will be playing at The Barn at Flintwoods (the home venue to Brandywine Baroque) on Saturday, December 5 at 205 Center Meeting Road in Centerville, with a program entitled ChamberRock! A Modern Mash-Up. His new music organization, Avian Music, was founded to promote joint projects between emerging and established composers.

It is a privilege to hear new works played by accomplished musicians!

See www.music.udel.edu/faculty/ensembles/fluteguitar.html and www.avianmusic.com