Spooktacular Rocks

The Art Loop came smack in the middle of the Fringe Wilmington festivities on Friday, making it almost more art and weirdness than we could handle -- as if! We took a detour from the downtown activities to check out the Talleyville Frame Shoppe & Gallery's "Spooktacular!" Halloween Art Show featuring spooky art and live music. It was well worth it -- this show wound up being one of the highlights of the weekend.

Coffin Fly at Talleyville Frame Shoppe & Gallery. Photo: Holly Quinn

The mood was relaxed, the art intense, including Newark-based artist and children's book author Kristen Margiotta's distinctive paintings of big-eyed characters and horror icons such as the Mad Hatter and, my favorite -- Vincent Price holding his own head on a platter;  Ric Frane's paintings of horror movie monsters paired with pinups, including the devilish "Self Portrait with Mate;" and Pinup model and glitter artist Asia "The Glitteress" DeVinyl's tryptich of glittery, glamorous and creepy pieces; Wendy Mitchell's wicked mixed-media art; Stephen Blickenstaff's colorful, comic-style paintings; and Kevin Herdeman's mixed-media monster art that not only puts the frame into consideration, it completely incorporates it.

In addition to the art on the walls (plus all the other cool art, cards and jewelry the shop carries regularly) the opening featured Coffin Fly, a trashabilly trio out of the University of Delaware. After a minor delay, they kicked into their set, and I'm sure glad I caught it! Ghoulish lyrics and rockabilly beats complete with stand-up bass and washboard. For those who follow Delaware's underground music scene, this band is one to watch.

"Spooktacular" runs through October 28. The show is brought to you by the minds behind this year's multi-artist Zombie A Go-Go Rock 'N Roll Art Show -- we hear that another ZAGG is planned for late winter/early spring '11, so keep an eye out.

Talleyville Frame Shoppe & Gallery
3625 Silverside Rd.
Talleyville Center

Copeland Plays Shostakovich and Then Some

Hurray for the clean and light rendition the Copeland String Quartet gave to the String Quartet No. 43 in G Major, Opus 54, No. 1! No cloying rubatos, just the smooth tones of Eliezer Gutman as he played the theme to the Allegro con brio. In the Menuetto allegretto, Mark Ward’s cello solo was majestic – reminding me of the fugue in the Emperor quartet. The finale presto had lots of wonderful ensemble playing at quite a clip until it suddenly ended in a whisper.

The String Quartet No. 8 in C Minor, opus 110 by Dmitri Shostakovich takes us to entirely different musical territory. The five short movements are played without interruption and Shostakovich wrote so that each instrument blends with the others but also has its own share of the theme, which recurred throughout the quartet – especially in the first and fifth movements. The quartet interpreted the sudden changes in style and mood seamlessly while appearing to have fun in the process.

The outrageous speed of the allegro molto demanded both technical prowess and the ability to see the shape of the piece as it unfolded. The allegretto gave them a merry chase as well – Eliezer Gutman had the macabre dance theme and Nina Cottman played double stops on the second and third beats as Mark Ward had the downbeat of the waltz – then Cottman and Ward each had the waltz accompaniments alone.

Tom Jackson and Gutman were perfectly matched in the very fast passages filled with half-steps and usually a fourth apart. How do they stay in tune? The chorale writing of the last two largo movements was beautiful and heart-wrenching. When it ends, you don’t know whether to feel sad or happy. I just know I was happy to hear it and delighted that Delaware has a group that can play these extremely demanding pieces.

See www.copelandstringquartet.com.

Delaware Composer Premiere

The motive which permeates all three movements of Chuck Holdeman’s Quatuor Excentrique is a short melodic phrase reminiscent of a soft, singable Arvo Pärt tune. But the composition premiered at the Second Annual Visual and Performing Arts Festival at West Chester has some Twenty-First Century harshness as well.

The three-movement quartet was based on Holdeman’s 2001 composition, Divertissement, a piece which was commissioned by the Adirondack Ensemble which featured a balaphon – an African xylophone with about a dozen notes.

Holdeman revised the Divertissement and added two other movements that he scored for violin, cello, marimba and bassoon.

The Divertissement retains a classical quartet feeling, with a good blend and balance between the instruments. Sylvia Ahramjian played violin facing the back of the stage to avoid overpowering the bassoon played by Holdeman. Chris Hanning kept the marimba extremely pianissimo through most of the movement, allowing Ovidiu Marinescu’s smooth cello sound to come to the forefront.

The second and third movement kept the same theme, but the second (Mélancolique) was muted and doleful while the third movement (Outré) ended in a jazzy and wild frenzy, with Marinescu and Holdeman playing dueling bassoon/cello and Chris Hanning seemingly playing the entire marimba keyboard at once.

Holdeman commented, “I was very grateful to the West Chester players for this opportunity to revisit the tune which opens the quartet, not only to hear it again, but to permit it to go in new directions. And I always felt the Divertissement was a little too short, and perhaps lonely. Now it has two companion movements."

Delaware artist Wes Meminger was at the premiere and compared the third movement to a work by Piet Mondrian entitled Broadway-Boogie Woogie (see above).

Holdeman is in residence for the rest of September at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts supported by a grant awarded to a Delaware artist by the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation of Baltimore.

See www.chuckholdeman.com.