Women Composers Take Over the Evening at The Music School of Delaware

By Christine Facciolo
For centuries, women composers were little more than a footnote in music history. Considered a novelty, their work rarely left the confines of the drawing room or recital parlor, if they got performed at all. Even the celebrated pianist Clara Wieck Schumann felt compelled to fill her programs with the works of her husband or their friend Johannes Brahms rather than her own.

So it was only fitting that a program honoring women composers open with one of Wieck Schumann’s own compositions, the Scherzo No. 2 in C minor (1845). The little sonic gem received an expansive and probing interpretation from Holly Roadfeldt Wednesday, February 17 at The Music School of Delaware in Wilmington.

The concert, which benefitted the Anthony G. Simmons Scholarship Fund and other scholarships, served to encourage young female musicians by emphasizing the works of living women composers. Roadfeldt remembered her disappointment at hearing one of her students say she felt she could not pursue composition because she was a woman.

Roadfeldt’s muscularity and poetic power were on fine display in three of the four pieces from Joan Tower’s No Longer Very Clear collection. Her fingers never stopped from the moment she placed them on the keyboard for Or Like a…an Engine (1994). Think Ondine from Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit. The second piece, Vast Antique Cubes (2000), gave Roadfeldt the opportunity to play in legato before tackling Throbbing Still (2000), Tower’s recollection of the rhythms she experienced growing up in South America. Think Inca Empire meets Stravinsky.

The Serafin String Quartet offered two works by Julia Adolphe. Just twenty-eight years old, Adolphe, a doctoral student in music composition at the University of Southern California, has already achieved considerable success. In 2014 she became one of three young composers chosen to have their work performed by the New York Philharmonic. She is now working on a commission from the Phil, a viola concerto for its principal violist.

Serafin and Adolphe share a passion for exploring new musical worlds. Veil of Leaves (2014) shows Adolphe’s potential for becoming a premier composer for this most intimate of forms. The work begins with the strings in unison but continuously diverges and converges in a swirl of pitch and texture. This is a piece that demands not only supreme musicianship but deep concentration which was etched on the players’ faces.

Between the Accidental (2010) engaged the quartet in a contrapuntal tour de force, juxtaposing jarring dissonances with modal melodies in a netherworld of tonality.

Roadfeldt took the stage again to perform two works by Philadelphia-based composer Kala Pierson. Spark (2014) and Flare (2016), the latter of which received its World Premiere at the concert with the composer in attendance. As their names suggest, these works are rhythmically fluid and vividly expressive — perfectly suited to Roadfeldt’s flair for intensity and meditative focus.

Pianist Jennifer Campbell appeared as both performer and composer, offering Perceptions of Shadows, a work she wrote in 2013. This is an intensely introspective piece, showing that as shadows change with time, so do our perceptions of life’s struggles. This work proves that Campbell is not only an acclaimed pianist but a composer of great insight and sensitivity.

Campbell joined forces with violist Esme Allen-Creighton for a first-rate performance of Rebecca Clarke’s Sonata for Viola and Piano. This work written in 1919 is packed with big-hearted melodies and delicate colors. It’s hard to fathom how and why it missed winning first place in competition and why it doesn’t get more outings than it does.

Allen-Creighton brought together all the right elements — robust sound, free-flowing legato lines, unbridled lyricism as well as a technically assured presentation — to make us want to hear more from an instrument that continues to play, well, second fiddle to the violin. Campbell supplied the virtuosic pianistic accompaniment which was as demanding as any concerto.

See www.musicschoolofdelaware.org.

Mélomanie Delivered Musical Treats for Wilmington Valentines

Mélomanie performed at The Delaware Contemporary on Feb. 14.

By Christine Facciolo
Music lovers who braved Sunday’s frigid temps got treated to a concert of sweet musical morsels from Mélomanie.

The program was an eclectic one, featuring the works of the definitely Baroque Telemann, the stylistically fluid Ibert and neo-Baroque contemporary Kile Smith.

The program featured a reprise performance of Smith’s The Nobility of Women, which was commissioned by Mélomanie and premiered in 2012. Mélomanie Co-Artistic Director Tracy Richardson commented that the ensemble gave Smith the choice of an additional instrument to be played by a guest artist. He chose the oboe — an instrument not uncoincidentally played by his daughter, Priscilla Herreid. Herreid reprised her role as guest soloist for this concert.

Smith’s composition proves that musical styles never really disappear, they just go out of fashion until inspiration or musical necessity spark their resurrection. Smith took his cue for this eight-movement work from the name of the 16th Century dance manual Nobilita di Dame by Fabritia Caroso. Each movement bears the name of a Baroque dance form: Allemande, Sarabande, Musette, Ciaccona.

The work is a pretty staid affair until Richardson breaks out with a dazzling harpsichord solo in the third movement. Herreid did herself proud, soloing in the Sarabande, which features a delicate italianate melody of great beauty. The Ciaccona served as a fitting finale, packed with interesting flourishes.

Smith’s work paired quite nicely with Telemann’s Quartet in G Major from the “Tafelmusik” collection. “Tafelmusik” — literally meaning table music — is a mid-16th Century term for music played at banquets. Mélomanie imbued the piece with a vigor and flourish that would compel anyone to put down their fork and defer to the music.

The program also featured the Two Interludes for flute, violin and harpsichord by 20th Century French composer, Jacques Ibert. The first interlude was slow and stately, in triple meter, reminiscent of a Baroque sarabande. The second was fast with swirls of color and a Spanish flavor thanks to inflections of the Phrygian mode. Both pieces were rich in tone yet balanced a perfection union of lushness of Impressionism and the clarity of Classicism. Flutist Kimberly Reighley, violinist Christof Richter and harpsichordist Richardson strike the perfect balance between lushness and clarity of tone and texture.

Rounding out the program were selections by two all-but-forgotten French composers: Louis-Antoine Dornel, a contemporary of J.S. Bach and Benoit Guilemant, an 18th Century flutist.

Herreid once again showed her mastery of the Baroque oboe — a notoriously difficult beast to tame — in the former’s Sonata n G Major, which featured a lively interplay between soloist and bass.

Cellist Douglas McNames and gambist Donna Fournier — this time on cello collaborated on a lively performance of the latter’s melodic Sonata No. 4 in C Major, Op. 3.

See www.melomanie.org. 

Students Create Mural "In Their Words" and Honor Black History Month

The info in this article comes from a Delaware Art Museum press release...
In honor of Black History Month, the Delaware Art Museum unveiled an Aaron Douglas-inspired mural created by local high school students. The February 4 unveiling ceremony included a short presentation during which the participating students and the project leader -- arts educator/artist Chad Cortez Everett -- spoke about the process.

The mural is part of the Museum's Mural Arts Interpretation Project, a student-art initiative created last fall with the goal of exposing under-served students -- who have not taken part in an art class or had access to art education since middle school -- to meaningful art education while raising public awareness of cultural diversity. The project includes eight high school students from William Penn and Dickinson High Schools.

The students' mural is a large-scale painting inspired by Study for a Mural by Aaron Douglas, an African American illustrator and muralist and important Harlem Renaissance artist.Study for a Mural (c.1963) -- currently on view in the Museum's modern American Art gallery -- was a mural design for the home of Dr. W.W. and Mrs. Grace Goens, a prominent African American family in Wilmington. Douglas painted two murals for the Goens family, and this study presents his design for the second mural for their Hockessin home in 1964.

Over the course of 10 weeks, Everett and the students met to discuss how to preserve the spirit of Douglas' work while transforming it to reflect themselves and today's society. After learning about Douglas and the Harlem Renaissance from Curator of American Art Heather Campbell Coyle, the students discussed the world they live in and how it might differ from Douglas' era. The students incorporated text from their discussions into the design and learned how to transfer an image to large canvas panels.

The words the students discussed and chose were born out of the original themes of the piece: African American history, cultural significance, and societal progress. As the students planned the mural design, they developed images and symbols that serve as important markers of their own personal histories. After a discussion about monochromatic color (as Douglas typically painted) the students chose to use local color and edit as they went, preserving a homage to Douglas' color scheme in the bottom right corner of the piece. The three-panel piece, which will be named during Thursday's presentation, will be on display on the Museum's lower level during the month of February.

The Museum is open late every Thursday evening from 4:00-8:00pm with free general admission. Special events and programs for all ages are offered on select nights throughout the year.

See www.delart.org.