Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Piffaro Serves Up a "Delight" for Audiences

By Christine Facciolo
Music about animals took center stage on Sunday when Piffaro brought “A Mummers’ Delight: A Renaissance Menagerie” to The Episcopal Church of Saints Andrew and Matthew in Wilmington.

The Philadelphia-based early music ensemble is in the midst of celebrating its 30th anniversary season, and one of the ways it’s marking that milestone is by welcoming back guest artists from years past.

This concert featured performers Mark Jaster and Sabrina Mandell, artistic directors of Washington, DC’s award-winning Happenstance Theater.

Piffaro deployed its full panoply of instruments while Jaster and Mendell clowned and mimed their way through this rather silly — but highly entertaining — afternoon.

The program featured seven vignettes combining music and action: “The Hunter and the Hunted,” “The Crocodile,” “The Flea and Love,” “A Veritable Menagerie!” “The Bear,” “Winged Creatures,” “The Ape” and “The Horse into Battle.”

Animals and animal sounds were extremely popular in the 16th Century. But animals make for dubious musicians. Only birds can actually sing; the rest make a buzzing, neighing, roaring racket. About the only thing music can do is capture the way the beast sounds or moves — which the members of Piffaro finessed quite nicely.

Lively instrumental work depicted the darting motion of the butterfly in Pallavicino’s Una farfalla as well as the hopping motion of the flea in Bassano’s Note felice.

Descending passages in Vecchi’s Il cocodrillo geme mimicked the slithering movements of the crocodile. Appropriately enough, this set also introduced the flattened s-shaped instrument called the lizard or lyserden, a tenor cornett with a foggy yet pleasing sound.

Similarly, the contrasting tempos of The Apes dance at the Temple characterized the slow, often manic movements of the rustic animal.

Sometimes the effect is downright silly as in Banchieri’s Contrapunto bestiale, in which a dog, a cat, an owl and a cuckoo battled for attention with their various calls. The cuckoo won out, becoming the star of the final selection in A Veritable Menagerie!

It could also be impressive and clever like the realistic imitation of bird sounds in Gombert’s Le chant des oyseaux, one of the pieces that made onomatopoeic compositions popular all across Europe.

Complementing the musical merriment was the kinetic energy and playful interaction of Mandell and Jaster. Mandell served as the maestro introducing each segment with a passage from literature.

Jaster is a master mime, all-around clown and brilliant performer. Playing “the fool” to partner Mandell’s emcee, he entered with a “Do Not Feed” sign draping his derriere. Whether playing a dead goose, a chicken laying an egg, a hopping flea, taking a swipe at Mandell as a hissing cat or a cuckoo clock, he had the audience in stitches. But there was a soft side to him as well as when he portrayed the sad swan that dies singing or the dancing bear, forced to entertain the crowd.

Friday, March 18, 2016

A Musical Trip to Iceland (and More) with Mélomanie

By Christine Facciolo
Just when you thought Icelandic music had nothing to offer beyond singer Bjork and post-rock band Sigur Ros, Mélomanie ups and offers a superb entree to the vibrant and varied musical traditions of this island nation.

Sunday’s concert at The Delaware Contemporary (formerly The Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts) featured internationally known Icelandic violinist Eva Ingolf on electric violin as well as two World Premieres by composer Mark Hagerty: Raven Thoughts (Hrafna Hugsanir) and Icelandic Songs, Sacred & Secular (Islensk log, helg og veraldlega).

The concert kicked off with two rare gems by Scandinavian Baroque composers Johan Helmich Roman and Johan Aggrell. Roman was the first native Swedish composer of international influence, earning him the titles “the father of Swedish music” or “the Swedish Handel.” He traveled extensively throughout Europe, exposing himself to a variety of musical styles, chiefly from Handel and other contemporary Italian composers. The combination of flutist Kimberly Reighley, cellist Douglas McNames and violinist Christof Richter brought out the Neapolitan influence of Roman’s Trio in G minor with its restless harmonies and continually shifting melodic gestures.

Mélomanie performs with guest artist Eva Ingolf (far right). Photo by Tim Bayard.
Although less celebrated than Roman, Aggrell produced formally sophisticated music in a pleasing galant style. Reighley and Richter engaged in a spirited and expressive dialogue of his Sonata I in G major.

Ingolf offered a performance of her own composition, Lava Flow, a sonic description of the 2011 eruption of Grimsvotn, Iceland’s most active volcano. Searing high notes and a violently cascading melodic line call to mind the magnitude of the event which was the largest in Iceland in 50 years.

That performance warmed her up for the World Premiere of Mark Hagerty’s Raven Thoughts (Hrafna Hugsanir), a four-movement work for solo violin. The raven (or hrafn) is an important bird in Icelandic folklore. It is said that the Norse god Odin had two ravens that counseled him.

It is the intelligence and communication skills of these big black birds that inspired Hagerty to compose Raven Thoughts, which posits ideas — rather than any specific representation — about ravens. Ingolf’s playing is sublime and her articulation and tone impeccable as she moved through the urgency of “Danger,” the intense tragedy of “Loss,” the loopiness of “Flight” and the accomplishment of “Survival.”

Members of 
Mélomanie joined Ingolf in a performance of the program’s second World Premiere, Icelandic songs, sacred & secular (Islensk log heig og veraldlega) again by Mark Hagerty. It was Ingolf, whom the group met when they visited Rio in 2014, who introduced Hagerty to these traditional Icelandic songs that range in character from the robust to the elegant and hauntingly beautiful.

Hagerty preserves the character of these folk songs with quintal harmonies while imbuing them with a contemporary texture. The coupling of Ingolf’s electric violin with Donna Fournier’s viola da gamba in the sixth song Raven’s Song (Krummavisur) was stunning. The work was a perfect expression of 
Mélomanie's mission: the paring of contemporary and early — in this case medieval — music.

The only departure from the program’s Nordic theme was Partita 622, composed for 
Mélomanie (and included on its CD Excursions) by Mark Rimple. Written in 2008 following the death of his stepmother, the piece centers around the fascination she had with the number 622, which was reflected in the Gregorian and Hebrew calendars the day she died. Rimple structured the work around these three digits: the ritornellos appear six times, always a perfect fourth (2 + 2) higher before the composition ends, while the intervening passages are generated by multiples of and powers of 6 and 2.

Although written at the time of a death, the piece is not a lament but rather the contemplation of a mystery, in this case, the complexities of life. The title “partita” represents the “starting out” on a journey. Melodic themes are frenetically tossed among the instruments in a dissonant soup, until at the apex of tension, the themes are gathered in a slow sarabande-like postlude as the mystery remains.

See www.melomanie.org.

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Powerful Messages Told Through Equally Powerful Performances

By Guest Blogger, Ken Grant
Ken Grant has worked in Delaware media, politics and marketing for 25 years. He and his Lovely Bride enjoy Wilmington's arts and culture scene as much as they can.

Hip-hop artist Richard Raw performs.

Dr. Lynnette Young Overby (Director of the Office of Undergraduate Research and Experiential Learning at the University of Delaware) and Colin Miller have created a multi-genre event that communicates hundreds of years of powerful, emotional history through dance, music, images, video, documentary footage and media interviews. The University of Delaware Professor of Theatre and Dance (Overby) and the CAS Director of Global Arts (Miller) gathered dancers from the U.S. and South Africa to explore the tumultuous racial strife of each country.


The project, Same Story Different Countries – From oppression to resilience to liberation in South Africa and the United States – takes the audience on a journey from the African Savannah to slave plantations in the U.S. to civil rights struggles in both the U.S. and South Africa. The primary form of communication in the show is dance. Dozens of dancers transform the stage, expressing the joy of community, the pain of oppression, the strength of character, the outrage at injustice, and the determination of a spirit that continues regardless of ignorance and violence.

While the dancers were performing to music provided by a soundtrack or beautiful live voices, there was one segment performed to the sound of testimonies before the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission and an interview by Wolf Blitzer with civil rights activist Deray McKesson.

Well-known Wilmington hip-hop artist Richard Raw performed his latest hit, Shine Yo Light, in the part of the program titled “The Power of Walking Together,” encouraging the African American community to take pride in their history and heritage while shining a light for others to follow.

The choreography and performances left the audience amazed at both the technical expertise and emotional connection achieved by the performers.

Unfortunately, this production has only been scheduled for one performance in this region, with talks now of taking the program to South Africa. If the organizers stage another production in the U.S., you will absolutely want to experience this powerful piece of performance art for yourself.

See www.ccacde.org