Music School Piano Faculty Shine in Performance

By Christine Facciolo

Four members of The Music School of Delaware’s esteemed piano faculty displayed their performing and compositional talents in a program entitled “Piano Majesty” Wednesday, November 14, 2018 at the school's Wilmington Branch.

No piano concert would be complete without at least one work by Frederic Chopin, and this program featured two, both brilliantly rendered by David Brown. Brown is a pianist of unwavering mastery and musicianship with a towering but sublime strength and nuance that is both personal and telling. He was especially glittering in Chopin’s melodic Fantasy Impromptu, Op. 66 and the happy, cantabile character of the Barcarolle, Op.60, one of the composer’s finest works.

Pianist and composer Jennifer Nicole Campbell performs
in the Music Masters program, Piano Majesty.

The program also featured a generous helping of original compositions. Jennifer Nicole Campbell applied her usual charm and impeccable technique to a rendering of Brown’s ethereal In the High Meadow. She also offered two of her own compositions, Prayer for the Right Hand, a left-hand piece she wrote to compensate for an injury she suffered to her right hand, and the lively Variations on Loch Lomond, which featured musical motifs from the pop and classical repertoire. The audience had great fun identifying the themes. She rounded out her set with a performance of Leschetizky’s Ballade Venitienne, Op. 39, No. 1 (Barcarolle).

Brown offered a more solemn set of variations on the Baroque aria Bist du bei mir. Brown wrote the variations in 1993 and revised the work this year. In some pre-performance remarks, he noted that he was responding to the loss of loved ones by several of his friends over the past year.

Liliya Maslov and Oleg Maslov delivered an edge-of-your seat rendering of Lutoslawski’s piano-slam Paganini Variations. The audience was transported to a cliff-edge zany and dissonance-allowed zone with superb playing from the duo in an intrepid choice of repertoire.

The duo of Brown and Campbell opened the program with a performance of two selections by Schubert: the Allegro moderato and Andante (D. 968) and the March in D major, D. 733.

  

See www.musicschoolofdelaware.org. 

Light Action to Build World Class Music, TV & Film Facility on 7th Street Peninsula

Content of this post comes from a City of Wilmington press release...

Out and About broke the story this morning about the facility and all it can mean for Wilmington

Wilmington Mayor Mike Purzycki today congratulated and thanked Scott Humphrey, President of Light Action Productions based in New Castle, for his decision to build a new multi-million dollar sound stage on Wilmington’s 7th Street Peninsula. The Mayor said he had encouraged Humphrey to move forward with his unique idea for some time and is very pleased that this project is finally moving forward. The Mayor and Humphrey said a groundbreaking will be held within the next month.

Rendering of Light Action Productions' future sound stage,
The Pine Box. Photo courtesy of Light Action.

Light Action will build 150,000-square-foot facility on 10 acres of land 
along the 7th Street Peninsula. Photo courtesy of Light Action. 

In an exclusive interview with Out & About, Humphrey said his company is building a 150,000-square-foot facility on 10 acres of land along the 7th Street Peninsula. The $8 million project will feature a 25,000-square-foot, 95-foot-tall sound stage called the Pine Box, which Humphrey says will be lit up and visible from Interstate 495.

“This sound stage will be for crews and companies that are either doing pre-production on a Broadway musical, or for a touring band that’s about to go out on the road, or for film or TV crews,” said Humphrey. “We’ve looked at moving to the city for a while, and I think this space will bring a sort of organic energy and lots of opportunity to the area.”

Mayor Purzycki said the City of Wilmington has been eager to facilitate the sale of the 20 acres of land that Humphrey’s company purchased on the peninsula. The Mayor said the location and availability of the 7th Street Peninsula property, while somewhat neglected, makes perfect sense for Light Action.

“There aren’t that many places in the city where you can find a piece of property that large, especially for a company of Scott’s size, with the need for external parking, all his big rigs, storage, and equipment,” says Purzycki. “We wanted to do everything we could to make the site attractive, but there was no particular assistance from us other than the commitment that we will improve road access at the site.”

The Out & About article quotes Humphrey as saying that once the facility is built, Light Action Productions’ warehouse – which will be filled with live entertainment production elements – will occupy 90,000 square feet, along with 30,000 square feet of space designated to design, video and lighting studios and conference rooms. Another 5,000 square feet will be reserved for office space, and the final 25,000 square feet for the Pine Box.

Humphrey says he’s already spoken to industrial and manufacturing neighbors in the 7th Street vicinity about future plans for the area such as a restaurant, bar or possible hotel accommodations, although no plans have been confirmed. Humphrey said a grand opening celebration is tentatively scheduled for late 2019.

DSO Opens Chamber Series with Woodwind Program

By Christine Facciolo

In a commendable change of pace, the Delaware Symphony Orchestra (DSO) opened its Chamber Concert Series with a a memorable evening of music for woodwinds.

The DSO Woodwind Quintet proved to be exciting and dynamic performers by offering a program that was both eclectic and entertaining.

Playing works that were stylistically distinct the five musicians in the group — Kimberly Reighley, flute; Lloyd Shorter, oboe; Charles Salinger, clarinet; Jon Gaarder, bassoon and Karen Schubert, horn — showed the diversity of the woodwind quintet despite the paucity of repertoire for it.

The ensemble warmed up with expertly crafted works by notable French flutist and teacher Claude-Paul Taffanel's Wind Quintet in G minor and his contemporary Charles Lefebvre's Suite for Winds No. 1, Op. 57. The latter is a standard of the wind quintet repertoire, demonstrating a superior understanding of how to orchestrate for these five instruments.

Taffanel’s Suite for Winds is thoroughly French and late Romantic in style with rapidly changing moods.

The most interesting piece in the concert was Paquito D’Rivera’s Aires Tropicales, written in 1994. This charmer of a piece contains a wealth of melodic traditions, playful inventions and enticing rhythms. Noteworthy movements included “Dizzyness,” a tribute to the late, great Dizzy Gillespie, Habanera, a trio for flute, clarinet and bassoon in the style of Ravel, Contradanza, an upbeat Cuban dance honoring Ernesto Lecuonar. Vals Venezolano, a lively Venezuelan waltz and Afro, an energetic dance over an African ostinato.

The evening of varied music concluded with a performance of Aria and Quodlibet for Woodwind Quintet by clarinetist Arne Running (1943-2016). The Aria contains a chorale in the low winds, the repetition of which features Shorter’s oboe singing high above the melodic line. The Quodlibet is sheer fun; a pastiche of tunes from virtually every corner of the musical world.

See www.delawaresymphony.org.