Tag Archives: cornish

Arts & Entertainment, Music

What We’re Hearing This Month: Classical Music Picks for November

Seattle’s classical calendar is full of intriguing events in November, from musical comedy to Mahler 4. Experience recent developments in microtonality, celebrate the 100th anniversary of John Cage’s birth, and revel in the ethereal sounds of medieval chants. Explore something new this month!

Classical music comedy duo Igudesman & Joo (Photo: BR Public Relations)

Nov. 5 — In 2006, comedy duo Igudesman & Joo became an Internet sensation with their YouTube hit “Rachmaninoff Had Big Hands“. Next week, they’re bringing their signature blend of classical music and hilarious hijinks to Seattle for the first time. Catch this pair of world-class musicians at Town Hall, where they’ll perform their musical comedy show A Little Nightmare Music.

Nov. 7 — New Jersey-based Newband presents a program of microtonal works by composer Henry Partch at the University of Washington’s Meany Hall. The ensemble will perform on a collection of instruments invented by Partch, including the 31-tone zoomoozophone.

Nov. 8, 10-11 — Renowned composer John Adams conducts the Seattle Symphony in a performance of his Harmonielehre. Also on the program is Beethoven’s “Emperor” Piano Concerto, performed by notable young pianist Jonathan Biss.

Nov. 9 — Seattle Modern Orchestra presents a tribute to John Cage at the Good Shepherd Center’s Chapel Performance Space. The program features performances by SMO, Seattle Percussion Collective, and Cage specialist Stephen Drury. The evening will also include a multimedia presentation and documentary on Cage’s life.

Nov. 13 — Explore contemporary electro-acoustic chamber music at Cornish College of the Arts. Visiting ensembles the Living Earth Show and the Mobius Trio present a program of newly commissioned works.

Newband and the Harry Partch Instrument Collection (Photo: Newband)

Nov. 16 & 18 — Now in its fifteenth season, Music of Remembrance presents concerts and outreach events devoted to the memory of Holocaust musicians and composers. This month, they’ll perform Viktor Ullmann’s opera The Emperor of Atlantis, composed in 1943 at the Terezín concentration camp.

Nov. 17 — Dedicated to the performance of vocal music from the Byzantine and Slavic regions, Portland-based ensemble Cappella Romana presents a concert of medieval Latin hymns at the atmospheric St. James Cathedral. Famed French choral director Marcel Pérès will conduct the ensemble.

Nov. 29 & Dec. 1 — Seattle Symphony Music Director Ludovic Morlot takes on Mahler’s momentous Symphony No. 4, featuring soprano soloist Donatienne Michel-Dansac. Also on the program is Berg’s Violin Concerto, performed by up-and-coming young German violinist Veronika Eberle.

 

 

Business, News

Theatre Puget Sound and Cornish Vie for Seattle Center Playhouse Lease

(Photo: MvB)

On August 21, Theatre Puget Sound, the trade and service organization that counts as members more than 140 area arts organizations, makes its final presentation to a Seattle Center Advisory Commission regarding their proposal to run the Center’s Playhouse (formerly leased by Intiman Theatre) as an arts incubator.

They’ve written up a 16-page proposal, bolstered by pages and pages of letters of support from arts groups. As the current lessees of the Center’s Center House  and Black Box theaters and Studio4 (on the fourth floor of the Center House), TPS would look to be a shoo-in. Except.

Cornish College of the Arts would also like in. Cornish, mentioning as an aside its $3 million in reserves, makes this a competition between two 400-pound gorillas. But their aims are quite different.

Cornish wants to take over management of the Playhouse primarily for its own student productions–the college produces more than 150 performances and exhibitions each year, and they would like to bring music and drama performances, especially, to a higher-visibility location. Cornish’s proposal emphasizes its compatibility with the reduced-in-size Intiman; besides complementary schedules (Cornish is happy to hand off the Playhouse to Intiman for summer festivals), Cornish is inarguably, inextricably part of the arts ecosystem in Seattle, as their proposal notes:

  • Cornish Theater Chair Richard E.T. White is a member of Intiman Theatre’s Artistic Collective, as are faculty members Marya Sea Kaminski and Sheila Daniels.
  • Artists involved in the 2012 Intiman Summer Season include Cornish faculty members Timothy McCuen Piggee, Marya Sea Kaminski, Carol Roscoe, Wade Madsen and Geof Alm, alumni Quinn Armstrong, Jerick Hoffer, Fawn Ledesma, Sara Peterson and Kayla Walker, as well as current student interns Jonathan Crimeni, Andrew Highlands, Holly McNeill, Jonathon Pyburn, Angela Rose Sink and Megan Tuschhoff.
  • Artistic Director Andrew Russell directed last fall’s Cornish Theater/Performance Production presentation of Oo-Bla-Dee by Regina Taylor.

Cornish is offering $3,000 per month rent for 2013, increasing to $5,000 per month for succeeding years. On a square-footage basis, this would rank as one of the sweetest commercial real estate deals in Seattle–but Cornish also suggests that included as rent would be in-kind services (tickets given away for events) and sub-market-rate rentals to other arts organizations. Furnishing a detailed schedule, Cornish proposes operating the Playhouse “from 9 a.m. to midnight most days from early September to early December and mid-January to early May.”

The Theatre Puget Sound “arts incubator” proposal represents, perhaps, a bigger break with Playhouse management past–Cornish replacing Intiman as the singular primary tenant isn’t structurally that different, except for being a college, instead of a theatre)–but it may be a good break. As TPS makes clear, they are not a producing organization, so their management of the Playhouse can be devoted to its maximal usage.

Their proposal envisions a “24/7” operation, with events open to the general public “generally be restricted to between 10:00 a.m. and 1:00 a.m.” Their rent payment to the Seattle Center would not be a flat-fee, but based upon a split in gross revenue, as is currently the case with their other Seattle Center venues. They argue that they have substantially outperformed the flat-fee rate suggested for those venues, and if that’s true, the Center would of course certainly be the people who would know.

What is most interesting about the TPS proposal is that it addresses a structural issue in the Seattle arts community, which is that there has been nowhere for a successful small or mid-sized theatre to “go” but into debt on venue acquisition–hoping that the location is amenable to their audience, will allow for growth, and won’t become a mortgaged millstone. (Over on Capitol Hill, Capitol Hill Housing is developing an arts center that will be the home of three resident companies: Washington Ensemble Theatre, New Century Theatre, and Strawberry Theatre Workshop.)

A further detail is the prospective stances with regard to the IATSE local that currently provides union labor for the Playhouse’s operations. In either case, an accord would need to be reached concerning non-union labor in the Playhouse, as smaller arts groups would be unable to shoulder that financial burden, and Cornish hopes to use interns extensively as part of work training for its students.

Here is the TPS proposal (pdf); here is the Cornish proposal (pdf).

Arts & Entertainment, Music

A Plucky Outing From the Corigliano Quartet at Cornish Music Series

The Corigliano Quartet

The SunBreak’s Constant Readers know we are huge fans of the Cornish Music Series. As a college of the arts, Cornish has a seemingly endless list of performers, some in house and some in as artists-in-residence, to showcase on the PONCHO Concert Hall stage. Certainly, the list of performances is usually varied in the extreme. But, to our ears, the results have never been less than fascinating and are often an exuberant revelation.

Saturday’s performance by the Corigliano Quartet was definitely the latter. Three glorious selections played with dash and and professional élan added up to a great night of music. Next up in chamber music, on April 14, is pianist Cristina Valdes, playing contemporary music by Latin American composers. Tickets are $20 adults, $10 students.

One of the best aspects of the Cornish Series is the informally academic atmosphere. Performers usually take a moment to introduce each piece, sometimes punctuating the introductions with wit and humor. Such was the case on Saturday. The Quartet took the stage and violinist Michael Jinsoo Lim took a moment to explain how the ensemble was first formed.

Lim self-effacingly explained that, while in school in Indiana, he was approached by the music department to have his quartet perform a work by composer John Corigliano as part of a modern music festival. Lim accepted, even though he didn’t actually have a quartet. He quickly found some like-minded friends and formed the Corigliano Quartet.

Saturday’s concert opened with a short John Corigliano work, A Black November Turkey, arranged especially for the eponymous quartet and played by them with unusual gusto. It was an aural equivalent of an amuse-bouche, a tasty nugget to wet the appetite for the feast to come.

Cellist Amy Sue Barston introduced the next work, Beethoven’s landmark String Quartet in E-Flat Major, Op. 74. It was a cagey choice because, in this work, Beethoven foregrounded pizzicato, a rhythmic plucking of the strings, as a new musical technique, a way to bring new sounds to concert performances. In fact, this piece is often called the “Harp” Quartet because of its innovative use of plucking.

Modern composers, including Corigliano, seized on this technique over the last century to create unusual, progressive and discordant music, but even they acknowledge that the master beat them to the punch two hundred years earlier.

The Corigliano Quartet’s performance of Op. 74 was masterful; they simply played it better than I’ve ever heard it before.

Perhaps it was the college setting that fired the Quartet’s performance. Violinists Lim and Elisa Barston, violist Melia Watras and cellist Barston couldn’t keep the smiles off their faces and you could see them encouraging each other to take it further. It’s only April, but it’s already my classical performance of the year.

After a brief intermission, the Quartet finished with a performance of Corigliano’s String Quartet (1995), one of the composer’s major works. Watras introduced the song’s origins: it was written to honor the final performance of the Cleveland Quartet.

The work starts, as Watras explained, with quiet tones and then builds with a rousing scherzo movement; a quiet, mature nocturne; a strange, oddly moving fugue; and ends with a restatement of the opening, quiet tones. It was a work to throw in the face of those that say great string quartet composition ended in the 1800s.

It’s a long work, but the Corigliano Quartet was up to it. Again, it was a strong, emotional musical performance and my guest and I walked out of the hall feeling light as air. The only downside was the small crowd–about 50 enthusiastic music lovers–which means most of you were missing it.

As Archer would say, What the hell is wrong with you people?

The Cornish Music Series has two more performances this year. The cost is right and there are multiple choices for great dining within walking distance. On Saturday night, my guest and I dined at Poppy before the show–and, for good measure, sat right next to Edward James Olmos, in town for Comicon. Your dinner guests may vary.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

The Esoterics Celebrate Menotti’s Music for His Centenary

Gian Carlo Menotti

Gian Carlo Menotti would have been 100 on July 7th and The Esoterics, joined by the Cornish College Choral Scholars, has honored him with a pair of concerts devoted to his music (last performance tonight, July 9, at 8 p.m. at All Pilgrims Christian Church on Broadway).

A composer and librettist who marched to his own drummer, he’s best known for his Christmas opera Amahl and the Night Visitors, but anyone who has seen any of his other chamber operas doesn’t forget them. Some are tragic, like The Medium; amusing, like the curtain-raiser The Telephone; and others chilling and all too true to life, as in The Consul, where a woman trying to get a visa to leave a police state gets trapped in a maze of contradictory delays.

Menotti, who also began the Spoleto Festivals in Charleston, S.C., and in Spoleto, Italy, always had a special feeling for the human voice. The works which Esoterics director Eric Banks chose for the concert Friday night included his fable The Unicorn, the Gorgon, and the Manticore or The Three Sundays of a Poet, as well as Moans, Groans, Cries and Sighs or A Composer at Work and finally, in a completely different vein, his Regina Coeli.

Eric Banks

Unicorn is modeled on madrigal comedies of the late Renaissance, but there is a large streak of cynicism running through it, and an undercurrent of morality which doesn’t really emerge until the end. Composed in six parts in singspiel style, it’s tonal but not hummable except in snatches, and there are wonderful effects like that of gossiping townfolk. The music is not easy, but The Esoterics under Banks has a well deserved reputation for singing the most difficult music a cappella without ever going off pitch an iota, and they achieved this evening’s music without any damage to that.

The words, which Menotti wrote himself, are paramount and The Esoterics had the forethought to project them in supertitles on the back wall but, as is rarely the case with any choral work, the singers’ word were so clear there was barely any need for it. The acoustics at the small Pilgrim Church on Broadway may have helped.

Unicorn comprises an introduction, twelve madrigals, some accompanied, some not, and six instrumental interludes. These last were played by Melissa Achten on the harp, and Matt Reed playing alto saxophone, clarinet, or flute. The two had reduced the score for nine instruments to the four they used. It was well done, the music never sounded thin. The original score calls for ten dancers who weren’t included here, but artist Sara Hogenson created three attractive banners of the three mythical animals which graced the performing space.

The very funny Moans, Groans is the stream of thought of a composer at work on deadline with all the attendant frustrations: the wish for an interruption one moment, the fury at being interrupted the next, whether by person or irritating fly. While it’s his own process, any creative person will recognize it.

Lastly, the chorus performed Regina Coeli, the moving song of priase to the Virgin which Menotti wrote for the unveiling of the restored 15th-century Filippo Lippi frescoes in the Duomo in Spoleto. This was made more special by one of the chorus, who came forward to describe that she had been in the choir that day, and that, true to form, Menotti had come up with the final pages of the score as the choir prepared to go out into the Duomo to sing it. Like the chorus Friday night, they achieved it superbly.