Tag Archives: Star Anna and the Laughing Dogs

Arts & Entertainment, Music

2012-13 Season Preview: The Year Ahead in Seattle Classical Music

Fall has arrived. Summer vacations are coming to an end, and it’s time to head back to school and work. For classical musicians, it’s back to the concert hall for the start of a new season. Now that autumn’s here, Seattle’s classical music ensembles have been announcing their performance schedules for the upcoming year. It looks like we have a fantastic season of concerts in store!

Here are few highlights from the major local ensembles, a list of notable events, and tips on groups to watch in the coming year.

Seattle Symphony Music Director Ludovic Morlot (Photo: Michael DiVito)

Seattle Symphony

  • The usual roster of visiting luminaries returns to Benaroya Hall this year, including Joshua Bell, Itzhak Perlman, Andras Schiff, Hilary Hahn, Emanuel Ax, Garrick Ohlsson, Gil Shaham, Yefim Bronfman, and Anne-Sophie Mutter.
  • (Untitled), the Symphony’s exciting new concert series, provides a much-needed space for 20th century and contemporary classical music at Benaroya Hall.
  • Sonic Evolution returns for a second year. This popular fall concert features new symphonic works inspired by icons of the Seattle pop and rock scenes. This year’s Sonic Evolution includes local alt-country favorites Star Anna and the Laughing Dogs.
  • Hear all four of Rachmaninoff’s piano concertos at Rach Fest, in early January. Four up-and-coming young pianists will perform the concertos in two concerts with the Symphony.
  • The Symphony presents their premiere performance of Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony in January. This important 20th century work features the ondes Martenot, an electronic musical instrument similar to the theremin.

Seattle Opera

  • Seattle Opera‘s season began last month with a gorgeous production of Turandot and continues with Beethoven’s Fidelio in October. Other upcoming productions include Rossini’s Cinderella, Puccini’s La Boheme, and a double-bill featuring Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine and Puccini’s Suor Angelica.

Pacific Northwest Ballet

  • PNB has a fantastic collection of audience favorites in store this season. Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake is likely to draw crowds, as well as productions of two Prokofiev ballets: Romeo & Juliet and Cinderella.

    Pianist Hélène Grimaud (Photo: Mat Hennek / DG)

UW World Series

  • The President’s Piano Series brings another crop of all-star pianists to UW’s Meany Theater, including Hélène Grimaud, Christopher O’Riley (host of NPR’s From the Top radio program), and Jon Kimura Parker, who will perform his own transcription of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.
  • Prepare for an impressive line-up of chamber music concerts this season with the International Chamber Music Series. Seattle audiences will be treated to performances by the Emerson String Quartet, Juilliard String Quartet, Tafelmusik, Tokyo String Quartet, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
  • This season’s World Dance Series includes two exciting collaborations between international dance companies and local classical music ensembles. In November, the Paul Taylor Dance Company will team up with Seattle Modern Orchestra for a piece featuring music by Arvo Pärt. Then, in January, Compagnie Marie Chouinard will be joined by the UW Symphony Orchestra for a performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

Early Music Guild & Seattle Baroque Orchestra

  • The Early Music Guild’s International Series presents a prestigious list of visiting ensembles this season, including Musica Ficta, Hesperion XXI, the Baltimore Consort, the King’s Singers, and Tafelmusik. Also on the calendar is a special performance of the epic poem Beowulf by harpist and bard Benjamin Bagby.
  • Bach fans will be pleased to hear that the Seattle Baroque Orchestra is planning two concerts of Johann Sebastian’s music this season. In addition, soprano Ellen Hargis returns to Seattle for a program of arias from Italian Baroque operas.

TownMusic

  • TownMusic artistic director Joshua Roman kicked off Town Hall’s classical music series this week with a concert of piano trios. The series continues with performances from the musical comedy duo Ingudesman & Joo (of “Rachmaninoff Had Big Hands” fame), the Talea Ensemble, JACK Quartet, and violinist Jennifer Koh.

    Portland Cello Project (Photo: Jason Quigley)

Ensembles to Watch

  • The Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra may be a new orchestra on the block, but they have an exciting fourth season in store. Their season opener features Vaughan Williams’ beloved Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis.
  • Lutenist Stephen Stubbs’ early music ensemble Pacific Musicworks is back with another season of ambitious programming, including Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, a collaboration with the Seattle Dance Project, and a performance of Handel’s newly-discovered cantata Gloria.
  • Tacoma’s Broadway Center for the Performing Arts get my vote for “venue to watch” this year. This season they’ll present the Fireworks Ensemble, experimental cellist Zoe Keating, the Portland Cello Project, and violinist Mark O’Connor.

Exciting Events

  • Philip Glass shuns Seattle in favor of the Eastside for the second year in a row. The renowned composer returns to Kirkland Performance Center in late October for a performance with Foday Musa Suso, a master of the African Kora.
  • Celebrate the John Cage centennial with the Seattle Modern Orchestra. Their John Cage Festival in early November features a documentary about the composer’s life as well as performances of some of his most famous works.
  • Known for their orchestral arrangements of Radiohead, Queen, and the Arcade Fire, the ever-popular Seattle Rock Orchestra rings in the new year with a concert of new works for orchestra.
  • Chicago-based contemporary music ensemble eighth blackbird pays a visit to Kirkland Performance Center in January. This GRAMMY-winning ensemble is a must-see for new music fans.
  • Choreographer Donald Byrd and the edgy, experimental dancers of Spectrum Dance Theater present their take on Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana in April.
Arts & Entertainment, Music

The Posies Re-frost the Beater at the Neptune Tomorrow Night

As Mary Poppins once posited, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. And the Posies have spent over twenty years delivering the tartest, most intricate lyrical pills in the sweetest of packages.

That’s a bit of a gross generalization to describe Seattle’s greatest pop band, but it does boil down the band’s appeal–and it addresses the central reason as to why they alternately built a devoted fan base, yet never quite broke into the mainstream.

On the surface, it seems like some sort of major incongruity in the fabric of the universe. After all, band leaders/songwriters/singers Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow burst onto the Northwest music firmament as pop wunderkinds in the late 1980’s, brandishing peerless vocal harmonies and British Invasion-influenced melodies that lodged themselves into the ears with near-parasitic insidiousness. The Posies’ 1990 major label debut, Dear 23, still stands as one of the finest records to come out of this region in the last three decades: To these ears, it’s an epic (and near-perfect) pop album that mixed Auer and Stringfellow’s time-honored sixties influences (The Beatles and The Zombies) with a pinch of Cheap Trick and the acerbic wit of Elvis Costello. Hell, a year or two later, one of the Beatles even covered a song from the record.

The cathartic wail of Grunge was just beginning to emanate from this neck of the woods, however, and a band that couched smart lyrics about relationship angst and the mounting realities of an adult world within carefully-crafted pop songs seemed off-kilter with the prevailing tide. Simply put, a significant portion of disenfranchised kids found the primal scream of Nirvana and Soundgarden more relatable. Dear 23 gained a solid foothold on the College Music charts, but Nevermind became the accidental voice of a generation.

Frosting on the Beater, the Posies’ 1993 follow-up, sounded like a concession to the zeitgeist at first blush. Auer’s and Stringfellow’s guitars roared more often than they chimed, Mike Musberger’s drums thundered with almost chaotic force, and the several of the songs exceeded the five-minute mark with extended squalls of feedback, left-field tangents, and somber starkness. Ironically, the band derided by one local wag as the Northwest’s answer to the Partridge Family had cut an album that was–in its own way–messier and more unpredictable than Nirvana’s immortal pop-culture calling card, Nevermind.

In music geek parlance, if Dear 23 was the Posies’ Sgt. Pepper’s, Frosting on the Beater was their White Album. Critics smitten by the sonic perfection of the Posies’ 1990 platter griped about the inconsistent racket generated by their follow-up (Rolling Stone magazine, significantly, gave Frosting on the Beater a dismissive two-star review when it first came out).

Time has a funny way of vindicating misunderstood records, though. Today, Frosting on the Beater has aged famously, largely because it achieved a louder, riskier, gutsier sound without short-changing Auer and Stringfellow’s harmonic and melodic gifts one iota. And at least two-thirds of the record’s songs are stone masterpieces. “Dream All Day,” the record’s opener, swirls and careens like the best psychedelia. “20 Questions” counters its pit-of-stomach romantic jitters with power-pop feistiness. And the masterful “Lights Out” sounds like an angel’s lullaby, intermittently bum-rushed by a drunken pack of hooligans bashing out T.Rex riffs. More than any other Posies record, Frosting on the Beater cemented their rep as Seattle’s most significant power-pop combo.

The Stranglers' Hugh Cornwell guests on it, so it must be good: Blood/Candy, the Posies' newest CD.

Auer and Stringfellow have amassed pretty amazing resumes as musicians and producers since Frosting. They served a joint fifteen-year stint backing Alex Chilton as half of Big Star, and each released solo records of their own. Auer produced other artists over the last two decades, and Stringfellow did time as a touring member of REM. They’ve also released several other terrific records as the Posies, the most recent of which (2010’s Blood/Candy) shook the tree by wedding their impeccable harmonies with engaging detours into Beach Boys oddball lushness and adventurous instrumentation.

The band will surely touch down at multiple points of their catalog during their gig at the Neptune tomorrow night, but word around the campfire is that they’re playing that beautiful mess of a record, Frosting on the Beater, in its entirety. To paraphrase one of its finest songs, it should be a definite door to another dimension.

(Not to sound like a broken record, but that old mantra of  “Arrive early if you can” really applies for tomorrow night’s show, too. Star Anna and the Laughing Dogs occupy the opening slot with Americana that takes a few loud pop jabs of its own, and any fan of the Posies’ sound owes it to themselves to catch the middle set by this town’s other greatest pure-pop band of the hour, Curtains for You.)