American Music Festival Continues
Evening Music | May 6, 2010
The American Music Festival continues. At the end of our first hour, we hear Steve Reich’s “Nagoya Marimbas,” with Alan Bennett and Paul Elliott as the two mrimba virtuosos.
Aaron Copland wrote his a portion of his Clarinet Concerto in 1947-48 in Rio de Janeiro while on a goodwill tour of South America. The work was commissioned by Benny Goodman, so the jazz idiom seemed a natural. Goodman did indeed play it, in 1950, but tonight we hear Richard Stoltzman’s clarinet do the honors, as Lawrence Leighton Smith conducts the London Symphony Orchestra.
“Song Book” for alto sax and marimba features Steven Jordheim on sax and Dane Richeson on marimba. Each of its seven short movements has a particular thing to say, and a particular mood or attitude to express; we hear wistful memory, remorse, determination, loss, summery sweetness, familial love, and evening thoughts.
Eric Ewazen’s concerto for oboe and strings, “Down a River of Time,” was written as a memorial to the fathers of both the composer and his oboist-friend, Linda Strommen. Lisa is joined by the Sejong Soloists in tonights performance. Ewazen’s title source was in an essay by Richard Feagler describing long-since lost souls “moving, though they can’t feel the current, down a river of time.”
Aaron Copland wrote his a portion of his Clarinet Concerto in 1947-48 in Rio de Janeiro while on a goodwill tour of South America. The work was commissioned by Benny Goodman, so the jazz idiom seemed a natural. Goodman did indeed play it, in 1950, but tonight we hear Richard Stoltzman’s clarinet do the honors, as Lawrence Leighton Smith conducts the London Symphony Orchestra.
“Song Book” for alto sax and marimba features Steven Jordheim on sax and Dane Richeson on marimba. Each of its seven short movements has a particular thing to say, and a particular mood or attitude to express; we hear wistful memory, remorse, determination, loss, summery sweetness, familial love, and evening thoughts.
Eric Ewazen’s concerto for oboe and strings, “Down a River of Time,” was written as a memorial to the fathers of both the composer and his oboist-friend, Linda Strommen. Lisa is joined by the Sejong Soloists in tonights performance. Ewazen’s title source was in an essay by Richard Feagler describing long-since lost souls “moving, though they can’t feel the current, down a river of time.”
