Concerts April 5th and 6th, and a soiree on the 7th!

Scheherazade

                March 28, 2019

            Concerts April 5th and 6th, and a soiree on the 7th!

            Hi friends! I have a busy week ahead of me!

Concerts

First, on Friday and Saturday, I'll be playing concerts with the Seattle Collaborative Orchestra. You might remember that I was supposed to play a concert with them earlier this year, but it got canceled. Our music director reworked the program for this concert so that we still get to play a couple of the pieces from it, so read on, and I'll tell you about them. But first I'll mention that people under 18 get in FREE to these, so bring yourself! And your kids! And your friends! And your friends' kids!

Scheherazade - Rimsky-Korsakov

This one is from the previous concert, but we are going to only play the first movement of it, probably so that this concert isn't ridiculously long. Here's what I had to say about it in the last newsletter:

I love this piece. Probably everyone who plays the violin loves this piece, because it has an amazing solo part for violin as well as really fun playing for the section musicians. We get to do lots of things that sound complicated and hard, but that are really entertaining violin tricks. It's based on the idea of 1001 Nights, the story of Scheherezade and Shahryar, the sultan who has married and beheaded one wife per day until Scheherezade came along with her stories and cliffhangers that compelled him to listen to her every night instead. You can hear their two personalities in the piece; it opens with Shahryar's theme, loud and gruff, and the solo violin responds as Scheherezade.

1001 - Primiani

And we couldn't pass up the opportunity to premiere a new work. This one goes better on a program with Scheherezade, so I'm glad that you'll get some of that, too. Here's what I said last time:

This is another one of my favorite things in life - a new piece of music, and it was commissioned especially for this orchestra! It was written as a response to Scheherezade, and in the wake of #MeToo, and it explores what it must have felt like to be Scheherezade, to have to entertain some powerful old creep until he decided that you're an okay enough person for him to not chop your head off. It's minimalist in that Philip Glass way that I like so much, and it includes a tape recording that we play along with, which adds an interesting new dimension.

Symphonic Metamorphoses - Hindemith

I have to admit that coming into this concert, and for a while during this concert cycle, I didn't really understand what Hindemith was trying to do or what his aesthetic was about, and I certainly didn't understand why a violinist would write violin parts like he does. But I learned that Hindemith was considered a degenerate and banned by the Nazis, and I know a lot of people love his work, so I took a closer listen. I think it's a sonic world I am glad to inhabit now, although I'm not as comfortable in that landscape as I am in other composers'. Come see what you think.

The Miracle - Walt Wagner, Mark Salman, piano.

Although I've lived in Seattle for more than a dozen years, I hadn't eaten at Canlis until this month. It certainly lives up to its reputation and it's definitely a special occasion, and one of the things that make it special is that the music there is provided by a sharply dressed musician at a grand piano. My favorite covers of the evening, when I went, were Careless Whisper and We Will Become Silhouettes.

For 20 years, Walt Wagner was that guy playing the piano in the background at Canlis, while everyone ate their macarons and looked out over Lake Union. To celebrate his retirement, Subpop recorded his last shift and released it as an album. It includes an excellent DJ Shadow cover.

Anyway, while Walt Wagner had his gig at Canlis, he was also composing this piano concerto. You won't be listening to it with an immaculately prepared cocktail in hand, but we can't have everything in life.

This one is going to be extra fun because for the first concert, I get to play with Liza Zurlinden, who is not only an excellent person but my violin teacher as well!

The Seattle Collaborative Orchestra concerts are on April 5, 2019, at the Roosevelt High School Theater, in Seattle (tickets) and April 6, 2019 at South Whidbey High School on Whidbey Island (tickets). Both concerts will feature a pre-concert chat at 6:45pm, and the concerts will start at 7:30.

Bonne Soiree

On Sunday, April 7th, the Lake Union Civic Orchestra is having a gala! There will be a four-course meal by our board president, who is also a professional chef. There will be chamber music, from a variety of LUCO musicians and friends of LUCO, including yours truly. There will be champagne, and a raffle for various things like wine and cabin stays. Best of all, there will be excellent company and fun to be had, in support of the Lake Union Civic Orchestra. Get your ticket by April 1st, and come join in a LUCO party like we've never had before!

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