View from the Choral Terrace: Kettle Drums on the Move (Bing Concert Hall, Stanford)

A View from the Choral Terrace
Where all we have to heft is our music

The new year sparked an increase in campus musical activity, playing and singing in the new Bing Concert Hall at Stanford University. As a community member of the Stanford Symphonic Chorus, I was quite pleased to be included.

The instrumentalists who play timpani have their work cut out for them shifting the great big kettle drums into place.

Live from Polovetsia, It’s Redwood Symphony! (Part 1 of 2)

Want a closer look at the music? Go ahead and click on the picture above.

Part1: Live from Polovetsia, It’s Redwood Symphony!

The “Polovetsian Dances” drew me to Redwood Symphony’s most recent concert. I wasn’t disappointed. The orchestra clearly loves playing this piece, and no one seems to enjoy it more than the director, Eric Kujawsky. During this piece, the maestro handed over th podium to assistant director, Kirstin Link, and moved back to join the percussionists, at the cymbal stand. The look on his face, each time the music crested to meet those great bells, told the audience that he was immersed in the delicious bursts that reverberated when he closed his instrument in a burst of copper, red bronze, nickel silver and zinc alloy.

I also encountered a new, to me, favorite composer, Lee Actor in the rambunctious piece ”Dance Rhapsody”. My ear heard stories from different individuals, bustling, strolling and interacting in a variety of urban social patterns, in this modern work that combines waltz, tango and fandango rhythms. I’ll be looking for the Redwood Symphony take on this in iTunes.

I could make comments about every piece on the program, such as the lure of Peter Stahl on the English horn in Sibelius’ “The Swan of Tuanela”. Not only could I easily envision the swan craning her neck, but Peter’s music told me just the sensation I’m searching for, when I draw the air up from the base of my spine, past my larynx, into the upper reaches of my soft palette and beyond. That's just the feeling I’m reaching for to get the true flavor of the high G in that Alessandro Scarlatti aria I’m working on. First soprano tutorial , whodda’ thunk it?

But…. my very favorite bit of the concert came before the program began. It came, in fact, during the assemblage.

Tomorrow – Part 2: The Assemblage: Dawning of Music

Redwood Symphony: No stranger to Paradise

Like it - when the music resonates right in my chest.

Like it - when I see the performers putting on the show, and I can pick out where the individual sounds come from.

Like it - when that bit the oboe does is coming up, and I spy him picking up his instrument.

Like to - watch the concert mistress rise casually up and exert her presence over her fellow players. She’s one of the people, but she’s also a power within the group unlike the director’s baton. She decides which way the bows move in the strings, and her ear picks up things nobody else’s hears.

I got to attend the Redwood Symphony’s Halloween concert this afternoon. We’ve been on stage together, when my chorus sings with them, and it gives me a neighborly feeling to see their familiar faces. It’s not just a feeling that I’m acquainted with them, but that my voice has a connection to their instruments.

This group is always everything local, friendly music ought to be. Today they started out being Interactive. The audience got to tour the symphony, visiting with each section: winds, brass, percussion and strings. We got specifics on how an oboe is different than a clarinet (about six thousand dollars more for an oboe is one of the specifics) and how the pedals work on the harp (you can get three tones for each string). Then it was listening to lively melodies like John Williams Harry Potter music and The Polovtsian Dances. For me this is the Prince Igor or Kismet music. "Take my hand! I'm a stranger in Paradise. All lost in a wonder land, a stranger in paradise."

We finished up with more interaction. Ten kids attending the concert got an impromptu chance to direct the orchestra. The rest of us spontaneously clapped along to Souza’s “Stars and Stripes Forever”.

I don’t get any of this from itunes.