by Mike Telin
HAPPENING TODAY:
At 6:30 pm, Stars in the Classics Summer Garden Concert features pianists Alexander Kostritsa, Cher Liu, Nikolay Pushkarev and John Simmons, violinists Maria Beyens, Victor Beyens, Maude Cloutier and Regina Laza, violist Brian Slawta, cellists Brendon Phelps and Mingyao Zhu, clarinetist Shihao Zhu, oboist Adrian Gonzalez, bassist Henry Samuels and vocalists Elizabeth Frey, and Isa Luchi. The program includes a selection of music by Russian, Czech, and Scandinavian composers. Socially distanced seating, prepackaged food and canned beverages included. Bring your own wine.. Private residence in Orange Village. Rain date: August 27. Tickets: $50 ($75 patron). RSVP here. If it’s sold out, there’s another performance on August 29.
NEWS BRIEFS:
Gramophone’s Orchestra of the Year Festival returns this Friday and Saturday, bringing you online performances from the world-class ensembles nominated for the magazine’s 2021 Orchestra of the Year Award. Each concert begins at 2pm (EST), and will be available to watch for 24 hours on the Gramophone website, Facebook page and YouTube channel.
The Festival will feature performances by the Academy of Ancient Music, Accademia Bizantina, Bamberger Symphoniker, Berliner Philharmoniker, The Cleveland Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Philharmonia Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich. Click here for more information.
Akron’s ArtsNow has released a new video that showcases Tuesday Musical’s Annual Scholarship Competition as part of the Akron Cultural Plan. Click here to listen to Oberlin graduate and Akron Symphony clarinetist Amer Hasan talk about how being a Tuesday Musical scholarship recipient has impacted his career in music.
And this morning Kirshbaum Associates announced that the Emerson String Quartet will retire at the end of summer 2023. Truly the end of an era.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Today we wish Nico Muhly a happy 40th birthday. Born in Randolph, Vermont, the composer, arranger, conductor, and pianist grew up in Providence, Rhode Island where he sang in the choir at Grace Episcopal Church. After studying at the Wheeler School in Providence he went on to enroll in the dual-degree program at Columbia University and the Juilliard School.
While at Juilliard, Muhly worked for composer Philip Glass, first as an archivist, and later as an editor, conductor, and keyboardist.
Muhly’s musical influences are diverse, ranging from the Anglican choral tradition to minimalism. He has written for and collaborated with artists including Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, James McAlister, Björk, the indie rock band Grizzly Bear, Antony and the Johnsons, and toured with Irish songwriter, actor, vocalist and guitarist Glen Hansard.
He has received commissions from The Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Tallis Scholars and St. John’s College, Cambridge. His more than 100 works for the concert stage include the operas, Two Boys and Marnie, both of which were staged by the Metropolitan Opera.
His recent work Throughline (2020) was written for the San Francisco Symphony and features eight collaborative artists who were selected by Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen. And earlier this year his composition Shrink was recorded by Violinist Pekka Kuusisto and the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra.
In June of 2019, English lutenist Elizabeth Kenny gave the world premiere of Muhly’s Berceuse with seven variations (for Theorbo) as part of the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival. Prior to the premiere, I caught up with the composer by phone at his home in New York, and began by asking him what he found interesting about this commission.
Nico Muhly: I’ve written a fair amount for “historical instruments” — I hate to even use that word, so let’s put it in quotes — because of course if it’s being played now, it’s not historical. I’ve written before for lute and viola da gamba. For me, there’s something poetic in those sounds being tempered by modern harmonies, and the other way around. There’s a bit of time travel which happens in most of my work anyway — it always looks back a little bit to the Renaissance, Elizabethan, and Jacobean periods.
I remember him being a jolly, down-to-earth conversationalist as his answer to my question of how the commission came about reveals:
NM: Very easily. Liz emailed asking if I wanted to write it and I said yes. I wish there were a more complicated origin story to this, but that’s literally what happened.
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Click here to read the full interview with Elizabeth Kenny and Nico Muhly and here to listen to Kenny play Variation VII. Coda.
Click here to listen to Pekka Kuusisto play the first movement of Shrink.
You can listen to Throughline here and read more about the fascinating work and its all-star cast of collaborators here.