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Review: Nightingale Opera: two one-acts at Akron Art Museum (March 9)

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by Daniel Hathaway

 

One-actGORDON-Ricky-Ian operas are a vastly neglected sub-genre — except for the few that are performed over and over again. Nightingale Opera put on two rarely-performed titles by American composers last Saturday afternoon, March 9, in the auditorium of the Akron Art Museum. Ricky Ian Gordon’s Orpheus and Euridice and Lee Hoiby’s The Scarf, each about an hour in length, made for a very interesting pairing — and a nice contrast to The Met’s Don Carlo, which ran more than twice as long that afternoon.

 

Also in contrast to grand opera, one-acts can thrive with a slim personnel roster. Saturday’s shows called for only four singers, a clarinetist, and a tag-team of pianists who more than filled the small theater with sound and created two very different but equally riveting dramatic situations. [Read more…]

David Krakauer: Fuze! series at the Akron Art Museum—a conversation

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by Mike Telin

Clarinetist David Krakauer closes out this season’s Fuze! Series at the Akron Art Museum on Thursday, April 22 at 6:30, a series co-sponsored by Tuesday Musical Association. We reached him by telephone in Brooklyn, NY to talk about the forthcoming concert.

Mike Telin: What can the Akron audience expect to hear next Thursday? Will this be your Klezmer Madness project?

David Krakauer: For this concert, I will be bringing what I call my Klezmer Madness Acoustic Quartet. It’s the same Klezmer Madness repertoire, only performed acoustically. Klezmer Madness normally includes an electric guitar, and a sample player so that we can bring in the sounds of folk, rock, and jazz, those kinds of influences that need electronics. Because this is an acoustic project, we have a drummer, although he is treating everything more like percussion. He has this rule of one drum at a time. This way he is not overwhelming in an acoustic setting. There will also be bass and accordion players.

We will be playing a mixture of my compositions along with traditional Klezmer songs. It does have the new Klezmer approach, but it is acoustic. It’s kind of on the chamber music side.  I’ve been offering this group to smaller venues or venues that are acoustically suited for a string quartet. When you start bringing in things like a full drum set, electric guitar, samples and everybody amplified, it’s just too much. [Read more…]

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