Lots of teaching and chamber music coaching was done on Tuesday, with some private lessons thrown in for good measure. Got to meet a young woman who was taking viola lessons via Skype while on deployment with the US Army in Iraq, what a story! She came to the evening concert with her distance-learning teacher.
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I awoke Monday morning with the happy awareness that the Bartók performance was behind me, and that it didn’t suck, so the day started off pretty well, just by that standard.
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The first day (half-day really) of the 20th Max Aronoff Viola Institute went quite well. Heather and I drove up from Tacoma, arriving around 1 p.m. at the Bastyr University campus. We got our stuff moved in, and then I started to warm up for my 2 p.m. dress rehearsal for the Bartók that would
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Today was the second day of rehearsals for performances at the 2010 Max Aronoff Viola Institute, and it was my second visit to my alma mater, the University of Puget Sound, located in Tacoma, WA. It’s been twenty years since I graduated, and though quite a bit has changed around campus, much has stayed the
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MAVI – the shorthand moniker for the Max Aronoff Viola Institute – the string camp that I helped co-found 20 years ago with University of Puget Sound viola professor Joyce Ramée – is starting this coming Sunday up at Bastyr University, so it’s time for the pre-festival rehearsing to begin as well. Today was the
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Good news for all of us at the Oregon Symphony: Elaine Calder has negotiated a four-year contract extension as president of the Oregon Symphony Association. We were sent an email from OSA board president Walt Weyler this morning:
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Thanks to Opera Chic for finding this and sharing it with the world. Go USA!!
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Portland Summer Ensembles, now in partnership with Metroarts, Inc has relocated to Marylhurst College, where they’ll be in residence from June 28 to July 16, 2010. There are now two distinct programs: first, the Portland Summer Chamber Ensembles, which runs from June 28 to July 2. Founded by Program Director Susan Franklin and former OSO
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Saturday night’s concert was especially meaningful in regards to its location in Astoria, as it was devoted to the music of two giants of Scandinavian composers: Grieg and Sibelius. Astoria is steeped in the traditions of Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, with many immigrants from those nations choosing the settle in what must have been
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Tonight was the opening night of the 2010 Astoria Music Festival (and that’s the Astoria in Oregon, not the one in New York). The concert was billed as Norman Leyden’s All-American Gala, and it certainly lived up to its name. With the exception of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, the entire program consisted of Leyden’s legendary
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It’s a well established fact that the first performance of any piece, no matter how simple or complex, is one of the most terrifying things that a performer can do. I’m not necessarily talking about a premiere, just the first time that one adds a piece to one’s performing repertoire.
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The Mouth of the Beast writes The Value of Regional Orchestras: Teachout’s argument makes me sad. I appreciate the local orchestras I’ve patronized throughout my life for both tangible and less tangible reasons. I find listening to music–just listening–very hard. A live orchestra provides a visual accompaniment to the music. It’s for this reason that
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Terry Teachout has an article in the Wall Street Journal in which he basically says that if you’ve got a decent hi-fi at home then you are better off staying home than going to hear some “third rate” regional orchestra. What a load of crap.
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It’s been a few days since I first posted on the quandary that violists find themselves in when approaching the various editions of the largely incomplete Bartók Viola Concerto. Let’s take an example from a passage from the end of the first movement (just before the Ritornello that transitions from the first to second movement).
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