Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Yesterday

Yesterday I went to a luncheon.
Here's what the invitation card said;
Please join us in support of
Seattle Chamber Music society
at a luncheon
celebrating contemporary music and art
featuring cellist Amos Yang
performing
"Seven Tunes Heard in China for Solo Cello"
by Bright Sheng
with brief commentary by
young composer Jeremy Jolly

Monday, June 11, 2007
11:30 AM
Howard House Gallery
in Seattle's pioneer Square.

The music was delightful, the food was delicious.
I talked with interesting people.
John Adams' sister in law.
Former head of the University of Washington (he loves the sonority of the cello and the oboe, so do I)
One of the subjects of conversation was toilet paper
Made my day.
So what was yesterday's blog all about?
Two glasses of wine?

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2 Comments:

Blogger Glenn Buttkus said...

like you, sir, I have my up and downs. Today, later, I have decided that "somehow" I will be done with all the labs and adjustments to meds by a week from Friday, on June 22, so that the Road Trip will still happen. This has lightened my step for the time being. It is incredible how much duress and misfortune we as a species can deal with and still keep on truckin'; lol.

Amos Yang, the former cellist of the Maia String Quartet who left the group last spring to join the Seattle Symphony, returns to the University for Iowa for a guest recital at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 15, in Clapp Recital Hall on the UI campus.


Yang’s recital will be free and open to the public.


Yang will play three large-scale works: the 12 Caprices for solo cello by Alfredo Piatti, Benjamin Britten’s Suite No. 3 for solo cello; and with pianist Hikari Nakamura, a graduate student in the UI School of Music, the Cello Concerto in E minor, op. 65, by Edward Elgar.


Yang said the transition from chamber musician to orchestral player has been “challenging.”

In spite of some widely reported problems at some orchestras, the Seattle Symphony continues to have a full house on most evenings. Many people consider their home, Benaroya Hall, to be one of the premier concert halls in America. Yang said there are so many subscribers that orchestra members often cannot get complimentary tickets to concerts..


Yang also enjoys the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest. “As I drive to work I can see Mt. Rainier on one side and the Olympic mountains and Puget Sound to the other side,” he said.


Yang played cello with the Maia Quartet, the resident quartet at the UI School of Music, from 1996 until he left the group in 2002 to join the Seattle Symphony. He has previously performed with the Deutsche Kammerakademie (German Academy of Chamber Music) in Dusseldorf and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.


Yang won first prize in the Grace Vamos Cello Competition and the American String Teacher’s Association Cello Competition and was a finalist in the Pierre Fournier Cello Competition. He has performed a wide range of concertos and played chamber music with the Ying Quartet, pianist Ann Schein and violinists Perrin Yang and Earl Carlyss.


Yang holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Juilliard School. He also studied at the Eastman School of Music and in London, England, under a grant from the Beebe Foundation. He attended the Tanglewood Music Festival, where he received the CD Jackson Award for outstanding contribution to the festival in 1994.


The piece was originally introduced, they say, by Yo Yo Ma, one of my favorite cellists.

As performed by Yo-Yo Ma. As composed by Bright Sheng. As arranged by Yo-Yo Ma. Cello Solo. String Solo. Voicing/Format: CELLO. 9x12 inches. 20 pages. Published by Schirmer.

This joyful suite of pieces for solo cello, based on folk melodies from various regions of the composer's native China, was written for and premiered by Yo-Yo Ma, who has also recorded it for Sony Classical.

Bright Sheng

© Alex CaoBorn: 1955

"A fresh voice in cross-cultural music."

"An innovative composer who merges diverse musical customs in works that transcend conventional aesthetic boundaries."

These are the words used to describe Bright Sheng, the 2001 recipient of the MacArthur Foundation’s "Genius Award." Steeped in the tradition of Western classical music, Sheng’s compositions draw from the fount of late 20th-century contemporary ideas, and the folk music of China and the surrounding-famed Silk Road region.

Sheng’s importance in the international music community is evidenced by his numerous commissions: Red Silk Dance (2000), a piano concerto for Emanuel Ax and the Boston Symphony; Nanking! Nanking! (1999) for pipa and orchestra for the NDR Symphony Orchestra; Flute Moon (1999) for flute and orchestra for the Houston Symphony; The Song and Dance of Tears (2003)—a Silk Road Project quadruple concerto for the New York Philharmonic for Western and Eastern solo instruments; the Seattle Symphony’s China Dreams (1995) and The Phoenix (2004), written for soprano Jane Eaglen in a co-commission with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, which subsequently brought the work to China in 2005; Colors of Crimson (2004) for percussionist Evelyn Glennie and the Luxembourg Philharmonic, and Sheng’s defining work H’un (Lacerations) (1988) for the New York Chamber Symphony, written in response to his experiences during the Cultural Revolution. Conductors who champion Sheng’s music include: Christoph Eschenbach, Valery Gergiev, Marin Alsop, Gerard Schwarz, Kurt Masur, Robert Spano, Hugh Wolff, Leonard Slatkin, David Zinman, David Robertson, and Neeme Järvi.

In the theater world, Madame Mao—Sheng’s two-act, psychological portrait of Jiang Qing (Chairman Mao’s wife)—was premiered by the Santa Fe Opera in 2003. Set to a libretto by its stage director Colin Graham, the work received accolades worldwide. In 2002, the Lincoln Center Festival mounted Sheng’s multi-cultural music theater piece The Silver River (1997; rev. 2000), in a co-production previously mounted at the Spoleto Festival USA. Based on an ancient Chinese tale about star-crossed lovers and set to a libretto by David Henry Hwang, the critically acclaimed production was directed by Ong Keng Sen. This production will be performed again in Ann Arbor Michigan in early 2007. From 1989 to 1992, Sheng served a composer-residency at the Lyric Opera of Chicago where he wrote The Song of Majnun (1992)—a one-act "Persian Romeo and Juliet"—in collaboration with librettist Andrew Porter. No stranger to dance, in 2002, Sheng collaborated with choreographer Helgi Tomasson for the San Francisco Ballet’s Chi-Lin, a new ballet set to three extant chamber pieces.

A la base, une Sherco Enduro que Arnaud a racheté en fin de saison à Jeremy Jolly, qui courait en championnat de France enduro avec, et qui a gagné le ...
www.crocoracing.com/tuning-crazy.htm - 69k - Jun 11, 2007

What the hell is this? Have I lost my mind? Sacre Bleu!

Jeremy Jolly - 4th place in the National Ice dancing Championships;

I guess Young Master Jeremy Jolly, fledging composer, has not made his cyber mark yet. So what was his brief commentary like?


HOWARD HOUSE GALLERY
604 Second Avenue
Seattle, Washington 98104 USA
Tel: 206 256-6399
Fax: 206 256-6392
Billy Howard
Send Email

www.howardhouse.net

HOWARD HOUSE was established in 1997 and occupies a luxurious storefront visual art space in the historic Pioneer Square District in Downtown Seattle. Two large galleries provide a grand showcase for renown national and local artists.
As a premier contemporary fine art gallery in Seattle, Washington, Howard House, is focused on showing and cultivating emerging artists. Often touted by the press and art buyers as one of the Regions leading galleries, it is dedicated to showing work that is aesthetically fascinating and conceptually rigorous. Progressive and award winning; the mission of Howard House is to bring leading contemporary art to this region and promote the talented artists who work from Seattle nationally and internationally. Howard House, under the direction of forward-thinking owner/founder Billy Howard has a unique track record identifying, and showing artists at the tipping point of their career.

This pioneering spirit is evident by the important exhibitions Howard House artists have been included. These exhibitions include: Corcoran Biennial, Corcoran Museum of Art; Cyborg Manifesto, Laguna Art Museum; Bitstreams and the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art; Weird and Whimsical: Northwest Art from the Permanent Collection, Seattle Art Museum; Screenshots, Arizona State University Art Museum; Fresh Flowers, Bellevue Art Museum; Twice Born: Beauty, Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts; Shifting Ground: Transformed Views of the American Landscape, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle

It is strange, but when I listen to great musicians play the violin, the viola, or the cello, it strikes some kind of reasonant cord in me, and I can't keep from weeping. Certain notes vibrate, and boom, there goes the tears. I love the feeling, and I wished that I understood it; probably deep stuff metaphysically, like in my former lives I was more plugged into the Music of the Spheres or something equally esoteric.

Speaking of toilet paper, every year I take wife Melva to Pac Beach, and we rent a 4 bedroom house or two, and get a lot of family, friends, and animals together to celebrate Melva's birthday. We have done it three years in a row now. One year we made up tee shirts with MISS MELVA'S BIRTHDAY BASH on them, no, it was the SECOND ANNUAL BASH. Last year we gave out bath towels with MISS MELVA'S THIRD ANNUAL BIRTHDAY BASH on them. This year, in October, she was to take dozens of rolls of Costco toilet paper, and rewrap them in wrappers that say MISS MELVA'S FOURTH ANNUAL BIRTHDAY BASH. Sounds great to me!

What is the saying, something Wino Veritas? in vino veritas"

Latin expression meaning that when you drink alcohol you tend to get loose and sometimes say things you normally wouldn't say had you not imbibed.
Literal translation= "Truth in wine"

So you were the victim of demon alcohol, you poor beggar poet muscian violin maker and car designer, you.

Glenn

12:16 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Butch:
Finally, you have gotten something WRONG! The Seattle Symphony concerts are often FAR from being sold-out; seems you haven't been in Benaroya lately (are you also banned??). As I haven't yet joined that elite grouip of "bannees", I have been there and have seen MANY empty seats, except in the third balcony, which is probably why they have raised the prices nextz season there to those in "Prime Orchestra" locations -- and have lowered them somewhat in the many parts of the "Orchestra" that are regularly empty. I'm sure SeaSymph musicians can get seats there, but which of them would want to go on a "Busman's Holiday", especially at the Cuckuck's Nest??

2:55 AM  

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