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*Music in Time -- Series director John Kennedy has loosened up in recent years, taking down the "For Elitists Only" sign from the entrance to the Simons Center Recital Hall. Sue especially dreaded entering this clean-room environment with its promised assaults of percussion and atonality, but this year has been a healing experience.
Even before the soothing sounds of Fernandes and Mille, from the Wachovia Jazz series, softened and humanized the space, there was a non-toxic Program I at the 2008 Music in Time, "Music of Anthony Davis." A very warm family affair, as it turned out. The composer of Amistad was on hand to introduce these more bite-sized morsels -- and to delve more deeply into his opera's beauties.
Sitting down at the keyboard, Davis played his "Goddess Variations," based on the climactic Act 2 aria sung by the African Goddess of the Waters. He was also on hand to introduce and accompany his wife, soprano Cynthia Aaronson-Davis, on "Lost Moon Sisters," a song set to the poetry of Diana di Prima.
More family followed. Young Jonah Davis, the composer's son, sang "Mama Help Me" from another Davis opera, X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X. To conclude the late afternoon smorgasbord, percussionist Gerry Hemingway and clarinetist JD Parran, cohorts in Davis's jazz combo, lent their virtuosity to You Have the Right to Remain Silent, a concerto notable for Parran's swinging exploits on contrabass clarinet (including elephantine harmonics), Hemingway's brushwork and vocalise, as well as its inevitable political thrust.
*Intermezzi -- These late afternoon concerts at St. Matthews Lutheran Church are less adventurous and intimidating than their Music in Time counterparts. Intermezzo I was downright reposeful, beginning with Copland's arrangement of Appalachian Spring for 13 instruments. Less interesting -- or should I say more mainstream? -- were Mozart's Symphony #36 and a section of Webern's arrangement of Bach's A Musical Offering.
But Intermezzi doesn't always go with the tried and true. On our return the following Sunday, we enjoyed a tuba concerto by Vaughan Williams as well as the composer's more familiar The Lark Ascending. The seditious John Kennedy was at the podium leading the creme de la creme of the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra, so naturally he slipped an even more outré offering, Ingram Marshall's Orphic Memories, into the program.
Members of that same sterling Spoleto ensemble of young professionals were upfront for the solo sections of the VW concertos. Aubrey Foard was revelatory behind the heavy metal in the Tuba Concerto while violinist Brittany Boulding was no less deserving of her bows as the fluttering, ethereal lark. Surely the harpist was intended to personify Ingram's Orpheus, but she received no mention in the program, and Kennedy unforgivably neglected to offer her a bow.
The series takes another unexpected turn when soprano Mary Elizabeth Williams and bass-baritone Gregg Baker, standouts in Amistad, take their places at the 5pm Intermezzo IV this Wednesday. Wish I could be there.
