Saturday, March 29, 2008

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PianoVoce

The community ensemble PianoVoce presents “Friendship,” a recital of music composed for friends by Brahms, Bernstein, Menotti and others, played by friends, including Virginia Ryder on clarinet, on Saturday, March 29 at 8 PM in the Fulkerson Recital Hall on the HSU campus in Arcata. Tickets $8 general, $3 student/seniors from HSU ticket office (826-3928) or at the door. An HSU Department of Music production.
PianoVoce Presents Music For Friends, By Friends

Friendship is the theme when the community ensemble PianoVoce performs selections from Brahms, Bernstein, Menotti and others, on Saturday, March 29 at the Fulkerson Recital Hall.

The featured work is “Variation on a Theme by Schumann “ by Johannes Brahms. Brahms’ tribute to his close friend Schumann is a piano 4-hand performed by friends Nancy Correll and Annette Gurnee Hull.

“This was one of the most famous musical friendships, between Brahms and the Schumann family,” said Nancy Correll. “The two composers nurtured each others’ music, and their relationship extended to their families. This piece is especially poignant, since it was written so soon after Schumann’s death.”

“Whether or not there was ever a romance between Clara Schumann and Brahms,” Correll commented, “it was a lifelong relationship of deep mutual respect and love.”

The work “is based on a mysterious set of piano solo variations begun by Schumann, but not published until 1939,” Correll said. “ We will have more to say about these variations during the recital.”

PianoVoce will play several other pieces by Brahms, including a late sonata for clarinet and piano, which features Virginia Ryder on clarinet. “She has been a good friend for years, and we are honored to have her musical magnetism for this recital,” Correll said.

Also on the program: John Corigliano’s rollicking “Gazebo Dances” (each of which is dedicated to at least one friend or family member), Leonard Bernstein’s Sonata for Clarinet and Piano (dedicated to a friend), also featuring Virginia Ryder, and Gian-Carlo Menotti’s “Six Songs,” which deals with love in all its aspects, including friendship.

In addition to pianists Nancy Correll and Annette Gurnee Hull, PianoVoce includes tenor Kevin Sharkey (who has sung with the group for the last two years) and narrator Richard Duning, who explains the background of the pieces and reads translations of the songs.

PianoVoce was formed in 2003 to explore music originally written for piano 4-hands and piano vocal literature, but “is not averse to other musical instruments - the clarinet for example!”

“Friendship” begins at 8 PM on Saturday, March 29 in the Fulkerson Recital Hall on the HSU campus in Arcata. Tickets are $8 general, $3 student/seniors from HSU ticket office (826-3928) or at the door.
PianoVoce: Bio

PianoVoce was formed in 2003 to explore music originally written for piano 4-hands and piano vocal literature, but is not averse to other musical instruments - the clarinet for example!

Virginia Ryder is a lecturer in the music department at Humboldt State University. She teaches studio and class woodwinds, Music Fundamentals and World Music. Ms. Ryder has performed extensively throughout the United States in orchestras including the Boston Symphony, Denver Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony and the Opera Company of Boston. She is a current member of the Symphony of the Redwoods in Mendocino County and the Mendocino Music Festival Orchestra. In her free time she enjoys watercolor painting.

Kevin Sharkey is a singer, dancer, actor, costume designer, and graphic designer. He studied Art History at San Diego State University where he graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa. He also studied music at HSU with voice teacher Jim Stanard and has had additional voice coaching from Sheila Marks. It is through his partership with pianist and vocal coach Nancy Correll, though, that Kevin has begun to discover his true potential as a singer. Last summer, Kevin sang the role of the ship’s architect in HLOC’s production of Titanic. He owns Threadbare Dancewear in Arcata, CA.

Annette GurnĂ©e Hull earned her B.A. in Music from HSU where her piano teacher was Charles Fulkerson. She has accompanied Humboldt Light Opera Company productions since 1983, the women’s chorus “The Babes,” is retired from the accompanying staff at HSU, has been a private piano teacher for 25 years, and plays regularly for services at the Humboldt Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. She studied violin with Floyd Glende and played in the FaDa's string quartet.

Nancy Correll served as staff accompanist for the Music Department at HSU from 1975 to 2001. She comes from Ohio and holds a B.A. in English from Carleton College and a B.A. In Music from HSU, where she studied with Charles Fulkerson. Now retired, she continues to teach piano and voice in McKinleyville, makes beautiful pottery, writes novels, and lives with her husband, Richard Duning.

Richard Duning, our narrator, has had many years of amateur theater experience in the role of actor, singer, and director. Richard’s primary focus is in the visual arts, and he describes his work as “symbolic expressionism.” He works from dreams, exploring psychological and spiritual images. He is currently represented by Claudia Chapline Gallery in Stinson Beach and Solomon Dubnick Gallery in Sacramento. His work can be seen at Cin Cin all’Italiana Restaurant in Eureka.
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Friday, March 14, 2008


Darius Brotman
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Allison & Brotman

Local jazz musicians Darius Brotman (piano) and Bill Allison (vocals) perform improvisations on jazz standards in a rare appearance on Friday, March 14 at 8 PM in the Fulkerson Recital Hall on the HSU campus in Arcata. Tickets: $8 general, $3 student/seniors from HSU ticket office (826-3928) or at the door. This Guest Artist concert is presented by the HSU Department of Music.

Bill Allison
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So Rare: Local Jazz Artists Brotman and Allison Perform

Local jazz musicians Darius Brotman and Bill Allison will make a rare appearance performing improvisations of jazz standards, on Friday, March 14 at the Fulkerson Recital Hall.

Host of the “Gone Sides” jazz show on KHSU, Darius Brotman has been playing jazz piano in local clubs for some 20 years. With a degree in music composition from the University of California at Berkeley, Brotman’s extended jazz suite, “The Rambler,” was performed at HSU.

He returns to the Fulkerson Recital Hall stage with vocalist Bill Allison in a program of improvisations on jazz standards that he prefers not to announce in advance.

Bill Allison is familiar to North Coast generations as a teacher as well as performer. He currently teaches at the HSU Music Academy, College of the Redwoods, and in many Humboldt County schools. Allison has a BA degree in vocal jazz from Cornish College of the Arts, and a Master of Arts in Education from HSU.

Brotman and Allison perform on Friday, March 14 at 8 PM in the Fulkerson Recital Hall on the HSU campus in Arcata. Tickets are $8 general, $3 student/seniors from the HSU ticket office (826-3928) or at the door. This Guest Artist concert is presented by the HSU Department of Music.

Saturday, March 08, 2008


Gamelan X
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Gamelan X

The Bay Area ensemble GAMELAN X brings high energy world music to the Fulkerson Recital Hall on the HSU campus in Arcata on Saturday, March 8 at 8 PM. Tickets $8 general, $3 student/senior from HSU ticket office (826-3928) or at the door. HSU students free with ID.

Gamelan X
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Gamelan X Comes to HSU

Bay Area world music ensemble Gamelan X brings its high energy world music to Humboldt State University on Saturday, March 8.

HSU Music Department Director of Percussion Studies Eugene Novotney calls them “an outstanding group that mixes world music from Asia, Africa and the Middle East into exciting interlocking rhythms, haunting melodies and a deep and funky groove. Gamelan X is the perfect show for a Humboldt audience.”

According to the group’s web site (http://gamelanx.com/) Gamelan X draws musical inspiration from Indonesian, Balkan, African, Indian and American traditions. Instruments used include dozens of small and large gongs (central to the gamelan tradition of Indonesia), plus wind and string instruments, synthesizers, drums and percussion. Their shows include group choreography and crowd interaction to take audiences “on a journey through a wide range of exotic musical spaces.”

Gamelan X comes to HSU at the tail-end of a Northwest and Northern CA tour, trailing clouds of a glorious press. Todd LaVoie in the SF Bay Guardian describes their music as “trance-inducing rhythms pinballing between Balinese gongs…This formidable primitive-futurist improvisational collective of epic proportions bashes out Indonesian marching music made for dance clubs yet to be conceived.”

“Gamelan X is a precision-guided tour de force of rhythm, sounds, theater and performance art,” said Evan Levy, Director of Art in Freedom Park in Atlanta, Georgia. “Think Cirque du Soleil meets Sun Ra, and you won’t want to miss them.”

“Gamelan X literally stopped the show,” said the director of the 2005 Arts Expo Gala in San Francisco. “Our guests were mesmerized by the pageantry, energy and authentic ritual. It was like nothing they’d seen before.”

“The Gamelan X show is the first step in an effort to bring the music of Asia, and specifically Indonesia, to the Humboldt stage,” Novotney said. “I would love to start a Gamelan program here at HSU some day.” Novotney used about half the prize money from his 2006 CSU Wang Award to purchase gamelan instruments from Indonesia.

Gamelan X performs on Saturday, March 8 at 8 PM. in the Fulkerson Recital Hall on the HSU campus in Arcata. Tickets $8 general, $3 student/senior from HSU ticket office (826-3928) or at the door. HSU students free with ID. This concert is co-sponsored by the HSU Department of Music, the HSU Diversity Program Funding Committee, the HSU Percussion Ensemble and Gamelan Sekar Sequoia.

Media: Arcata Eye, North Coast Journal, Eureka Times-Standard Northern Lights, HSU Online, Humboldt Beacon.

Gamelan X
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What's Gamelan?

Information edited from Wikipedia:

A gamelan is a kind of musical ensemble of Indonesia typically featuring a variety of instruments such as metallophones, xylophones, drums, and gongs. The term refers more to the set of instruments than the players of those instruments. A gamelan as a set of instruments is a distinct entity, built and tuned to stay together — instruments from different gamelan are not interchangeable. The word "gamelan" comes from the Javanese word "gamel", meaning to strike or hammer, and the suffix "an", which makes the root a collective noun.

Gamelan is found in the Indonesian islands of Java, Madura, Bali, and Lombok (and other Sunda Islands), in a wide variety of ensemble sizes and formations. In Bali and Lombok today, and in Java through the 18th century, the term "gong" has been preferred to or synonymous with gamelan. Traditions of gamelan-like ensembles also exist in the Philippines, Malaysia and Suriname, sometimes due to emigration, historic trade, or diplomacy. More recently, through immigration and local enthusiasm, gamelan ensembles have become active throughout Europe, America, Asia, and Australia.

Gamelan music is built up in layers. At its centre is a basic melody (core melody) known as the balungan. Further layers, including singing in vocal pieces, elaborate upon this melody in certain ways, but the notes of each layer of music relate to the balungan, and generally coincide at the ends of phrases (called seleh in Javanese). There are also a set of instruments which delineate a colotomic structure, usually ending in the stroke of the largest gong.

The gamelan has an old and mysterious origin. Apparently it predates the Hindu-Buddhist culture that dominated Indonesia in its earliest records, and instead represents a native art form. The instruments developed into their current form during the Majapahit Empire.[1] In contrast to the heavy Indian influence in other art forms, the only obvious Indian influence in gamelan music is in the Javanese style of singing.[2]

In Javanese mythology, the gamelan was created by Sang Hyang Guru in Saka era 167 (c. AD 230), the god who ruled as king of all Java from a palace on the Maendra mountains in Medangkamulan (now Mount Lawu). He needed a signal to summon the gods, and thus invented the gong. For more complex messages, he invented two other Gongs, thus forming the original gamelan set.[3]
In the palaces of Java are the oldest known ensembles, the Munggang and Kodokngorek gamelans, apparently from the 12th century. These formed the basis of a "loud style."

A different, "soft style" developed out of the kemanak tradition and is related to the traditions of singing Javanese poetry, in a manner which is often believed to be similar to performance of modern bedhaya dance. In the 17th century, these loud and soft styles mixed, and to a large extent the variety of modern gamelan styles of Bali, Java, and Sunda resulted from different ways of mixing these elements. Thus, despite the seeming diversity of styles, many of the same theoretical concepts, instruments, and techniques are shared between the styles.[4]

Saturday, March 01, 2008

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Humboldt Symphony

The Humboldt Symphony plays selections from Rimsky-Korsakov, Aaron Copland, Scarlatti and Saint-Saens’ “Danse Macabre” on Saturday, March 1 and Sunday, March 2 at 8 PM in the Fulkerson Recital Hall on the HSU campus in Arcata. Tickets are $7 general, $3 students/seniors, from the HSU Ticket Office (826-3928) or at the door. Free to HSU students with ID. Paul Cummings conducting; an HSU Music Department production.
Stirring Melodies and Fiddling to Raise the Dead

With Paul Cummings conducting, the Humboldt Symphony features composers from the Baroque to the modern era, plus selections with an eastern European flavor, in its concert on Saturday March 1 and Sunday March 2 at 8 PM in the Fulkerson Recital Hall.

Probably best known for his operas, Alessandro Scarlatti also composed twelve three-movement symphonies in the Baroque style. The Humboldt Symphony showcases one of these, “Sinfonie V,” with flute solos by Kelsey Sluss and Kearney Vander Sal.

Earlier in the evening, the Symphony plays one of the last works by famed American composer, Aaron Copland: “Down A Country Lane,” which he wrote in 1962.

The Eastern European emphasis enters with two stirring works based on folk music: “Overture on Russian Themes” by Russian composer Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov (which includes a melody sharp- eared listeners may recognize as one also used in Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture”) and the energetic “Rumanian Dances” by Hungarian composer, Bela Bartok.

Ending the evening is “Danse Macabre” by French composer Camille Saint-Saens. It was inspired by a folk tale that portrayed the figure of Death playing a fiddle that caused the dead to arise and dance. The music evokes this themes so well that it’s been used in various horror films and TV shows, including an episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” For the Symphony concert, the “fiddle” is played by violin soloist Otis Harriel.

The Humboldt Symphony with Paul Cummings conducting, performs on Saturday, March 1 and Sunday, March 2 at 8 PM in the Fulkerson Recital Hall on the HSU campus in Arcata. Tickets are $7 general, $3 students/seniors, from the HSU Ticket Office (826-3928) or at the door. Free to HSU students with ID.