Friday, September 26, 2008


Pianist Ching-Ming Cheng, clarinetist Virginia
Ryder and soprano Elisabeth Harrington. Not
pictured but also performing: piansts Deborah
Clasquin and John Chernoff. Click photo to
enlarge.Posted by Picasa
Fascinating Rhythms

Soprano Elisabeth Harrington with clarinetist Virginia Ryder and pianists Deborah Clasquin, Ching-Ming Cheng and John Chernoff perform jazz-inspired classics by Ned Rorem, Gershwin, Walton and Ravel on Friday, September 26 at 8 PM in the Fulkerson Recital Hall on the HSU campus in Arcata. Tickets are $8 general, $3 students and seniors, from HSU Ticket Office (826-3928) or at the door. An HSU Music Department Faculty Artist Series concert.
Fascinating Rhythms Times Five

In various combinations and as soloists, soprano Elisabeth Harrington with clarinetist Virginia Ryder and pianists Deborah Clasquin, Ching-Ming Cheng and John Chernoff perform jazz-inspired classics on Friday, September 26 in an HSU Music Department Faculty Artist Series concert.

“The major work for me is Ned Rorem's’Ariel,’ a cycle of five songs based on the poetry of Sylvia Plath,” said Elisabeth Harrington. “Very dark and spooky, and very vivid music.” Harrington will sing, accompanied by Virginia Ryder on clarinet and Ching-Ming Cheng on piano.

Rorem is an American composer, and Plath was an American poet who committed suicide at the age of 31. The program also includes the work of a British poet—Edith Sitwell—interpreted by a British composer, William Walton. Walton, also known for his jazz influences, achieved some of his first fame interpreting Sitwell’s poetry for voice and chamber ensemble. He later adapted “Three Songs” for voice and piano. Harrington will sing, accompanied by John Chernoff.

“Three Songs” by American composer William Bolcom is also jazz-inflected, but has more of “a cabaret feel,” Harrington said. She sings with pianist Deborah Clasquin accompanying.

Clasquin plays a set of virtuoso etudes by Earl Wild based on George Gershwin songs, including “Fascinating Rhythm” and “The Man I Love.” “Each song presents a different set of technical hurdles,” Clasquin commented. “They incorporate some early jazz keyboard styles, such as ragtime.”

Pianist Ching-Ming Cheng also performs a solo piece: “Alborada del Gracioso,” a section from a larger work by 20th century Basque-French composer, Maurice Ravel. “This is probably one of the most difficult pieces in the piano repertoire,” she admits. “It doesn’t sound very difficult, but it’s very hard to play. It’s got a lot of variety, and once you have it down, it’s a pleasure to play.”

Harrington, Clasquin, Cheng and Chernoff, all members of the HSU Music Department, are in concert on Friday, September 26 at 8 PM in the Fulkerson Recital Hall on the HSU campus in Arcata. Tickets are $8 general, $3 students and seniors, from HSU Ticket Office (826-3928) or at the door.

Media: Arcata Eye (photo), Eureka Times-Standard (photo), Eureka Reporter.

Saturday, September 13, 2008


Deborah Clasquin, Terrie Baune and friends
in Fulkerson Recital Hall on September 13.Posted by Picasa
Terrie Baune & Deborah Clasquin: Behind the Iron Curtain

A chamber music recital featuring Terrie Baune (violin), Deborah Clasquin (piano) and other musicians in a program of Shostakovich and other Soviet-era composers, on Saturday, September 13 at 8 PM in the Fulkerson Recital Hall on the HSU campus in Arcata. Tickets are $8 general, $3 students and seniors, from HSU Ticket Office (826-3928) or at the door. A Faculty Artists Series concert sponsored by the HSU Department of Music.
Terrie Baune and Deborah Clasquin. Click photo
to enlarge. Posted by Picasa
Baune and Clasquin Back in the USSR

Renewing a performing partnership that goes back more than a decade, violinist Terrie Baune and pianist Deborah Clasquin headline a program of works by Dmitri Shostakovich and other Eastern European composers of the Soviet era.

The recital they are calling “Behind the Iron Curtain” begins at 8 PM on Saturday, September 13 in the Fulkerson Recital Hall on the HSU campus in Arcata.

Baune and Clasquin are reuniting, Clasquin said, “to perform an early love: chamber music.” That’s especially fitting since that’s how they met. “We've been a duo since 1997,” Clasquin recalls. “We met at a Sequoia Chamber Music Workshop for talented kids, held every summer at HSU.”

Joining Baune and Clasquin on a rarely heard piece by Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya will be Paul Cummings on clarinet. The program concludes with the Piano Quintet by Shostakovich, also featuring Karen Davy (violin), Nicholas Marlowe (viola), and Carol Jacobson (violoncello.)

In addition to music from the Soviet Union itself, Baune and Clasquin will play a work by Polish composer Karol Szymanowski.

When they first performed in 1999 in San Francisco, reviewer Stuart Canin wrote of their debut, “Baune and Clasquin made a fine team, presenting the music in a straightforward manner and letting the music itself make its own points.”

These days, Terrie Baune is Concertmaster of the North State Symphony based in Chico and Redding, and Co-Concertmaster of the Oakland East Bay Symphony. She is the Associate Director of the Humboldt Chamber Music Workshop and a faculty member of the Sequoia Chamber Music Workshop, both summer programs at Humboldt State University. Baune is also a member of two professional “new music” chamber ensembles: the San Francisco-based Earplay Ensemble and the Empyrean Ensemble, which is in residence at UC Davis.

Deborah Clasquin has become one of the North Coast’s most popular performers, as well as a prominent teacher and arts education advocate. She is professor of Music at HSU, and has been nominated as a Distinguished Teachers in the Arts by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. She enjoys an active career as a recitalist, having appeared in Moscow, Paris, Kiev, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and Washington D.C.

Tickets for the September 13 recital in Fulkerson Hall are $8 general, $3 students and seniors, from HSU Ticket Office (826-3928) or at the door. A Faculty Artist Series concert sponsored by the HSU Music Department.