Monday, November 17, 2008

Bonnie Draina

Soprano Bonnie Draina sings of love and loss in a Guest Artist concert on Monday, November 17 at 8 pm in Fulkerson Recital Hall on the HSU campus. Tickets are $8 general, $3 students/seniors from the HSU Box Office (826-3928) or at the door.
Guest Artist Bonnie Draina Sings of Love and Loss

With a program that ranges from Mozart and Schubert to Japanese lullabies and poems by Emily Dickinson set to the music of contemporary composers, soprano Bonnie Draina visits HSU from Boulder, Colorado, for a Guest Artist concert on Monday, November 17 in Fulkerson Recital Hall.

Draina describes the program as featuring “Classical and Romantic pieces about abandoned and lovelorn women.”

Also highlighted are settings of Emily Dickinson poems by 20th century American composers William Roy, Ricky Ian Gordon, Richard Pearson Thomas and Lee Hoiby.

“Hoiby's ‘The Shining Place’ is comprised of five songs of vastly differing mood, from mournful to celebratory, in which both poet and composer draw parallels between forces of nature and human emotion, “ Draina said.

Draina will sing selections from "Hushaby Songs" by Sayaka Ishiguro, adapted from traditional lullabies from various regions of Japan. She will also perform “Perpetuelle” by 19th century French romantic composer Ernest Chausson. “This is more often heard with a piano quintet or orchestra,” she said, “but the piano and vocal version is gorgeous, too.”

As a special treat for the Humboldt audience, she will sing the Susanna-Countess duet from Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro with HSU soprano Elisabeth Harrington.

Bonnie Draina currently teaches studio voice and vocal pedagogy at University of Colorado-Boulder. She specializes in Body Mapping and somatic education of singers. Her most recent performances include an all-Mozart program with the Boulder Philharmonic, and as soprano soloist for Stravinsky's Les Noces, with choir and percussion/piano ensemble at Colorado University.

Bonnie Draina performs on Monday, November 17 at 8 pm in Fulkerson Recital Hall on the HSU campus. Tickets are $8 general, $3 students/seniors from the HSU Box Office (826-3928) or at the door. This is a Guest Artist concert, produced by the HSU Department of Music.

Media: Arcata Eye, Humboldt State Now.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Michelle Marenberg -left front; Brian Jones, Dennis Astley, Adolpho Acuna, Anna Pinsky, Cynthia McGregor, and Gregg Moore. Not pictured: Joanne Rand.
Composers Concert

NEW BEGINNINGS: new music from HSU composers is performed on Saturday, November 15, at 8 p.m. 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.
From the Page to the Air: New Composers, New Beginnings

With help from fellow musicians, HSU students pursuing a degree in Composition move their notes from the page to the air, in a concert of new work dubbed “New Beginnings,” on Saturday, November 15 in the Fulkerson Recital Hall.

“They’re experimenting with both new and old musical approaches,” said Dr. J. Brian Post, HSU professor of Music Theory and Composition. “Their music contains influences from American folk, jazz and rock and roll as well as European art music from Mozart’s time to the present.”

Featured composers for this recital include Joanne Rand, Louie Ochoa, Mark Jensen, Greg Moore, Anna Pinsky and Dennis Astley. Their music will be performed by HSU student and faculty players.

”New Beginnings” begins at 8 p.m. on Saturday, November 15 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.

Media: Arcata Eye, North Coast Journal, Humboldt State Now.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Tuesday Trio: Michael See, Josh Boronkay and Drew McGowan.
Jazz Combos

An all-strings trio, a jazz sextet and a bop quartet are this year’s HSU Jazz Combos, performing on Friday, November 14, at 8 p.m. 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.
Wednesday Sextet: Charlie Sleep, Cullen Miller, Ari Davie, Gabriel Ben-Shalom, Brian Jones and Leo Echazábel.
Variety is the Spice of Jazz

An all-string trio with a twist, a groove sextet and a bop quartet are this year’s HSU Jazz Combos, performing a mix of classics and original tunes on Friday, November 14 in the Fulkerson Recital Hall.

As usual, the three combos are the best of this year’s players, each group named after the day of the week they usually practice.

The Tuesday Trio is Drew McGowan, violin; Michael See, guitar; and Josh Boronkay, bass. “They have an unusual all-strings, drummer-less lineup that is often associated with the great Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt and so-called ‘gypsy jazz’, but they’re a little different,” said Dan Aldag, HSU music professor and “coach” of the combos. “They play bebop tunes like Dizzy Gillespie's ‘A Night In Tunisia’ and Oscar Pettiford's ‘Tricotism’. They’re also playing an as-yet untitled original by their guitarist, Michael See. The trio has developed a number of different ways to compensate for the drums usually associated with modern jazz.”

The Wednesday Sextet is Ari Davie, trumpet; Brian Jones, alto sax; Leo Echazábel, tenor sax and bass clarinet; Charlie Sleep, guitar; Cullen Miller, bass; and Gabriel Ben-Shalom, drums. “Their music is frequently groove-oriented, with elements of both '50s/'60s hard bop and today's groove or acid jazz,” Aldag said. The sextet performs Clifford Brown's "Sandu", Joe Zawinul's "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy", Freddie Hubbard's "Red Clay" and Pat Metheny's "Midwestern Night's Dream"—“each imaginatively rearranged by the sextet.”

The Friday Quartet is Isaac Williams, tenor sax; Aber Miller, piano; Michael Dieter, bass and Abraham Chase-Muhammad, drums. They play in a contemporary post-bop style and will be performing ‘Joshua’ (made famous by Miles Davis), "Swinging At The Haven" (by Ellis Marsalis), Nirvana's "In Bloom", and a new tune by the group's pianist Aber Miller, called "Requiem Pacifique".

The HSU Jazz Combos perform on Friday, November 14 at 8 p.m. 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.

Media: Arcata Eye, Humboldt State Now.

Sunday, November 09, 2008

Paul Cummings

Paul Cummings performs on clarinet, featuring works by Mozart, Weber and Charles Villiers Stanford, with pianist John Chernoff and violist Karen Davy, on Sunday, November 9 at 8 pm in Fulkerson Recital Hall on the HSU campus. Tickets are $8 general, $3 students/seniors from the HSU Box Office (826-3928) or at the door. A Faculty Artist Series Concert produced by the HSU Department of Music.
Paul Cummings: Better Late Than Never for the Clarinet

Concertgoers—not to mention jazz fans—are used to the clarinet as a standard musical instrument…but it wasn’t always so.

“There was no clarinet in the Renaissance or the Baroque period,” HSU professor Paul Cummings points out. “In something like three hundred years of western music, there was basically nothing written for the clarinet.”

But a lot of great music has been written for it since, and clarinetist Paul Cummings will play three works—one acknowledged masterpiece, one well-regarded piece and one that is seldom performed—on Sunday, November 9 in Fulkerson Recital Hall.

It was only at the turn of the 18th century that technology allowed the modern clarinet to be adapted from an earlier instrument. Fortunately, that was just in time to catch the ear of a composer named Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who thought the clarinet best approximated the qualities of the human voice.

“Mozart took a liking to it, and he wrote some of his greatest works for this instrument,” Cummings said, “including his clarinet concerto, a beautiful clarinet quintet, and the clarinet trio we will perform.”

Together with pianist John Chernoff (who accompanies him on all three pieces) and Karen Davy on viola, Cummings plays Mozart’s Trio for Clarinet, Viola and Piano.

“This piece has three movements but it’s a little unusual in that it has no slow movement,” Cummings explained. “It’s also interesting because it is balanced equally among the three instruments. It is so much fun to play this piece—you can tell why it is a masterpiece.”

Cummings and Chernoff combine on another familiar work in the clarinet repertoire, the Grand Duo Concertant by German composer Karl Maria von Weber.

“Weber was known first of all as a composer of German opera,” Cummings explained. “His music is very dramatic. So in this piece there are some really wild contrasts, as you might hear in an opera. There are very loud and very soft parts, tempo changes—all very intense. It’s kind of a clarinet showpiece. That’s partly because Weber, like Mozart, understands the strengths of the instrument. Not every composer understands what the clarinet can do.”

Another composer who did is not as famous for it. “Charles Villiers Stanford was known mostly as a teacher,” Cummings said. His students at the Royal College of Music and Cambridge University included composers Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Though he taught during the musical ferment of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Stanford’s predilections as a composer favored a slightly earlier age.

“He reminded a lot of people of Brahms. So his work is not part of the standard repertoire—maybe because people consider his work a Brahms knock-off. But the piece we’re doing--Stanford’s Sonata for Clarinet and Piano—has its original features.”

“It has three movement, with a fascinating slow movement based on an Irish folk song,” Cummings said. “Stanford was born in Dublin. It’s a kind of lullaby—very tender, simple at times, but with clarinet passages that decorate the melody. For me that beautiful second movement is a highlight.”

Music professor Paul Cummings is also the conductor of the Humboldt Symphony and director of the HSU Symphonic Band. His clarinet concert begins at 8 p.m. on Sunday, November 9 in the Fulkerson Recital Hall on the HSU campus. Tickets are $8 general, $3 students/seniors from the HSU Box Office (826-3928) or at the door. A Faculty Artists Series concert produced by the HSU Department of Music.

Media: Humboldt State Now

Friday, November 07, 2008

Jamie Banister, Sarah Benzinger, Sara Scibetta, Lindsey Tewksbury, Katherine Kinley and Jerilyn Gashi in the contemporary one-act opera, "The Proposal." Click photo to enlarge.
Opera Workshop

The HSU Opera Workshop performs a light-hearted one-act opera by Milton Granger and scenes from a comic opera for children set in a circus, on Friday and Saturday, November 7 and 8, at 8 p.m. 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.
Jessica Malone and Chris Hatcher in a scene from "Sid, the Serpent Who Wanted to Sing."
Lighten Your Heart with the HSU Opera Workshop

For those who think of opera as only “operatic” melodrama involving tragic Europeans of a bygone age, the HSU Opera Workshop has a couple of surprises for its upcoming performances on Friday and Saturday, November 7 and 8.

The student workshop will perform a one-act opera by contemporary American composer Milton Granger, called “The Proposal:” When a young woman receives a marriage proposal, she debates what she should do with five figures who represent different parts of her own personality.

“Though its mostly light-hearted,” said Elisabeth Harrington, teacher and director of the workshop for the HSU Department of Music, “the opera touches on important issues women—and men—must face when choosing whether to enter into a serious relationship.”

Jamie Banister plays the young woman who splits into five aspects of her psyche: Katherine Kinley as her “Statue of Liberty,” Jerilyn Gashi as her inner Security Officer, Lindsey Tewksbury as her five-year old self, Sarah Benzinger as her “Mother Theresa”, and Sara Scibetta as her Sensual self.

In an even more light-hearted vein, the Workshop begins with scenes from "Sid the Serpent Who Wanted to Sing," an opera for children by another contemporary American composer, Malcolm Fox.

In this comic romp, Sid is a serpent who performs as part of a circus quartet, but longs for deeper artistic fulfillment. Chris Hatcher plays Sid, James Murphy is the Strong Man, Brandy Rose is the Clown, Molly Severdia is the Juggler and Jessica Malone is the expert opera teacher Sid consults.

The Opera Workshop performs on Friday and Saturday, November 7 and 8, at 8 p.m. 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.

Media: Arcata Eye, Humboldt State Now.

Saturday, November 01, 2008

Photo by Brittney Cathey / Brittney's Photography
Humboldt Bay Brass Band

Humboldt Bay Brass Band performs classic, new and newly re-discovered tunes on Saturday, November 1 at 8 p.m. 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.

click photo to enlarge
Marching in Arcata with the Humboldt Bay Brass Band

The 28 players of the Humboldt Bay Brass Band performs classics, new compositions and another newly discovered and arranged march by the legendary Humboldt County bandmaster Professor Frank Flowers, on Saturday, November 1 at Fulkerson Recital Hall.

From the sheet music trove that made its way from a Seattle apartment building to the Humboldt County Historical Society and then to Gil Cline, conductor of the Brass Band, comes another lost composition by Professor Frank Flowers, the Eureka High School band director in the 1920s and 30s. Last fall the Brass Band presented Cline’s arrangement of “Redwood Highway March.” This year, the Band plays Cline’s arrangement of Flowers’ march, “My Friend in Arcata,” in honor of Arcata’s 150th anniversary.

The first half of the concert also features the classic “Poet and Peasant Overture” by 19th century composer Franz von Suppe and "Um Bom Tambour" (One Good Drum) by Band member and local composer, Gregg Moore.

The second half begins with music familiar to many from its years as a theme for network broadcasts of the Olympic Games: “Bugler’s Dream” by French-American composer Leo Arnaud, as arranged by Gil Cline for Brass Band.

Then the Band presents the premiere performance of ”Tower Bells and Brass in the Firmament,” an original composition by Gil Cline, who described it as a “soundscape” of bells in all directions. Featured are chimes, orchestra bell and celesta, as well as brass.

Ending the concert is the classic, "Crown Imperial" by British composer William Walton, written originally for the coronation of King George VI in 1937, and featured again in 1953 for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

The Humboldt Bay Brass Band, an HSU Music Department ensemble, is the only traditional brass band in northwest California. It performs on Saturday, November 1 at 8 p.m. 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.
Musicians of HBBB include:

Burt Codispoti, Tom Cover, Perry Crook, JoyceCarter, Alex Fonseca, John Ferreira, Oshi Jager, Tristan Kadish, JenniferReiske, Gregg Sisk, and William Zoller - Cornets.

Gary Ross - Flugelhorn.

Matt Morgan, Anwyn Halliday, and DickLaForge - Tenor Horns.

Phil Sams and Toshi Noguchi - Baritone Horns.

George Epperson, Doug Hendricks, and Kearney VanderSal - Trombones.

George Ritscher and Matt Sullivan - Euphoniums.

Damien Adams, Jerry Carter, Elizabeth Cruz, Joe Eckert, and Gregg Moore - Bass Tubas.

Jessica Bishop, Julia Chase, GraceKerr, and Beth Moyer - Percussion.