------------Cedric Berry,
Grant Gershon, Adriana Manfredi, Elissa Johnston -- Photo: jacarandamusicShort Take Review by Rodney Punt
Composer/Librettist David Lang’s The Little Match Girl Passion (2007) is a winter’s tale without a happy ending. Based on the H.C. Andersen tearjerker, a beggar girl is forced to sell matches in the snow, lighting them one by one in a losing battle to keep warm. The setting elevates the story to a universal secular passion, with music of pointillistic brightness and mesmerizing grace. The music has traces of minimalism and chant; its utmost economy of motifs treads an inexorable path from the dread of a flickering heartbeat to a death in frozen stillness.
Its cast of four singing narrators did double duty as eerie trance-inducers and light-as-a-feather percussionists: Elissa Johnston, soprano; Adriana Manfredi, mezzo-soprano;
Grant Gershon, tenor
; Cedric Berry, bass baritone.
The concert also had other genre-bending works: Elliott Carter’s spidery Sonata for flute, oboe, cello & harpsichord, Sofia Gubaidulina’s oddly-registered pulsing sonics for organ in Light & Darkness, Joan Tower’s big-boned Night Fields for string quartet, and Alfred Schnittke’s goofy-glorious Sound & Resound for organ and trombone.
Performers in other works above: Pamela Vliek-Martchev, flute; Leslie Reed, oboe; Timothy Loo, cello; Gloria Cheng, harpsichord; Mark Alan Hilt, organ; Lyris Quartet (strings), Steve Suminski, trombone
Concert Title: Perilous Balance
Date: January 22, 2011
Venue: First Presbyterian, Santa Monica
Future concerts: Jacaranda Music
Date: January 22, 2011
Venue: First Presbyterian, Santa Monica
Future concerts: Jacaranda Music
Rodney Punt can be contacted at [email protected]
Pianist Mark Robson, a everyday Jacaranda soloist and ensemble participant, become instrumental in creating Jacaranda. His 2002 “global-magnificence” performance of Messiaen showed the capacity of our superb and acoustically great venue. Robson and Vanhauwaert will be a part of forces on pianos for the conflict and epiphany of John Adams’ autobiographical Hallelujah Junction, now not heard earlier than at Jacaranda. The Grammy-winning Pianist Gloria Cheng has played on every season, and finished Adams’ huge Phrygian Gates on our 8-hour Pan-American music Marathon to remarkable crucial and target audience acclaim. She has helped hooked up the excessive fashionable for which Jacaranda is understood. Best Ringtone Free
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