THIS WEEK AND NEXT
OUR CALENDAR takes us to the end of the year. ‘HOLIDAY SHOWS & CONCERTS’ leads off with eight listings, including Chanticleer, who have just released a new CD. (See album cover above.) TWO NUTCRACKERS, in Santa Cruz and Aptos. (The Nutcracker Ballet premiered on this date in 1892, St Petersburg.) MADREGALIA brings vocal and instrumental music of the Renaissance to Monterey. TOM PARKS takes the Broadway Songbook to the Cherry Center in Carmel. For links to these and dozens of other live performance events, click our CALENDAR
SLO MUSIC FESTIVAL SEEKING A NEW EXECUTIVE
VENERABLE FESTIVAL MOZAIC in San Luis Obispo is accepting applications for a new executive director. Click HERE
VIOLIN PRODIGY TO QUIT LA PHIL FOR STREET ACTIVISM
VIJAY GUPTA to form Street Symphony in Los Angeles. Click HERE
TURNING CLASSICAL MUSIC INTO ‘SOOTHING’ WALLPAPER
JENNIFER GERSTON in the Washington Post fingers KDFC as guilty as the rest of the marketing industry in ‘robbing a great art of its power.’ “The San Francisco-based station KDFC even offers a daily ‘island of sanity,’ including slow pieces by Mozart, Debussy and Bach, in the interest of tempering rush hour woes.” Click HERE
BEN ZANDER IS A ‘ONE-BUTTOCK’ MUSICIAN
JUST IN TIME FOR THE START OF SUMMER
IMAGES OF BRAZIL, an enchanting collection of works for violin and piano by Brazilian composers, three living and four dead. Among the latter is the world-famous Heitor Villa-Lobos who is represented here by O Martírio dos Insetos (The Martyrdom of Insects) which had me laughing out loud. Its three movements are titled “The Cicada in Winter,” “The Firefly in the Light” and “The Moth around the Flame.” Villa-Lobos had a preternatural urge to compose—he was one of the most prolific of all time—and a spontaneous instinct for inspiration, as these miniature portraits demonstrate. They bring out the best in violinist Francesca Anderegg and pianist Erika Ribeiro, who also arranged Three Songs in the popular style by Léa Freire, born 1957. The other living composers, Ernani Aguiar and Edmundo Villani-Cortes, are represented by, respectively, Meloritmias No. 4 (1987) for violin alone and Aguas Claras (1991). The old dead guys are César Guerra-Peixe (Three Pieces, 1957), the acclaimed Mozart Camargo Guarnieri (Violin Sonata No 4, 1956) who thought his given name was too pretentious and suppressed it—his piece is samba flavored with a nod toward Gershwin—and Radamés Gnattali (Flor da Noite, 1938.) In the hands of Anderegg and Ribeiro, everyone here is alive and full of spunk. SM
JUST IN TIME FOR THE WINTER HOLIDAYS
NEW YORK TIMES music critics just anointed new classical CD titles, sprawled across six centuries, including audio tracks that will show you why the familiar designation ‘classical’ is fading from relevance. Click HERE
WORLD’S OLDEST SURVIVING FORM OF THEATER
IRRESISTIBLE, SEDUCTIVE NANCY WILSON (1937-2018)
I WAS TELLING HIM ABOUT YOU
FRESH REVIEW
DAVID COPPERFIELD THE MUSICAL. Click HERE
NEXT WEEK
CAFÉ MUSIQUE returns to Hidden Valley for New Year’s Eve. FIRST NIGHT MONTEREY rings in the New Year with numerous performers in many different venues.
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Scott MacClelland, editor; Rebecca CR Brooks, associate editor