How about a little Christmas in July? The next few featured photos come from our 2011 Benefit Concert. Despite being postposed due to last October’s surprise blizzard, the concert – held in December instead – was a great success. Talented musicians from around Hartford presented music that has been performed on previous festivals and previewed works from future events. Today’s photo shows Sheri Brown performing on the alto saxophone.
Here Elisabeth Tomczyk and Katie Cousins are featured performing a movement of Ellen O’Meara’s Orbits, for violin, clarinet, and piano, on the 2011 Local Composers Concert. A Brooklyn based composer and instrumentalist, Ms. O’Meara is a strong advocate of new music and her works can be found here.
In addition to featuring a diverse array of musical styles, the Local Composers Concert also presents audiences interaction with the many composers living near Hartford. Here Tawnie Olson introduces her duo for bassoon and piano, À mon seul désir. Of the piece, Dr. Olson says:
This piece was inspired by Elizabeth Shoemaker, her skilled interpretation of Saint-Saëns’ Bassoon Sonata, and by an idea of marriage informed by my relationship with my own husband. At first the instruments seem to co-exist peacefully, but independently, but after a crisis material is passed back and forth between them. This dialogue incites the bassoon to jubilant virtuosity, and then the opening material returns; the piece has come full circle. The circle – the shape of a wedding ring and an ancient symbol of perfection – is also meant to be suggested by the piano part’s slow journey through its entire range. The title of this piece comes from the final Lady and the Unicorn tapestry, in the collection of the Musée de Cluny.
Recordings of Tawnie Olson’s music and updates on her projects can be found here.
An annual tradition for the festival, the Local Composers Concert displays the wide variety of musical styles and ideas present in just the tri-state area (Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York). The following picture features Janet Jacobson and Han-Wei Lu performing the intricately microtonal “Five Vignettes” by Julia Werntz. A process of dividing the traditional Western scale, Julia describes her use of microtonality:
My method was just to seize the “new” pitches from in-between the “old” pitches of 12-note equal-temperament—60 new pitches in total—and to sing the intervals again and again until I had internalized a new microtonal, equal-tempered chromatic scale consisting of 72 pitches. Then I began developing a melodic technique, relying on certain aspects of my traditional musical training, while at the same time looking out for the peculiar new demands of the new intervals themselves, such as rhythm.
More info on Julia Werntz and her music can be found here.
Though many of the pictures posted so far have shown the great music-making that takes place at the Festival each year, our events also serve as an important opportunity for composers to interact with each other and with audience members. Most of the living composers programmed on the Festival attend, and we always look forward to meeting the women featured each year.
In the photo above, composers Kate Swanson-Ellis (left) and Gale Gardiner (right) chat at the 2010 Local Composers Concert.
