Doug Machiz (MM ’11) and his Friction Quartet will be performing in “String Quartet Smackdown 2” as part of Graham Reynolds’ Golden Hornet Project at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar on Saturday, January 24, 2015. The quartet will also appear on the UT campus in Jessen Auditorium the evening prior on Friday, January 23, 2015.

Golden Hornet Project is an Austin-based presenting and commissioning organization founded by composer/musician/bandleaders Graham Reynolds and Peter Stopschinski. Since 1999 GHP has premiered over 60 new alt-classical works by more than 50 composers rooted in wildly different musical backgrounds. In 1999 the alt-classical movement barely existed. In 2014 it is thriving in cities around the world. Golden Hornet Project continues to be a vital member and leader of that global community and their commissions and productions strive to synchronize the rock club and the concert hall.

For venue, ticket and more information about the two events visit
goldenhornetproject.tumblr.com and music.utexas.edu.

About the Friction Quartet…

Today, Diana Burgess (BM ’15), as member of the orchestral indie band Mother Falcon, begins an eight-city Northeast US tour at the Rock & Roll Hotel in Washington, DC. The tour continues through New York, NY (Littlefield and Joe’s Pub), Providence, RI (Columbus Theatre), Philadelphia, PA (World Cafe Live), Baltimore, MD (Creative Alliance), Raleigh, NC (Kings) and ends in Birmingham, AL (Bottletree Cafe). For individual dates, venue, ticket and other information, visit motherfalcon.com.

SXSW profile of Mother Falcon…

For his final DMA lecture-recital on December 1, 2014, at the Butler School of Music, Jun Seo (MM ’11, DMA ’14) composed and performed a original set of Theme and Variations for Solo Cello. About his new composition, Jun writes:

“I wrote this theme and variations for solo cello to use it as a pedagogical tool. In order to aid future cellists with their technical study, this theme and variations guides a player’s technique from the basic skill of sound production through advanced techniques such as string crossings, chords, octaves, pizzicato, clear bow articulation, ponticello and artificial harmonics. The concept of the theme and variation form is to build upon one simple idea or melody in an improvisational manner. For inspiration, I studied several theme and variations of Beethoven, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Martinu and Paganini.”

The sheet music to Jun’s Theme and Variations for Solo Cello is available for download here.

On Friday and Saturday, December 12-13, Ying Zhang (DMA ’15) performs with the Conspirare Youth Choirs in their winter production The Heavens Unfastened. Other guest artists include UT Butler School of Music professors Thomas Burritt (percussion) and Delaine Leonard Fedson (harp).

Conspirare Youth Choirs (CYC) were formed in 2005 as an outreach program of the five-time Grammy®-nominated ensemble Conspirare. CYC seek and train young musicians who share a love and commitment for creating music at a high level of excellence.

For ticket, venue and more information, visit conspirare.org.

Daniel Smith (DMA ’15) has been chosen as a winner of the 2014 UT Symphony Orchestra String Concerto Competition. He will perform the Elgar Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85, with conductor Gerhardt Zimmermann and the UTSO on Monday, May 4, 2015, in Bates Recital Hall. For venue, ticket and more information, visit music.utexas.edu.

For his final DMA lecture-recital at the Butler School of Music, Yi Xin (DMA ’14) will present the first performance of Augusta Read Thomas’s Cello Concerto No. 3: Legend of the Pheonix in cello and piano reduction form. The concerto was originally premiered by cellist Lynn Harrell, conductor Christoph Eschenbach and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in March 2013.

About Legend of the Pheonix, Augusta Read Thomas writes:

“One might describe Legend of the Phoenix as ‘Scenes with Arias’ with the solo cello as a singing storyteller. Shaped in one long-reaching, continuous arch, the energy flow is often activated by the soloist, who is at the “philosophic center,” beckoning, caressing, and summoning the music’s chain of outgrowths.

“With sparkling, radiant, and capriciously witty atmospheres that celebrate the soloist and orchestra, this concerto is optimistic, clean, colorful, bright, sunny. There exists a wide and spontaneous variety of characters, including: triumphant, in-flight, ever-renewing of energy, graceful, majestic, spacious, pure and clean, playful, spry, jazzy, lively, rhythmic, ever-rising, resonant, and elegantly vibrant.”

Yi’s lecture-recital will take place on Wednesday, December 3, 2014, at 6 PM, in MRH 2.614. Admission is free.

More info…

James Burch’s (DMA ’16) performance of the David Maslanka’s Remember Me: Music for Cello and Nineteen Players with conductor Robert Carnochan and the UT Wind Symphony is now available for viewing at YouTube.

Yi Xin (DMA ’14) appears onstage with superstar soprano Renée Fleming during the Chicago Lyric Opera’s production of Strauss’s Capriccio this month. Here’s what Lawrence A. Johnson of the Chicago Classical Review had to say about opening night:

“Richard Strauss’s final opera, which opened Monday night at Lyric Opera, remains an acquired taste for many, and has only been staged once previously at Lyric, two decades ago. Capriccio takes place on the birthday of the Countess Madeleine, where several entertainments are being planned.

“Written in 1942, Capriccio is Strauss’s affectionate farewell to the stage, and the aged composer and his librettist, conductor Clemens Krauss, were clearly drawing on their experiences and frustrations in producing operas. Capriccio is a short one-act opera–here presented with an intermission rather than straight through as the composer intended—yet a heavily conversational and metaphorical one.

“There is no real reason to stage Capriccio unless you have a radiant star soprano in the role of Madeleine, and clearly Renée Fleming supplies the necessary mega-wattage. In her first fully staged Lyric production since La Traviata in 2008, Fleming here reprises a role she has sung to acclaim at the Metropolitan Opera, in the same John Cox production.

“More than anyone else, this was Sir Andrew Davis’s show. Few conductors can equal the Lyric Opera’s music director in Strauss, and Davis’s fluent, spirited yet light-footed account of this score was masterful, maintaining a fleet, conversational pace and rising seamlessly to the breakout lyrical moments.

“Even by their standard, the playing of the Lyric Opera Orchestra was beyond reproach, with a refined quicksilver quality that suits this restless music. The opening string sextet was drop-dead beautiful, Jonathan Boen lofted a gorgeous horn solo to open the final scene, and violinist David Perry, cellist Yi Xin and harpsichordist William Billingham (offstage) made a graceful banda accompanying the ballet dancers.”

Capriccio runs through October 28. lyricopera.org; 312-294-3000.

Read the full review…

On Wednesday, October 8, James Burch (DMA ’16) performs David Maslanka’s Remember Me: Music for Cello and Nineteen Players with conductor Robert M. Carnochan and The University of Texas Wind Symphony. Of Remember Me, Maslanska writes: “It was inspired by my reading of a “relatively minor” Holocaust event – the extermination of 5,000 Jews in a small town – in William L. Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. An eye-witness description of a Jewish family about to be slaughtered – mother, father, 10-year-old son, grandmother gently bouncing a year-old baby and making it smile – forcefully riveted my mind and heart. This music is for the baby—a single death, through which it is possible to begin to experience the massive horror of the totality.”

For venue, ticket and more information, visit music.utexas.edu. The concert will also be video streamed live online via Ustream.

More about the UT Wind Symphony…

Francesco Mastromatteo (DMA ’12) returns to Central Texas this fall for two solo engagements with orchestra. On Sunday, September 28, Francesco makes his fourth appearance with conductor Robert Radmer and the Balcones Community Orchestra in the Vieuxtemps Cello Concerto. And on October 4 & 5, Francesco makes his debut with conductor David Oertel and the Starlight Symphony Orchestra in Wimberley performing the Haydn Cello Concerto in C major. For venue, ticket and more information, visit www.bcorchestra.org and starlightsymphony.org.

More about Francesco…