On Friday, January 18, and Saturday, January 19, Nora Karakousoglou (DMA ’16) appears with the Austin Chamber Music Center in “It’s All Greek to Me.” Nora performs works by Beethoven, Ravel and Christos Hatzis with violinist Sonja Larson and pianist and ACMC artistic director Michelle Schumann. See the ACMC’s spotlight on Nora here. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit austinchambermusic.org.
This past season, Doug Machiz (MM ’11) and his San Francisco-based Friction Quartet released its debut album, Resolve, which features the Haydn “Emperor” Quartet, Britten String Quartet No. 2, and Friction by Roger Briggs. The quartet also performed George Crumb’s Black Angels at Carnegie Hall on their Sixties Festival. Through the San Francisco Symphony’s Adventures in Music, the quartet performed for every student in grades 3-5 in San Francisco public schools. They completed a fundraising campaign to commission six new works, including UT Alumni Max Stoffregen, as well as Canadian composer, Nicole Lizée and British composer, Piers Hellawell. And, over the summer, Friction completed residencies at Lunenburg Academy of Music and Performance in Nova Scotia, Interlochen Summer Camp, and New Music for Strings Festival in Denmark.
Next Friday, November 3, at 8:00pm, at Imagine Art, Tetractys, founded by Matthew Armbruster (MM ’16) and James Burch (DMA ’16), presents its third composer portrait, a program dedicated to the work of a single composer. This installment focuses on Nina C. Young, recently-appointed professor of composition at the Butler School of Music. On the program are Nina’s l’heure bleu for flute and viola, Sun Propeller for violin and electronics, Memento Mori for String Quartet, and an excerpt from Making Tellus: An Opera for the Anthropocene.
For venue, ticket and more information, visit
www.tetractysnewmusic.com.
Today is Prof. Tsang’s teacher Aldo Parisot‘s 100th Birthday!
A graduate of Yale University, the Brazilian-born American pedagogue Aldo Parisot joined the music school teaching faculty in 1958—also later holding distinguished teaching positions at the Peabody Conservatory, Mannes College of Music, The Juilliard School and the New England Conservatory. This past July, after 60 years on the faculty, Parisot officially retired from his position at the Yale School of Music.
During its twenty-first season, the Balcones Community Orchestra and conductor Robert Radmer welcome back two Longhorn cellists to perform the two beloved Haydn cello concertos. On September 23, 2018, Francesco Mastromatteo (DMA ’12) performs the Concerto for Cello in D Major, Hob. VIIb/2. On Sunday, November 18, 2018, Ying Zhang (DMA ’16) performs the Concerto for Cello in C major, Hob. VIIb/1. For venue, ticket and more information, visit www.bcorchestra.org.
This month, Seulki Lee (DMA ’19) participates in the 2018 Lucerne Festival Academy in Switzerland, where she will have the opportunity to collaborate with Sir Simon Rattle, Duncan Ward and Peter Eötvös, the world premiere of whose new composition commissioned by the Roche Commissions will be performed by the Orchestra of the Lucerne Festival Academy. She will work with such artists as the percussionist and composer-in-residence Fritz Hauser and the pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich. And in addition to key works of Modernism by György Kurtág, Luigi Nono, and Bernd Alois Zimmermann, she will focus intensively on the creative legacy of Karlheinz Stockhausen, who would have celebrated his 90th birthday in 2018, through performances of such important scores as Gruppen and Inori. At the end of the program, with the Academy Orchestra, Seulki will travel beyond Lucerne to tour Hamburg, Berlin, and Paris.
For more information, visit www.lucernefestival.ch.
Jonathan Dexter (MM ’05) has been appointed as Interim Professor of Cello at the School of Music at Pennsylvania State University. He fills in for Kim Cook, who is on sabbatical for the 2018-19 school year.
This summer, Jun Seo (MM ’11, DMA ’14) joins the faculty of the Omaha Conservatory of Music Summer Music Institute (OCMI). OCMI is the Conservatory’s week-long summer intensive camp, where world-class guest-artist musicians are brought in from around the world to create a vibrant and fun experience for students ages 5–college.
Austin Camerata splendidly fuses music and dance
by Michael Barnes
From where I sit, “Austin Camerata” translates into “unadulterated beauty.”
At least it did last night when the Austin chamber orchestra played the Rollins Studio Theatre at the Long Center for the Performing Arts.
But first, an historical note: Debra and Kevin Rollins, whose gift made the gray box theater possible, adored chamber music. And yet, during the first 10 years of the Long Center, not much of the genre has been heard in their Studio Theatre.
For a concert called “Reinventions,” the room sounded great! And there was enough space onstage to accommodate Dorothy O’Shea Overbey‘s dancers, who performed with the musicians during the final number.
Back to the music: Like other chamber orchestras, the University of Texas-associated string group — led offstage but not onstage by cellist Daniel Kopp (MM ’18) — expands on the collaborative dynamics of a string quartet. Their measured romp through Edvard Grieg‘s “Holberg Suite” was precise, proportional and over way too soon.
All else melted away when guest violinist Chee-Yun arrived downstage, her red gown gown splashed against the orchestra’s workaday blacks, her performance lighted to their near darkness. And for good reason, because she could pull all those wild sounds from her instrument for Astor Piazzolla‘s “Four Seasons of Buenos Aires.” These four tangos, composed independently but rearranged to match Vivaldi‘s “Four Seasons,” kept the near-full house on the edge of their seats.
Longhorn Cellos 