Category Archives: Music

Atlanta Opera: Maria de Buenos Aires

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The Atlanta Opera’s production of Astor Piazzolla’s “Maria de Buenos Aires” was a true delight. It was staged in the event space at Paris on Ponce, La Maison Rouge, which is a decent sized space decorated with a variety of novel tchochkes kind of like one of those restaurants with a name that ends with an apostrophe and an ‘s.’ The action took place in a C shaped area that enveloped the front of the audience, with a stage to the left that led to a higher, narrower stage in front. To the right was a bar set and on the floor in front of the higher stage were a couple of small, high tables and chairs, such as you might find in a bar or café. The word “Maria” was written in ribbons of cloth woven through nails on the front wall.
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ECMSA: Violamania!

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How many violists does it take to induce mania? Yinzi Kong seemed to think that nine would be enough when she programmed “Violamania!” for the Emory Chamber Music Society of Atlanta. The program consisted of nine pieces arranged for viola ensembles of sizes ranging from solo to eight, with occasional accompaniment from piano or harpsichord.
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Bent Frequency and Michael Fowler: Sound Worlds – The Sonification of the Japanese Garden

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At work today, I was told that I should have worn red and black instead of purple and black. Apparently, this was to signify support for some local falcons who might get to go to the superb owl. Apparently ornithophilia1 is pretty wide spread in Atlanta because the performers at this evening’s concert at Kopleff Recital Hall got the memo and wore red and black, as well. I’m not sure if this owl is like the one from Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH or more like Wol from Winnie the Pooh – both are superb in their own, distinct ways – but it must be impressive to have so many people excited about local birds visiting it.
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ASO: Donald Runnicles with Kirill Gerstein

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Donald Runnicles opened this evening’s Atlanta Symphony Orchestra program with the world premiere of a new piece by Marc Neikrug, “The Unicorn of Atlas Peak.” It is, apparently, named for a mutual acquaintance of Runnicles and Neikrug’s who, it seems, lives on Atlas Peak and may actually be a unicorn…or a guru…or just some dude whom they’ve both made up to hide the real way that they met, which probably involved some kind of scandalous intrigue or another. It began softly, with a kind of forced sense of mystery, and built up to something best described as meh. By the end it was completely uninteresting. It just never seemed to go anywhere nor to express anything meaningful. The parts that I found the most interesting seemed more like sketches of something that needs to be developed at a later time. It was not a strong start to the concert.
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ASO: Laura Jackson with Avi Avital

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This evening’s Atlanta Symphony Orchestra concert under the baton of Laura Jackson was novel for a few reasons. First, it featured a mandolinist as the soloist. It’s a fairly quiet instrument to put on the stage of Symphony hall and I’m not aware of a mandolin concerto being programmed since I’ve been attending ASO concerts. Secondly, it featured two concerti instead of the usual one, both featuring mandolinist Avi Avital. Finally, the first three of four pieces on the program featured a slimmed down orchestra. There was one Baroque era piece and one Romantic era piece that adapted Baroque era pieces, both of which included a harpsichord in the orchestration. The third piece for small orchestra was from the 21st century but featured the mandolin, which would be overpowered by a full orchestra.
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Georgian Chamber Players: Piano Eight Hands & String Octet

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The Georgian Chamber Players had some fun with the program for yesterday’s concert by playing with the number eight. Three pieces were for piano eight-hands and the final piece was for a string octet. There was one odd work out that was for piano six-hands, but the smiles on the musicians faces while they played this particularly novel piece excuses breaking the quantitative theme. Besides, taken all together, there were 46 hands needed for all of the works and that is the birth year of Plutarch and also the channel number for the local CBS affiliate which, of course, totally means something.
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ASO: Donald Runnicles with Russell Thomas and Kelly O’Connor

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There were two novel things about tonight’s concert by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. The first was that they finally asked people to silence their cell-phones before the concert. They used a modestly witty video featuring some of the musicians to do so. I think that the video will get old after a while and they may want to rethink the tone of it as it sounds somewhat judgmental, but it was still nice that they’re finally showing some awareness that this aspect of audience experience is important enough to comment upon. The other novelty was an introduction by principal guest conductor Donald Runnicles to the two pieces on the program, including a small video explaining some of the Japanese instruments whose sounds are reflected in the first piece.
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