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Showing posts from September, 2019

BEETHOVEN ROLLED OVER TUCSON. Took No Prisoners!

"What is beautiful in science is the same thing that is beautiful in Beethoven. There’s a fog of events and suddenly you see a connection. It expresses a complex of human concerns that goes deeply to you, that connects things that were always in you that were never put together before." ~ Victor Weisskopf "What can you do with Beethoven's 7th Symphony? It’s like a lot of yaks jumping about."  ~  Sir Thomas Beecham Yekwon Sunwoo REVIEW:  Tucson Symphony Orchestra, Opening Night,  20 September 2019         Beethoven is the all-time most performed symphonist by American orchestras -- and still is today. He is the most performed symphonist in world history. At some point, one might think that he and his music would become 'passe'. In Tucson Arizona, 249 years after his birth, that is not happening! S uper energized by setting their sights on performing  the whole Beethoven symphony cycle  this season, the sheer rapture of the music and the imp

Refraction -- New Chamber Art Music for Clarinet -- Jackie Glazier

A quintet of reeds! (R to L) Jackie Glazier, Charles Du Preez, Melissa Olegario, Edward Goodman, Sara Fraker 'REFRACTION' - Faculty Recital, Jackie Glazier Fred Fox University of Arizona School of Music 12 September 2019 - Crowder Hall We were tempted by a program of new music -- four compositions from living composers, and a fifth, by Karlheinz Stockhausen -- groundbreaking exploratory composer of the mid-20th Century. As well, each piece had a strong visual element, and the last work, a heavily pop-influence number. A colorful refraction indeed, of Western chamber music for clarinet! Kay He 's 'Heat It Up!' , commissioned this year by Jackie Glazier , was remarkable and memorable. For clarinet and piano, this music was being electronically manipulated with synthesized ring modulator, digital delay, and other filters and distortions, all controlled by pedals fed into a laptop on stage, and executed by the composer, He (pronounced "Hu