The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/cornell-concert-series/)
Ahead of Jennifer’s Koh’s concert at Bailey Hall, we were able to speak with her, discussing her musical influences and philosophy, and exploring a few memories that inform the scope of her musical journey.
The small a cappella ensemble brought their big guns right away, with each member speaking in rhythm, creating a wall of chatter that in an instant, gave way to raucous polyphonic vocals. After a few iterations, rhythmic spoken word became interspersed with small vocal phrases. The piece was chugging along and it was clear that Roomful of Teeth had a very important message to share with the audience that evening. Roomful of Teeth, the Grammy-winning vocal octet, visited Bailey Hall on Friday night to kick off the Cornell Concert Series 2018-2019 season. The group was founded in 2009 with a goal to explore the expressive potential of the human voice.
For the inaugural Cornell Concert Series performance of 2017, Grammy-winning bassists Christian McBride and Edgar Meyer will take to the stage at Bailey Hall on February 3. Although both musicians helm their respective vessels in nominally different streams, together they have created something as fresh as their foundations are solid. Where McBride is something of a musical chameleon, rooted in the backyard of the blues yet stretching his branches over into every willing neighbor’s property, Meyer has turned his classical wheelhouse into a kaleidoscope of interpretive possibilities. I had the opportunity to speak with both bassists — first to Mr. McBride on the phone, followed by Mr. Meyer via e-mail — as an overture to what promises to be an engaging night from this rare combination of instruments. The Sun: One of my all-time favorites from your discography is Live at Tonic.
Toward proving that “solo piano” is a misnomer, I might present Friday night’s recital by Tamara Stefanovich as my Exhibit A. Stefanovich knows that the piano is more than a single entity, that the trials of other composers and performers before — if not also echoes of those after — graft their own wires into its evolving circuitry. Not only did she seem to make reference to these histories, but also created an alternative one of her own. Her program was a formidable one. Titled “35 Études,” it brought together knuckle-busting pieces of varying temperament. By way of Frédéric Chopin’s “Étude in F minor (Op.
This past weekend we went beyond the basement of Cayuga Lodge and Ithaca at large, for a show seven hours away in Portsmouth, NH: Animal Collective’s debut of their new album Painting With (2016). The show made the far drive one-hundred percent worth the gas guzzling. Painting With officially dropped on February 19th, after a long awaited release. Though the group put out a live album in 2015, Painting With is their first original album in four years. Members Avey Tare, Panda Bear, and Geologist headline this album without their historical fourth member, Deakin.
By TYRAN GRILLO
After dining on the well-balanced meal served by András Schiff at Carnegie Hall (see my review in last week’s Sun), sitting at the table of Emanuel Ax’s solo performance at Bailey Hall last Friday was like losing a Michelin star. The flavor was all there, but it lacked a certain aftertaste. In light of this, dear reader, take the following impressions with a proverbial grain of salt.
Hearing Ax play in an enthusiastically attended venue was theoretically exciting, but in practice was a mixed bag of tricks. I say “tricks” because so much of what went down on stage was impressive in craft yet otherwise inconsistent in art. The concert’s all-Beethoven first half went from day to night in this regard, shining with exuberance in the Piano Sonata No.
By TYRAN GRILLO
The term “chamber music” can be quaint or constricting. In the first sense, it describes music played in a small space and on a smaller scale than, say, a symphony orchestra; in the second sense, a literal and figurative confinement that will never match the volume of said orchestra. Tuesday’s performance by cellist Steven Isserlis and fortepianist Robert Levin at Barnes Hall threw open the windows on both misconceptions. Throughout the evening’s all-Beethoven program, these established musical partners held conversation not only among themselves, but also with the immovable spirit of invention that was the composer’s gift. Beethoven was unprecedented in spotlighting the cello in such an intimate setting, and the duo’s traversal of the Cello Sonatas Nos.
By TYRAN GRILLO
In 2013, a year after being named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, drummer Jack DeJohnette was asked to perform at the Chicago Jazz Festival. Given a free choice of bandmates, he convened reedmen Henry Threadgill and Roscoe Mitchell, pianist Muhal Richard Abrams and bassist Larry Gray on far more than a whim. Their connection runs back to the early 1960s, when DeJohnette was making a name in his hometown of Chicago. Abrams and company would go on to found the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, or AACM, from whose ranks would arise the legendary Art Ensemble of Chicago. By that time, DeJohnette’s career was already taking off in New York City.