Recent Concerts You've Enjoyed

Thought this might be a fun thread and a way to find out about acts on tour.

My wife and I saw the Smoke Fairies at the Tractor Tavern last evening as the opening act for Rasputina. The Smoke Fairies are a 'folk blues' duo from Wales and have been described as "Bob Dylan's dream." I thought that their debut release "Through Low Light and Trees" was one of last year's best. It was just the two principles singing and playing guitar. Really terrific concert with excellent acoustics and thankfully not too loud.

If you are ever in Seattle, the Tractor Tavern is a great venue in the Ballard neighborhood. Very fun people watching...I think my wife and I were the only ones without tattoos! I got to chat with them after their set and had my LP signed. I love the lilting Welsh accents!

Here's a video of "Hotel Room" from their debut LP:

[video]

 

All I know, I bet him there one night. Given some of the traffic I have had to endure in Manhattan and being someone caught in the Bridgegate traffic on the GWB, I believe anything is possible.

 

I've had the great pleasure of seeing Lupu a couple of times. He doesn't like to perform much. Also is quite eccentric - sits in an office chair rather than a normal piano bench. Maybe he has back problems.

Larry

I did notice he was sitting in a chair instead of the piano bench. I enjoyed watching and listening to his performance.

Dre

 

I want to make a plug for house concerts. The proximity and interaction with the musicians is a great way to see music.

 

Just recently, I started attending a performance series at a local recording studio. Its a big, nice sounding room, 40-60 people in attendance. They feature 5-6 singer-songwriters or 2 bands within a 2 hour period. Much of this is acoustic. It's like a mini-vacation.

 

Ridiculously awesome.

I attended the January 7 show, and that description is apt.

 

Just recently, I started attending a performance series at a local recording studio. Its a big, nice sounding room, 40-60 people in attendance. They feature 5-6 singer-songwriters or 2 bands within a 2 hour period. Much of this is acoustic. It's like a mini-vacation.

Where is this?

 

Where is this?

Rochester, NY

 

Sadly my favorite haunt has been gone for awhile. Ronnie Earl in a small intimate blues dive. Jimmie Vaughn harping with Jerry Portnoy.

 

Sunday's concert wasn't too bad, next one should be good too! Concerto winner is a youngin' playing Carmen (Fantasia, I think, haven't seen the music yet, probably at tonight's rehearsal). The bad news is that even with school support our attendance is down, may be partly the cold weather but classical music is just not in much demand.

Concert III: feb. 9, 2014, 3:00 p.m. at Mitchell high school, 1205 Potter Dr., Colorado Springs, CO 80909
Elgar: Pomp & Circumstance March No. 2
Prokofiev: Romeo & Juliet Suite 2
Mendelssohn: Music from Midsummer Night’s Dream
Gliere: Russian Sailor’s Dance

Concert IV: april 6, 2014, 3:00 p.m. at Mitchell high school, 1205 Potter Dr., Colorado Springs, CO 80909
Borodin: Polovtsian Dances
Beethoven Symphony No. 2
Dukas: Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Concerto Competition Winner TBA

 

I had a wonderful evening this past Saturday February 22nd with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra featuring guest pianist Zhang Zuo.

Guest Conductor: Music Director Laureate Paavo Järvi
Featured Performer: Zhang Zuo (MENDELSSOHN: Piano Concerto No.1)
Featured Performer: Heidi Grant Murphy soprano (MAHLER: Symphony No. 4)

The program for this performance was:

BERLIOZ: "Love Scene" from Roméo et Juliette
MENDELSSOHN: Piano Concerto No.1
MAHLER: Symphony No. 4


Content comments from website:

Music Director Laureate Paavo Järvi introduces Zhang Zuo, a vibrant young pianist described as “full of enthusiasm and glamour, radiating the vigor of youth,” to play Mendelssohn’s dazzling Concerto No. 1. The program opens with the lustrous Love Scene, which Paavo recorded with the CSO during their first season together, as part of the CSO’s Shakespeare for your Ear focus throughout the Masterworks Series. Closing the program is Mahler’s radiant Fourth Symphony, whose theme of “The Heavenly Life” culminates with the soprano’s declaration that “There is just no music on earth that can compare to ours. The angelic voices gladden our senses, so that all awaken for joy.”

That young lady really played Mendelssohn's Concerto No.1 extremely well. Quite surprisingly so!

Dre

 

I attend the first and part of the second set of Patricia Barber at the Blue Note in NYC last night. She is quirky but the performance was superb. A great set of rather young musicians who really played their asses off. Superb. The sound was excellent as well.

 

Anne-Sophie Mutter flawlessly playing the Dvorak Violin Concerto - incredible dexterity and left-hand fingering; she's a fantastic virtuoso. The DG CD is soft-sounding

 

Anne-Sophie Mutter flawlessly playing the Dvorak Violin Concerto - incredible dexterity and left-hand fingering; she's a fantastic virtuoso.

Agree, saw her with local symphony a few years ago.

 

I attend the first and part of the second set of Patricia Barber at the Blue Note in NYC last night. She is quirky but the performance was superb. A great set of rather young musicians who really played their asses off. Superb. The sound was excellent as well.

Maybe we should have a "concert you are about to attend" thread; I was at the first set Sunday night. Excellent.

Earlier in the day, Emmanuel Ax and Yo Yo Ma at Carnegie Hall.

It was a good day.

 

A good day indeed. I did post about attending this concert a couple of weeks ago in this thread. I heard from Miles who attended one of the shows on Saturday.

 

Maybe we should have a "concert you are about to attend" thread; I was at the first set Sunday night. Excellent.

Earlier in the day, Emmanuel Ax and Yo Yo Ma at Carnegie Hall.

It was a good day.

Yo-Yo and Manny were here (in Berkeley) on Wednesday playing an all Brahms program. Wonderful. We had good seats, about 12th row center. The hall (Zellerbach) was full and the stage was also full, the first time I have seen that in many years. Manny is apparently doing more accompanying - he accompanied Anne Sophie Otter in a lieder concert earlier this year - didn't get to see it. Yo-Yo and Manny are very good friends. About 15 years ago we were visiting our daughter then in college in Cambridge and saw Manny playing the Brahms first piano concerto with the BSO - Haitink conducting. We were in the balcony on the side and looking down, we saw in the middle of the orchestra section was Yo-Yo and his wife, attending the concert.

Last night we saw a great sequel to Yo-Yo, it was Jordi Savall, playing both his bass viol (the predecessor to the cello) and his treble viol, with his Hesperion XXI group and a Mexican ancient music group. We were in the second row (First Congregational Church in Berkeley) with Savall (who sat at stage right) right in front of us. I didn't realize he has released around 150 CD's. The bass viol (played like the treble viol held between the legs) has seven strings, but looks very much like a cello. Great combination of sounds - percussion, guitars and their ancestors, some singing - I guess replacing his wife Monserrat Figuras who died in 2011.

Coming up next weekend is a triple header - Friday, Saturday and Sunday are three concerts by the Vienna Philharmonic, all at Zellerbach in Berkeley.

Larry

 

Tracy Grammar at Glenside House Concerts. She played a lot of Dave Carter songs before playing some of her own. She is writing a song a week and posting them to You Tube. She is one of 21 women who are part of Real Women Real Songs. Amazing voice.

 

This past Saturday, March 1st, 2014 I visited a friend in Richmond Virginia. The evening was filled with a nice dinner and a trip to hear the Richmond Symphony featuring Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers.

The quite surprisingly good and well performed violin concerto by Mason Bates during the first half of the performance was worth several times the price of admission alone.

Conductor: Steven Smith
Guest Artists: Anne Akiko Meyers

The program for this performance was:
Liadov: The Enchanted Lake, Opus 62
Mason Bates: Violin Concerto (featuring Anne Akiko Meyers, violin)
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Opus 93

Content Comments from website:

BEHIND THE MUSIC:

Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10
Notes by Steven Smith for Richmond Symphony performances March 1-2, 2014

Historical Context

The symphonies of Beethoven, Mahler and Shostakovich represent a direct lineage that poignantly illustrates significant aspects of their individual eras. Each of these three composers chose the medium of the symphony (typically a four movement structure – sometimes expanded) to express their most profound thoughts and emotions about both their individual lives and wider world.

The fifteen symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich collectively form a crucial document of the 20th century. From his youth during the Russian Revolution through his life in the Soviet Union experiencing the rise of Stalin, World War II and later the Cold War, Shostakovich came to write intensely powerful music using primarily traditional formal and harmonic structures. His particular choice of the symphony and the string quartet to convey his deepest emotions (often with a kind of double meaning to conform to the pressure of state doctrine) is remarkable for the seeming contradiction of economy of means and enormous communicative power. The many stories of emotional public reactions to performances of his works are a testament to the voice he as an individual artist provided to an entire suffering population.

In the Tenth Symphony, we hear music that is reputed to be a reflection of the tyrannical and barbarous years of terror under Josef Stalin. (I say reputed because of the controversy surrounding the publication of Solomon Volkov’s “Testimony” which the author claimed to have been memoirs dictated and authorized by the composer himself, but has been the subject of a great deal of controversy as to its authenticity. Whether the specific attribution of the Tenth as “a portrait of Stalin” is precisely true is somewhat irrelevant since the music itself clearly conveys the sorrow and terror of those years.) From the expansive, brooding opening to the ending’s triumphant proclamation of the indomitability of the human spirit to overcome the greatest evil, this symphony takes us on a stunning and epic human journey.

Below I have included links to a live performance by Yevgeny Mravinsky and the Leningrad Philharmonic from 1976, a year after Shostakovich’s death. While the sound quality is somewhat problematic and contains a fair amount of audience noise, I think it is fascinating to hear, particularly because Mravinsky worked closely with Shostakovich on the premieres of many of his symphonies, including the Tenth (in 1953).

Dre

 

Not enjoyed yet, but I just scored 2 tickets for Keb' Mo' at Massey Hall in Toronto on March 14th. Pretty pumped!

 

Not enjoyed yet, but I just scored 2 tickets for Keb' Mo' at Massey Hall in Toronto on March 14th. Pretty pumped!

You should be. He delivers.