The Monterey Symphony continued its 77th season last weekend with a riveting program of storytelling music conducted by Jayce Ogren. At its heart, the much-anticipated world premiere of the piano concerto by composer-in-residence John Wineglass revealed again the Emmy winner’s skill in holding a mirror to injustice within a container of hope, unwavering in both aspects. Its theme of The Great Migration follows the relocation of African Americans and other populations to urban centers in the Northeast, Midwest and West. The concerto is dedicated to those who survived and escaped the Jim Crow oppression after the Civil War and to their descendants.
Ogren deftly led the orchestra and soloist Lara Downes through the work’s powerful and tantalizing three movements from the musical depiction of “white ships with black cargo” to the later migrations to the cities. The second movement, “Plains, Trains and Automobiles,” dropped listeners into a spirited and jazzy pandemonium of metropolitan life. The finale delivered an exhilarating homage to American resilience.
An exquisite keyboard artist, Downes gave the concerto a personal voice, bringing a heartfelt counterpoint to its immense thematic material. Her encore of Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” perfectly concluded the first half of the program.
Ogren opened the concert with Weber’s dramatic “Overture to Der Freischutz” and living composer Jennifer Higdon’s popular “Blue Cathedral,” which is an elegy to her brother. The second half, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 with its celebrated Allegretto movement, made an ideal finish for the program.
A word to the wise, these Symphony concerts are selling out. Get tickets early.
Jon Nakamatsu and Friends
Three renowned musicians appear at Carmel’s Sunset Center for Chamber Music Monterey Bay’s February program performing works by Claude Debussy, Frederick Chopin and Darius Milhaud among others. Acclaimed pianist Jon Nakamatsu, a long-time Carmel favorite, is joined by returning clarinetist Jon Manasse and two-time Grammy nominee violinist Jennifer Frautsci, who is making her Carmel debut.
Manasse will be showcased in Debussy’s Première Rhapsody for Clarinet and Piano and Frautschi in Debussy’s Violin Sonata in G Minor. Nakamatsu closes the first half with Chopin’s Andante spianato et Grande Polonaise brillante. The trio plays Milhaud’s Suite for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano and Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du soldat suite. The program concludes with John Novacek’s Two Rags for Violin, Clarinet and Piano.
Musicologist Ian Scarfe from San Francisco gives a pre-concert talk at 6:30 p.m. The concert takes place Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at Sunset Center. For tickets and information call 625-2212 or see www.chambermusicmontereybay.org
Polymath Sir Stephen Hough
Carmel Music Society’s next concert showcases Sir Stephen Hough, named by UK magazine Economist one of 20 living polymaths. The composer-writer-pianist was the first classical performer to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. Le Monde declared, “Elevation and luminosity, the art of sonority, overwhelming virtuosity, the fingers of Stephen Hough are pure gold.” He will appear at Sunset Center on March 3 with the Castilian Quartet hailed by BBC Music Magazine as “nothing short of a revelation in its lucidity of line and sheer beauty of sound.”
Hough was awarded Northwestern University’s 2008 Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano, won the Royal Philharmonic Society Instrumentalist Award in 2010, and in 2016 was made an honorary member of the Royal Philharmonic Society and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He was knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2022. He has appeared with most of the major European, Asian and American orchestras and plays recitals regularly in major halls and concert series around the world. Many of his recordings of over 60 albums have garnered international prizes.
The Castilian Quartet has received wide acclaim since its formation in 2011. The foursome has performed widely throughout Europe and will give debut concerts this season in prestigious halls in the U.S., Austria, France and the U.K.
Their program begins with Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet Op 20 No. 5, followed by a string quartet composed by Hough. He then joins the Castilians at the keyboard for Johannes Brahms Quintet for Piano and Strings in F-Minor.
The concert takes place in Carmel’s Sunset Center on Sunday March 3 at 3 p.m. For tickets and more information call (831) 625-9938 or see carmelmusic.org.
Soloists and strings
Ensemble Monterey’s third concert of the 2023-2024 season features four compositions spanning the late Renaissance to 20th-century America. Soloists and Strings begins with Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen, one of the composer’s final works, written for string orchestra in the year of his death in 1945. Gian Carlo Menotti’s Cantilena and Scherzo, the former being a lyrical solo for harp and strings, features harpist Jennifer Cass.
Peter Warlock’s delightful Capriol Suite, based on Renaissance dances, and Aaron Copland’s Clarinet Concerto complete the program. The concerto, originally written for Benny Goodman, shows off the virtuoso skills of Bruce Foster, Ensemble Monterey’s first principal clarinetist.
The Santa Cruz High School Concert Choir also joins the Ensemble for this program. Dave Dally, the orchestra’s longtime concertmaster, also conducts the music. Founder and music director John Anderson will give a lecture on the music an hour before each concert.
Ensemble Monterey Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1992 as a consortium of professional musicians in the greater Central Coast area, dedicated to performing music that is adventurous, challenging, and unique.
Soloists and Strings takes place March 2 at First Presbyterian Church in Monterey at 7 p.m. and March 3 at 5 p.m. at Peace United Church in Santa Cruz. For tickets and more information call (831) 333-1283 or visit www.ensemblemonterey.org.
Nannerl Mozart!
It is the disturbing and egregiously unfair fate of women of talent and genius often to be discarded by circumstance and history while men of equal or lesser accomplishments are valued, celebrated and remembered.
Finally, Mozart’s brilliant older sister takes center stage where she has rightfully belonged for over two and a half centuries. Maria Anna Mozart, nicknamed Nannerl, was a musical prodigy, keyboard virtuoso and composer like her famous brother. They both toured as youngsters with their father Leopold, dazzling audiences in major cities in Europe to equal acclaim. But her work, her genius has faded away, much of it lost to history.
“The Other Mozart,” an award-winning play about Nannerl, now tells the forgotten story of this remarkable woman. Created, written and performed by Sylvia Milo, the one-woman show had a critically acclaimed Off-Broadway run in New York City followed by performances in London and Europe. Directed by Isaac Byrne, “The Other Mozart” is based on facts, stories and lines pulled directly from the Mozart family’s humorous and heartbreaking letters.
As part of Women’s Week at Sunset Center, the play will be presented March 9 at 7:30 p.m. after an evening with Anne Lamott on March 8 and Trailblazing Women of Country: from Patsy to Loretta to Dolly on March 7. For tickets and more information see [email protected] or call (831) 620-2040 or (831) 620-2048.
How do composers compose?
For those of us who love music and don’t score it for others to reproduce, this process may seem arcane and unapproachable. Lanier Sammons, associate professor of recording & technology at CSU Monterey Bay, offers to take the mystery out of composing in a two-hour exploration of this creative endeavor. Composers working in the program join him to share their approaches, tools and means by which they accomplish their art. In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Sammons composes concert hall works, installation pieces, film scores and podcast music.
“How Do Composers Compose?” takes place March 8 from 1-3 p.m. at the CSUMB Music Hall, Building 30. The session is free. All are welcome. Bring your questions and curiosity.