This Wednesday, two of America’s leading, landscape-changing contemporary music ensembles will join forces to take Rackham Auditorium by storm.
Founded in 2007, 17-member, Boston-based string ensemble A Far Cry operates under a unique model of rotating leadership among the ensemble members: despite the group’s size, they perform without a conductor. The GRAMMY-nominated ensemble has revived seldom-performed gems of the classical repertoire, in addition to premiering and recording several works by living composers.
“Dedicated to mining the expressive potential of the human voice,“ vocal octet Roomful of Teeth performs a wide array of traditional and contemporary works, even employing vocal techniques such as yodeling and throat singing. The GRAMMY-awarded ensemble also features Pulitzer-Prize winning composer Caroline Shaw.
A Far Cry will be performing works by Prokofiev and LA-based comoser Ted Hearne, while Roomful of Teeth will perform a piece by des Prez. The groups will join together at the end to perform Caroline Shaw’s “Music in Common Time.”
The performance will be Wednesday, April 12th in Rackam Auditorium at 7:30pm. Buy your tickets here!
Tenor Michael Fabiano takes a bow with pianist Martin Katz.
Award-winning tenor and UM alum Michael Fabiano was joined by Collaborative Piano Professor Martin Katz in Hill Auditorium on Saturday to present a concert of art songs composed in the 19th and 20th centuries. As both artists have received numerous accolades for their work separately, it was a true delight to witness them come together for this intimate evening.
The program was separated into four groups of related works. The first group was four Victor Hugo poems that were set by Franz Liszt. The second was a collection of six pieces from the small yet significant collection of seventeen art songs by Henri Duparc. The second half opened with a selection of Italian songs from Giacomo Puccini and Arturo Toscanini, with Samuel Barber’s Three Songs of James Joyce, Op. 10 ending the program. The songs encompassed themes of love, death, and everything in between.
Fabiano established his prowess as both singer and actor by engaging with the audience through the difficult repertoire he sang. He was clearly comfortable onstage, no doubt owing to his operatic experience, and moved freely about the stage, adding unspoken meaning to the songs. He was able to capture the myriad of emotions that transpired over the course of the program by making use of different vocal colors and embodying the drama of the music.
The musicianship of Martin Katz was so clearly present during the concert that at times one might have forgotten that he was playing. He demonstrated his mastery over every unique style of the program’s composers, painting a breathtaking backdrop for Fabiano to explore and revel in.
Although the translations of the French and Italian songs were readily available in the program book, I decided not to follow along. I found the experience of imagining the story based on the emotions portrayed by the composer and the performers to be far more engaging and enjoyable.
At the conclusion of the written program, Fabiano proceeded to perform five encores for the highly receptive audience. Each one was more demanding than the last, and the concluding performance of the famous “Nessun Dorma” from Puccini’s Turandot was absolutely stunning. The evening was a beautiful reminder of the incredible talent Ann Arbor has been blessed with through the University of Michigan.
This Saturday, two of the University of Michigan’s finest musicians will present an evening of art songs by Liszt, Puccini, Duparc, Toscanini, and Barber. Award-winning Tenor Michael Fabiano is a University of Michigan alum who has performed on such significant stages as the Metropolitan Opera, the San Francisco Opera, and the Paris Opera.
Fabiano will be joined by University of Michigan Collaborative Piano Professor Martin Katz, a phenomenal accompanist who has worked with some of the world’s greatest singers.
The concert, which will be on April 1st in Hill Auditorium at 8pm, promises to be an intimate evening full of beautiful song. Buy your tickets here!
A standing ovation after Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians
Last night, Hill Auditorium throbbed with the pulsing patterns, reverberating rhythms, and crunchy chords of the one and only Steve Reich. The seats were packed with fans (and critics) of the Pulitzer-Prize winning composer for the UMS premieres of Reich’s music by Chicago-based ensembles Eighth Blackbird and Third Coast Percussion, in celebration of the composer’s eightieth birth year.
As a special, pre-concert treat, three student ensembles from U of M’s School of Music performed in the lobbies of Hill Auditorium prior to the concert. The University of Michigan Western African Drumming Ensemble brought Reich’s polyrhythmic roots to life, while a student jazz quartet covered John Coltrane’s Africa, a work that influenced the composer’s perception of rhythmic and harmonic possibilities. A student violin quartet performed Reich’s Violin Phase, a difficult piece that involves one of Reich’s trademark techniques, phasing, in which players purposefully fall gradually out of sync with one another in order to bring rhythmic and polyphonic complexity to the texture. All three performances were extremely impressive and drew sizable crowds. I only wish that they hadn’t overlapped so that I could have fully enjoyed all three.
The concert itself began with Steve Reich’s Sextet, performed by all four members of Third Coast Percussion with guest percussionist Matthew Duvall and pianist Lisa Kaplan. Although these were the performers’ “official” titles, that did not restrict Reich from calling on the percussionists to play piano parts, or the pianists to play synthesizers. The players moved around the labyrinth of a setup and traded around instruments with ease, while the music flowed so naturally that these transitions were hardly noticeable. The structure of the piece was as regular and predictable as it was surprising, which made for a very satisfying auditory experience. This performance was certainly deserving of the ovation it received.
The second half of the concert held what everyone had come to see: Music for 18 Musicians. The piece is notoriously demanding due to its significant length and the sheer man- (and woman-)power it requires, which explains why it is not performed often. The fact that 18 players (or in this case, 19––the ensemble chose to have four full-time female vocalists, rather than having one double on piano), were able to stay so in sync with one another without a conductor was astounding.
The piece is about an hour long, which allows plenty of time for the audience to engage in deep focus and/or distracted contemplation: there are moments when you consider checking how much time has passed, but there’s something too special and soothing about letting yourself remain suspended in oblivion; you’re tempted to doze off on the shore of this ocean of sound, but you also want to hold on tightly to every musical moment before it disappears from right under your nose; you wonder when the piece will be over, but you’re terrified of this sweet, unadulterated regularity coming to an end. The dynamic swells that run throughout the entire piece are like a breeze passing through a dense forest, making the leaves shimmer and the sweat on your brow sparkle. All 19 musicians achieved such a deep level of focus, intentional musicality, and personal connection with the music, themselves, and the audience that it was hard to walk out of that auditorium feeling nothing.
Ann Arbor was extremely fortunate to have Eighth Blackbird, Third Coast Percussion, and their guest co-performers come together for this special evening of sound from an undeniably significant composer. Whether or not I finally get Music for 18 Musicians out of my head, I won’t be forgetting this concert for a long time.
Tomorrow in Hill Auditorium, two renowned, award-winning contemporary music ensembles will be joining forces to present a concert honoring one of the most influential American composers, Steve Reich, for his 80th birth year.
The main feature on the program is Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, an hour-long work which, due to its musical and logistical demands, is seldom performed. Ann Arbor is extremely lucky to have Eighth Blackbird and Third Coast Percussion, which are both Chicago-based, Grammy-award-winning ensembles, come together to perform this landmark piece of minimalist repertoire!
The performance will be on Saturday, March 18th at 8pm in Hill Auditorium, with a pre-concert talk beginning at 7:30. Buy your tickets here or at the League ticket office!
Last night, Snarky Puppy made their debut in Hill Auditorium, marking their third and most-attended performance in Ann Arbor. The group has steadily climbed in popularity over the years, and more recently, their several accolades have launched them into stardom. I guess that would explain the traffic.
The evening began with Mama Sol, the opening act from Flint, MI., who warmed up the crowd just as much as she warmed the crowd. A self-proclaimed motivational hip-hop group, Mama Sol presented a series of original rap songs and spoken word pieces, hitting on potent, personal topics ranging from embracing individuality and loving life to speaking out against our nation’s current political climate, the degrading messages found in popular entertainment, and the Flint water crisis. Everything the group shared was given from a position of love and peace, which the packed hall drank up enthusiastically.
The transition between acts was foreboding: stagehands arranged two larger-than-life drum sets which loomed over three synthesizer keyboards, 2 electric guitars, bass, and amplified trumpet, flugelhorn, and tenor saxophone. When Snarky Puppy came out, bassist Michael League counted off his other eight bandmates into an incredible 90-minute set of sensitive artistry, powerhouse virtuosity, and relentless energy.
Drawing on jazz, rock, funk, and Latin influences, Snarky Puppy played numbers from the group’s latest Grammy-award winning album, Culcha Vulcha. The music was complex, but not so cerebral that anyone felt left out. There were no lyrics, yet everyone could sing along. People freaked out when percussionist Nate Werth exchanged his drumsticks for shakers in the middle of his solo. By the end, dozens of people were dancing in the aisles. Moments like these were plentiful over the course of the entire evening, which demonstrated the sense of connection that Snarky Puppy was able to create with the audience.
The group achieved an amazing balance between carefully rehearsed tightness of sound and improvisatory freedom that kept everyone on the edge of their seats. Every heart-stopping break, every jaw-dropping solo, every head-bopping groove and catchy melody kept the venue full of energy. Since every instrument was hooked up to amplifiers, the players were able to use distortion and reverb techniques to widen and exploit the timbral possibilities of their instruments. And the audience couldn’t seem to get enough of the delicious sounds they cooked up.
This concert was one of the most enjoyable performances I’ve attended in a long time. I’ve been to dozens of great concerts in my life, and dozens more after moving to Ann Arbor, but something about this show was special. Both Mama Sol and Snarky Puppy achieved an intimate connection with the crowd, despite its large size. Their grooves were electrifying, which created this beautiful, symbiotic relationship between audience and performer as energy whirred around the 3,000-seat auditorium. Afterwards, I couldn’t believe that I had been crammed into a Hill Auditorium seat for three hours. The music was so infectiously joyful that perhaps time itself got a little lost in the moment.
