Christopher Takeda News Today

Piano masters, jazz ensembles, tribute acts and experimental composers highlight a busy week of music on the Sarasota scene.

Our weekly guide to the best in the performing and visual arts in the Sarasota-Manatee area.

On many levels, the music is reminiscent of Vivaldi mixed with Johann Sebastian, but the genteel fabric, most notably in the slow movement, is tossed up by awkward elbow jabs of sound. It is vigorous and edgy, posing plenty of finger challenges for the violins. Happily, there is never a dull moment in this score. C.P.E Bach offers a more refined style, sensitive and more gracious, fitting with early classical music developed later by Haydn and Mozart. Unfortunately, we don’t hear his music o...

The concerto, written in 1753 by Johan Sebastian Bach’s fifth child and second son, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788), sits astride the transition between the Baroque and Classical eras. “Something you’d expect from a Bach concerto is there, but the drama of it is much more than what one would expect,” said Helm, who will perform the concerto as the final composition of the orchestra’s “All in the Family” program March 11-14 (streaming March 18-23). The concert also includes W...

Gayle Williams, Correspondent Sarasota Orchestra musicians are handling the adversity and challenges of the pandemic with aplomb. Thursday’s debut of “Serioso,” the latest of their live concerts in Holley Hall, showed off serious talent and considerable ensemble strength in three widely diverse compositions, the last of which knocked our socks off. Violinist Christopher Takeda took the lead in the absence of a conductor and the results were rock solid in Arcangelo Corelli’s Concerto Gr...

Sarasota Orchestra gets ‘Serioso’ in new chamber concert Susan L. Rife, Correspondent George Walker, the first Black man to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, was just 24 years old when he composed his first string quartet, titled “Lament,” in memorial to his grandmother, who had escaped slavery, lost a husband when he was sold, and lived to a great age. When Walker heard the quartet performed by string orchestra, he reworked the “Lament” and retitled it “Lyric for Strings.” “I...

Ludwig von Beethoven’s birthday is next week. Musicians all over the world are marking his 250th year with celebratory performances. Constrained by the pandemic, the Sarasota Orchestra is celebrating with a compact, meaningful concert of two of the master’s string quartets. The program opened Thursday night with his String Quartet No. 4, Op. 18 in C minor from Beethoven’s first set of quartets composed while still bearing the shadow of his teacher, Franz Josef Haydn. Pioneer of the form,...