Wagner’s
Die Walküre. Conductor: Adam Fischer, director: Sven-Eric Bechtolf. With Christopher Ventris, Ain Anger, Waltraud Meier, Linda Watson, and Tomasz Konieczny. Production from January 2016. Register for free and view here.
1 pm ET: Copland House presents
Underscored: Jalbert’s
Crossings. Vermont-born composer Pierre Jalbert was inspired by the migration of people voyaging into new and unfamiliar places and traces Jalbert’s own French-Canadian-American ancestry.
Crossings is built around a folk song from Quebec,
Quand j’ai parti du Canada (When I Left Canada), which is deconstructed, reinterpreted, reassembled, and reordered in inventive and unexpected ways. The program features a complete performance of the work, preceded by an introductory conversation with the composer, and followed by a live Q&A with viewers. Register and view here.
Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Gives Virtual Concerts For Duke Performances and Meany Center For The Performing Arts
Committed to continuing to reach audiences during these challenging times for live performance, Simone Dinnerstein announces two upcoming virtual performances presented by Duke Performances on January 30, 2021 and Meany Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Washington on February 12, 2021. Both of these intimate concerts were professionally filmed at Dinnerstein s home in Brooklyn, NY (see photo above).
Dinnerstein s Duke Performances virtual concert will be available on demand for 72 hours beginning on January 30, 2021 at 8pm ET. General admission tickets are $10 per presentation and Duke Student tickets are available free of charge through the support of the Provost and the Vice Provost for the Arts at Duke University. The first half of Dinnerstein s concert includes J.S. Bach s Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 639 (arranged by Busoni) and transcr
Timelapse
Orchestra of the Swan’s new album,
Timelapse, features a number of my arrangements. Some of them are simple - straightforward transfers from keyboard to ensemble in the case of
Gnossienne 1 by Erik Satie and
Les Barricades Mystérieuses by François Couperin - and others combine original composition with existing works. Yet more are what I call ‘reimaginings’ of well-known songs, a few of which are almost unrecognisable in comparison with the source material.
There are many ideas about what constitutes a ‘good’ arrangement and there are talented practitioners who approach the task in an impressive and virtuosic fashion. Complexity and compositional dexterity can be dazzling, as is the case with Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s