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Main Menu Home About Us Contact Us MHS eNewsletter Composers Conductors Instrumentalists Vocalists Featured Artists & Groups Reviews Performance Reviews Record Reviews Book Reviews Donors Search Site for... Links Newsflash Fun Stuff Hot Topic! Bibliography Events Myrtle on the Web Guestbook Finding the truth is not enough. What we also have to find is justice.                                ~Rigoberta Menchu Chicago Sinfonietta: Global Voices Tuesday, 31 March 2009 Chicago Sinfonietta: Global Voices When: Sunday-Monday, Mar. 22-23, 2009 • Who: Kiran Ahluwalia, Indian vocalist, Carolyn Sebron, mezzo-soprano, Alex Udvary, cimbalom, Leslie B. Dunner, conductor, Paul Freeman, music director It's rare to see a classical program which includes Indian vocals, opera and rarely soloed instruments like the cimbalom, especially in Chicago. Most classical music concerts are singularly themed, Romantic era or Music of Mozart, for example. However, Chicago Sinfonietta isn't your run-of-the-mill orchestra. I asked the two friends I brought to the event what they thought about the program since its differences were stark. "It's all about the music," one friend offered. "The program is called Global Voices so you have to expect a sampling of international music." Quite right. "Think about what Sinfonietta does!" the other exclaimed. "It isn't called The Nations Most Diverse Orchestra for nothing." Quite right, again. You can't compare Chicago Sinfonietta to any other orchestra because it's not like any other orchestra ... so if you've never been, all I can suggest is that you make a special trip out to Chicago in May for their very last performance of the season when the ensemble will perform a new work by Michael Abels. The performance we attended warranted six pages of handwritten notes during the concert. My first feverishly scribbled paragraph revealed the following about Indian vocalist Kiran Ahluwalia: In traditional garb, Kiran (wearing a golden salwar kameez or long shirt over pants) sang into a microphone and controlled the volume of a sitar streaming from her radio or speakerbox on the platform beside her. The tabla player, Nitan Mitta, sat cross-legged on a square platform behind her, two microphones pointed downwards toward his instrument. With the lone drummer and acoustic guitar improvising jazzy strumming, the rhythmic Yakeenan danced its bass into our ears. Patrons also kept time as best they could with fingers tapping knees and shoes tapping floor. Maestro Leslie B. Dunner, knowledgeable and charismatic as always, directed the hip-swaying piece in 4/4 through East Indian melismas familiar to me only through the many Bollywood movies currently prevalent in this Western hemisphere. The tune ended in a riff reminiscent of the Eagles 1976 rock hit "Hotel California," which hooked several more listeners as evidenced in their appreciative smiles and headnods. The string players in the chamber-sized ensemble on stage appeared entertained by the different rhythmic challenges presented in the music. Between tunes, Maestro Dunner asked, "So what's next?" or something akin to that. Kiran answered with a story, joke or other light-hearted comment, which made the venue feel less like a stuffy concert hall and more like a relaxed outdoor amphitheatre. At one point toward the end of the first half, Kiran asked the audience to repeat after her singing Indian "scat." The little girl seated behind me, with her taps on her shiny patent leather shoes (seriously), who couldn't have been more than 6 years old, imitated her flawlessly. I almost fell out of my seat with laughter. What fun! The next section spotlighted mezzo-soprano Carolyn Sebron, with whom I had the delightful conversation the month prior (see MHS eNewsletter, March edition), singing the excerpts from Manuel de Falla's El Amor Brujo: Every time I look up from writing, Carolyn, dressed in obsidian red, is located on a different spot of the concert stage like a hologram. It's now a game I play ... figuring out where she may appear next - through which door she'll glide singing tunes that audience members may equate with Zorro movies. With dramatic flamenco dancer hand flourishes, Carolyn dances across the stage like a flamenco dancer without all the foot-stomping ... scratch that. She just stomped. Enter stage left. Exit stage right. Enter backstage ... she's really getting a workout behind the scenes! It a true testament to skill when a vocalist can move around so much and still have a clear, strong and powerful voice as does Carolyn, who can be heard at the same volume from any of her various points on stage without a mic. Brava! The end of the program threw me for a bit of a loop. What type of instrument is this cimbalom, I wrote. Thank the heavens for Wikipedia (sometimes). Apparently, "the cimbalom (most common English spelling), is a concert hammer dulcimer. It is commonly found in the countries of East Europe that previously made up Austria-Hungary which includes present day Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The word "cimbalom" is also used to refer to smaller, related or earlier versions of this instrument." As such, I had conflicts with the choice of instrument, its lack of proper mic'ing, the Kodály piece itself or the combination: I'm staring at the cimbalom and can see that Alex is doing something that looks skillful and intense ... then again playing any stringed instrument that isn't color-coded is foreign to me. It's as if they took the top off of a harpsichord and told a xylophonist to play it ... which has a really cool sound and yet ... I can't hear anything. How loud is this instrument in general? Is the instrumentation too large for his sound or is the mic off? Oh. The timpanist just put plugs in his ears. Now you KNOW this isn't the right piece for a soft-voiced instrument. I'm very confused. The concert ended with an original arrangement of Verdi's Don Carlos with both Kiran and Alex improvising while Carolyn sang the French libretto. From what I gleamed from the conversation overheard in the wings of a dressing room, Maestro Dunner composed a few things for the woodwinds to make the trio fit. "It really came together," said Executive Director Jim Hirsch. "Especially the encore." This is the diversity that sets Chicago Sinfonietta apart.   < Prev   Next > [ Back ]       © 2012 myrtlehart.org Joomla! is Free Software released under the GNU/GPL License.

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