Concert Review of JMU's Pops Concert

I posted this about a month ago (a couple of days after the concert), but it doesn't appear to be on the blog anymore. I'm posting it again for anyone who hasn't read it or would like to read it again. -BM

Concert Review

The concert I chose to review was the Family Day Pops Concert at James Madison University in the JMU Convocation Center on October 10, 2009. The concert was meant to showcase some of the top student ensembles at the university. Those ensembles were the wind symphony under the director of Dr. Stephen Bolstad, the chorale under the direction of Dr. Patrick Walders, the brass band under direction of Mr. Kevin Stees, and the Marching Royal Dukes under the direction of Scott Rikkers. Out of these four ensembles, the only one with a pianist was the wind symphony.

Due to time constraints, Dr. Bolstad only programmed one twenty-minute piece for the concert. The wind symphony played Symphonic Dances from West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein and transcribed for wind band by Paul Lavendar. Due to the limitations of the convocation center, they were unable to wheel a grand or upright piano on to the basketball court where they performed. The pianist used an electric keyboard instead. It added an interesting sound to the piece. You could easily tell that there was not a real one being used for this piece. The work featured the piano several times, occasionally playing the melody. During the “Mambo” section the piano seemed non-existent as the brass and percussion were prominently heard. Usually the piano was an accompanying voice to the winds and percussion. The ensemble and piano’s sound was well balanced for being in a huge open space where the entire group had microphones and monitors and speakers everywhere.

The concert gave me insight and ideas to pondering if I were to play piano in an ensemble or to accompany someone. Its important to not overpower the ensemble and remain balanced. The JMU Wind Symphony did a fantastic job with the piece and I look forward to attending more of their concerts in the future.

Concert Review

I chose to review a performance of the first movement of the Trout Quintet that I heard performed as part of a Master class given by the Marine String Quartet. First of all I loved the piece; the combination of violin, viola, cello, bass, and piano creates such a neat texture and it is a combination that is not, at least for me, heard that often. The dialogue between the strings and the piano in certain sections was one of the great parts of the piece. The piano would play a melodic passage sometimes alone at other times while the strings were playing and then the melody would be picked up by the first violin and they would trade little melodic figures back and forth. The inner voices definitely had their work cut out for them since the served as the driving line underneath the melody a part which I know is harder than it looks. The ensemble did a very nice job performing the piece, but what was most interesting about the performance was to then be able to hear the critique of the Marine String Quartet. One issue that seems to be prevalent in a piece like this is the balance between the piano and other instruments. The piano is sometimes so powerful that it overwhelms the inner voices especially the cello so they suggested that the group configure themselves differently so that the cello was able to project more. The master class was concluded by a concert put on by the Marine String Quartet, which was fantastic.

Concert Review

For my concert review, I have chosen to review a the NSO debut of Yuja Wang.  She played Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 16.  I originally went to hear the other pieces on the concert, Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin and Stravinsky's full ballet version of The Firebird.  First, the Ravel was well done, featuring small orchestra.  This work was originally a piano suite with six movements, of which he chose to orchestrate four.  The re-orchestration featured the oboe in the first two movements and some other solo winds in the following two.

Second on the concert was the Prokofiev.  I had never heard the work before, nor had I heard of Yuja Wang, but after watching her play that very difficult piece, there's no way I could forget.  She looked more like an expressive conductor than a player, swaying and moving with the music, using gestures to play instead of clumsy finger movements.  Some of the runs in this work, spanning many octaves, were so fast that I thought there would be no way to play them expressively…there's just no time!  But, she again proved to be a true virtuoso, playing the most difficult passages with the ease of ringing a bell for the average person.  The piece finished in an expressive flourish and Ms. Wang's performance was greeted by a standing ovation and several extra trips to the stage to acknowledge the continuing applause.

The Firebird, the final work on the program was, as always, an entertaining classic.  After sitting through the entire ballet version, however, it became quite evident why the Suite was written…the ballet was just too long without the dancers.  It went on and on and on…and on.  That should have made the payoff of the final accented motive pattern passed around the orchestra that much more relieving to get to, but it didn't for some reason.  Still a wonderful work of musical art, I'd rather hear (or play) the Firebird Suite any day.

MUSIC 516

Concert Review

10/28/09

For my concert review I chose to go to a jazz concert at the University of Maryland at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. The concert featured three jazz ensembles. Each group played six selections. Three complete jazz ensembles for one school was pretty impressive. The venue was a great place to hear a concert.

The first group, The University of Maryland Jazz Ensemble was the top group. Balance and blend were excellent. Their director, Chris Vadala, did an excellent job of teaching the fundamentals and concepts of jazz to his students. The ensemble was tight and well balanced. Soloists were very mature musically. There was a lot of depth through out the band.

Strangely, throughout the performance of the first group, the piano was not featured at all. The only time I noticed it was when it was used with the guitar to set up an ostinato figure. During the second group, the piano was featured a lot. The piano had some solos and was used more to back up certain soloists.

It is difficult in a big band to find a working balance in a rhythm section when drums, bass, piano and guitar are all used, which was the case for all of the groups. It is difficult to communicate musically, primarily when both guitar and piano are used in a big band setting, as both instruments have a very similar role. I did not stay for the third group as it was getting late.

Concert Review

Concert Review
Wayne Tympanick

Live at the Birchmere, September 28, 2009: The “Super Trio” starring Chick Corea on piano, Stanley Clarke on bass and Lenny White on drums.

This concert was a real treat for this jazz musician. This acoustic trio was one of the groups that established Chick Corea as a driving force in jazz music in America. In my estimation, all of the electronics and computer generated music will never take the place of the sound of an acoustic band. This grouping of acoustic piano, bass and drums will always be the standard instrumentation for a traditional jazz trio, but it is a combination seldom heard anymore because of the ubiquity of electronics. But this is where jazz all started, and thank goodness there are jazz greats like Chick Corea who are keeping it alive.

The concert began with Chick Corea playing piano by himself. By listening intently, it was possible to figure out that he was playing the introduction to “Green Dolphin Street.” After his introduction, the bass and drums entered and continued the song in its original form. All of the music was memorized by the artists. They have been the best of friends for the past thirty years, so their musical communication is evident in performance.

The third song was a crowd pleaser, up tempo with lots of intensity and energy. This song brought us up to the intermission.

Corea opened the second set with his signature technique of playing directly on the strings inside the piano, both by plucking and with drumsticks, along with using the keyboard. This set up one of his original compositions, “Now He Sings, Now He Sobs,” another crowd pleaser. This segued into another up tempo composition from one of his best known albums, Return to Forever. Stanley Clarke played a remarkable bass solo and the song ended with an incredible and energetic drum solo by Lenny White (who is no spring chicken). Then the mood was changed with a ballad.

For an encore, they played my all time favorite Chick Corea song, “Spain.” This brought down the house. Corea started a call and response with the audience, his playing the rhythms and notes of the bridge section of Spain, their singing it back. Corea, Clarke and White seemed surprised by the accuracy of the audience and kept increasing the difficulty of the challenge. This was a very musically intelligent audience.

This was a very special night for my wife and me to share this wonderful musical experience. We may never get this opportunity again.

Live Piano

On the 18th of October I performed a job with the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps that also happened to include piano. The job was a memorial service for the victims of the Beirut barracks bombing in 1983. It took place in section 59 of Arlington National Cemetery under the cover of two tents and on a wooden platform brought in specifically for this ceremony. I was part of the presentation of the Joint Forces Color Guard at the beginning of the ceremony. Before the ceremony began, however, pre-ceremonial music was provided by a vocalist and a pianist from the United States Army Band, "Pershing's Own." The female vocalist and male pianist performed for a group of about 50 people as they were arriving for the ceremony and taking their seats. Since the ceremony took place in the middle of the cemetery, it would have been difficult to truck in an upright piano over the uneven ground of the cemetery. So the pianist played on a more portable electronic keyboard that would not have been bothered as much by the moving or the chilly, damp weather.

The musicians performed the song "Morning Has Broken" particularly skillfully given the performance conditions. Their rendition of the piece would have been much more effective except for a few facets of the performance that were out of the control of the musicians. The electronic piano itself either did not use or simply did not have a very realistic or pretty-sounding piano timbre. The arrangement of the piece was also not ideal. It sounded somewhat dated and schmaltzy. However, the talented musicians more than made up for any shortcomings of the arrangement and the performance was still very effective.

Self Evaluation- Ryan Nobles

The piece I chose was Menuet by Bach. My approach to this piece was to first look at the time signature and the key that the piece was in. After looking seeing that the piece was in ¾ and the key of G maj I then scanned the pieces for form and any additional markings, I saw that there were two repeated sections and mordents and I also looked for the dynamics and tempo. After looking through all of those things I played through each part starting with the right hand alone, followed by the left hand and after I was comfortable with the notes I practiced with both hands together. Quickly I found out that certain parts were more challenging than others. The mordents were one area that gave me trouble along with measure 21-28 on the second page. When I identified the problem areas I took them one at a time and drilled them at a slower tempo gradually speeding the tempo up when I was able to play the section consistently with both hands at the given tempo. There were places that I needed a better fingering than the one I initially read through the piece with so I would attempt to figure out a better one. Once I was more comfortable with the difficult sections I tried to put the piece together and work on the expression of the piece. Overall I think my method for looking at the piece was fine but there were certain aspects like the tempo that I should have paid more attention to since I took the piece at a faster tempo than was needed. I also needed to think more about the time period the piece was written in to understand more of what the composer intended. Over the process of learning this piece I did learn that it was harder than it looked and sounded, at least for me. I do still like the piece and I think that as my keyboard skills improve I will be able to revisit the piece again play it more successfully.