Community Calendar

Hampshire Music Club Musical Potpourri. Viola performer RONALD GOREVIC will discuss and perform Schubert's Great Song Without Words 'Arpegionne', D821 - not on the arpegionne, but on the viola. The arpegionne is an instrument of the viol family which became obsolete in the classical era. Schubert's piece is one of the surviving pieces composed for it. Its successor, the viola, is often ignored as a solo instrument. It has been described as "dark," "smoky," and "husky," but it can also be bright, clear, and ring like a bell, as Mr. Gorevic will demonstrate. There will be a Q&A and refreshments will be served at this mid-morning event.

Under Artistic Director Richard Tognetti, the Australian Chamber Orchestra has become a major cultural export, traveling around the world to deliver over 100 concerts every season. Comprised of 17 musicians, the ACO has received massive acclaim in its time presenting new arrangements of classical works. Called “one of the wonders of the musical world today,” (The Guardian, UK), the ACO celebrates the arts with dynamic programs and cross-artform collaborations in their new music as well as the old classics. The program will feature the Tawadros Brothers who are pushing the boundaries of melody and metre, seamlessly fusing Egyptian, classical and contemporary influences.  Enjoy Mozart’s Violin Concerto No.5, selections from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, and original music by Joseph Tawadros.

Don’t miss the all-Mozart West Stockbridge Chamber Players Harvest Concert on Sunday, October 20, 2024 at 4 p.m. in the West Stockbridge Old Town Hall. Featuring Chamber Players’ artistic director Catherine Hudgins on Basset horn, William Hudgins on Basset horn, Andrew Sandwick on Basset horn, Sheila Fiekowsky on violin, Daniel Getz on viola, and Adam Esbensen on cello, the program includes Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Divertimento No. 1 in B-flat major for 3 basset horns, KV 439b/I, his Divertimento “Don Giovanni” for 3 basset horns (arr. Schottstädt), and his Divertimento in E-flat major for string trio, K. 563. Old Town Hall, 9 Main Street, West Stockbridge. Tickets ($35 for members; $40 for nonmembers) can be reserved at weststockbridgehistory.org. Limited attendance — first come, first served.  

Boston-based choir Nightingale Vocal Ensemble presents un/bodying/s by Belchertown composer Gregory Brown at 7pm on Sunday, October 20 at Grace Church, 14 Boltwood Ave, Amherst, MA. Tickets are available through the ensemble's website: nightingalevocalensemble.com

un/bodying/s is a sprawling, intricate, and ambitious choral work that explores the history of the populations displaced by the Quabbin Reservoir in Western Massachusetts, including the Native Americans moved by incoming Europeans, and then those Europeans relocated by the State when creating the massive reservoir that supplies Boston with water. Gregory and librettist Todd Hearon combined forces in 2017 to tell these stories from a variety of perspectives, including the history of the wildlife that, like the human refugees, have fled and since returned to this land. The music undulates as if at times floating on water, or hidden under it, or soaring above it, reflecting up. Suddenly a New England hymn will emerge, then be replaced with a more distant, elusive texture, as the eternal search for Atlantis continues. 

The work was commissioned and premiered in 2017 by Philadelphia's multi-Grammy award winning choir — The Crossing. Nightingale now brings this piece to Massachusetts for the first time, performing both in Amherst (near Quabbin) and Boston (where Quabbin’s water flows). The program also includes both traditional and modern shape-note tunes from the New England tradition (including Amelia by local composer Tim Eriksen) and a double-choir work on a text by Celia Thaxter (by Brown).

Hampshire Music Club's Musical Potpourri. Marc Winer, long-time tenor soloist and Director of the Greater Westfield Choral Associaiton, reveals hints on building and maintaining a classical choral group. In this session, Mr. Winer will describe how to make rehearsals fun, staying positive under adverse conditions, when and how to be critical, and what choir members need mentally and emotionally to feel included and rewarded at each rehearsal. Repertoire and how to stretch the choir's ability just enough to make it rewarding without being overwhelming will be explored. Examples of GWCA rehearsals and performances will illustrate the talk. There will be a Q&A and refreshments will be served at this mid-morning presentation.

The Calidore String Quartet performs an all-Beethoven program featuring three of the composer’s legendary string quartets. The Calidore Quartet has been praised by the New York Times for its “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct.” The Los Angeles Times described the quartet as “astonishing,” their playing “shockingly deep,” approaching “the kind of sublimity other quartets spend a lifetime searching” and praised its balance of “intellect and expression.” Recipient of a 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant and a 2017 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, the quartet first made international headlines as winner of the $100,000 Grand Prize of the 2016 M-Prize International Chamber Music Competition.

On sale now at spac.org

8 musicians from Afghanistan will demonstrate various traditional Afghan instruments: rabab, tabla, sitar, harmonium, and others. They will give an informal performance and answer questions. This is in prelude to their performance the next day of Symphony of Resilience: the Afghan orchestra unsilenced at the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts in Hartford.

This demonstration concert is free of charge, but we ask that you please sign up so we know you are coming. Please also consider getting tickets here for Symphony of Resilience on Sunday, October 27: https://bushnell.org/shows-concerts/cuatro-puntos-symphony-of-resilience

Thank you to the Lutheran Church of Saint Mark for hosting this event, as well as for hosting rehearsals for Symphony of Resilience.

Bernard Herrmann won an Oscar for his film scores of Alfred Hitchcock thrillers. Hear his Souvenirs de Voyage for Clarinet Quintet, in addition to Paul Chihara’s [Duke] Ellington Fantasy, and works by Vaughan Williams and Haydn.

Music is forbidden in Afghanistan, leaving an ancient musical tradition to live on in exile. The style of the “Afghan Radio Orchestra” consists of traditional Afghan instruments alongside Western orchestra instruments. This historic performance features an orchestra of Afghan and local musicians playing all music by Afghan composers. It will be only one of a handful of Afghan orchestral concerts around the world since Afghanistan was silenced in 2021.

10 Afghan musicians- instrumentalists, singers & composers- will converge on Hartford to join local musicians. This concert will feature music by Afghan composers, past and present, performed by an orchestra of 30.
Cuatro Puntos has a history of commitment to the orchestra music of Afghanistan since working with Afghanistan’s first and only all-female orchestra on their first-ever album recording in 2015, titled Rosegarden of Light: https://www.cuatropuntos.org/rosegarden-of-light-2016.html

You may also attend a free demonstration of Afghan instruments and music the evening before in Glastonbury- sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/demonstration-of-afghan-instruments-tickets-981652518107?aff=oddtdtcreator

Music is forbidden in Afghanistan, leaving an ancient musical tradition to live on in exile. The style of the “Afghan Radio Orchestra” consists of traditional Afghan instruments alongside Western orchestra instruments. This historic performance features an orchestra of Afghan and local musicians playing all music by Afghan composers. It will be only one of a handful of Afghan orchestral concerts around the world since Afghanistan was silenced in 2021.

10 Afghan musicians- instrumentalists, singers & composers- will converge on Hartford to join local musicians. This concert will feature music by Afghan composers, past and present, performed by an orchestra of 30.

Cuatro Puntos has a history of commitment to the orchestra music of Afghanistan since working with Afghanistan’s first and only all-female orchestra on their first-ever album recording in 2015, titled Rosegarden of Light: https://www.cuatropuntos.org/rosegarden-of-light-2016.html

You may also attend a free demonstration of Afghan instruments and music the evening before in Glastonbury- sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/demonstration-of-afghan-instruments-tickets-981652518107?aff=oddtdtcreator