Jiyang Chen
20-something Julliard grads comprise the Isidore String Quartet, playing Shannon Hall in December.
Back to school on the UW-Madison campus means new sounds and sonic fusions, new artists, and new ways of hearing old standards.
Repetitive? Yes!
Elizabeth Snodgrass, director of the Wisconsin Union Theater, says that the classical series is one of its gems. “What most people don’t know is that UW-Madison students are behind the programming, to help keep our seasons fresh, exciting, and relevant.”
Snodgrass has a welcoming vision for the classical series.“You don’t need a trained ear or eye or previous experience in concert-going to a classical music performance, or any performance, at the Wisconsin Union Theater.”
The 2023-2024 classical series opens with pianist Simone Dinnerstein, on Sept. 28, in the Memorial Union’s Shannon Hall. Dinnerstein is known for her insightful, clear-eyed interpretations of music, both past and present. She’ll play works by Robert Schumann, François Couperin, Erik Satie and Philip Glass, exploring the idea of repetition.
If you tuned in to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s royal wedding in 2018, you heard teenage British cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason warm the Gothic stones of Windsor Castle with his rich playing. He comes to Shannon Hall on Nov. 3 with a program that honors tradition with works by J.S. Bach and Benjamin Britten, but looks to the future with Gwilym Simcock’s 2022 piece, composed for Kanneh-Mason, Prayer for the Senses.
The Isidore String Quartet, an award-winning ensemble comprised of 20-something Juilliard grads, comes to Shannon Hall Dec. 8. In addition to Mozart’s unusually dissonant Quartet No. 19 and Brahms’s Quartet in A Minor, they will perform Billy Childs’ fascinating quartet Awakening, an improvisatory, genre-defying masterpiece.
Celestial seasoning
The University Opera prepares students to sing on stages here and around the world. This fall, the group presents Francesco Cavalli’s 1651 opera, La Calisto (Nov. 17, 19 and 21 in Music Hall).
Cavalli’s opera takes us back to the Baroque sound world with harpsichords, theorbos, Baroque guitar, Baroque harp and more. But his inspiration for the opera goes back even further to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a collection of mythological poems written around 8 CE.
David Ronis, director of the University Opera, describes La Calisto as “a somewhat bawdy, gender-bending show.”
“Jove, the king of the gods, has the hots for the nymph Calisto who is part of the goddess Diana’s virgin cult,” says Ronis. Calisto rebuffs him, but Mercury has a gender-flexible plan that helps Jove gain her affection. Juno, Jove’s wife, gets wind of all this and, in her anger, turns Calisto into a bear. But Jove saves Calisto by giving her immortal life as the star constellation, Ursa Major, the bear.
New York-based Christa Patton, a Baroque harpist and specialist in the repertoire, will be the music director for this production.
World of wonders
A highlight of the Mead Witter School of Music’s fall offerings is Wonderporium on Sept. 9 in Hamel Music Center’s Collins Recital Hall. The new group includes Mark Hetzler (trombone) and Tom Curry (tuba/euphonium), both of whom are professors at the School of Music. Jason Kutz (keys), and Noah Gilfillan (keys, electronics, auxiliary percussion, etc.) are Madison-based musicians who play with numerous groups.
Wonderporium likes to offer a huge sonic variety and juxtapose sounds in surprising ways. To achieve this, Curry says that he and Hetzler send their trombone and tuba sounds through effects pedals, Kutz uses processed piano sound and various synths, and Gilfillan has a collection of keys, string instruments, and percussive instruments that he also feeds into various effects.
The group also specializes in ambient soundscapes, noise cultivation and improvisation. “When we begin a performance, we have very few parameters or ideas about what might happen,” says Curry. “So the audience experiences the creative process along with the group, wherever it goes, and hopefully feels a sense of imagination and experimentation unfolding in real time.”
Curry says that while this is still a somewhat niche approach, electronic and electroacoustic music have allowed classical musicians to engage with other types of popular or mainstream music, which is created more electronically these days.
Guest pianist Artina McCain, a rising star from Texas, comes to Collins Recital Hall on Sept. 27. She will play a diverse program with works by Debussy and Rachmaninoff as well as such spirituals as “Were You There,” arranged by Joseph Joubert. McCain champions works by Black Americans and other marginalized groups in the classical music world.
On October 29 in Collins Recital Hall, the Wisconsin Brass Quintet will celebrate half a century as one of Wisconsin’s leading chamber groups. Jean Laurenz and John Wagner on trumpet, Daniel Grabois, horn, Mark Hetzler, trombone, and Tom Curry, tuba, highlight all the layers of sound.
Tickets to all events can be purchased through Campus Arts Ticketing (artsticketing.wisc.edu), in person or by phone at the Memorial Union Box Office (608-265-2787), and at the venue one hour before the start of a ticketed event.
