-Fall and Halloween Themed Program-
Vivaldi -- "Autumn" third movement
Irish traditional -- A Ride on a Stack of Hay
Paganini -- Witches' Dance Variations
Bolcom -- Graceful Ghost
Sarasate -- Introduction and Tarantella
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I had a great opportunity to play for an elementary school's lunch time concert about a month ago. The students were enthusiastic and asked me lots of cute and intelligent questions. I love playing for young audiences!
-Fall and Halloween Themed Program- Vivaldi -- "Autumn" third movement Irish traditional -- A Ride on a Stack of Hay Paganini -- Witches' Dance Variations Bolcom -- Graceful Ghost Sarasate -- Introduction and Tarantella
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A photo from the Petite Concert I played back in June was on Scarsdale Inquirer. At Petite Concerts, kids get to touch and try an instrument after a short performance. Our audience is pre-schoolers, age 0 and up. It's a great opportunity to intruduce live-music to young audience (they are usually not welcomed to concerts). They can be kids during the music and they get to participate in the music by clapping, singing, dancing etc.
We are trying to branch out the project. If anyone in/around the Tri-State area is interested in bringing this project into your town, please contact us! I went to play for inmates at Taconic Correctinal Facility last month. The performance review is in: At Taconic Correctional Facility: "Transported" by Music by Eileen Gallagher
I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving Day. As usual I spent the evening with my dear friends. I have edited and posted our Mozart Clarinet Quintet videos. Here is the most beautiful second movement: And the joyous last movement: Here is an official announcement: we have been invited to perform the program in Sleepy Hollow, NY in February. It will be a private concert but we are very excited to perform again!
Happy Halloween! Here is a perfect piece for Halloween, Danse Macabre by Saint-Saens (the video is from last month). The piece is based on a poem by Henri Cazalis. Death wakes up the dead by playing his fiddle at midnight on Halloween. They have a dance party until a rooster crows at dawn and they all go back to their graves. You'll hear all sorts of sound effects. Enjoy! ハロウィンにぴったりのヴァイオリン曲、サンサーンスの「死の舞踏」です。ハロウィンの夜、死神の弾くヴァイオリンで骸骨たちが起こされ、一晩中踊り、日の出を告げる鶏の鳴き声で自分のお墓に戻るという、アンリ・カザリスの詩を元に作曲されたものです。先月のリサイタルのビデオです。お楽しみください♪ Here are the Brahms sonata videos from the recital on September 21. Enjoy! Thank you to those who came to the benefit event, "A Day of Music: An El Sistema Fundraiser" in Rye Brook on September 21. We raised over $630 by the admission, bake-sale and raffle ticket sale. Many thanks to our raffle donors; Long Ridge Music Center, Joseph Dermody and Fuji Mart CT!! And great job to young musicians who performed in the Young People's Concert! It was my great pleasure to present them. The recital went well and I'm very happy I got to play this great program with Benjamin Steinhardt! I'm editing the recital videos and I have the first piece up on YouTube. Hope you will enjoy my "Meditation from Thais"! The Brahms sonata might have been too heavy for our audience but I could tell some of them were really enjoying it. I, too, did enjoy performing it! Of course this is not the end of a journey; I'm looking forward to the next big concert in early November -- Mozart Clarinet Quintet and Shostakovich String Quartet No.7.
Here's a video of Piazzolla's "Tango étude No.3". Due to its copyright I decided to only include part of the piece. Hope you will enjoy it! Performed at Atria Rye Brook, NY on June 7. Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra visited five elementary schools in Ridgefield to give educational concerts this past week. I hope our young audience and their teachers enjoyed the concerts and learned something out of it. The program was to introduce a compositional form of fugue. Started with Mozart's Magic Flute Overture, we demonstrated fugue themes and how they develop by handing it to different instruments. And then... this! That's right, ANGRY BIRDS theme! I don't have to mention how excited our young audience was to hear us play it. Then we played a fugue based on Angry Birds theme, in Baroque style. Then "Fuga y Misterio" by Piazzolla -- here's a YouTube clip of it, Piazzolla himself playing it on bandoneon. Then we had a "guest conductor", a student from each school, conducting "Ode to Joy". That was really adorable. Each conductor has different characters and it shows very much in their conducting.
We closed the concert with Can-Can. We invited the audience to dance to it or clap, and I think that was the most fun part for them. I am actually starting to plan educational concerts for young audience and I got some ideas (what works and what doesn't with this age group). Stay tuned! This past Sunday concert at Concordia College - New York concluded my seven consecutive weeks of concerts. I have one weekend off and then re-starting performing again. The last seven weeks was a series of difficult program and I had 2 weeks maximum to prepare for them. I'm so glad it all went well! The most fun I had was with the Long Ridge Music Center faculty recital and "All About Folk!" concert but I also got to play great orchestral literature. There were a few pieces that I had not known or even known of, and one of them, Wotan's Farewell and Magic Fire by Wagner, surprisingly became my favorite. Why did I say "surprisingly"? Well, I had never really liked Wagner's music. Not that I had had that many opportunities to play his music (because his operas are lengthy and not budget-friendly for opera companies), but the ones I had played/known were not my favorites. A friend of mine had pointed out that I need to give it a chance. Well, he was right. Here's a YouTube video of Wotan's Farewell and Magic Fire. Enjoy! |