Broadly speaking, all music is in perpetual motion. Even a rest is more like a leap from one note to the next rather than a stop, or it serves as potential energy preparing for dynamic sound to come. But there is that special marking in music scores that drives the point home: moto perpetuo.
The Charlotte Ballet dancers take their places on the stage. But they are not alone. As the lights come up, it is former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky who stands beside them as the music begins.
At 8:15 p.m. tonight in the Amphitheater, the party will include guest conductor Bruce Hangen, who will highlight David Amram’s “Ode to Lord Buckley; Concerto for Alto Saxophone” with soloist Kenneth Radnofsky.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.”
Markand Thakar transcends his sense of self when he conducts a piece of music.
“The process of making music, for me personally, actually transcends the emotion [of the music],” Thakar said. “It’s not about joy — there’s something that goes even further. I absorb the sounds, if they come to me in the right way and I’m open to them. … They wash over me. I take them in [and] I lose myself in the sounds — I lose that sense of distinction between me and the sounds. In that conscious act, I become the sounds.”
Nobody asked Milana Strezeva, a renowned Moldovan-American pianist, if she wanted to learn to play piano. Her parents invited a music teacher to look at Strezeva’s hands and her fate was pronounced: She had very good hands for the instrument.
Lessons began at age 6, and by 11, Strezeva was accompanying her father, a clarinetist, and her mother, a soprano vocalist, in concert. This was her first chamber music ensemble. Luckily, Strezeva turned out to love chamber music.
The Chautauqua Chamber Winds will show audiences this afternoon just how romantic and heroic wind instruments can be.
Alexander Gavrylyuk is coming to Chautauqua Institution during a week of debates on morality, economics and social contract theories. His reason is simple: Here, he is free.
“For a performer, it is the most important thing to be free onstage,” Gavrylyuk said, “to simply dissolve into the world of music and find artistic truth in every piece. Every good artist can really perform only when they’re free inside, when they feel liberated.”
German composer Robert Schumann’s father earned a living as a publisher, bookseller and novelist. He grew up in a household that was heavily influenced by literature. Pianist Evelyne Brancart believes this influence seeped into his piano compositions.
The Chautauquan Daily 