A Concert with two Vladimiroffs, three really

See also: Memorial for Sergei & 70 at 70 & Walden Premiere

Saturday, November, 8,  I went to a free concert at the Valley Presbyterian Church on Wisconier Road in Brookfield.  The concert was in celebration of the church's new grand piano and a grand piano it is indeed, especially in the capable hands that played this concert.....

The players were Maxim Vladimiroff, a Russian-born pianist and award-winning composer, his father, Sergei Vladimiroff,  a beaming and emotive concert pianist, as well as two highly credentialed Russian string players who have both appeared with the Hartford Symphony: violinist Natalya Shamis,  (a former concertmaster of the Moldavian Symphony Orchestra and later of the New American Chamber Orchestra),  and cellist Zakhary Paranyuk who is a member of the Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra, the Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra, etc.

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The company was great too - I got to sit with an old friend, Leisa Vladimiroff, who is Max's wife, whom I haven't seen in quite a while - long enough to notice that their boys have grown quite a few inches, while I have been away!

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Back to the music! The opening salvo was Sonata for violin and piano (KV 378(317d) with its Allegro sections, sandwiching an Andantino sostenuto e contabile. Ms. Shamis showed her beautiful, energetic and singing lines, and Mr. Vladimiroff the younger played this lighter Mozart score with precision, balance and sensitivity.

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Next was an immediate change of pace. From the tidy elegant structure of Mozart, the program moved to Tchaikovsky, and Vladimiroff the younger was tag-teamed by his father, who specialty is emotion, caprice and surprise.  Mr. Vladimiroff the senior played five sections (months) from The Seasons, which is "program music" composed to embody  some well known Russian poems.  It was all lovely - but I most loved the June and October selections because they were most meaningful to me.. In June one could feel the sea waves lapping at one's ankles, and the warm night sky arching above. In October it was impossible to not see leaves flitting slowly to the ground, and at the end even a single leaf, trembling and rocking in the breeze before it finally lets go and falls.

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For November and December, I  couldn't grasp the metaphor and I think this prevented me from immersing myself in the music itself. November involved "not trying to catch up with the troika" according to the program notes,  and I had no idea what the troika  was.... December 's metaphor was wonderful, but I was unsure of its context. The program notes mentioned maidens on Christmas eve, removing their slippers and throwing them outside the gates. How wonderfully poetic! I would love to  know more about that (someone comment and enlighten me....)

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From the Sesaons, the senior Vladimiroff moved to more Tchaikovsky - the Polonaise from Eugene Onegin (an opera based on a poem). This well-known and beloved composition almost makes one want to dance...  As always, Vladimiroff played it with strength and subtlety.

After all this work, the players got to rest during intermission, during which a silent auction took  place in the lobby.  There was a lot of friendly conversation, and a few libations as well. (I am a coffee addict and always love fresh brew...)

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And fresh from intermission - I heard my favorite piece of the night - Etude in G minor Op. 33 by Sergei Rachmaninoff.  Now, when listening to music, it's always best heard when one approaches it as a sunbather approaches the sun - peel off the protective artifice and allow the music to act directly on the most vulnerable areas of the self.  This etude took me away, filled me with melancholy, and exaltation in its exquisite beauty all fabulously brought out by this fine player.

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Next on the program was a psychological wonder -- the father interprets the son!!!   Sergei played Six Preludes, a modernist tone-row style composition by Maxim !  I loved the caprice, the smatterings of tones, contrasted with the heavier tread of discordant semi-chordal blocks of notes - yet this is not a completely atonal work. .

There was much context to center, and it was an interesting contrast to the surrounding works.

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Then, it was back to the intense emotional ride of Dmitri Shostakovich's Prelude and Fugue  NO 24 in D minor, Op 87! It was most interesting to read in the program that this was a part of the composer's 24 Preludes and Fugues written written in tribute to Bach's own preludes and fugues.  Listening with the form of  Bach's  works in mind - it was amazing what different effect emerged from  Shostakovich's simmering furtive intensity - an intensity amply encompassed by Sergei Vladimiroff. The man must have been exhausted when he was finished playing it, so much energy went into the furious build of the fugal elements.

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He got to rest though - the next item was played by Maxim instead.  The composition was another Mozart bookending the program: Trio, KV 502. And here is my second favorite work of the night.  To me there is nothing so beautiful as the sound of the cello, and Mr Paranyuk is a wonderful player with superb tone! Perhaps as a mezzo-soprano, I am systemically partial to this rich sonority. Then when the cello's sound is woven with the sound of  Ms. Shamis, singing  violin, and Vladimiroff's artful energy, well, it's like a death by chocolate desert, except more serious, more expediant!   It was so compelling my own head could not stop moving in some sort of sympathetic rhythmic echo.   Oh what a marvel - Mozart, form and controlled flash, so well inhabited.  This was truly a fine piece...

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There followed lots of applause and people rising from their seats. There was an encore, I am getting senile and cannot remember what it was.  Then followed by

FOOD, conversations, more libations.

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Valley Presbyterian - congratulations on very satisfying event.

Rutter Gloria with Lots of Brass!!!

The occasion was the Eighth Annual Fall Festival of Music at the First Congregational Church in Ridgefield, directed by Edwin Taylor, which occurred on Sunday, November 2.. (It’s that church by the stone fountain, the one in the middle of the road that gets hits by cars so very often.) In fact the concert is part of the church’s Fountain Music Series.

The primary work was the Rutter Gloria with organ and brass. The singers included Edwin’s choir, singers from Jessie Lee United Methodist, and choir members who sang under the late Robert Ayotte of St Mary’s including a few of his paid soloists singing in the chorus(me for instance, and that is how I came to be involved) and a few from out of town. The 11-member brass and percussion ensemble was all imported and very expansive! The organist who played instead of Rob was Daniel M. Beckwith from Princeton. And no one ever forgets the fabulous Celebration Ringers – Edwin’s marvelous and discplined handbell choir.

We had dress rehearsal the afternoon of the concert. It was rigorous but very well organized so there was a minimum of hassle involved. Because most of us missed lunch, and would be concertizing well into the dinner hour, a meal was served at 3p.m. And there was coffee (I am always in need of caffeine), and I was grateful for the sustenance.
The brass ensemble opened in the side isles with a Gabrieli hymn arranged by Mr. Taylor. The brass and handbells were smashing! The handbells did Fantasy No 4 a new composition by Michael Helman and on Elgar’s Nimrod from his Enigma Variations. Later the brass and Organ together had a Taylor arrangement of Pacibell’s Deus in Adjutorium.

There were also a lot of congregational hymns. All in all, the concert went of without a hitch, Although it is hard to tell when you are singing – I think the choral works went very well too. I have to report that I actually did NOT GET LOST in the 5/8 sections of the Gloria. The Counting went very well.
There was a marvelous metaphoric talk Living in Harmony with the Universe, given by the Rev. Dr. Brenda Steirs about finding the tune and the key of life…..
For me the only difficulty was, that during a lush and beautiful duet The Lord’s Prayer, written by Mallotte and arranged by Mr. Taylor and sung by Amy Montanari and Faith Ferry – my eyes teared up, my sinuses clogged. It was so so very beautiful. I suppressed a cough until after this beautiful duet was done, then lost track a bit blowing my nose. We did the benediction ( The Lord Bless You and Keep You by Lutkin), from memory. And low and behold I remembered it. YEAH.

The concert ended with Moussorgsky’s Great Gate of Kiev in Mr. Taylor’s own arrangement for brass, organ, percussion, handbells and choir. And a good time was had by all….

Dia: Beacon - thought-provoking exhibit...

Last Thursday, fellow Shijin Robin Sampson, White Plains Slammer Ann Marie Marra and I visted the DIA museum in Beacon New York (a snapshot of its website is to the left), which opened in 2003 in a 300,000 square foot printing factory.  We got separated in this large maze-like building and I didn't see them for two hours.

I was constantly surprised - each time I thought I had reached the end of the exhibits, there was a still a large part of the building I had not visited!   Better, each time I thought I had drawn a bead on the meaning of what was exhibited, another twist was revealed.

The first room featured an exhibit of  minimalist work "24 Colors for Blinky" by Imi Koebel - large odd shapes each painted in a single bright color.  They were not at all like the monochrome canvases of Modrian  which contain subtle, though barely discernible, complexities. Koebel's colors are utterly flat and uniform.  Just shapes varied wildly. Imi may well have been trying to "shape-up" Blinky Palermo whose small and uniformly square works were on display in another room.  Another room had works by Agnes Martin whose canvases were more in the actual lineage of Modrian, but with a much more personal touched-surface  feeling....

Then there was an entire warehouse-sized room of light work by Dan Flavin. I mean, a kind of minimalist work created entirely as arrangements or "monuments" of florescent light fixtures. I didn't really get off on these, though they were interesting.  On the lower floor were a several works that were a kind of minimalist drawing  and the medium was vivid  blinking neon lights .

And then there was a room entirely containing abstract expressionist sculptures by John Chamberlain that looked as if, and I think were actually made from junk cars and scrap metal. I liked several that were imposing crumpled metal cairns each cloistering a small brightly color nucleus.  But My favorite work of the day was The Privet - one of his metal  sculptures. (The photo simply does not do it justice...)  It is a bit of an abstract expressionist hedge - of metal strips painted capreciously with high gloss enamel. It's metal fronds twisted organically, and each with a unique color scheme. The form was so familiar, the material and colors, arresting. I was inspired to write a poem, though it has a miserable slant rhyme.

The privet's metal stalks aspire
To rustle 'neath the critc's pire
In colors crisp with high gloss shallac
The metal hedge row with varied palette 

Louise Bourgeois' mythic Spiders inspire primal fear, I think and awe.... One can walk right up to the monster which is sci-fi man-eating sized!

Another area I adore, was a set of architectural scale works by Michael Heizer - that involved enormous holes in the floor, I liked the effects, and as a bonus the polished concrete floors in that area were so beautifully and intricately marked, each of the huge sections could have been hung on the wall as art....

Another area I enjoyed very very much contained huge iron spirals "Torqued Elipses" by Richard Serra like the hulls of mysterious ships or giant vats in a factory, that were 15 feet tall with walls several inches. You could walk inside the huge spirals and sometimes, there were hidden inner chambers.  Their juxtaposition also made a very pleasing view of differing angles. There was an erie sonority to the pieces as well. I tried singing inside of one and the echos were amazing.

Interpretive verses generative art

One of the most fascinating aspects of the artists on display were the many who had not constructed the piece on view, but who had left a set of instructions as an architect leaves blueprints, or actually the very same way a composer writes a a score and then leaves it to the future - for others to bring to life!

There was one Lawrence Weiner who had left large sized instructions for the construction of arrangements of monolithic stones. One huge obelisk-like monolith was recessed into the wall. There was an exhibit of drawings by Sol LeWitt (who had recently died). The work required  a team of 20 artists to draw patterns of six different basic squares.  Each looked like a geeks creation on graph paper. The squares were drawn in combination, juxtaposition and super-imposition  in pencil right on the four walls of a museum room. It sounds so prosaic but the effect was sort of  contrary to that. Inside four twenty-foot walls all covered with this work, well the effect was strangely imposing and the repetition made it comforting and  tranquil. It had a great quiet dignity.

The presence of a whole room of Andy Warhol canvases gives real weight to the idea of art by collaboration rather than by one hand.  So much of the art in this exhibit was  what I would call Art Divisi - that is art divided into inceptor or "Idea-ator" and executor. Or more completely - as in music - the generative artist and the interpretive artist. As in theater or in the performance arts, this allows subsequent generations to add cultural nuance...

Could an artist devise a handmade drawing or painting of so many layers that generations of interpretors would be required to fulfill the design? One thinks of the great cathedrsls ( one was still unfinished when I was in college. Not sure now)

And on the topic of great catherdrals - the Photographs of Bernd and Hilla Becher were of wonders of another sort - the great detailed twisting industrial cathedrals of European industry of an era past.

It's a great exhibit. They also have a fine coffee shop for lunch and a fabulous book store. Check the museum's website at http://www.diabeacon.org/exhibs/bindex.html

While we were in Beacon, we also visited the Muddy Cup for Lavendar Tea....

-- Mar Walker

Alternate Parking

It was hard to find parking at the polls. We voted at 6:15 a.m. this morning. Before coffee before breakfast. I personally voted straight Democratic - Duane Perkins, Chris Murphy, Joe Taborsak and most important of all BARACK OBAMA.

( I am an independent who went over to a party to vote in the primaries when John Kerry was running...)
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I think the odd angle and out-of-sight bike in this pale pic, contribute to the idea of hidden alternatives, escape routes, and alternate ways of looking at the familiar.... This is a photo I took in New Milford CT, standing by town hall looking towards the green, (you can see the intersection with Bank Street in the distance.) I fiddled with the photo in both iphoto and Adobe Photoshop Elements.



UPDATE; It's 11PM and ABC news has just projected BARACK OBAMA will be the next president..... HURRAY!

My Halloween costume this year....

This is how I answered the door this year. The thing on my head is black furry ear muffs that hold the dime store wig in place. In the front window we had a big "BOO" with orange lights!.  I had the door cracked open with Oggi dog on guard. Erie Thermin music was playing with its weird moans and slides.  It's eight thirty and we've had over thirty kids and attendent moms and dads. I love Halloween!

It's nine pm and we have had 38 tricker-treaters. We are out of treats and the lights are out.

 It's good to take off this wig...

My cat and dog are settling down now that the  weird music is finally off....

Priests screw up the mass - no ligntening, just screaming kids

There must be something in the air - at work (I am a mezzo soloist at an RC church, a mercenary arrangement not a religious one) the father forgot to follow the cross during the processional and got left behind. He also forgot to end the mass!!! A lay minister reminded him, and he shouted WAIT. What a riot. These guys need cue cards I guess. And the flock gets really peeaved. Deviation from the norm is not appreciated! Also, today, babies and toddlers were present in larger numbers than usual and they were so LOUD, hollering and shrieking all though mass. At least they were in a happy mood. None of those grinding and angry screams. If there were a god, surely he or she must remain baffled by this crazy flock....

Another face in polymer

Fog like cold smoke hugs the landscape this morning. A blood sun begins to burn through it now - the light is changing, a reluctant warmth rises in the air.

Grief is a fog that lingers for years. Visited my father's grave and also the grave of Rob Ayotte this past weekend.  (They are in the same cemetery. ) You hardly ever  know what the weight of a person is for you until you try to make do without them...   Some people leave a rend in the fabric of things.

The face is polymer clay It's of no one in particular.

It's resting on a wrinkled pedestal made of cement color pinkish like the polymer.

I read an amazing fact last night: in a recent month there were 2700 people PER DAY  who were losing homes to bank foreclosure.