Last week I wrote about the Apollo Academy, a wonderful four-day retreat at a facility called “Ratna Ling” located in the coastal mountains of Northern California’s Sonoma County. The Academy – the brainchild of a surgeon and cellist named Bill Moores – focuses on “mind/body synchronization that enhances mental and physical health. Optional sessions include immersion in the natural environment, poetry-writing, yoga, and the role of seasonal foods.” Yes, lovely and all very well-and-good, though the heart and soul of the Academy is chamber music. Open to performers and non-musician auditors alike, this year’s program was entitled “String Quartet Masterpieces of Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms.” These quartet masterworks were performed by the Alexander String Quartet with yours truly acting as host and lecturer. Here’s how our concert-presentations worked: Each of our three sessions was delivered in two parts: for an hour before dinner (4:30pm-5:30pm) and hour-and-a-half after dinner (6:30pm-8:00pm). On day one (September 6), we presented a program entitled “The Mendelssohn Conundrum”, during which I discussed and the ASQ performed Mendelssohn’s String Quartets in A Minor, Op. 13 (of 1827); F Minor, Op. 80 (of 1847) and excerpts from his String Quartet in E Minor, Op. 44 (of 1837). […]
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Robert Greenberg
Historian, Composer, Pianist, Speaker, Author
Archive for Alexander String Quartet
Last week’s “Music History Monday” was about the premiere of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13 on December 18, 1962 and the official Soviet silence that greeted that premiere on December 19, 1962. We’re going to stay with Shostakovich this week because on January 21, 2017 the Alexander String Quartet and I are going to begin a two-season, nine-concert perusal of the string quartets and chamber music of Dmitri Shostakovich in San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre. Along with Shostakovich’s 15 string quartets, we will examine and perform as well Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet in G Minor, Op. 57 (1940), Piano Trio in E Minor, Op. 67 (1944), and his Viola Sonata Op. 147 (1975). The lessons to be learned from Shostakovich’s life, his times, and his music are as real and relevant today as they were when Shostakovich was alive. Russian repression and adventurism are alive and well today in the kleptocracy of Tsar Vladimir the First as they were under the Soviets. “Mistakes that were made” are once again being made, and Shostakovich’s life and music offer a degree of insight into these current events that few other things can. Art and politics can be problematic bedfellows, but they are an indivisible […]
Continue ReadingFor nine wonderful years – from 1992-2001 – I was on the faculty of something called the “Andersen Executive Program”, or “AEP”. Three or four times a summer, various partners from the accounting, auditing, and consulting firm of Arthur Andersen gathered in some extraordinary place for a week to talk about the current issues facing their clients. The teaching faculty – as you’ve surmised, since I was on it – was incredibly diverse. For three years in the late 1990s the AEP held sessions at a resort hotel called the Huis ter Duin (“House of the Dunes”) on the North Sea in the Dutch town of Noordwijk, 27 miles southwest of Amsterdam. It was at one of those sessions that I had lunch with a fellow faculty member: an Englishman about my age who was a professional “futurist”. He struck me as equal parts high-tech dude, palm reader, and huckster, all of which seemed necessary tool-box skills for someone who made a living predicting future trends and technologies. When the futurist discovered I was a musician he wanted to talk about one of his pet ideas: how consumers will listen to music in the future. He had it all figured […]
Continue ReadingThe Alexander String Quartet and I are doing a benefit fundraiser for the Montclair Elementary School in Oakland on October 10. The Montclair Elementary School is a public K-5 school in the Oakland Hills. Founded in 1925, it numbers among its present students my daughter Lillian (a third grader) and my son Daniel (a first grader). Public education. Pardon me for getting a bit vehement and more than a bit teary-eyed here, but there is nothing more important and yet financially undervalued than our public schools and the magnificent people who teach in and administer them. Yes, yes; it’s cliché to ask, but still: when was the last time the prison system, the military, and our state and national bureaucracies had to hold bake sales, car washes, and silent auctions in order to raise operating funds? When did our national priorities become so profoundly skewed? So raise funds we will, with a program to be held between 6 PM and 9 PM on October 10, 2015 at the David Brower Arts Center at 2150 Allston Way in Berkeley, California. Here’s a description of the program the Alexander String Quartet and I will perform: “Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) and Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791), […]
Continue ReadingFor your viewing and listening pleasure I offer up the premiere performance of Invasive Species for piano quintet, performed by the incomparable Roger Woodward and the Alexander String Quartet in Berkeley, CA in March of 2014. (For a studio recording of the piece, score and parts, please visit Sheet Music Plus) Here’s the program note for Invasive Species: Three-Part Intention March of the Yellow Crazy Ants One-Part Incursion Pretty Pretty Poison Two-Part Ignition E. globulus (10-20-1991) The title Invasive Species refers to non-native species of plants and animals that, once introduced to a new environment, have an adverse affect on the habitats and bioregions they invade and colonize. Specifically this piece is about three “invasive species” portrayed in alternating movements: yellow crazy ants (“March of the Yellow Crazy Ants”), water hyacinths (“Pretty Pretty Poison), and gum eucalyptus (“E. globulus”). Generally, the piece is about confrontations between like and unlike elements, as most obviously depicted by the confrontation between the piano and the string quartet. The yellow crazy ant (Anoplolepis gracilipes) most likely originated in West Africa. Accidentally introduced to northern Australia, it has devastated the local ecology. The ant is called “crazy” because of its unpredictable movements and its long […]
Continue ReadingThe old line goes that being a member of a professional string quartet is like being married to three people, except there’s no sex and nobody cooks. The lack of food and sex notwithstanding, professional quartet membership IS a marriage. The members of a quartet live for and with each other; they depend on each other; they spend countless hours with each other through sickness and in health and along the way survive the ups and downs inherent in any long-term relationship. They rehearse together and, in doing so, they constantly compromise in order to create a musical whole greater than the sum of their individual parts; they travel together (when a string quartet travels, it must book FIVE airline seats: one for each of the players and one for the ‘cello); nightly, they experience together the stress and trial and potential disaster (and occasional glory) of public concertizing. If the musical and personal chemistry between its four members are not right, a string quartet – no matter how good the players are, individually – cannot succeed or survive. The magnificent Alexander String Quartet was founded in New York in 1981. After 33 years, the ASQ is still going strong, […]
Continue ReadingI spent the better part of last week working on background materials for my OraTV show “Conspiracies, Peccadilloes, and Dirty Little Secrets: Fun and Games With the Great Composers.” A chunk of time was spent finding and scanning visual images appropriate for the shows, images that will be projected behind me. The bulk of the week was spent planning for and video recording musical examples that will “accompany” the shows. For this we hired the superb pianist Lino Rivera and the indomitable (and inexhaustible) Alexander String Quartet. We recorded Lino at my house on my studio piano and the Alexander Quartet in Knuth Hall at San Francisco State University. The recordings were supervised by my producer Jason Rovou and my director Scott Brown, who flew up from SoCal to supervise a locally hired recording crew. Total pros, all. I’ve posted a few photos below of the Alexander String Quartet in action; I’ll post a few pix of Lino Rivera’s recording session in a few days. The programs themselves will be on-line at OraTV and on Hulu within a few weeks. I will keep you posted re: when and where. Tomorrow will be a most exciting day. In preparation for joining […]
Continue ReadingColor me thrilled and grateful. Our Kickstarter campaign has raised its required 3k minimum, and will thus pay out on March 11, the day of the premiere for which the campaign was created. However, my dearest, darling, beneficent, generous-to-a-fault friends (was that treacly enough?), the cause of new American music is a good one, and while we’re raising money for such, we might as well go whole hog and keep the dollars coming in for the remaining five days. All additional funds raised via the Kickstarter will go into the coffers of the estimable Composers, Inc., the mission of which is the performance of new American music by living American composers. The essential beneficiary of the Kickstarter is the premiere of my piano quintet “Invasive Species” by its dedicatees, the brilliant pianist Roger Woodward and the magnificent Alexander String Quartet. We’ve been in rehearsal all week. As a teaser, I offer up a brief video below, which features the conclusion of the final movement of the piece, entitled “E. globulus (10-20-1991)” “E. globulus” is the species name of the Blue Gum Eucalyptus tree, an incredibly fast-growing weed of a tree that was planted across the San Francisco Bay Area in […]
Continue ReadingToday’s post offers an invitation, a request, and a screed. Invitation Come one; come all; please: I have a premiere coming up on March 11 at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley, California; 8 PM. The concert will take place under the auspices of Composers, Inc., an organization dedicated to the performance of new American music currently celebrating its thirtieth anniversary. My piece – scored for piano and string quartet – is entitled “Invasive Species”. It will be performed by the spectacular Alexander String Quartet and the brilliant Roger Woodward. A program note for the piece appears in the link below. A request Composers, Inc. is running a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds that will be used to pay the performers and defray the costs of the concert. This link will take you to the Kickstarter page, and I humbly beg, beseech, and implore you to contribute towards this event. Any amount would be wonderful, though I would point out that $75 or more is going to cadge you an invitation to a party at my house in the hills of Oakland, CA, at which I will mix you a martini, feed you, and, once sodden enough myself, play piano […]
Continue ReadingI will have two works premiered this season. In the spirit of self-promotion I am posting the particulars and would then discuss the first of the premieres, coming up in November. Premiere One: “180 Shift” (2013) Place: Recital Hall, Conservatory of Music at University of the Pacific, 3515 Pacific Circle, Stockton, California Date: November 2, 2013 Time: 7:30 PM Series: Resident Artist Series Performers: Trio 180 Ann Miller, violin Nina Flyer, ‘cello Sonia Leong, piano Commissioned by and dedicated to Trio 180 and supported by a Pacific Arts and Lectures Committee Award/Grant More information Premiere Two: “Invasive Species” (2012) Place: First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way, Berkeley, California Time: 8 PM Date: March 11, 2014 Time: 8 PM Series: Composers, Inc. Performers: Roger Woodward, piano and the Alexander String Quartet Zakarias Grafilo, first violin Fred Lifsitz, second violin Paul Yarborough, viola Sandy Wilson, ‘cello: Composed for and dedicated to Roger Woodward and the Alexander String Quartet in honor of the Alexander String Quartet’s thirtieth anniversary More information 180 Shift Trio 180 received their parts and scores for “180 Shift” about 6 weeks ago. They’ve been practicing, rehearsing, and asking me all the right questions since. They are, individually […]
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