Words and the Night

Dear reader, Words and the Night is going to be absolutely amazing. Mozart opens the evening with the perfect aperitif: Divertimento #3. Beautiful operatic melodies, perfect structure and balance, and a great sense of humor provide the ideal backdrop for an elegant evening soiree. Suddenly, the mood shifts...a cloud passes in front of the moon with two songs from 16th-century master John Dowland lamenting loneliness and elusive love. These are the same songs that inspired Benjamin Britten in the early 20th century to compose Lachrymae, a haunting, gorgeous conversation with Dowland, featuring the incomparable Roger Tapping on viola. The cloud passes, though, and the party resumes with two motets from the 16th-century Italian Palestrina, who (although separated by centuries) speaks the same language as Mozart.

The second half of the concert leaves the festive gathering and explores the night in isolation. Gesualdo, the 16th-century nobleman, musician and murderer, wrote some of the most tortured, chromatic and wildly emotional music one could imagine--truly the nighttime of the soul. The concert concludes with a kindred spirit, Arnold Schoenberg, exploring from his vantage point 300 years in the future the same issues of guilt, betrayal and loneliness, but also transformation and redemption. Verklarte Nacht (Transfigured Night) tells the story of two lovers wandering in the moonlight. She makes a shocking confession, and he grants a transcending forgiveness, in one of the most beautiful works ever written for string orchestra. Don't miss these concerts - they are going to be our best yet!

On programming...

One of the questions we are frequently asked is, "How do you choose which music you play?" The truth is that we program collaboratively, with everyone being welcome to give their input. We take into account musical compatibility, potential connections between pieces, availability of soloists, and yes even the extra costs associated with choosing certain music. Words and the Night is a great example of the kind of open-minded, thought-provoking program which can result when musicians put their heads together. In this case, Megumi suggested Shoenberg's Verklarte Nacht, a masterpiece with strong connections to poetry and the night. Next, yours truly suggested 16th-century madrigals, in particular Gesualdo to pair musically and poetically with the Schoenberg. Then Jason bounced us back to the 20th century, suggesting Britten's Lachrymae with Roger Tapping, which just so happens to be based on 16th-century songs by Dowland. Finally, Jae found the perfect opener, a wonderful divertimento by Mozart, which pairs exquisitely with 16th-century motets by Palestrina. No single person was in charge. There were many false starts and dead-end ideas, but a truly collaborative solution finally presented itself, and the whole proved to much greater than the sum of the parts. That's A Far Cry in a nutshell.

We live for this!

Wow. A Far Cry in day-to-day life is amazing: a great collection of individuals, always an exhilarating experience, always striving for bigger and better things. Then A Far Cry performs, and everything ratchets up about 10 notches. Consider an Italian sports car: no matter how comfortable it is to tool around town, no matter how cushy the leather seats or how harmonious the surround-sound, you simply won't understand the soul of the machine without taking it to the race track and pushing it to its limits. A Far Cry is the Italian sports car of ensembles. One simply forgets, in day-to-day activity, the almost terrifying potential and power that lurks in the belly of the beast.

A Far Cry lives to perform. If you haven't experienced A Far Cry's current program, "Remixed Classics," you have one more chance: in a free performance at Cochran Chapel at the Andover Academy this Friday, February 1.

If you saw A Far Cry in concert this week, thank you so much for coming to support us! We'd love to hear from you - just click "Leave a comment..."

Remixed Classics

A Far Cry is in the midst of rehearsals for our next program, Remixed Classics, and I am so excited about this music, I had to post here to tell everyone about it!

Remixed Classics concentrates on classical "cover pieces." Each of the pieces on this program represent the composer stepping out of the normal, the mainstream, the expected, and writing a piece in a totally unexpected new style - sort of like A Far Cry itself. Hmm...

Golijov's Last Round brings grinding, sultry, passionate Argentinian tango to the concert hall. The piece is basically just hot. Then the program moves to Shostakovich, who explores ragtime and jazz in his Piano Concerto #1, which A Far Cry will perform with the great Russian pianist Alexander Korsantia. (More info about Korsantia coming soon!) After intermission, Grieg looks well into the past, going for Baroque (oof) in the beloved cornerstone of the chamber orchestra repertoire, The Holberg Suite and finally Beethoven seems to look back to the archaic fugue and simultaneously forward hundreds of years to cutting-edge avant garde in the landmark Grosse Fuge, performed in A Far Cry's new adaptation for string orchestra.

Please join us and experience Remixed Classics! This concert is going to rock!

A Far Cry at Yellow Barn

A Far Cry has been invited by Yellow Barn Music Festival to work with their Young Artists Program this coming summer in a weekend residency to include both workshops and a concert. On Saturday, June 21st, 2008, we will present a full concert at Big Barn in Putney, Vermont, and for the better part of Sunday, A Far Cry will be working with the 30 talented, aspiring high-school instrumentalists and composers from across the country in workshops. Topics of exploration will likely include communication and collaboration, starting your own chamber ensemble, and how to rehearse a 16-piece, conductorless chamber orchestra without losing your mind! We hope also to have a chance to perform side-by-side with some of the musicians in the Program. Additionally, we will be exploring sketches of works by some of the young composers in residency. Around this same time (mid-to-late June) we are in the process of organizing a couple of other concerts in the Vermont area. Hopefully we will have the opportunity to return to our fabulously supportive Montpelier audience! Join our mailing list to stay informed!

Concert Feedback

Thanks to everyone - criers, guests, volunteers, venues, recording engineers, mentors, teachers, sox, and especially audience - for making our Cambridge and Brookline concerts of the last two days such wonderful events. We hope that our music uplifted the spirits and stirred the passions. If you were at the concerts, we would LOVE to hear from you - any thoughts at all about any aspect of the evenings! Simply click "leave a comment" below.

A Far Cry on YouTube!

A Far Cry is invading YouTube! There are five videos online (so far). The sound quality isn't great on any of them, but we still think they're fun to watch! A Far Cry on YouTube

Announcing Guest Soloist Fenwick Smith

A Far Cry is delighted to announce that Fenwick Smith, a force in the Boston musical scene for the past 30+ years, has agreed to join the Criers in the G Major Flute Concerto by Quantz for our October 29th and 30th concerts!

Fenwick's impressive biography includes years of service with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Chamber Music Society, and New England Conservatory, as the distinguished chair of the woodwinds department. Visit fenwicksmith.com

Thank-you, Vermont!!

A Far Cry had an AMAZING weekend tour in Vermont last week. We arrived in five different cars at six different homes(Montpelier/Berlin) Thursday night. Some of us had engagements in Boston until the evening, so we didn't in until very late, but ALL of our hosts were so nice. On Friday morning, we met up with Karen Kevra at Vermont Public Radio, outside of Burlington and had a live spot on what is probably one of the most popular public radio stations in the country! We were a little nervous, mostly for the interview part, but it all went just fine. We had a great lunch hour on Church Street in Burlington and then piled in the cars to head to Middlebury. We arrived at the college and entered one of the most beautiful halls! After a quick photo shoot and dress rehearsal, we had dinner and then a concert. The audience there was great and we were particularly impressed and thankful to the people who stuck around afterwards to talk to us. We decided we should encourage that more during all of our concerts - we like to get to know our audience!

Saturday, we were treated to a lunch at the New England Culinary Institute's cafeteria and relaxed for the rest of the afternoon, most of us in the quiet luxury of Mr. and Mrs. Iron's house. In the evening, we had one of the most exciting concerts I've ever played and that was mostly because of the energy coming from the audience. There was something that night about the way we could communicate with the people sitting in there. It was joyfully packed, and although it was almost unbearably warm in there (how many of us saw the sweat dripping from Andrew's violin?!), there was a spirit like no other. That evening, we were treated to a nice reception, again by the Iron's, and returned home Sunday, tired and blissfully happy from the weekend. I had a special treat - my host took me on a hike, right in Montpelier, just before I left. Thank you, Leslie!

If any one is reading this who attended these concerts or other concerts of ours, even in Boston, we'd love to hear your comments! We encourage you to leave comments on this blog, or write to us!

On behalf of the Criers, thank you, thank you, everyone in Vermont! This will be our home away from home, for sure.

Sincerely,

Margaret

Middlebury College Concert

We've managed to line up another appearance in Vermont! Thanks to the generous sponsorship of the Middlebury College Music Department, we will be able to present our first concert program at the Middlebury College Art Center Concert Hall on Friday September 21 at 8pm. The hall looks absolutely beautiful, and the word on the street is that the acoustic is spectacular as well. Check it out - we're on their calendar!