Congratulations to the String Sinfonia, directed by Elina Hakanen, who made Studio 3 Gallery resound to bustling lunchtime concert on Day Five; bristling Bach with soloists Lydia Cheng and Claudia Hill, lyrical Borodin, and closing with fiery, passionate Piazzolla.
Day Six tomorrow features the Cecilian Choir, Sinfonia and soloists in a Baroque extravaganza out at St Michael’s and All Angels, Harbledown.
The #EarBox series in which music speaks to visual art – and vice-versa – returns next week to Studio 3 Gallery on Weds 18 May with a short musical ‘happening,’ centred on Alvin Lucier’s otherworldly Unamuno, in which four semitones are articulated in a changing sequence; this focused pitch-collection, which is presented in twenty-four different patterns, creates an intense yet beautiful soundworld, which promises to be something remarkable, with singers spaced around the gallery’s sonorous acoustic
The short programme juxtaposes ancient and modern music, opening with twelfth-century plainsong and Cornysh’s meditation on love and fidelity, Ah Robin, and finishing with a dramatic re-telling of the Song of Roland, an epic poem written sometime between 1040 and 1115, based on the Battle of Roncevaux in 778, featuring Cory Adams on percussion. Staying with the Norwegian theme, Lillebjørn Nilsen’s haunting, lilting contemporary piece, Danse, ikke gråte nå (Dance, do not cry now), has echoes of old folk-song, with drone harmonies beneath a skirling melody.
The backdrop to the event will be a new exhibition of works by Philip Hughes devoted to the strange landscape of Dungeness, including paintings, prints and photographs, as well as a special garden installation made in collaboration with the ceramist, Psiche Hughes (more details here).
Admission to the event is free, and the performance will last twenty minutes. Join Minerva Voices to hear Lucier’s unique piece amidst the new exhibition in Studio 3 Gallery .
The second in this term’s #EarBox series in Studio 3 Gallery yesterday drew an audience to hear the Flute Choir performing amidst the gallery’s latest exhibition, After the Break.
The ensemble, together with cellist Faith Chan and Your Loyal Correspondent on harpsichord, presented a concert ranging from the Baroque through to an evocative arrangement of Sakura, sakura, the traditional Japanese folk-song celebrating the spring cherry-blossoms. An appreciative audience was held spell-bound as the piece unfurled in the resonant, dimly-lit gallery, winging its way amongst the paintings.
Thanks to Katie McGown, gallery co-ordinator, and the School of Arts; plans are afoot for a third #EarBox event next term – watch this very particular space…
The department’s newest ensemble, the Flute Choir, brings a programme of music to Studio 3 Gallery in the Jarman Building this Wednesday, as the #EarBox collaboration continues.
Bringing together visual art and live music, the #EarBox series event this Wednesday sees the gallery hosting the ensemble, complete with harpsichord and cello, in a programme including music by Bach, Handel, Telemann, Dvorak and a traditional Japanese folk-song, all set against the backdrop of the gallery’s current exhibition, After the Break. Anyone who attended last month’s concert in the series, given by Minerva Voices, will know what a wonderfully resonant and intimate space the gallery has, perfect for bringing art and music together.
The Flute Choir performed last week as part of the Magical Musical Miscellany lunchtime concert, and has been developing the programme for Wednesday throughout the term; Wednesday’s performance starts at 1.10pm, admission is free, more details here.
Congratulations to Minerva Voices on the choir’s performance this lunchtime in Studio 3 Gallery.
An appreciative audience (which continued to grow after the concert had started!) was treated to some well-crafted, nuanced performing and some genuinely spine-tingling moments.
Pictured here, in both rehearsal and performance, are the choir with assistant conductor, Joe Prescott, working amidst the gallery’s latest exhibition, After the Break.
If you missed them, then the choir will be back in action in two weeks time, on Friday 26 February, when it gives its annual performance in Canterbury Cathedral Crypt in a programme which includes Vivaldi’s bright and shining Gloria.
Bravo, team.
The latest exhibition in Studio 3 Gallery – After the Break; Grete Marks and Laure Provost looks anew at the work of two artists who were forced to become refugees, who had to flee Nazi Germany and begin their creative pursuits in a new land.
Fleeing the country and re-locating to England, the Bauhaus-trained Grete Marks had to sacrifice her successful pottery factory – all her pottery and paintings that were left behind were either lost or destroyed. Kurt Schwitters, a leading figure of the German avant-garde, fled to Norway prior to being interviewed by the Gestapo, eventually also travelling to England where, selling small paintings for small fees, he eventually died in obscurity in London in 1948.
The works on display in the gallery, predominantly pictures and some surviving pottery by Marks, include stark portraiture of friends made in England, as well as landscape views created in the Lake District and Spain. The images speak of loss, the post-emigration portraits looking out at the viewer with a sense of isolation. The floating colours of Two Boys from 1930 have a life and movement absent from stark portraits made after her arrival in England, whilst the landscapes seem to show a desire to engage with and to find a new home – they speak of new efforts to build a connection, a need to continue to create.
Amidst the mute testimony the exhibition provides, there is a particular poignancy about some of the music in the programme which Minerva Voices will perform at the #EarBox event next week. Gounod’s intimate motet, Da Pacem Domine, ‘Give peace, Lord,’ acquires a greater profundity in the context of the upheaval and terror implicit in the paintings. The medieval Kyrie setting, written by Hildegard von Bingen, sees two creative women looking at one another across the intervening centuries. There is also something especially moving about Brahms’ famous lullaby, Wiegenlied, which bids a moving, poignant farewell;’ Lullaby, good night…Tomorrow morning, if God wills, you will wake once again.’
The new exhibition reawakens the importance of Marks and Schwitters; come and experience the dialogue between art and music for yourself on Friday 12 February; admission free, more details here.
Jarman’s Studio 3 Gallery rang to the tempestuous world of love and loss at the opera at lunchtime today, as several of the Music Scholars presented a selection of operatic arias to an enthralled audience.
Against the backdrop of the current exhibition, Beautifully Obscene: a history of the Erotic Print, several of the singing Scholars brought characters including Delilah, Despina, Orpheus, Dido and Rusalka to life in a programme ranging from the poignancy of Mozart’s Porgi Amor (sung with authority by first-year Charlotte Webb) through an extremely coquettish Una donna a quindici anni from ‘Cosi fan tutte’ (delivered in mischievous fashion by third-year Kathie Kirschbaum), to the heady, epic emotions of Delilah’s Mon cour ouvre a ta voix in a storming rendition from third-year Olivia Potter.
Elsewhere, Gluck’s Orpheus lamented the passing of Euridice in the rich, warm voice of first-year Ruth Webster; Handel’s Bel Piacere had a joyous conviviality in the hands of third-year Philippa Hardimann; final-year Kathryn Cox soared to the heights with Rusalka’s Song to the Moon; there was a lyrical reading of Mozart’s Deh vieni by third-year Rowena Murrell; and second-year Charley Tench gave an affecting, intimate performance of Dido’s Lament.
Our thanks to Katie McGown and the team at Studio 3 for the invitation to continue the #EarBox series of collaborative events, of which there will be more. Meanwhile, the singers are back on Monday 8 June, the second day of our Summer Music Week, in Colyer-Fergusson Hall; find out more here.
Some of the University Music Scholars will be taking a trip to the Studio 3 Gallery in Jarman next week, as the #EarBox series returns on Wednesday 27 May.
Set amidst the backdrop of Studio 3’s current exhibition, ‘Beautifully Obscene,’ the musical programme presents some heady and expressive arias from several operatic heroines, including Delilah’s epic, aching aria ‘Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix‘ from Samson & Delilah by Saint-Saens, Eurydice’s lament for her lost love, Orpheus, from Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, the ‘Song for the Moon’ from Dvorak’s Rusalka, and pieces by Mozart and Purcell.
The programme starts at 1.10pm, admission is free. Please note that some of the works in this exhibition contain explicit content – and some of the music is pretty sensual too…
To get you in the mood, here’s the aria by Saint-Saens performed live.
