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Contact: Gabriel Langfur
info@chameleonarts.org
617-427-8200
Chameleon Arts Ensemble announces 2010-2011 chamber music season
August 1, 2010 – Boston, MA – The Chameleon Arts Ensemble is pleased to announce its 2010-2011 season of chamber music concerts at the Goethe-Institut Boston, 170 Beacon Street in the Back Bay, one of the most beautiful and intimate music rooms in the city. All five of the diverse, engaging programs will be performed on Saturday evening at 8 PM and Sunday afternoon at 3 PM, beginning on October 16th and 17th and continuing with concerts on November 6th and 7th, February 12th and 13h, March 26th and 27th, and May 21st and 22nd.
Since its founding in 1998, Chameleon and artistic director Deborah Boldin have earned unqualified praise for integrating old and new repertoire into unexpected chamber music programs that are themselves works of art. They were recognized nationally with 2009 and 2007 ASCAP/CMA Awards for Adventurous Programming. The Boston Globe praised Ms. Boldin’s “carefully curated blending of classic and contemporary repertoire,” and her “discerning ears and cosmopolitan tastes,” and remarked, “Boldin is continually looking for big but little-known works – new, recent, and old – and putting them together in intriguing, organic combinations. The cross-references are not just intellectual; you can feel them in your body.”
This innovative ensemble now draws capacity audiences of those who love the adventure of music—classic and contemporary. A Chameleon concert is a multifaceted experience in an intimate environment joining audience and musicians in an exuberant celebration of music. The musicians are among Boston’s most highly-respected and sought-after performers, with growing national and international reputations. Their superb artistry and finely honed collaborative skills ensure luminous performances and dynamic musical dialogues. The 2010-2011 season will again offer Chameleon’s inimitable mix of the witty and the sublime, the adventurous and the beloved, with favorites by Beethoven, Bartók, Mozart and Schumann, as well as marvelous yet less familiar works by György Kurtág, Nikolai Roslavets, Zhou Long, Kaija Saariaho, and others.
The season opens with we are the dreamers of dreams, on Saturday, October 16 at 8 PM and Sunday October 17 at 3 PM. The program celebrates the work of those truly visionary artists who break new ground and compel the world to hear music in new and invigorating ways, including Beethoven (C Major cello sonata), whose epic works ushered the Romantic spirit into the concert hall; Bartók (second violin sonata), who created entirely new and timeless beauty by digging deeper for the roots of his national music than anyone before him; Joan Tower (A Gift for flute, clarinet, bassoon, horn & piano), one of the first women composers to achieve international success; the great American revolutionary Charles Ives (his marvelous Piano Trio); and Nikolai Roslavets, a Russian who developed a serial method of composition entirely independent of Schoenberg. Of course, Soviet oppression prevented his music from being heard for many years, and Chameleon will present a rare Boston performance of his first viola sonata.
On Saturday, November 6 at 8 PM and Sunday November 7 at 3 PM, Chameleon will present a program entitled that the time should linger. Chinese-America composer Zhou Long’s Su (Tracing Back) for flute & harp and Lukas Foss’ now-classic masterpiece Time Cycle for soprano, clarinet, cello, piano & percussion both explore concepts of time and our perception of it. Chameleon welcomes soprano Elizabeth Keusch, praised by Allan Kozinn of The New York Times for her “vocal power” and “dramatic flexibility,” as guest for the Time Cycle. Also on the program are reflective, autumnal works by two master composers: the D Major Oboe Sonata of Camille Saint-Saëns, written in the last year of his life, and Brahms’ immortal Clarinet Quintet, composed in 1891 for the remarkable virtuoso Richard Mühlfeld. Brahms was beginning to consider himself retired from composition, but a chance meeting with Mühlfeld inspired him to showcase the remarkable expressive range of the clarinet in several more chamber music masterpieces.
February’s program, on Saturday the 12th at 8 PM and Sunday the 13th at 3 PM, is titled with every brilliant hue. The works on the concerts generate amazing instrumental colors in a variety of ways: by unusual combinations of instruments, as in Mozart’s wonderful “Kegelstatt” Trio for clarinet, viola & piano and Steven Stucky’s Ad Parnassum for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano & percussion, a musical response to Paul Klee’s famous painting of the same name; by sheer inventiveness, as in Milhaud’s Four Visages for viola & piano and Ravel’s lush Piano Trio; and by drawing on spectral analysis of sound and how it can be applied to compositional technique, as in Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s New Gates for flute, viola & harp. In the melting pot of art and science that is the IRCAM studios in Paris, Saariaho developed a unique musical idiom that is as sensual, descriptive and lyrical as it is intellectually rigorous.
The remarkable and thoroughly unique Hungarian composer György Kurtág serves as the central figure of upon the wind your music floats, to be performed on Saturday March 26, 8 PM, and Sunday March 27, 3 PM. Kurtág’s particular sensibility of vivid, expressionistic, seemingly fragile miniatures is beautifully represented in Scenes from a Novel for soprano, violin, double bass & cimbalom. Elizabeth Keusch will again be the guest soprano. Kurtág describes the music of Béla Bartók as his “mother tongue,” and connects to the Austrian/Hungarian tradition through him. The program includes Bartók’s Rhapsody No. 1 for cello & piano, as well as Schubert’s Der Hirt auf dem Felsen for soprano, clarinet & piano and Robert Schumann’s E-flat Major Piano Quartet. Also on the concerts are his Kurtag’s good friend György Ligeti’s Six Bagatelles for wind quintet.
The season comes to a close with from wild spring air, on Saturday, May 21, 8 PM and Sunday, May 22, 3 PM. Acclaimed pianist, Sergey Schepkin, described in The Boston Globe as “an artist of uncommon, almost singular capability and integrity,” will join Chameleon’s musicians as a guest for Ernest Bloch’s Piano Quintet No. 1. This marvelous work, deserving of much more recognition, was composed in 1923 during his tenure as founding music director of the Cleveland Institute of Music and described in The New York Times as “the greatest work in its form since the piano quintets of Brahms and César Frank.” Also on the program are Beethoven’s a minor violin
sonata, Op. 23, Samuel Barber’s Summer Music for wind quintet, and American composer Derek Bermel’s Tied Shifts for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano & percussion. Bermel’s eclectic style, drawing on jazz, rock, ethnic and classical traditions, is on full display here; the melodic material is generated both from hymns and from the ornaments and inflections found in Bulgarian folk music.
The May concerts will also serve as a benefit for the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership. Audience members who bring any new or gently used children’s or adult books for the library at the MBHP’s office will receive 25% off the price of any Chameleon concert ticket. The MBHP serves homeless, elderly, disabled, and low-income working individuals and families in Boston and 29 surrounding communities, ensuring that they have decent, affordable homes and choice and mobility in their housing. MBHP averages about 500 visitors a week to the agency. The library is a unique resource where their patrons can borrow, swap, or simply keep books they find there. It uplifts the spirits of clients in the waiting area and entertains the children who come in with their parents.
For tickets or more information, concertgoers can call 617-427-8200 or visit www.chameleonarts.org. Subscription prices range from $54 to $160, and individual tickets are $40, $30 and $20. $5 discounts for students and seniors are available for individual tickets. Goethe-Institut is a wheelchair accessible venue.
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