Here’s something to put in your calendar. Our friends at the Metropolis Ensemble, led by Artistic Director Andrew Cyr, have a fabulous program called “There and Back Again” lined up for May 24 at the Angel Orensanz Foundation Center for the Arts, highlighted by the U.S. Premiere of Avner Dorman’s Mandolin Concerto. Mandolin virtuoso Avi Avital (for whom the work was written) and the Metropolis Ensemble Strings will do the honors.
“The concerto’s main conflicts are between sound and silence and between motion and stasis,’ Dorman says. “One of the things that inspired me to deal with these opposites is the Mandolin’s most basic technique – the tremolo, which is the rapid repetition of notes. The tremolo embodies both motion and stasis. The rapid movement provides momentum, while the pitches stay the same.”
Dorman says the piece draws from the mandolin’s vast repertoire, including Baroque, Russian folk music, Bluegrass, Indian music, Brazilian jazz and Avant-Garde.
“When Avi approached me to write a concerto for him, my acquaintance with the mandolin was fairly limited,” he says. “I had used it in chamber pieces only twice before, and did not know most of the repertoire for the instrument. As I got to know the instrument better, I discovered its diverse sonic and expressive possibilities.”
Also featured will be Osvaldo Golijov’s The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind for string quartet and clarinets, with clarinet soloist Tibi Cziger in collaboration with the Metropolis Ensemble Chamber Players, Arnaud Sussmann and Lily Francis, violins, Eric Nowlin, viola, Michal Korman, cello. The program will round out with Shostakovich’s masterpiece Chamber Symphony op. 110a and Bartók’s Rumanian Folk Dances.
That’s Thursday, May 24, 2007 (7:30pm) at the Angel Orensanz Foundation Center for the Arts, (172 Norfolk St, between Houston and Delancey).
Why a String Quartet? What is it that has given it its exalted reputation and mystique? Why have so many composers regarded it as the perfect medium of expression, though it is perhaps the most demanding to write for? And why do distinguished artists often prefer to work as a team in a first class quartet rather than make bigger money as, say, orchestral leaders? Music means different things to different people: but for those to who music is an intellectual art, a balanced and reasoned statement of ideas, an impassioned argument, an intense but disciplined expression of emotion – the string quartet is perhaps the most satisfying medium of all.
Sebastian Currier has won the 2007 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for “Static,” a six-movement piece for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano.
Props to our amigo Tom Steenland who has been producing great avant-garde recordings on his Starkland label from Boulder for many years now. It isn’t every day that a CD from a small label makes the New York Times but Phillip Bimstein’s 
Beth Anderson
Claus is another composer I ran into on Myspace, and we’ve been corresponding for a few months now. Gahrn began his musical studies as a classical guitarist; from 2001 he studied composition and electroacoustic music at the Academy of Music in Esbjerg, Denmark, earning his MA degree with distinction in 2006. That’s Claus on the right in the photo, with his own young ensemble (including his pianist wife Malwina). There are links above that will take you both to Claus’ personal site, as well as that of the ensemble itself. Under “Media” at either, you’ll find excellent MP3 recordings and performances of Gahrn’s often-introspective yet just-as-often-edgy work.
It’s a monster week for our gaucho amigo