Author: Oren

Coming to the Met Museum in February:

Guitar Heroes: Legendary Craftsmen from Italy to New York
February 9, 2011–July 4, 2011
Robert Lehman Wing, court level

The exhibition will feature the guitars and other stringed instruments made by John D’Angelico, James D’Aquisto, and John Monteleone, three New York master luthiers of Italian descent. Their instruments will be presented against the backdrop of the long tradition of Italian stringed instrument-making that has thrived for more than five hundred years. The exhibition will include approximately eighty musical instruments, including many masterpieces from the Museum’s permanent collection, as well as instruments on loan from museums, private collectors, and performers. 

sequenza21.com as reviewed by Christian Carey:

Harold Meltzer

Brion / Sindbad / Exiles (Cygnus Ensemble, Peabody Trio, Sequitur, Shirley-Quirk, Baker, Hostetter)

Naxos CD 8.559660

After having a couple of pieces featured on compilation recordings that appeared on the Albany imprint (including the memorable work Virginal for Sequitur), composer Harold Meltzer’s first solo disc is on Naxos. Meltzer’s music combines an incisive sense of rhythm – he’s particularly thoughtful in setting the rhythms of speech – with a varied pitch palette that combines judicious but punctilious use of dissonance with lush, often haunting, moments of repose.

The Cygnus Ensemble makes a palpable delineation between these two musical approaches on their sharply etched recording of Brion (2008). This piece was a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in Music, and one can hear why. It’s fastidious in its craftsmanship, yet abundantly imaginative. Centering around a bird call-based ritornello refrain, which easily moves between foreground and background presentation, its intricate design is just the type of work that’s tailor made for Cygnus’ modernist performance specialists. And Brion isn’t sparing in its technical demands either. Guitar flurries are matched by virtuosic flute passages in several bustling duos. But the ritornello supplants this with an eerily pastoral music suffused with chirping birds and, at the piece’s close, an intriguing, if somewhat uneasy, sense of harmonic closure.

On “Two Songs from Silas Marner,” soprano Elizabeth Farnum negotiates the high tessitura with grace, bringing delicate shading of dynamics to her characteristic pitch-perfect accuracy.

Both sprechstimme and monodrama have, not entirely unfairly, gotten a reputation for sounding carbon-dated at best and often mawkish when not well-deployed. While Sindbad may not entirely allay these misgivings, Meltzer’s aforementioned talent for word-setting and a passionate performance by baritone (here as speaker) John Shirley-Quirk make a case for this hybridized musical/dramatic form. It certainly helps that the speaker is accompanied by such colorful and multifaceted music.

Sequitur appears here too, accompanying baritone Richard Lalli in Exiles, a two-movement work featuring settings of Conrad Aiken and Hart Crane. Written in a kind of “bari-tenor” register (Exiles was originally composed for the tenor Paul Sperry), it could, in the hands of a lesser (or lower) baritone, seem a bit strained. But Lalli too negotiates the upper regions with a supple and, at times, surprisingly gentle approach. It well befits Exiles haunting lyricism and limber long-lined melodies.

All told, this disc is a very strong outing that begs for a sequel.

http://www.sequenza21.com/cdreviews/2010/11/harold-meltzer-on-naxos/

Oren will accompany the wonderful mezzo soprano Jessica Bowers, in a program of songs by Falla, Weill, Schubert and Carter, in a benefit concert for the New Amsterdam Singers.

The concert will be on Central Park West (at 94 St.)
Tickets are $20
For tickets & specific address please email the organizer at marcos.dinnerstein@gmail.com

Oren and Jessica recently sang Schubert songs in recital at the Old Westbury Gardens as part of Poetica Musica’s series there.

Here’s a pic:

Went to a wedding in Portland, ME last weekend, and couldn’t resist checking out the local guitar shop. Here’s a pic:

Yet another nice review for Harold Meltzer’s new disc, with my group Cygnus Ensemble playing “Brion”. It’s in the San Francisco Chronicle: HERE

The reviewer writes:

A very nice review of Harold Meltzer’s piece “Brion”, written for the my group the Cygnus Ensemble. Here’s the review, by Frank Oteri:  Click Here.

“Brion” was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in music composition.

Greetings! I hope everyone is having a relaxing summer. I wanted to tell you about some exciting projects that happened this summer, and some that will happen in the Fall.

New You Tube video! : Elliott Carter’s “Changes, for Solo Guitar”. Here’s the link.

I performed two Concertos recently; David Del Puerto’s “Zephyr”, for guitar and ensemble, with New Paths in Music , and Rodrigo’s “Concerto de Aranjuez” with the Manchester Music Festival Orchestra . Both were recorded professionally, and sound clips will be posted soon.

I also returned to Tanglewood , to play guitar and mandolin on two concerts at the Festival of Contemporary Music, Unsuk Chin’s “ Akrostichon – Wortspiel” for soprano and ensemble, and Mario Davidovsky’s “Festino”, for guitar, viola, cello and bass. The New York Times review said “Also on Sunday evening the guitarist Oren Fader presided over a lively account of Mario Davidovsky’s invitingly pointillistic “Festino” (1991)” Here’s a link to the full NY Times review.

Other highlights include a week-long Composers residency at the University of Oregon , Eugene , with the Fireworks Ensemble , and a duo performance with violinist Katie Lansdale in Carnegie’s Weill Hall in New York , and a full recital of Spanish and Latin American music in Northern New Hampshire (look for our Piazzolla “Histoire du Tango” on Youtube, soon to be posted).

I have articles and interviews in both Classical Guitar , and Guitar Review magazines this month. The Classical Guitar article is a profile of me, and how i make a living as a classical and new music guitarist in New York City, and the Guitar Review article is a remembrance of Thomas Humphrey, the great guitar luthier, on his recent passing.