RECOMMENDED

This Polish-born singer has various facets in her career. She seamlessly bridges the gap between avant-garde and classical music, and from what we’ve been able to hear she is equally comfortable in either style, whether singing in front of a symphony orchestra or a cacophony of sounds—Zubel’s YouTube clips show her belting out tunes like Gershwin’s “Summertime” and Chopin with the same enthusiasm that she does more contemporary material.

Also an awarded composer in her own right, Zubel premiered her 2nd Symphony during the Beethoven Festival in Bonn in 2005, and she has since been commissioned to do several other contemporary works. She has released various albums throughout her career, the latest being “Cascando,” a piece seemingly inspired by the tango of Astor Piazzolla, but being this modern music, don’t expect to feel the urge to dance to this. Zubel is also a music professor, and she holds a teaching position in her alma mater, Wroclaw University (Ernest Barteldes)

Zubel is half of Contempo’s Double Bill: European Connections, March 1 at Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 East Randolph, (312)334-7777; 7:30pm. $ 10-$25.

Boulez conducts CSO in Mahler's Seventh for PBS/Photo: Todd Rosenberg

By Dennis Polkow

“I knew when I received ‘the call’ that something was out of the ordinary,” admits Pierre Boulez, who was on sabbatical from conducting in order to compose back in October when Chicago Symphony Orchestra management interrupted him with an SOS to step in for an ailing Riccardo Muti. “The second sentence,” he laughs, “was something like, ‘We know that you are free.’ ”

The irony was that Boulez himself was having health issues. “I had eye surgery for glaucoma that was completely unforeseen. I asked my doctors, ‘Can it wait?’ ‘No,’ they said because it was a difficult repair and they are now very happy with how it all went. I am not entirely happy with my eyes, but it is early yet. The left eye has already improved. I see, but not clearly.”

“But I did accept,” says Boulez, “for the team here, which is wonderful. And for Muti, who was at the end of his strength and was very anxious to go home to his doctor. I was in the same case with an ophthalmologist here, so I could understand him very well, wanting to get back home to his own doctor.”

Did Muti himself ever contact Boulez at any point along the process? “He was initially so de-energized, but I did get two very nice messages from him later on thanking me.” Read the rest of this entry »

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Although many of us think of the holiday season as being in full swing now that Thanksgiving is behind us, there was a time when Christmas actually began on December 25 and extended to January 6, the full “Twelve Days of Christmas” known to us in song. The season itself would then extend to encompass a full forty days, ending on February 2.

As inconceivable as it would be to us today, the weeks prior to Christmas, or Advent, were actually an austere, penitent time when no music could be played. As such, Johann Sebastian Bach wanted the first sounds of Christmas itself to be particularly jubilant, blazing forth with trumpets, timpani and chorus festively welcoming the newborn Savior.

Eighteenth-century German Lutheran worship services were literally all-morning affairs. The Leipzig services that Bach musically oversaw included biblical readings, hymn singing, organ preludes and postludes, a long and dramatic sermon, and a musical cantata based on the lesson for that day for vocal soloists, orchestra and chorus that Bach himself composed and directed. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: João Wainer

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Ever since Carmen Miranda came to the US in the 1930s, Brazil seems to have had an incessant supply of young artists, going from the bossa invasion in the mid-sixties (Jobim, Joao Gilberto, Astrud Gilberto) to modern voices like Bebel Gilberto, Ceu and Marcio Local—to name a few.

Like Ceu, Luisa Maita hails from the industrial city of Sao Paulo, a metropolis that is home to more than twenty-million people that include both migrants from other parts of the country and also first-, second- and third-generation immigrants from all over the world. Such diversity—and a bustling nightlife—has clearly influenced the region’s pop music. Listening to Maita’s debut CD “Lero-Lero” (Cumbancha), you notice that she takes in that sonic blend to make it her own. Like Ceu, she is heavily influenced by samba, funk and rock. She does, however, seem to rely less on electronics, emerging with a more organic sound that throws back to a more nineties-inspired sound without sounding retro.

For instance, in the title track (which loosely translates as “bullshit”), percussion and electric guitar form a melodic base that is the perfect frame for her soprano, while “Alento” has more of an urban-acoustic feel. She might be well on her way to find an audience stateside, considering her talent and also the history of her many predecessors. (Ernest Barteldes)

November 13 at Logan Square Auditorium, 2539 North Kedzie, (773)252-6179, 8pm. $15.

RECOMMENDED

Dvorák is best known as an orchestral composer who wrote bright, Czech-influenced “Slavonic Dances,” symphonies, a memorable cello concerto and chamber music, but the Dvorák who wrote the large-scale choral work “Stabat Mater” represents a more introspective and meditative side of the composer, a man who lost three children within the first four years of his marriage. Turning to the famous medieval poem that portrays the grief of Mary at the foot of the cross of Jesus, Dvorák found setting the text with four soloists and a full chorus and orchestra an expression of his grief.

That work cemented Dvorák’s international reputation and a follow-up commission emerged from England to set a specific text for the same forces, Cardinal John Henry Newman’s “The Dream of Gerontius,” which Elgar would later set and which the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus performed last season. Dvorák rejected the text and preferred instead a setting of the Catholic Requiem Mass which afforded him the opportunity to offer a contemplative alternative to the bombastic settings of the same text by Berlioz and Verdi.

It is a work that is rarely performed and has a moving effect on both performers and audiences, despite its length of almost ninety minutes, and should provide an extraordinary showcase for the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra and Chorus along with soprano Layla Claire, mezzo-soprano Alexandra Petersamer, tenor Brendan Tuohy and bass Kyle Ketelsen and conductor Carlos Kalmar. (Dennis Polkow)

August 13, 6:30pm, August 14, 7:30pm, Millennium Park’s Pritzker Pavilion, (312)742-7638. Free.

RECOMMENDED

Because New Zealand soprano Kiri Te Kanawa was a protégée of legendary Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Sir Georg Solti, Chicago has heard this once-reigning diva at virtually every stage of her career. That included a gala “farewell” two years ago with the orchestra so long associated with her. As reported then, no one says it’s over until the diva says it’s over, and in this case, since Te Kanawa is still in superb voice, she is giving us something as an additional “farewell” that was a real rarity when she was in her prime: an intimate recital.

Among the highlights of Te Kanawa’s many performances here was the glorious Mahler Fourth that she performed and recorded here under Solti and the CSO, and no less than two performances of Desdemona in Verdi’s “Otello,” –one for Solti’s seventieth birthday gala in 1987 with Placido Domingo, another alongside for the first and only time that Luciano Pavarotti ever sang the role for Solti’s own “farewell” performances as CSO music director in 1991, where Te Kanawa sat onstage traumatized by the fact that Pavarotti was attempting to camouflage eating entire chickens onstage when he wasn’t singing and was tossing the chicken bones on the floor next to her. But hey, while Te Kanawa was rehearsing for the world premiere of “Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Oratorio” at Liverpool Cathedral, she freaked out the former Beatle when she began actually scolding tourists who were in her line of sight yards away, asking them to “move along” as if she owned the place. Late and mischievous tenor Jerry Hadley thought the whole thing was hysterical and was doing his best to keep a straight face. Ah yes, they don’t make divas like this anymore. Read the rest of this entry »

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Last week I received an email from a high-octane PR firm that primarily deals in rock and pop music with the subject line that “Renée Fleming to take on indie rock” at Ravinia. Hmm. Someone was confused, I thought, but then again, Sting showed up at Ravinia last week with the Royal Philharmonic, so anything is possible.

It turns out that yes, America’s reigning superstar operatic soprano has recorded an album called “Dark Hope” (Decca) which “finds her exploring a parallel universe via songs by Arcade Fire, Band of Horses, Leonard Cohen, Death Cab for Cutie, Jefferson Airplane, The Mars Volta, Muse and others; the album debuted on the Billboard Top 200,” as the release explained. But unless Fleming is planning to do any of these as an unlikely encore for her Ravinia appearance, we will have to settle for her doing one of her signature art pieces, Richard Strauss’ “Four Last Songs” with Christoph Eschenbach (spelled Eschenback in the pop release) and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, doing these polished gems from late in Strauss’ life about life, loss and the inevitability of death as no one else can. Can the same be said for her “parallel universe” exploration of pop music? I have yet to hear, but generally speaking, there are good reasons that trained voices stay away from this stuff: neither the material nor the voices benefit. Read the rest of this entry »

Sir Michael Tippett

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British composer Sir Michael Tippett used to be a regular visitor to Chicago back in the days when then-Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Sir Georg Solti would champion and perform his music and even managed to commission a piece from him, a 1991 CSO centennial work called “Byzantium” which the world-premiere forces even recorded.

Lyric Opera music director Sir Andrew Davis picked up the Tippett mantle since arriving here in 2000, spearheading the Chicago premiere of Tippett’s opera “The Midsummer Marriage,” a work ignored during Lyric’s longtime “Toward the 21st Century” initiative and which was given a 2005 premiere so long overdue that its composer, who died in 1998 at the age of 93, was no longer alive to experience it. The difficulties in mounting that production were so immense that Lyric lost its lead tenor and its director, none other than Sir Peter Hall, along the way. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, July 7, 2010 is Gustav Mahler’s 150th birthday anniversary, and in honor of the occasion, Ravinia Festival president and CEO Welz Kauffman and music director James Conlon shared details of three concerts that will be part of the 2011 summer residency of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

The particulars were shared initially with the musicians themselves this morning at the CSO’s rehearsal at the North Shore Festival before being released to the media later today.  Among the announcements:

• James Conlon will conclude his multi-year Mahler Cycle during the centennial anniversary summer of the composer’s death by conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in “Das klagende Lied” (“Song of Lamentation”), the first time this rarely heard Mahler masterpiece will be performed at Ravinia in more than twenty years.
• Conlon will also conduct the CSO in Puccini’s “Tosca,” starring soprano Patricia Racette in the title role with Italian tenor Salvatore Licitra as Cavaradossi and Welsh bass-baritone superstar Bryn Terfel making his long-awaited return to Chicago opera—his first appearance here in seven years—as Scarpia.
• Ravinia has commissioned twentysomething indie-rock and classical composer Nico Muhly to write a new multi-genre work specifically for the 5 Browns, a family of acclaimed twentysomething pianists who perform together with five pianos on stage.

Remaining details of these and other programs planned for the CSO’s 2011 summer residency at Ravinia will be released in coming months. (Dennis Polkow)

William Schuman

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Aristotle warns us to beware of seeking the “life of honor,” as the awards afforded us by others are a poor substitute for the best judge of anything we do, i.e., ourselves. It is true that those of us who depend on the accolades of others can be superficial and shallow creatures looking for outside attention as a substitute for a lack within, but then again, we could just be sore losers that we didn’t get an award ourselves.

In music, the award that everyone loves to hate is the Pulitzer Prize, an arbitrary barometer of classical music elitism since it was first awarded back in 1943. Infamous for its institutionalized Eurocentric and Caucasian patriarchal sensibilities for decades, the process itself became forever tainted when the Pulitzer music jury chose Duke Ellington for the Prize in 1965, only to have the Pulitzer board reject that decision and choose not to give an award at all that year. (Ellington would get a posthumous honorary Pulitzer nearly a quarter of a century later, for his centennial. Chicago composer Ralph Shapey would also be chosen for a Pulitzer by the jury in 1992, only to have the board reject that decision as well.) Slowly but surely, the awards have opened up a bit—there have even been a handful of female and African-American recipients—but still largely continue to be insular. Whatever the merit or relevance of a Pulitzer in music, it is hard not to be struck by the irrelevance of the vast majority of the scores that have actually been given the award virtually since its inception. Read the rest of this entry »