Myra Presents: Sunday Concerts in the Galleries 2018-2019 Season

Sarah Cahill
(pianist)
October 14, 2018 | 1 pm, North Dakota Museum of Art
October 15, 2018 | 7:30 pm, Mayville State University
 

Sarah Cahill will present an immersive piano performance installation titled The Future is Female and involves five hours of music by women composers from all around the globe, all performed by Cahill. She describes it as a “ritual installation” featuring more than forty compositions by women ranging from the 15^th century to the present day, including newly commissioned works by Cahill. The long duration of The Future is Female allows for the audience to come and go, walk around the space, sit and listen for any length of time. It is a marathon performance ritual. Composers include Elizabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Maria de Alvear, Galina Ustvolskaya, Aida Shirazi, Florence Price, Dobromila Jaskot, Hannah Kendall, Meredith Monk, Louise Farrenc, Deirdre Gribbin, Pauline Oliveros, and many others.

The Walter Piehl Retrospective exhibition will also open Sunday, October 14 at 2pm. A private donor will underwrite Sarah Cahill's honorarium so all guests will be invited without charge to the Museum that October 14th afternoon. Donations are welcome to fund her expenses.

For more information about Sarah Cahill click here.

Tapestry
(Ensemble)
November  4, 2018 | 2 pm, North Dakota Museum of Art
November 5, 2018 | 7:30 pm, Mayville State University

Cristi Catt, Soprano
Laurie Monahan, Mezzo
Daniela Tosic, Alto

With Guests:
James Falzone, Clarinet
Shira Kammen, Vielle
Arsentiy Kharitonov, Piano

Program Lessons of Darkness: Armistice Day 1918

Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, found people throughout the world singing and dancing in the streets, once again hoping for a peaceful world. In turns celebratory and solemn, this program commemorates the 100^th anniversary of this landmark day in history. 

Tapestry presents works of composers affected by the World War including:

• Ralph Vaughan Williams who abandoned his composing career to enlist as a private in the Royal Army Medical Corp with his Cantata Dona Nobis Pacem,

• Sergei Rachmaninoff who was forced to flee Russia in 1917,

• Claude Debussy whose Noël des infants qui n'on plus de maison lashes out at a world at war,

• Maurice Ravel who hoped to serve as a pilot but drove an ambulance and ultimately found a way to express his reaction to the war in his Le Tombeau de Couperin paired with

• Baroque composer Francois Couperin's Leçons de Ténèbres, which harkens back to ancient wars and the siege of Jerusalem,

• Songs by Stephen Foster (American Civil War) and

• Simon and Garfunkel (Vietnam).

• Ivor Novello’s Keep the Home Fires Burning (Till the Boys Come Home). He was born in Cardiff, Wales and was only twenty-one when in 1914 he wrote Keep the Home Fires Burning, which touched all families at the outbreak of war with its hopeful message. The words of the song are by the American Lena Gilbert Ford, who was divorced and living with her son in London. Both were killed by a German air raid on London in March 1918.

• Gustav Holst with I Vow to Thee My Country. Holst always denied that Mars, the Bringer of War in his orchestral work The Planets (1914-16), was a direct response to the onset of war. A later movement, Jupiter – the Bringer of Jollity, confirmed the work’s identity with the First World War as its melody became the hymn I Vow to Thee, My Country. The words, written by diplomat Cecil Spring Rice, were reworked in 1918 to reflect British losses: The love that never falters, the love that pays the price / The love that makes undaunted, the final sacrifice. This was performed at Winston Churchill's funeral.

For more information click here.

 

Poulenc Trio
(Oboe, Bassoon, Piano)
February 10, 2019 | 2 pm, North Dakota Museum of Art
February 11, 2019 | 7:30 pm, Mayville State University

Underwritten by Dr. Kevin and Amy Muiderman

James Austin Smith, Oboe
Bryan Young, Bassoon
Irina Kaplan, Piano

Bassoon Trio: Three of a Kind is a new work by contemporary composer Michael Wittgraf, who holds the title of Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor at the University of North Dakota. The bassoonist for the Poulenc Trio, Bryan Young will join fellow bassoonists Mr. Wittgraf and Dr. Cody Hunter, Assistant Professor of Music at North Dakota’s Mayville State University. Mr Hunter has also taught music theory at the University of Memphis and applied bassoon at Arkansas’s Harding University. The next evening the concert will be repeated at Mayville State University.

Bassoonist Cory Hunter, after learning the new work writes: 

As far as bassoon trios go, this piece is absolutely one of a kind. Not only are quarter tone fingerings employed in all parts, but Dr. Wittgraff does a fantastic job at exploring the full range of the instrument and its many colors and characteristics. The piece weaves together lyrical sections with very exciting, rhythmic sections.

In addition to this, Dr. Wittgraff takes advantage of the bassoon’s ability to have a wide palate of articulations within all sections of the tune. Finally, the ending is a rip-roaring combination of thematic material that ends with a B-flat major chord.

This is a great addition to the repertoire—original, challenging, and a great way to showcase the bassoon.

The Bassoon Trio is funded in part by Julie Blehm Amy and Kevin Muiderman and the estate of the late artist Lois Johnson.  The concert is funded by the Myra Foundation, the North Dakota Council on the Arts, and numerous individuals.

Myra Presents: The Poulenc Trio

James Austin Smith, Oboe    Bryan Young, Bassoon    Irina Kaplan Lande, Piano

The Poulenc will perform Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), Piano Trio, Op. 38. 

Tom Benjamin (b.1940) Three Études 

Michael Wittgraf (b.1962) Bassoon Trio: Three of a Kind

Duke Ellington (1899-1974) In a Sentimental Mood songs: The Mooch, Black, and Tan Fantasy 

André Previn (b.1929) Trio for Oboe, Bassoon, and Piano 

The Poulenc Trio is the most active touring piano-wind chamber music ensemble in the world. Since its founding in 2003, the trio has performed in 45 U.S. states and at music festivals around the world, including the Ravello Festival in Italy, the San Miguel de Allende Festival in Mexico, and the White Nights Festival in Russia.

In a recent review, the New York Times praised the trio for its “elegant rendition” of Piazzolla’s Tangos. The Washington Post said the trio “does its namesake proud” in “an intriguing and beautifully played program” with “convincing elegance, near effortless lightness and grace.” A recent performance in Florida – for which the Palm Beach Post praised the group’s “polished loveliness” and the Palm Beach Daily News said the “potent combination” of oboe, bassoon and piano had “captured the magic of chamber music” — was rebroadcast on American Public Media’s nationally syndicated radio program, Performance Today. The trio has garnered positive attention in recent full-length profiles by Chamber Music magazine, and by the Double Reed Journal. The group has been called “virtuosos of classical and contemporary chamber music” in one profile for Russian television.

For more information click here.
 

Saint Louis Brass
(brass)
March 24, 2019 | 2 pm, North Dakota Museum of Art
March 25, 2019 | 7:30 pm, Mayville State University

Allan Dean, Trumpet
Miki Sasaki, Trumpet   
Victoria Knudtson, Horn
Melvyn Jernigan, Trombone
Daniel Perantoni, Tuba

Founded in 1964, the Saint Louis Brass Quintet is one of America’s longest standing brass quintets. Members of the St. Louis Symphony originally formed the Saint Louis Brass by to play children’s concerts around the St. Louis area. Soon though, they had expanded to present full-length concerts funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Missouri Arts Council and the Mid-America Arts Alliance. Now, forty years and more than 2,500 engagements later, the only original member still in the group — and the only one who actually lives in St. Louis — is trombonist Melvyn Jernigan, who retired from the St. Louis Symphony after thirty-five years. The other quintet members hold top positions across the United States: Professors at Yale, University of Texas, Austin and Indiana University.

The Saint Louis Brass Quintet performs the entire spectrum of great music for brass – from the works of today’s composers to Baroque and Renaissance music transcribed for modern instruments. Light-hearted entertainment intertwines with serious classical music. The program has not yet been formalized.

For more information click here.

Rolston String Quartet
(violins, viola, and cello)
April 7, 2019 | 2 pm, North Dakota Museum of Art
April 8, 2019 | 7:30 pm, Mayville State University

In 2016, the Rolston String Quartet took First Prize at the prestigious Banff International String Quartet Competition. Their place was secured on the international stage when Chamber Music America (CMA), the national network for ensemble music professionals, awarded the Rolston String Quartet the Cleveland Quartet Award for the 2018–19 and 2019–20 seasons. Prior Cleveland Awards have gone to the Brentano, Borromeo, Pacifica, Jupiter, and Dover Quartets, all of which have performed in the North Dakota Museum of Art’s Concert series, several more than once.

The Rolston String Quartet was named among the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s 2016 “30 Hot Canadian Classical Musicians Under 30.” A winner of Astral’s 2016 National Auditions, the quartet was also the Grand Prize winner of the 31st Chamber Music Yellow Springs Competition, as well as prizewinners at the inaugural M-Prize competition (2016) and the 2016 Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition.

In the 2016-17 season, they embarked upon the Banff Competition’s winner’s tour, which took them throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Israel. Having recently completed a residency at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, the group currently serves as the Yale School of Music’s fellowship quartet-in-residence.

The Rolston is based in Toronto and includes Luri Lee (violin), Jeffrey Dyrda (violin), Hezekiah Leung (viola), and Jonathan Lo (cello). Recent graduates of Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, Eastman School of Music, Peabody Conservatory, and the Glenn Gould School, they formed in 2013 at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity’s Chamber Music Residency.

According to the Toronto Star, They already belong to a generation of string players performing at a level difficult to imagine in generations past.

Twenty-five percent of the fee to bring the Rolston Quartet to the North Dakota Museum of Art and Mayville State University is funded by the Art Midwest Touring Fund.

For more information click here.