By Dennis D. Rooney Founded in 2013, the Telegraph Quartet hails from the West Coast, specifically San Francisco, where they been appointed artists-in-residence at The San Francisco Conservatory of Music. They have often appeared nationally and internationally, and performed last year in the Flagler Museum music series. Their prizes include the Fischoff Competition. In 2016, … [Read more...]
Amernet Quartet provides engaging opening to Chameleon season
By Robert Croan Martin Luther King was the focus of the first concert by Chameleon Musicians in the group’s inaugural season at the Broward Center – a totally engaging performance Jan. 14, by the Amernet String Quartet and Chameleon’s founder-director, cellist Iris van Eck. The series’ new venue is the Center’s Abdo River Room – a sleek, modern space, if not quite as … [Read more...]
At Mizner Park, Sunshine Music Fest cooks, Big Easy-style
With a lineup that included two bona fide New Orleans acts, plus several others steeped in Crescent City musical history, the sixth annual Sunshine Music Festival stop at Mizner Park Ampitheater in Boca Raton on Jan. 14 was expected to be more funky than its previous installments of blues, rock, and roots music performers. Yet what couldn’t have been expected was how easy … [Read more...]
Sister pianists dazzle in Four Arts concert
The piano has as one of its many benefits the ability to be orchestral, if not in color, at least in contrapuntal density and mass. Small wonder that in the days before recordings made actual orchestral performances available to people far from the concert hall, enthusiasts heard the symphonic works of their day by playing them at home in four-hand arrangements at one piano. … [Read more...]
Stellar Bartók stands out at Tesla Quartet’s Flagler appearance
By Dennis D. Rooney The procession of string quartets to South County concert venues continued last Tuesday with a concert by the Tesla String Quartet. They chose a classic program: Bartók’s Third Quartet of 1927 was flanked by early and middle period quartets of Beethoven. Founded at New York’s Juilliard School in 2008, the Teslas quickly began to attract awards, … [Read more...]
Philadelphia Orchestra’s Kim returns for genial Symphonia program
David Kim came back to Boca Raton on Sunday, and he got the kind of warm reception and enthusiasm people give long-absent friends when they finally get to see them after many moons have passed. Kim brought his violin and avuncular professionalism to center stage as soloist and conductor with the Symphonia Boca Raton for a program of 19th- and 20th-century Romanticism that … [Read more...]
Calidore Quartet outstanding in Shostakovich, Beethoven at Four Arts
By Dennis D. Rooney Founded in 2010 at Los Angeles’s Colburn Conservatory of Music, the Calidore String Quartet’s name is a pastiche of “Cali(fornia)” and “doré,” French for “golden.” Now based in New York, it has garnered a brace of prestigious awards and recently completed a residency with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center II. The group’s concert Sunday at … [Read more...]
Escher Quartet brings brilliant Mozart to Breakers
By Dennis D. Rooney The new year brings an abundance of string quartets to Palm Beach County. Last week brought the Escher String Quartet. Founded in 2005, they have become regular visitors. Their most recent appearance was Thursday at The Gold Room in the Breakers, sponsored by the Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach, where they played an all-Mozart program. The members … [Read more...]
Trumpet competition at Lynn honors legacy of Roger Voisin
Every branch of music has its deities, and for classical trumpet players, one of the members of the pantheon was the Franco-American trumpeter, educator and conductor Roger Voisin. Voisin, who died in 2008 at 89, was born in France and moved to the U.S. as a boy when his father René joined the trumpet section of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1928. His son became the … [Read more...]
PB Symphony inaugurates chamber music series with program of overlooked American master
Even if you’re a devotee of classical music, you might never have heard of William Grant Still. It was different in Still’s own day. Music historians have long called Still (1895-1978) the dean of African-American classical composers, and that came out of his prominence, which began in the 1920s when he made his initial name as an arranger for leading bands in the new … [Read more...]