Bringing a “mellifluous blend of vigorous intensity and dramatic import, performed with enthusiasm, technical facility and impressive balance,” the 13-strong Manhattan Chamber Players make their Close Encounters With Music debut this season.
The Avalon String Quartet, in a Berkshires premiere, perform “For Such a Time as This,” a retelling of the biblical Esther story from a feminist perspective. In this work, composer Stacy Garrop reminds us “we each possess agency to make changes happen in our lives, to act upon injustices, and leave the world a better place.” Mezzo-soprano Julia Bentley narrated this piece.
To paraphrase Walt Whitman, only the darkness of the night reveals all the stars—in the Heavens and on stage! Max Levinson, piano; John Viscardi, baritone; Kobi Malkin and Grace Park, violin; Luke Fleming, viola; Lizzie Burns, double bass; Yehuda Hanani, cello. Presented on Sunday, December 3 at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
Close Encounters With Music's 32nd season launches with "Virtue and Virtuosity" at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, with selections from Kapustin, Paganini, Ysaÿe, Saint-Saëns and Brahms.
Yehuda Hanani casts his gaze back over the turbulent era of the 1920’s finding that the restless urgency to break taboos and overcome or demolish barriers was part of a larger cultural upheaval, the product of irresistible and inevitable forces.
