Seattle Times
The Olympic Music Festival opens its 26th season of “Concerts in the Barn” in Quilcene next Saturday. The event promises the chance to listen to great chamber music while feeding donkeys carrots. Performed Saturday and Sunday afternoons, the programs this year cover a wide range of classical repertoire along with one 20th-century masterpiece, Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor. The event opens on June 27th-28th .
Seattle Times
“Baroque Northwest is one of Seattle’s best-kept musical secrets,” says August Denhard, who plays lute and baroque guitar for the early-music ensemble. Founded at Indiana University in 1993, the group landed in Seattle a decade ago. Through creative programming (such as last September’s “Louis Louis: Music from the Courts of Louis XIV and Louis XV”) and instrumental mastery, it has gained a loyal following.
Seattle Times:
The beautiful domed space at Fifth Avenue and Marion Street that was once fated for demolition because of building-repair costs threatening its ability to minister to the homeless is now a sanctuary of a different sort to downtown workers: 45 minutes of classical music programmed by local organist Mark Andersen. The atmosphere is informal: You can eat your lunch while you listen, and come and go as you please. One significant change in the sanctuary’s design was to open up the view of the organ so you can see the feet at work. The stained-glass windows will soon be illuminated with electric light 24/7, after the new next-door skyscraper blocks what little sun streams through them now.
The Seattle Times:
Big, vital and almost ferociously listenable, Vladimir Martynov’s “Night in Galicia” (1996) is the opening-night highlight of “Silk Road Modern!” — a pair of concerts being presented by Joshua Roman’s TownMusic Series. But it’s in good company with the other pieces on the bill, including “Ulari Udila” by Vladimir Nikolayev and “Voices of a Frozen Land” by Alexander Raskatov. The titles alone suggest the tribal-chant energy that informs all three works on this invigorating program. The Seattle Chamber Players, an adventurous local ensemble, is bringing the pieces to town with the help of members of Russia’s Opus Posth, featuring violinist Tatiana Grindenko, and the Dmitri Prokrovsky Ensemble, a choral group formed in 1973 that specializes in traditional Russian song and contemporary “avant-folk” work.
The Stranger:
On Thursday at 5th Avenue and Marion Street, audiences enjoyed the christening event for Daniels Recital Hall. The event featured Mark Andersen, performing “classic and sacred music.” In addition, Kelle Brown sung a repertoire written by Andersen, Lynn Andersen played an arrangement by Mark Andersen on handbells, and Genevieve Picard performed Andersen’s work on a harp. The undertones, however, are about the 98-year-old building’s future. Formerly the First United Methodist Church, it was preserved as part of a deal that allows developer Kevin Daniels to build a 41-story tower on Fifth Avenue and Columbia Street. He’s trying to figure out how to use the space and wants to recognize it’s roots as a church. “It’s the acoustics of that place and the organ that drives it to be a performance-type hall,” he says. “I want to try something that can sustain into the future. I want to see if there’s a niche here.”
