Composer

DSO violinist Heidi Han always wanted to play “Death and the Maiden.” Schubert’s Quartet is a monumental piece reflecting emotions of fate. George Crumb’s Black Angels, composed for electric string quartet and subtitled “Thirteen Images from the Dark Land,” is similarly driven. Like Schubert’s momentous opus, Crumb hears powerful music in the irresistible pull of destiny.

EPSG:4326

Schubert & Black Angels

Chandler Park

“My debut program highlights some of the most consequential composers in music history. Through groundbreaking works by Beethoven, Debussy and Crumb, I explore how the boundaries of music have been constantly pushed forward. This program celebrates these composers' visions of grandeur and the profound impact they had on the trajectory of classical music.” – Chaeyoung Park

Young Concert Artists: Chaeyoung Park, piano

Kaufman Music Center

One piano, two pianos, four hands duets, eight hands quartets — this concert has it all. FWSO music director Robert Spano and his long-time collaborator Pedja Mužijević, pianist Shields-Collins (“Buddy”) Bray, President and CEO Keith Cerny, rush the stage for more than a dozen high-energy works for multiple pianists by composers ranging from Bach to John Cage and Schumann to George Crumb, with favorites like Saint-Saens Danse Macabre for two pianos, eight hands and Crumb’s “Celestial Mechanics” anchoring the program.

Piano Stampede!

Kimbell Art Museum

Immerse yourself in the cool, blue waters of the Weidner Philharmonic’s oceanic performance! This multimedia program features atmospheric lighting effects and recordings pulled from aquatic habitats to complement the music. By turns meditative and mysterious, this music explores the nature of water, its power, and our relationship to it. 

Weidner Philharmonic | Bathed in Blue

The Weidner

Featuring the recorded voices of Mahalia Jackson and Studs Terkel.

Kronos Quartet

PPU Pittsburgh Playhouse

Every time you go to a percussion concert, the experience usually resonates beyond the normal concert hall boundaries and genres. Exploration of rhythm, sounds and color are limitless in this percussion world of music making. For this program we present works that have been written within the past ten years, three of them within the past five years. The first three pieces on the program all have a similar instrumentaion – all players playing the same setup of instruments, constantly developing and searching as one. The final piece on the program is believed to be Crumb’s final written work and we’re very excited to be able to present it here, as part of the California Festival. In comparison to the first half, it is a total explosion of instruments (almost 100) and color. Evoking an other-worldly experience, treading the line where nature meets sound in an endless exploration of time and color.

Hidden Time-Hidden Treasures

The USC Percussion Group, led by faculty member Joe Pereira, presents an evening of contemporary percussion works as part of the California Festival.

This event features Alyssa Weinberg's Ember II (2018), Juri Seo's Wah (2014), Joseph Pereira's Mallet Quartet (2013 rev 2023) and George Crumb's final work, Kronos-Kryptos (2020). Named "Hidden Time – Hidden Treasures," the program transitions from three pieces of similar instrumentation to Crumb's explosive percussion quintet which treads the boundaries between nature and sound.

California Festival: USC Percussion Group

University of Southern California

Sandbox Percussion closes out the series and Bravo! Vail’s 36th Music Festival with John Cage’s Third Construction; George Crumb’s American Songbook III, Unto the Hills; and a selection of songs from Charles Ives, featuring the American soprano Susanna Phillips and Anne-Marie McDermott.

Classically Uncorked III: Sandbox Percussion

Donovan Pavilion

Hailed by the Cincinnati Business Courier for her “exquisite control, expressive beauty and a voice of sheer gold,” and the San Francisco Chronicle for her “ravishingly velvet vocal tone,” Grammy® Award-winning mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor performs four song cycles. Debussy’s three Chansons de Bilitis are sensuous and impressionistic evocations of an antique pagan world. Robert Spano composed his moving Sonnets to Orpheus for Kelly O’Connor based on poetry of Rilke. The five songs in Britten’s 1947 A Charm of Lullabies last only 12 minutes, and range from a true lullaby to scarier fare. Britten enjoyed composing on the theme of sleep and wrote some of his strangest music on the subject. This piece is no exception. In Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben, the female protagonist describes her life with her husband from first meeting through marriage to his death, and after. The text is characteristic of earlier days when a woman was defined solely by her relationship to a man, but the music is timeless. Hear one of the most compelling vocal artists of her generation joined by AMFS Music Director Robert Spano at the piano!

Recital: Kelley O'Connor mezzo-soprano and Robert Spano piano

Aspen Meadows Resort

Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Kelley O'Connor's uniquely rich and alluring voice makes her one of the most compelling performers of her generation. Following her performance as the soloist in Mahler's Third Symphony with the Aspen Festival Orchestra, she is joined by AMFS Music Director Robert Spano on the piano for this intimate Harris Hall recital. 

Imagine as an aspiring tennis pro, you get an hour on the court with Venus Williams or Rafael Nadal. Or, as an emerging golf talent, hitting the links with Tiger Woods? x2 is the classical music version of this dream – realized before a live audience. This unique series features our Academy Artists paired with the brilliant 2023 fellows – the energy is explosive as emerging talents dance with legends.

x2: Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet

Music Academy of the West

Berlioz’ Fantastic Symphony plays right into Mehta’s strengths of highlighting drama and color in the orchestra, bringing to life the saga of the drug-addled, love-obsessed artist who meets a hair-raising end.
Mehta opens the concert with a work he has conducted around the world, the late George Crumb’s song cycle Ancient Voices of Children on poems of Federico Garcia Lorca offers a transcendent phantasmagoria of sounds and silence.

Symphonie fantastique with Mehta

Walt Disney Concert Hall

George Crumb’s “Makrokosmos, Volume I” for solo amplified piano (1972) is a landmark of 20th-Century piano literature. Taking its inspiration from Bela Bartok’s “Mikrokosmos”, and Claude Debussy’s Preludes, as well as “the darker side of Chopin” and “the child-like fantasy of early Schumann”, it is a masterwork that not only utilizes the full dynamic and expressive range of the piano played from the keyboard; Crumb masterfully creates an entirely new coloristic and tonal palette by making use of extended, inside-the-piano techniques. In addition, the pianist must chant, shout, sing, whistle, and moan like a ghost.

George Crumb

Composer

Events

Past events

Jun 17, 2024

Schubert & Black Angels · Detroit Symphony Orchestra

Apr 16, 2024

Young Concert Artists: Chaeyoung Park, piano · Kaufman Music Center

About

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