The next display of skill, insight and creative power by the Music Academy of the West’s Festival Artists is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Lobero Theatre.
The program for this concert will include Georg Philipp Telemann’s Concerto in F-Major for Flute, Horn, and Bass Continuo, TWV 42:F14 by Timothy Day on flute, Julie Landsman on horn and Nico Abondolo on double bass; the world premiere of a Hannah Lash piece for harps, keyboards and percussion with Lash and JoAnn Turovsky on harps, Conor Hanick and Natasha Kislenko on pianos, and Colin Currie and Michael Werner on percussion; and Richard Strauss Piano Quartet in C-Minor, Opus 13 (1885) with Frank Huang on violin, Cynthia Phelps on viola, Carter Brey on cello and Jonathan Feldman on piano.
It cannot have escaped anyone’s notice that, of the music academy’s eight resident composers this summer, four — Lash, Elizabeth Ogonek, Ellen Reid and Caroline Shaw — are women. Nor is this the result of some gender-based affirmative action program. These women, like their male counterparts, are all here on merit. One of them — Shaw — has already won a Pulitzer Prize (the youngest composer ever to do so), and all of them have earned prestigious awards, received major league commissions and performed with world-class ensembles.
I can’t help but remember the time, at least three decades ago, when I interviewed Emma Lou Diemer for an essay I was writing about women composers. Diemer was pleased at the focus of my piece, and she modestly accepted my praise of her achievements as a pioneer woman in a male-dominated world, but she looked forward to the time when she would take her place, not as a woman composer, but as “a composer, period.” Clearly, that time has arrived.
Writing in The New York Times, Steve Smith wrote of one of Lash’s works: “Ms. Lash’s compact sequence of pale brush strokes, ghostly keening and punchy outbursts was striking and resourceful; you hoped to hear it again … .” That so perfectly describes all of Lash’s work that I have heard that I will not attempt to add my own spin, and will only observe that I look forward eagerly to hearing the new work.
Strauss — Mr. Orchestra — is not generally known as a composer of chamber music, yet he wrote quite a bit of it as a young man, and most of it is still worth hearing. The Piano Quartet is the most interesting, and also the most beautiful.
The Festival Artists Series enjoys the munificent support of Linda and Michael Keston.
Tickets to this concert cost $46, and they may be obtained at the Lobero box office at 33 E. Canon Perdido, by phone at 805.963.0761 or online by clicking here.
— Gerald Carpenter covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributing writer. He can be reached at gerald.carpenter@gmail.com. The opinions expressed are his own.