Category Archives: Music

ASO Chamber Series Kicks Off Tonight with Brahms the Romantic

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The Arkansas Symphony Orchestra kicks off the 2013-2014 Parker Lexus River Rhapsodies Chamber Music series tonight at 7:00 p.m. at the Clinton Presidential Center.

The program will feature Mozart’s “String Quintet No. 3 in C major, K.515;” Takemitsu’s “Rain Tree;” and Brahms “Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115.”

Mozart’s piece was completed in 1787.  Like all of Mozart’s string quintets, it is a viola quintet.  That means, it is scored for an extra viola: two violins, two violas and one cello.  Takemitsu’s selection was composed in 1982.  At that point in time, many of his compositions have references to water in the title.  Brahms composed his clarinet quintet in the summer of 1891.  The piece is known for its autumnal feeling (appropriate to be performed on one of the first full days after the autumnal equinox).  The selection is written for a clarinet in A and a string quartet.

Arkansas Sounds: Singer Songwriter Showcase

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arkansas_sounds_2013Later this week music stages downtown will be filled with three days of music as part of the 2nd annual Arkansas Sounds  music festival.

The week kicks off tonight with a Singer Songwriter Showcase.

Featuring local members of the Nashville Songwriters Association International (Steve Smith, Russellville; Jim Pollock, Conway; Rodger King with Molly Brockinton, Lonoke; Roy Hayle, Malvern) and a special performance by Arkansas songwriter Wood Newton.

The program will start tonight at 6pm at the Darragh Center of the Main Library.

The Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, a department of the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS), sponsors the annual Arkansas Sounds Music Festival.

Focused on Arkansas music and musicians both past and present, the Festival also works to get musicians and songwriters involved in local schools, with songwriting workshops for kids and adults, and related performances and events throughout the state.

Martina Filjak, piano with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra this weekend

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ASO_2-colorThe Arkansas Symphony Orchestra will perform with charismatic pianist Martina Filjak, on Saturday, September 21 at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday, September 22 at 3:00 p.m. at the Robinson Center Music Hall. This is kicks off the ASO’s 2013-2014 Stella Boyle Smith Masterworks Series.

The program includes Shostakovich’s Festive Overture; Op. 96; Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 23 and Stravinksy’s Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring).

The ASO will be under the baton of Music Director Philip Mann.

One of the most exciting young artists to emerge in recent years, Martina Filjak is garnering international praise for her poetic passion and technical mastery at the keyboard as well as for her charismatic personality and magnetic stage presence. Her transition from prodigy to mature artist has been all the more remarkable against the backdrop of political maelstrom that defined her native Croatia during her childhood.

Martina’s unwavering hunger for music, nurtured by piano teacher parents, has been her lodestar. Civil strife or no, she graduated from the Zagreb Music Academy and subsequently from the Vienna Conservatory and the soloist’s class at Hannover’s Hochschule für Musik. She participated in masterclasses at the Como Piano Academy, where she was coached by Dmitri Bashkirov, Peter Frankl and Andreas Staier.

In 2009, Martina Filjak won first prize in the Cleveland International Piano Competition, following which she made concerto debuts at the Konzerthaus Berlin and Vienna’s Musikverein and her recital debut at New York’s Carnegie Hall/Zankel Hall (“Brilliant, sensitive and imaginative playing with resourcefulness of technique and naturalness of musicality. …A striking individuality …A pianist to watch” The New York Times). Prior to winning the Cleveland competition, she had been first prizewinner of the 2007 Viotti International Piano Competition in Italy and the 2008 Maria Canals International Piano Competition in Barcelona.

She loves to travel and speaks seven languages.

UALR Public Radio welcomes Frank Deford

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book3-maggyThe Friends of KLRE/KUAR will host a fundraiser featuring an evening with legendary sportswriter and public radio commentator Frank Deford on Thursday, September 19, at 7 p.m.

Admission to the event at Embassy Suites in Little Rock is $100, and tickets can be purchased online or by calling us at 501-569-8485.

$50 of the ticket amount is a tax-deductible donation to your non-profit public radio stations.

“Sports: The Hype and The Hypocrisy” will be the theme, and the event will include a dinner, talk and book signing with Deford.

Arkadelphia native and Southern Fried blogger Rex Nelson will be the master of ceremonies. A cash bar will precede the dinner in the foyer of the Embassy Suites ballroom.

“We are very excited to welcome Frank Deford to Little Rock,” says Katherine Lu, board president of the Friends of KLRE/KUAR. “He’s more than just an NPR personality. He’s a writer of great fiction and a national sports icon,” she says of the Baltimore native whose work appears regularly in Sports Illustrated, on HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel and on National Public Radio.

Deford is the author of 18 books, nine of them novels, and was awarded a National Humanities Medal by President Obama on July 10. His Wednesday morning sports commentaries are broadcast on KUAR FM 89 at 7:50.

Rex Nelson will be introducing Deford and conducting a question-and-answer session at the end of Deford’s presentation. Nelson is a regular political commentator on KUAR news, head of Arkansas’ Independent Colleges & Universities association, and a columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. His career started as broadcaster and sportswriter covering the Ouachita Baptist Tigers.

“Nelson is going to be a great host because he’s an expert on Arkansas culture with a background in politics, sports, and writing,” says Lu. “We hope that this event will help public radio reach a new segment of our listeners and get to know some of our more occasional listeners better.”

klre_logoImportance of the Fundraiser
The top priority is replacing the stations’ aging audio control boards used to broadcast programming and record local content.

“The equipment is more than 15 years old and starting to fail,” says General Manager Ben Fry, “and some of the parts for these control boards are getting hard to replace because they are no longer available.”

“Reporters, producers, and board operators are having technical problems. It’s time to update,” says Fry.

KUARAbout The Friends of KLRE/KUAR
The Friends of KLRE/KUAR is a non-profit organization that financially supports the two stations of UALR Public Radio.

With public radio, “members” of the Friends of KLRE/KUAR make financial contributions to support the stations’ annual operating budgets.

“Hundreds of listeners participate in our semi-annual fund drives and become members of UALR Public Radio,” says Development Director Mary Waldo. “But it’s been several years since we’ve hosted a major fundraiser,” she says. “This year our focus is to improve the equipment for KUAR FM 89 and KLRE Classical 90.5. We do rely on the support of our listeners and members to serve central Arkansas.”

About KUAR FM 89.1 and KLRE Classical 90.5
KLRE FM 90.5, Little Rock’s first public radio station, went live in 1973 and became a member of National Public Radio in 1984. KUAR FM 89.1 went on the air in 1986. Today, the two stations serve a third of the state’s population and even more people through live streaming on the internet. KUAR broadcasts news and information programming, including daily newsmagazines from NPR and local news. KLRE broadcasts classical music 24 hours a day.

Encyclopedia of Arkansas Music launched tonight

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butler-welkyWhat do a rockabilly musician turned cinematic swamp monster, an instrument that lent its name to a weapon, and the creator of Schoolhouse Rock! have in common? They all come from Arkansas. The Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, a department of the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS), will host a cocktail party to celebrate the release of the Encyclopedia of Arkansas Music, a new Butler Center Book, on Thursday, September 19, at 5:30 p.m. in the Main Library’s Darragh Center, 100 Rock Street. Reservations are appreciated, but not required. To RSVP, email kchagnon@cals.org or call 918-3033.
The Encyclopedia of Arkansas Music is a special project of the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture (EOA), an online encyclopedia launched in 2006 by the Butler Center. This colorful, photo-filled reference work spanning all aspects of Arkansas’s musical past and present includes more than 150 entries on musicians, ensembles, musical works, and events.
Also included is a musical map of Arkansas showing important musical sites-both defunct and still in existence-including the Rock ‘n’ Roll Highway. Covering the genres of blues/R&B, classical/opera, country, folk, gospel/contemporary Christian, jazz, rock, and rockabilly, this encyclopedia has something to interest any lover of Arkansas music and Arkansas history-as the state’s past, present, and future are tied to its music.
The Encyclopedia of Arkansas Music is available at River Market Books & Gifts, 120 River Market Ave., and from the University of Arkansas Press, Butler Center Books’ distributor, www.uapress.com. Butler Center Books is a division of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. The Butler Center’s research collections, art galleries, and offices are located in the Arkansas Studies Institute building at 401 President Clinton Ave. on the campus of the CALS Main Library. For more information, contact Rod Lorenzen at (501) 320-5716 or rlorenzen@cals.org.

Mac Park Music Tonight – Kirk Anderton and Quentin May

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macparkmusicFrom the late 1920s through the mid 1950s, Little Rock’s MacArthur Park was a centerpiece of live music.  The Foster Bandshell, named in memory of Mrs. H. H. Foster, stood in the park near 10th and Commerce.  The structure was torn down in the early 1960s.  A portion of the Arkansas Arts Center sits on the site of the old Foster Bandshell.

In 2002, the lakeside pavilion in MacArthur Park was renamed the Foster Pavilion to pay tribute to the memory of Mrs. Foster and the bandshell.

The Foster Pavilion will be the site of a new music series taking place on Wednesday nights in September.  MAC PARK MUSIC! will take place from 5:30pm to 7:30pm on September 11, 18 and 25.

Tonight’s lineup features Kirk Anderton and Quentin May will be playing good ole Southern Rock and all of your sing-a-long favorites.  Clyde & Kiddo’s BBQ will be serving salads, burgers, BBQ, fries and more.  Beer and wine will be available for donations.

 

Artspree 2013 kicks off with Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano

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(Photo by Dario Acosta, courtesy of UALR Artspree)

(Photo by Dario Acosta, courtesy of UALR Artspree)

Radiant American mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke caused a sensation as Kitty Oppenheimer in the Metropolitan Opera premiere of John Adams’ Doctor Atomic, the DVD release of which won the 2012 Grammy Award® for Best Opera Recording. She was praised in The New Yorker for her “fresh, vital portrayal, bringing a luminous tone, a generously supported musical line, a keen sense of verbal nuance, and a flair for seduction.”

Cooke will be in recital today at 3pm at UALR’s Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall to kick off the 2013-2014 Artspree season.  Tickets are $15 for the general public, free to UALR faculty staff and students, and $10 for other students.

During the summer of 2012, Sasha Cooke opened the Hollywood Bowl’s summer season in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with Leonard Slatkin and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and also appeared at Music@Menlo and the RoundTop Festival. She appeared in the closing concerts of the Aspen Music Festival and the Mostly Mozart Festival, with Robert Spano in Mahler’s Eighth Symphony and with Louis Langrée in Beethoven’s Mass in C, respectively. Returning to the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Sasha performed songs by Bernstein, Copland, Bolcom, Barber and Gershwin in the inaugural concerts of new music director Tugan Sokiev in Berlin and at the Beethovenfest in Bonn. The new season marks her San Francisco Opera debut as the title role in the world premiere of Mark Adamo’s The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, as well as her role debuts as Magnolia in Francesca Zambello’s production of Show Boat at Houston Grand Opera and as Sonja in Dominick Argento’s The Aspern Papers at Dallas Opera.

She returns to the San Francisco Symphony in Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas, gives the world premiere of Augusta Read Thomas’s Earth Echoes with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, appears with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center both in New York and in Mecklenberg, Germany, and sings Mahler’s Third Symphony with the Orchestre de Lyon. She also sings Bernstein’s “Jeremiah” Symphony with Leonard Slatkin and the Detroit Symphony, and Alexander Nevsky with Pinchas Steinberg and the Cleveland Orchestra. She returns to the New York Festival of Song for a program exploring the lives of women, joins the Mirò Quartet for music of Respighi and Schubert with Friends of Chamber Music Denver, and sings Das Lied von der Erde with the Columbus Symphony.