Category Archives: Music

Bernstein and Brahms this weekend with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra

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ASO B&BThe Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, Philip Mann, Music Director and Conductor, presents the fifth concert of the 2015-2016 Masterworks series: Bernstein & Brahms, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, February 27 and 3:00 p.m. Sunday, February 28 at the Maumelle Performing Arts Center at Maumelle High School. Eight collegiate choruses join the ASO to perform Brahms’s German Requiem and Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms. Bernstein & Brahms is sponsored by CHI St. Vincent. The Masterworks Series is sponsored by the Stella Boyle Smith Trust.

Tickets are $19, $35, $49, and $58; active duty military and student tickets are $10 and can be purchased online at www.ArkansasSymphony.org; at the Maumelle Performing Arts Center box office beginning 90 minutes prior to a concert; or by phone at 501-666-1761, ext. 100. All Arkansas students grades K-12 are admitted to Sunday’s matinee free of charge with the purchase of an adult ticket using the Entergy Kids’ Ticket, downloadable at www.ArkansasSymphony.org/freekids

Choral Ensembles
The ASO will collaborate with choirs from around the state of Arkansas for Bernstein & Brahms. The University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff Vesper Choir is featured on Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, and Brahms’s German Requiem features choirs from Arkansas State University, Harding University,  Lyon College, Southern Arkansas University at Magnolia, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, University of Central Arkansas, and the Arkansas Chamber Singers.

Concert Conversations
All concert ticket holders are invited to a pre-concert lecture an hour before each Masterworks concert. These talks feature insights from the Maestro and guest artists, and feature musical examples to enrich the concert experience.

Shuttle service is available
The ASO provides shuttle service from Second Presbyterian Church in Pleasant Valley to the Maumelle Performing Arts Center and back after the concert. For more information and to purchase fare at $10 per rider per concert, please visit https://www.arkansassymphony.org/concerts-tickets/shuttle-service

 

Program
Bernstein            Chichester Psalms
with the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff Vesper Choir

Brahms                 Ein Deutsches Requiem
with mass collegiate choir and the Arkansas Chamber Singers

Program notes
Bernstein composed Chichester Psalms during a sabbatical from conducting in 1965. In his own words, “I wrote a lot of music, twelve-tone music and avant garde music of various kinds, and a lot of it was very good, and I threw it all away. And what I came out with at the end of the year was a piece called Chichester Psalms, which is simple and tonal and tuneful and as pure B-flat as any piece you can think of.” Ein Deutsches Requiem was not composed for the people of Germany, but in the German language and was intended to be addressed to all mankind. Breaking from the historic requiem form, in which there is a strong focus on Judgment and the seeking of forgiveness, Brahms instead concentrates on offering consolation to the living who are mourning their departed loved ones.

Tonight at 7, Arkansas Sounds salutes composers Florence Price and William Grant Still at Ron Robinson Theater

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AR Sounds price_stillTwo of the leading American classical music composers in the first half of the 20th Century were from Arkansas and were African American.  Tonight (February 26) Arkansas Sounds pays tribute to Florence B. Price and William Grant Still in a program at 7pm at the Ron Robinson Theater.

Arkansas Sounds pays tribute to two of Arkansas’s most highly acclaimed African American classical composers with a screening of The Caged Bird: The Life and Music of Florence B. Price followed by performances of Price’s and Still’s compositions by members of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra (ASO) and the ASO Youth Orchestra. The film’s length is approximately 1 hour.

Little Rock native Florence Price (1887-1953) was the first African American female classical composer to have her composition played by a major American symphony orchestra. The Caged Bird: The Life and Music of Florence B. Price traces Price’s life, detailing her cultured childhood in an extraordinarily gifted family, her struggles and eventual departure from the South due to racial tension, and her great artistic impact and success. Her compositions were favored by famed soprano Marian Anderson, and in 1933, her “Symphony in E Minor” was performed at the Chicago World’s Fair by the Chicago Symphony.

Born in Woodville, Mississippi, and raised in Little Rock, William Grant Still (1895-1978) achieved national and international acclaim as a composer of symphonic and popular music and, as an African American, was hailed for breaking race barriers of his time. His Afro-American Symphony was the first symphony composed by an African American to be played by a major symphony orchestra and is still performed today. Still was a prolific composer whose work includes symphonies, ballets, operas, chamber music, and works for solo instruments, totaling nearly 200. He also received numerous honors and achievements such as the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1934, 1935, and 1938. He also received eight honorary degrees from institutions such as Oberlin College, the University of Arkansas, Pepperdine University, and the Peabody Conservatory of Music.

The Arkansas Symphony Orchestra (ASO) comprises the state’s most sought-after professional musicians and is celebrating its 50th season. The ASO Youth Orchestra comprises over 200 student musicians, ages 9-18, who travel from over thirty-seven communities throughout Arkansas.

Tonight at 9pm at South on Main After Hours – Siamese, Jacob Metcalf & Young Speilberg

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som jacobmetcalf.jpg.190x140_q60_cropSouth on Main After Hours welcomes Siamese, Jacob Metcalf & Young Speilberg to the stage, tonight.

Admission is $10. You may purchase a wristband beginning at 4:00 pm. The show begins at 9:00 pm. Call South on Main at 501-244-9660 to make a reservation.

ABOUT JACOB METCALF
North Texas musician Jacob Metcalf will be releasing his first full-length solo effort, Fjord, later this winter. And while fans of his two longtime groups, Fox and the Bird and Dallas Family Band, might expect a similar rootsy update on rural American music, the sparsely orchestrated cinematic folk that sweeps through these 11 tracks are sure to cover the listener in permafrost and thaw them back out again.

The material for the record was written over the last decade on five continents (Asia, Africa, Europe, North and South America). It was during the last few years that Metcalf lived out of his car and inside a four foot crawl space between a vintage store and loft apartments in order to save enough from his bakery and music teaching jobs to make this album. Recorded in Austin, Ft. Worth and Dallas over the last two years with more than 20 talented musician friends, the singer-songwriter and band members would often use the streets to hone these songs before dressing up the arrangements in the studio.

The result is an often-breathtaking collection of indie-folk compositions that range from wistful, unhurried ballads to swirling, majestic orchestrations, sometimes within the same song, and all set to Metcalf’s warm, inviting vocals and non-linear story-telling.

ABOUT SIAMESE
Siamese is an avant glam art pop band from Dallas, TX, who utilize sets, costuming and lighting to create a sometimes ominous, always opulent live show. It is comprised of members Paul Alonzo (bass), Paul Grass (drums), Nicole Marxen-Myers (vocals, synth, guitar), and Teddy Georgia Waggy (vocals, guitar), each of whom brings skills in carpentry, sewing, painting and film production, respectively, to create their sets and costumes.

This winter Siamese premiered its second recording, Neon Lights, as well as its second set design, a futuristic visual brew inspired by ectoplasm-shilling charlatans and 2001: A Space Odyssey. For their previous set, a floral arrangement nightmare, the members made over 2,000 paper flowers by hand, which drove them crazy and ended up being good inspiration for their psychotic funeral director alter egos. The band is set to record their inaugural EP in February, to be released in spring 2016.

Marxen-Myers and Waggy started the project as a way to explore malleable identity, to blend music and visual art, and to face the vulnerability of live performance. In late 2014, they asked Alonzo and Grass to join them, two old friends of theirs with a like-minded love of creating other worlds. The band began writing its music together, with Nicole and Teddy adding lyrics that deal with their own modern apathy and colonial guilt; with the surreal fragility of our fleshy human bodies commingling with the cold clean space age; and sometimes, with the inner workings of their favorite sociopathic film characters.

In less than ten shows, they’ve already shared bills with the likes of Pinkish Black and Tele Novella, played the historic Texas Theater, received press coverage from Central Track, ANON Magazine and We Denton Do It, and their two releases are in regular rotation on The Local Ticket and Dallas’ NPR music station, KXT

Darth Vader and Trombones tonight with the Little Rock Wind Symphony

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lrws darthA long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… there were trombones! Join the Little Rock Wind Symphony for the concert of the intergalactic kind!

Israel Getzov conducts the evening which features solisits Justin Cook, trombone.

The program includes:

Alfred Reed: Hounds of Spring
Richard Wagner: “Elsa’s Procession to the Cathedral” from Lohengrin
Jacques Press: Wedding Dance
Meredith Wilson: 76 Trombones
Richard Peaslee: Arrows of Time
     Justin Cook, trombone
John Williams: Stars Wars Trilogy
7:30 p.m. Thursday, February 25th at Second Presbyterian Church, 600 Pleasant Valley Drive, Little Rock.

Tonight at South on Main – Charles Woods takes the stage

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som charleswoods.jpg.190x140_q60_cropTonight at South on Main, their next February Sessions, curated by Amy Garland.  The featured musician is Charles Woods who takes the stage at 8:30pm

We have a musical legend in our midst and many folks don’t even know it! Born in Little Rock in 1946 and raised in a musical household with a gospel and blues background, Charles Woods began playing the harmonica at the age of eight and started playing the electric guitar at the age of 12. Charles honed his musical talents in the gospel chorus on Sunday mornings. While in the choir, Charles Woods also developed his heartfelt and soulful voice reminiscent of such legends as Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, and Johnny Taylor. Charles’ impressive musical talents came to the forefront while playing electric guitar with such notable acts as the Staple Singers, Rufus Thomas, Little Johnny Taylor, Fenton Robinson, Larry Totsie Davis, and playing bass with Freddie King. Although Charles Woods has traveled the world and performed with a number of world-class entertainers, he has remained true to his roots, his heritage, and his hometown of Little Rock where he still entertains to this day and is known to his fans and his musical peers as the “Best Kept Secret in Arkansas.” Charles Woods is a musician’s musician.

Charles just released a brand new record, “Something In The Dark.” This record highlights some of the finest musicians in Arkansas; Tonya Leeks, Jess Hoggard. Eric Ware, Ivan Yarbough, Cecil Parker, and Tim Anthony, among others.

Little Rock Look Back: The first Elvis concert at Robinson Auditorium

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eap feb 55 adSixty-one years ago today, on February 20, 1955, Elvis Presley made his first appearance on stage in Little Rock. He performed at Joseph Taylor Robinson Memorial Auditorium.

eap receits 05-little.rock_.feb_.55He was billed as “an added attraction” to a Grand Ole Opry Show headlined by the Duke of Paducah.  Others on the bill included Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters, Jimmie Rodgers Snow, Charlie Stewart, the Singing Hardens, Sammy Barnhart, Bob Neal, Uncle Dudley and Smilin’ Mac Cyclone. (It is interesting to note that at least some of the advance tickets billed it as The Elvis Presley Show, though the newspaper ads billed the Duke of Paducah as the headliner.)

This concert was part of a weeklong tour of Arkansas and Louisiana.  There were two shows that day – one at 3p.m. and the other at 8:15p.m.  Tickets on the day of the concert were $1.00 for adults and fifty cents for children.  Advanced tickets had sold for 75 cents at Walgreens.

The night before, Elvis played the Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport.  Following his Little Rock appearance (for which he and his band were paid $350 instead of their usual $200), they played in Camden, Hope, and Pine Bluff.

eap 02-little.rock_It is believed that Elvis’ parents attended this concert in Little Rock. Gladys Presley was a big fan of the Duke of Paducah. Elvis apparently also wanted his parents to meet with Colonel Tom Parker, who would become inexorably linked with Elvis’ career.

10pm tonight – South on Main After-Hours features Bijoux and Tawanna Campbell

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som bijouxtawanna.jpg.190x140_q60_cropTonight (February 19) at 10pm at South on Main – Bijoux and Tawanna Campbell headline another After-Hours concert.

Two of Little Rock’s powerhouse vocalists will grace the stage for a night of music entertainment. Bijoux, a sultry, soul singer adept in various styles, has made a name for herself in the music scene, both locally and in surrounding areas.

Bijoux’s jovial spirit, endearing vocals, vibrant entertaining, and musical versatility make her a perfect artist for any atmosphere! Tawanna Campbell has been a beacon, leading the way for Arkansas’ growing music scene, and is an all-encompassing performer. Her musical acumen is eclectic and dynamic. Tawanna possesses an amazing stage presence and a style all her own. Backed by some of Little Rock’s greatest musicians, the two will deliver an eclectic mixture of your greatest tunes from almost every genre of music.

Doors open at 4:00 PM, show begins at 10:00 PM. Wristbands can be purchased for $15 after doors open. Call ahead to reserve a table (501) 244-9660. Call (501) 952-7501 for additional information about this event.