A Bowl of Potatoes and More Old Shoes

The Kröller-Müller Museum’s website comments on van Gogh’s Still Life with Potatoes (1889) that “In Arles, Van Gogh is far away from the artistic milieu in Paris. He embarks, once and for all, on a quest for his own style and is unbound by realism. Thus, the colours in this still life are not ‘after nature.” I might say, rather, “van Gogh captures the essence of potatoes” or “van Gogh could make art out of anything.” Whatever the case, I couldn’t let well enough alone, so set the bowl of potatoes against a backdrop of the moon rising over a field of wheat sheaves.

Contemporaneous performs Brian Petuch’s Portrait and a Dream

Jackson Pollack, Portrait and a Dream (1953)

Contemporaneous is in top form, the singers are stupendous, and Petuch’s opera is outstanding, with his text choices as brilliant as his compositional approach. Watching this made my day, and I hope it may do the same for you.

“Portrait and a Dream [is] an opera about Jackson Pollock told through the lens of Lee Krasner and archival recordings of the people who surrounded his life.” [cite]

Bringing in Spring with Shawn Jaeger’s The Cold Pane

Shawn Jaeger, photo by Arthur Moeller

Shawn Jaeger‘s The Cold Pane is an exquisite summoning of spring. Jaeger’s composition sets five texts by Wendell Berry. They can be found here, together with the score. The piece is scored for soprano and chamber ensemble (clarinet in B-flat, mandolin, violin, double bass). The performers are Contemporaneous members Lucy Dhegrae, Vicente Alexim (clarinet), Colin Davin (mandolin), Josh Henderson (violin), and Pat Swoboda (double bass). David Bloom conducts.

Transcendental Geometry: Contemporaneous at Murray’s 2017

It was a stroke of luck to have happened on Contemporaneous when the ensemble was still at Bard and barely six months old. That was in 2010, and it’s an ongoing cause for celebration that this treasurable rara avis, a chamber orchestra dedicated solely to new music, has not only survived, but is thriving today. Over that time, as Contemporaneous continues to amass significant musical accomplishments, we, as listeners, reap the benefit in an ongoing series of musical gifts. The April 15, 2017, concert at Murray’s in Tivoli was but the latest in a long, glittering string.

Spaghetti Western: Contemporaneous in the Spiegeltent

Contemporaneous in the Spiegeltent, warming up for the concert

It is a measure of the power of music, in the hands of Contemporaneous, that the silly season engulfing us decamped, wholly vanquished, within the first bars of Vicenti Alexim’s adroit arrangement of Ennio Morricone’s Il triello. The occasion was Contemporaneous’s appearance at Bard’s Summer Music Festival, the focus of which this year is “Puccini and His World.”