Orchestra pit

The Madison Symphony Orchestra is an exquisite ensemble with over 100 talented musicians. On April 2, 2016, John DeMain conducted a wonderful orchestra performance. It was held in Overture Hall at the Overture Center in Madison, WI. Garrick Ohlsson was the piano soloist that night in a Johannes Brahms piece after the intermission. The conductor came onto the stage before the show to give a brief explanation of the concert for the night and why he chose the musical selections he did, and I found…

In the video “The Transformative Power of Classical Music” Benjamin Zanders demonstrates how powerful and connecting classical music can be. While not everyone is a fan of the classical genre, Benjamin Zanders attempts to prove that everyone can enjoy it and connect to it. He tries to prove this by asking his audience to think of someone they loved that was no longer with them as he played a piece by Chopin. By doing this, Benjamin Zanders was seeking to pull the audience in and let them feel…

On April 26th of this year I attended a faculty recital in the Walker Recital Hall. The recital featured the Presque Isle Saxophone Quartet with Allen Zurcher, Bethany Dressler, Rebecca Wunch, and Scott Meier. The hall was not fully filled with spectators, however, attendees were very supportive and enthusiastic about the artists. The performance consisted of the 20th and 21st century music pieces, which was something I did not expect. To surprise this performance did not take long time…

The piece that I have chosen is “Country Gardens”, written by Percy Grainger. This piece was his first piano arrangement of the English Morris dance tune “Country Gardens.” It became extremely popular and his greatest commercial success, later this piece became one of his least favorite pieces as he was asked to play it so often. A remark that was included in the early publication was: “Rough sketched for 2 whistlers and a few instruments about 1908.” In another edition he writes: “In some…

For the third music critique I am going to talk about the performances of Gunnar Biggs and Bill Bradburry. First of all, I must say this was my favorite performance of the semester so far. I love the bass and it amazes me how beautiful the mandolin plays music. The musician who played the bass was Gunnar while the mandolin was played Bill. They both played Irish traditional music, however in their performance they improvised solos when usually you don’t in Irish traditional music. Both Gunnar…

He Mandu After listening to both versions of the song, I prefer to listen to the second version. The first version it seems out of balance in how everyone was singing. It seemed that the singers on the right side, specifically the one in the red, was doing the most singing. While the left singers to me did not feel as if they were singing as much. I determined this by their gestures and movement of their lips. This is most likely because classical singers are divided into different voice types,…

The Dow Piano recording began with a series of lower notes, and the tempo stayed the same throughout the entire thing. After the initial part of the recording, the notes then go up in a run like fashion before taking a sudden drop once they reach the top. This recording was not super complex since it only used the piano and percussion, so it was not hard to add your own notes and complexities to it. The waterphone is an instrument that gives great depth to the sounds that it emits even though…

E-Flat for Military Band The First Suite in E-Flat for Military Band Op.28, No.1 by Gustav Holst is particularly unpopular due to it’s somewhat esoteric instrumentation,as the song was composed for a military band which is considered to be a wind orchestra instead.Orchestras with string instruments are far more popular and is the reason for its unpopularity outside of wind bands. It being so praised, it’s known beloved and popular in concert band repertoire ,I’ve heard this piece…

Peter and the Wolf composed by Sergei Prokofiev is a children's story that is told through various instruments performing as a symphony orchestra. There were seven characters in Peter in the Wolf all represented by different Instruments. The flute represented the bird, the oboe represented the duck, the clarinet represented the cat, the bassoon represented the grandfather, three french horns represented the wolf, the string section represented Peter, and the tympany and big bass drum represented…

Jameson Marvin does an excellence job in explaining how the process conductors use to achieve the highest level of performance. He begins by saying, “Mastering choral ensemble – a unified sound image of the whole – is the foundation upon which enlightened, communicative, and inspiring performance takes place.” He explains that there is a process to achieving this mastery, and it is based off of mental-aural image, which is a vision of what the music should sound like. In this chapter, Marvin…