Classical Thu Sep 04 2014

Pulling Strings: For classical music in Chicago, you got a guy - September 2014

By Elliot Mandel

It's gonna be a great season.

Collaborative Works Festival
The Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago (CAIC) presents its annual Collaborative Works Festival: four days of vocal chamber music in some of the city's most comfortable and intimate venues. The 2014 festival explores the personal and musical relationships between Robert and Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms with a lineup of some of the nation's best voices. The opening and closing concerts feature soprano Susanna Phillips, mezzo-soprano Kelley O'Connor, tenor Nicholas Phan, and baritone Joshua Hopkins accompanied by Myra Huang. Renowned mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung gives a solo recital of works by Brahms, R. Schumann, Manuel De Falla, Edward Elgar, and Joseph Marx. Tickets and venue info available at www.caichicago.org. September 11-14. Poetry Foundation, Cindy Pritzker Auditorium at Harold Washington Library, Pianoforte, Logan Center for the Arts.

eighth blackbird: Columbine's Paradise Theatre
8bb's one-night-only program at the MCA promises to be an early highlight of the classical season. Composer Amy Beth Kirsten revamps the 17th Century commedia dell'arte style into a fantasy world in which the musicians become actors in full costumes and masks. The instruments themselves become characters in this wild dreamscape. The program includes explorations of love through the music of Monteverdi, Gesualdo, Bon Iver, and Richard Reed Parry. Friday, September 12. MCA members $22; nonmembers $28; students $10. Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago Ave., Chicago.

eighth blackbird- Colombine's Paradise Theater Trailer from eighth blackbird on Vimeo.

Avalon String Quartet plays Brahms
The exquisite Avalon begins its season-long exploration of Brahms's quartets with the autumnal a minor quartet. A lush work that alternates with airy and dense passages, it was written at a time when Brahms was trying to find his voice amidst the dominance of Beethoven; the final movement employs a Hungarian dance theme found throughout Brahms's output. Avalon pairs the Brahms quartet with Schumann's A Major quartet in a program that should delight lovers of the Romantic era when chamber music was all the rage. Admission is free with museum entrance. Sunday, September 28, 2pm. Fullerton Hall, Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan Ave.

Rembrandt Chamber Players and Howard Levy
Harmonica master, jazz composer, original Flecktone, and one of the reasons Chicago is a great music town Howard Levy joins the Rembrandt Chamber Players to give the Midwest premiere of his Sonata for Oboe and Piano. Levy will also perform Bartok's Romanian Folk Dances arranged for harmonica, violin, viola, cello, and bass. Those two works alone make this concert worth seeing, but the program features two other rarities: Mozart's Quartet for Flute and Strings, and Vaughn Williams's Piano Quintet in c minor. Drawing its musicians from the rosters of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Lyric Opera Orchestra, the Rembrandt delivers top quality chamber music in small settings. Tickets are $35 general; $25 ages 18-30; $10 students. Sunday, September 28, 3pm. Nichols Concert Hall, Music Institute of Chicago, 1490 Chicago Ave., Evanston. Monday, September 29, 7:30pm. Driehaus Museum, 40 E. Erie, Chicago.

Programs, artists, and prices subject to change. Tickets subject to availability.

About the author: Elliot Mandel photographs classical concerts and you should hire him for your next show. He also writes reviews and plays cello.