We flew to Dublin over Saturday night, arriving around 6:30 AM Dublin time. The bus we had so carefully reserved was nowhere in sight, but the public bus driver was nice enough to take us directly to the hotel.
Since it was Sunday morning and the hotel was fully booked, we weren't able to check in right away. Some of us took some time to get our Dublin bearings, some of us slept in the lobby, some of us dealt with production issues, etc. We also, thanks to an ear infection, had the chance to experience the Irish health care system! Everyone is fine, and it was interesting to witness that up close.
Dublin's beautiful and it was great to have some time off there, especially following the Morgan Library concert, which was Friday night, and so beautiful. The hall at the Morgan is great for chamber music - you can hear and see everything without it being too live. This was my third time hearing the "Messenger" concerto, and it was the best performance so far - energetic, committed and tight.
There was an exciting moment in the Harbison when the players stopped one by one as they realized that Richard had broken a string. While he was offstage replacing it, Warren took advantage of the opportunity to tell a story about the only time he had ever broken strings...on the piano, apparently, when he was eight years old and his practicing wasn't going as he hoped.
That intensity is still with Warren, and his Brahms on Friday night was especially poignant and gorgeous. Following the concert, the Consul General of Ireland, Niall Burgess, held a reception for musicians and their guests at his incredible apartment with views of New York on three sides of a breathtaking terrace. Am doing my best to post some pictures of all these events!
So, we're in Derry. Today's bus ride was beautiful, all the scenery we expected from Ireland, and even more green than I could have imagined. The Guildhall concert is tomorrow night, I'll be back after that, if not before.
Messenger Concerto at the Morgan
Warren plays Brahms
Niall Burgess and Adrian Spence
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Hi there,
We're in Dublin and I'm more than a little disoriented about what time it really is. Once I get that sorted out, I'll be back to tell you all about the concert at the Morgan, which was beautiful.
Meanwhile, here's the review from the Washington Post on April 25:
Camerata Pacifica
Camerata Pacifica is a Santa Barbara, Calif.-based chamber music ensemble, though you would never know it from the surface trappings of its Thursday evening concert at the Library of Congress. The program and most prominent players lent the impression that the group might call Northern Ireland home. At the center was a bracing account of a violin concerto by Ian Wilson, the group's resident composer and a Belfast native, and the bold concert was part of a tour with stops in London, Dublin and, yes, Northern Ireland.
These Irish ties come from the Camerata's artistic director, Adrian Spence, himself a former Northern Ireland resident. Spence told the good-size audience that the astringency and density of Wilson's concerto, "Messenger," flows from the composer's firsthand war experiences such as the 1999 airstrikes in Belgrade, Serbia. In the brooding account, sliding glissandi conjured dark visions of falling bombs, while compact textures evoked tense atmospheres. Through these dissonant sound blocks weaved the focused violin of Catherine Leonard, emerging like a lone voice amid remorseless terror. A lullaby in the second movement came off more gritty than soothing, and little light came into a more quiescent finale.
The group's American roots peeked out in the performance of John Harbison's Piano Quintet, which subtly integrates the percussive thrusts of Shostakovich and the meditative gentleness of Messiaen within a larger cast of American-style, angular modernism. The Camerata brought out the piece's human side, at once searing and tender. Pianist Warren Jones's rhapsodic account of Brahms's E-flat Intermezzo from Op. 117 accentuated the ability of Harbison and Wilson to paint emotional calm amid storm and stress.
-- Daniel Ginsberg
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Hello friends,
This blog is a little reluctant to accept pictures, but I'm working on it. A few from Gala night below.
Last night's concert in DC was amazing - attended by about 300 people who loved the music. The ensemble was tight and the hall at the Library of Congress is fantastic - it's very live, while still feeling intimate.
So here's a true story about the excitement of being on the road:
Some of you have seen our beautiful tour program books, which include information on the Messenger project, our sponsors, dates and venues, etc. We're all really proud of those books and eager to get them to our audience.
So we decided to ship them ahead to the various venues. Being the clever non-profit employees we are, we also decided to save money, and eliminate one possibility for disaster, by consolidating the shipments. So I sent 500 books to DC, with the idea that we'd bring half of them to New York.
Books were shipped from Ventura on Tuesday and arrived yesterday morning in DC, which should have been the end of the story. I called the Library producer with a tracking number and name of signatory, and forgot about it...until.
Until, a few hours later, I called another producer at the Library, who immediately said to me "Oh....I heard the bad news."
!!!
"the bad news?"
"About your program books? She didn't call you?"
She had not, in fact, called me. I knew something had gone wrong, but didn't know what, so I weakly played my only card -
"but - but I have a TRACKING NUMBER."
Yeah. Well, my sad little tracking number can't sway the forces of government. The books did not make it to the show last night, because they were being held -
AND CHECKED FOR ANTHRAX.
As, apparently, is all mail that comes to government offices in DC, which would have been nice to know. But it gave Adrian a chance to talk about the "Messenger" concerto from the stage, which the audience liked, and the Library was nice enough to print our program page and distribute it at the concert.
Happily, there were still a few program books in Ventura, which we had FedExed to New York, where I'm happy to report we are, and they are, and it's a magnificent beautiful city.
Morgan Library concert tonight.
the people on the bus
Ani gets ready
backstage at the Cathedral
Hope to post more soon, including pictures of the huge crowd!
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Hello Camerata blog readers:
This is Andrea Moore, Camerata's Director of Community Relations. I'l be posting here regularly over the next 10 days, along with bassoonist John Steinmetz, and possibly some other musicians or tour guests.
We've just arrived in Washington, DC, where we'll start the tour with a concert at the Library of Congress tomorrow night. It's always exciting to come to this city and see those landmarks that sometimes seems to only exist on CNN: the White House, Washington Monument, etc.
Last night we launched the tour with a gala and a free concert at the LA Cathedral. For those of us working as performers or presenters, the rule of thumb about giving away free tickets is that you have to assume about 40% no-show rate.
No one told that to our Cathedral guests! We had about 1300 reservations, in addition to our 200 Gala guests; an audience of 800 would have been fantastic. Instead, the Cathedral was packed. We're estimating about 2000 people were there to hear Ani play Bach, and Catherine and ensemble play Ian Wilson's "Messenger" Concerto - the piece around which this whole tour was built.
It was crazy. For one thing, we think of chamber music as being, well, music for a chamber, ie, a small space. But the music Adrian chose worked beautifully in the huge Cathedral. For another, we build our concert series around intimate spaces and we tend to build our audience one person at a time. But this audience was amazing. Based on the phone calls we got reserving tickets, I don't think everyone who was there is a regular classical music attendee (though I could be wrong about that). But the attention this audience gave to the music was just incredible. Maybe we'll start building audiences by the hundreds. This audience stayed, and was absolutely attentive, from beginning to end. For those of us who've been working like mad to put this all together, it was immensely gratifying, and the gala dinner following the concert was a great wrap up to the evening.
All in all, it was a great way to start, and in spite of a late night and early morning, I'm feeling excited - we're off!, optimistic - last night's events were fantastic!, and, though it's 5 PM in LA, just about ready for bed. Stay tuned.
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Our blog is now up and running! Check back in the next few days as we will be posting interviews, photos and behind the scene highlights regarding how the 2008 European tour is going!
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