Interview with Peter Rejto

Jean-Paul Bierny, president of AFCM, interviews Peter Rejto, artistic director of the Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival since its inception. Peter is speaking from his home in Sydney, Australia. Peter and Jean-Paul discuss how the music and musicians for this year’s festival evolved over a two year process.

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9 minutes

The Festival features 5 concerts from March 4th – March 11th, 2012,
plus a Gala Dinner on Saturday, March 10th.

There are also free Open Dress Rehearsals: 9 a.m. – Noon
Wednesday, March 7th — Friday, March 9th — Sunday, March 11th

PURCHASE TICKETS

 

Apollo’s Fire Baroque Ensemble returns with Nell Snaidas, Soprano

Apollo’s Fire Baroque Ensemble will again thrill Tucson audiences on Tuesday, March 6, 2012 – 7:30 p.m. at this year’s Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival.

“Mediterranean Nights: Sultry Songs & Passionate Dances
from 17th-century Italy & Spain,”
featuring music by Boccherini,
Ortiz, Merula, Uccellini and Castello.

Here they play Dario Castello’s Sonata No. 2 for Violin & Continuo, recorded at the 2011 Festival and featured on AFCM’s most recent CD.

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Castello (1590–1658) was a younger colleague of the great Claudio Monteverdi at
St. Mark’s in Venice. Although his publications are advertised as being “in stile
moderno,” he in fact blended styles by alternating passages in the older strictly
contrapuntal “canzona” style with contrasting sections in the newer freely expressive
style. His Sonata No. 2 develops with quick mood changes and culminates with a
powerful conclusion. With nothing but a bass line and melody indicated (no tempos,
dynamics, etc.), the piece can sound quite different with every performance.

AFCM CD’s are available at www.classicalcds.net/arizona/

Interview with Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson

Sharo & JaimeJean-Paul Bierny, president of AFCM, interviews cellist Jaime Laredo and violinist Sharon Robinson about their February 22th concert. As you will hear, the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio embarked on a consortium project with Ellen Taaffe Zwilich ––  scored for quintet with Schubert’s “Trout” instrumentation and performed with violist Michael Tree and double-bassist Harold Robinson. You’ll hear both pieces at Wednesday’s concert. AFCM is proud to be a part of that consortium through our unique commissioning program.

We also support the Trio’s International Trio Award. Learn more about the KLRITA here.

Listen to the interview

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The concert will be at Leo Rich Theater on February 22th at 7:30 p.m.
Purchase tickets here

(The webmaster wishes to apologize for the audio quality. Jaime and Sharon were speaking from their hotel in Washington, and it seems that when trying to communicate with Washington some voices are heard louder than others, and there’s always some static on the line.)

Program notes online

We would like to introduce a new feature.

Visit the blog a few days before our Evening series and our Piano & Friends matinee series. The link you see above in the navigation bar will provide complete program notes for the upcoming concert. If you miss the concert, the notes are still interesting reading. Complete program notes for the Festival will soon be available on the website in a nifty online viewer, before the Festival starts on March 4th .

If you prefer, sign up for the program notes email list. We keep that separate from the main list so we don’t send you mail you don’t want. We will mail the notes a few days before the concert.

Sign up for program notes via email