Music's Recreation   Music's Recreation brings lively, innovative chamber music programs to listeners of all ages in the Finger Lakes region.   OUR NEXT CONCERT: mark your calendar! Can Wolfgang come out and play? 2:30 pm Sunday April 26, First Baptist Church, Ithaca How often does music make you chuckle, giggle or guffaw? Probably not very often. Most likely some music has put a smile on your face, filled you with a sense of mirth, made you feel jolly or simply amused you with its playfulness. It's this last quality that Music's Recreation will illuminate with examples from the music of P.D.Q. Bach, Beethoven, Bolcom, Haydn, Milhaud, Mozart, Schickele, Stravinsky and others, all bound to tickle your musical funny-bone. Refreshments and fine conversations will be served in the church Parlor after. Concert time is 2:30 pm on Sunday, April 26, at the First Baptist Church, on DeWitt Park, Ithaca, NY. Tickets: $7 per person, $21 family pass at The Ticket Center at the Clinton House, 607 273-4497; $8 and $22 at the door. More information: www.musrec.org & 539-7777 With grant support from the Community Arts Partnership   Music's Recreation is devoted to exploring new concert formats that integrate educational commentary and an informal atmosphere with high level performance in order to spread a love of, and cultivate a new audience for, classical music.  The organization seeks especially to reach what we see as an under-served population of families who are otherwise offered few opportunities to expose their children to the rich experience of hearing live classical music.  Music's Recreation is committed to making concert-going a pleasurable, family-friendly, educational activity. We also aim to appeal to seasoned concert-goers who relish a change from the usual formal milieu of classical music.  Music's Recreation is not associated with any one musical ensemble but sponsors various local ensembles in its mission to provide the area's talented reserve of musicians with more performing opportunities and a chance to engage in an unusual kind of connection with their listeners. Our name is drawn from the title of a compendium of works for the viol published by John Playford, an English publisher, in 1652.  We feel that the name, a wonderful double-entendre, represents our joy in making music and our mission to re-create music of many time periods and genres. In recent years the organization has begun to engage in outreach programs.  It has performed Casual Classics concerts at the South Seneca Elementary School in Interlaken; at the Lansing Middle School as a part of a fundraising campaign for its Arts Booster Club; at the Danby Community Center in Danby; and at Grace Church in Elmira as a part of its Music at Grace concert series.  It also presented a program at the Sciencenter in Ithaca called "Twang, Bang and Toot: How Musical Instruments Work."  This program was also presented for all the third grade classes at Caroline Elementary School and the After School Program at the Northside Community Center in Ithaca. In 2005, Elisa Evett, along with Marie Sirakos, did an Arts in Education Residency at the Newfield Elementary School, working with third graders to stage their own dramatization of "My Father's Dragon." Music's Recreation performed its version of the Marie Sirakos' adaptation of the book with music by Eric H. Feinstein. In 1993, Music's Recreation produced the first of four annual Fingerlakes Bach Festival (1993-1996), each a three to five day series of thematically-oriented chamber music concerts and lectures.  In April, 1995, the organization launched another series, Casual Classics, designed to attract families, seniors and others who may be deterred from traditional classical music concerts due to high ticket prices, late night hours and strict concert etiquette.  Since 1995, a yearly three-concert series of Casual Classics have offered concerts whose reduced length, informal tone, educational content and audience engagement all contribute to making classical music more understandable and accessible to new and seasoned concert-goers of any age. In 2003, Casual Classics ventured into new territory by collaborating with artists in theater, mime and dance in presenting a series entitled "Telling Stories with Music."  The organization plans to continue this kind of collaboration in at least one of its offerings each year. Last Year's Programs:  Here are articles about two of last year's programs, our twelfth season. The First Concert was on Nov. 20, 2005: "LULLABIES AND WAKE-UP CALLS" Music's Recreation ushered in its twelfth season of its informal, kid-friendly Casual Classics concert series with "Lullabies and Wake-up Calls." The concert served up a widely varied program of short musical gems to demonstrate the ability of music to wake us up, or to lull us to sleep. Ranging from rousing march to some of the most loved childrens' lullabies, the program explored the ways music can stir the blood and quicken the heartbeat, or help slumber take hold. Fast and loud wake-up calls included the Brahms Hungarian Dances Nos. 3 and 5 and a Schubert march, as well as pieces by Bach and even a brief, wild jazzy gallop by Stravinsky. The slow and quiet antidotes to all this excitement included Brahms' beloved Lullaby and a medley of children's bedtime favorites to sing along with, as well as a lovely soothing Cradle Song by Gliere, and a haunting, serene piece by the American composer Peter Schickele. All the players, including violin, viola, cello, flute, clarinet and piano with four hands (and two heads) joined in a new arrangement by Music's Recreation's own music master William Cowdery, of Franz von Suppe's "Poet and Peasant" overture. This music contrasts episodes of lulling calm and rousing racket to produce a very dramatic effect. The richness of alternating moods was also heard in a beautiful movement from the Piano Trio Opus 90, "Dumky" by Dvorak, as well as in the contrasting minuet and Badinerie from the French Suite No. 2 for flute, by J.S. Bach. Concert guide and clarinetist John Greenly illustrated the musical elements that produce these opposite moods as he transformed the fast, jazzy third of the "Three Pieces for Clarinet Solo" by Stravinsky from a wake-up call to a lullaby, by progressively changing the ingredients of tempo, rhythm, melody and expression that are used to such great effect that it is nearly impossible for us to resist being roused or calmed as the composer wishes. All the musicians helped to show that this ability to regulate our mood is perhaps the most basic power of music. All great music, whether rock, folk, classical, jazz or any other kind, uses this power to communicate to us on a level beyond the reach of words. Are we worried that revealing the composers' secrets will spoil the effect? Not at all! Music connects to us so directly that its effect is not the least bit weakened by examining it. Even when we know how it is being done, it still works just the same. In fact, if there is a secret to tell, it is that the musicians themselves are affected more than the audience, even though their business is to "look under the hood" and know how it all works. By talking with the audience as well as by their playing, the musicians of Music's Recreation revealed this secret. Our Second Concert this season was on Feb. 12, 2006: "MUSICAL CONVERSATIONS" Musical conversations? What kind of conversation can you have when there are no words involved?  What makes up a musical sentence? How do our ears pick out the topics of a musical conversation?   Furthermore, in a spoken conversation people have to take turns talking; you can't communicate if you are all talking at once. And yet in a musical conversation all the instruments can play at the same time!  Why doesn't it sound like a big mess? Some answers to these questions were explored in "Musical Conversations". Noting both similarities and differences between spoken and musical conversations, the musicians focused on the special "rules" of musical conversations. Ernst Toch's "Geographical Fugue" (for speaking/shouting chorus) demonstrated a unique combination of the back-and-forth of spoken conversations and the at-the-same-time nature of a musical canon.  The musicians then introduced purely wordless musical conversations.  They first showed how Beethoven gives a string quartet a musical "sentence" to toss back and forth in a canonic way to create a rich musical conversation that leaves the listener fascinated with the "subject." The visual connection between the two hands playing the two musical lines in a Bach two-part invention helped the audience identify its two "voices."  The musicians showed how Beethoven begins a musical dialogue with a simple statement and response- back and forth-  and then gradually weaves a more complex exchange in which the various instruments  combine the original statements in all kinds of unexpected ways.  String quartets by Haydn and Shostakovich demonstrated how short musical phrases can grow into interesting conversations even when the same things are "said" over and over again. The musicians also showed how one voice may have the floor while other voices gently support and provide "polite comments" on the topic. A sample from a quartet by Shostakovich demonstrated how contentious musical  "arguments" can sound! Elisa Evett, cellist,  was the program tour guide for this concert.  She was joined by violinists Sarah Cummings and William Hurley and violist Melissa Stucky to play the varied examples from the string quartet literature.  In addition to performing the Bach invention, pianist Bill Cowdery was joined by other Music's Recreation  regulars using their voices (rather than their usual instruments) for the hilarious "Geographical Fugue." Here you will find brief descriptions of our productions from previous seasons.