Previous Programs:   Here are brief descriptions of previous Music's Recreation productions.

Dance Rhythms
The first listeners of our favorite classical music knew something that we don't--they knew how to dance to it! Yes, the composers usually did want their audience to stay seated.  But imagine seeing a marquise interpret a dance form like a gavotte at a court ball.  After that, the sound of a gavotte would never be the same.  Find out what you have to do with your feet when you waltz and see why composers couldn't resist sneaking the waltz rhythm into their music.  Travel in time with the help of dancer Joyce Morgenroth, and see what such courtly dances as a minuet or bourree looked like.  See the gestures of the tango that Argentinian composer Piazzolla had in his mind's eye when he wrote his piece, History of Tango. Then, conjure dance movement in your own imagination while listening to the music of local composer Ann Silsbee in her Journey, a suite drawn from a longer dance music work.

Musical Conversations
If you went to a play and all the characters spoke their lines at the same time, the resulting chaos would drive you to ask for your money back.  When you go to a concert, the instruments  always "talk" at the same time, and what they say-to you and to each other-can be great fun.  Come and join the Devon Quartet in exploring some of the differences between spoken and musical conversations.   Start by listening to a musical impression of spoken chatter by local composer Margaret Fairlie Kennedy and then learn about some of the conversational rules of music as you listen to works by Mozart, Haydn, Bartok, Dvorak and Shostakovich.

Patterns & Rounds & Symmetrical Sounds: The Math Hiding in Music
As anybody who reads or plays music knows, you have to be able to "count" in a special way, keep track of how many beats fit into a measure, know that one quarter note equals two eighth notes and other such math-like things.  That is pretty simple stuff compared to the mathematical systems that composers often employ to create shapes, patterns, proportion and symmetry in their music.  Musicians and listeners may not be conscious of the mathematical games composers play in constructing their pieces, but they certainly respond to the pleasing effects of creations based on structured invention and logical solutions.  Come join Elizabeth Alexander, concert tour guide and composer of our featured work, to ferret out the mathematical games at work in pieces by Bach, Mozart, Haydn, and Saint-Saens and hear how fractal patterns, their methods of generation and their evocative names inspired her piece, "Fractals," for bassoon and=20 piano.

With A Song
Guest artist, Judith Kellock, will demonstrate what a solo voice can convey with a song--one of humankind's most felicitous forms of communication.  She will continue our Casual Classics concert series' theme of programme music by presenting a sampling of songs for solo voice.  She will explain how songs have been used over the centuries, from folk songs to operatic arias.  Works by Adam, Beethoven, Brahms, Britten, and Bartok will be among the varied fare.  The piece-de-resistance will be Judith Weir's "King Harald's Saga" a miniature, ten-minute opera in which Ms. Kellock will narrate the story and play all the characters!

All That Jazz and More
"Take One"
In a farewell nod to the 20th century, "All That Jazz and More" checks out some of the influences of popular music on classical music during the last century.  A tidy boundary between the two didn't exist for the likes of Gershwin, Berlin, Porter, Sondheim and Ellington, the featured composers in "Take One," and Elizabeth Alexander will point out the inventive ways they moved about the rich middle ground between the two genres.  Carol Buckley and Rosalind Feinstein promise lively and sassy renditions of their songs.  The program will be rounded out by a Joplin Rag, Gershwin "Preludes" and Claude Bolling's "Baroque and Blues."

"Take Two"
Jazz was one of 20thcentury America's greatest gifts to music.  Jazz performers reached Europe early in the century and instantly inspired "classical" composers to play with this exciting new musical language.  "Take Two" explores some of the many links between European classical music and American jazz.   Join us for some very energetic and even danceable music!  We'll have piano rags from Scott Joplin and Artie Matthews, blues from Maurice Ravel, a really hot piece written by Bela Bartok for the "King of Swing", Benny Goodman, lighthearted humor for two pianos from Darius Milhaud, and tango, waltz and ragtime dances from Igor Stravinsky's "The Soldier's Tale," brought to life by dancers choreographed by Rachel Lampert.   Musical influences also came back across the ocean and a piece from 1910 by Claude Debussy illustrates the lush, impressionistic French music that influenced such jazz masters as Duke Ellington.

"Take Three"
In this last farewell nod to the twentieth century, "All that Jazz and More, Take 3" features the saxophone, the youngest member of the wind instrument family that came into its own in twentieth century music, both popular and classical.   The Empire Saxophone Quartet will show off the richness and versatility of the saxophone in a program that leans heavily on the popular music side, playing arrangements skillfully tailored for a quartet of both mellifluous and sassy saxophones.  In addition to playing works by Joplin, Gershwin, Cohan, Monk and Lennon/McCartney and others, they will play a recent work by William D. Pardus written just for the group.  They will also tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the saxophone.


The Magic of Melody
"Part One:  Songs to Words and Words to Songs"
Whether you call it the tune, the song, the  line  or the melody, the thing that tends to grab you first off and that you go away humming is the part of music Casual Classics is going to focus on in its 2001-02 concert series.    Since songs with words are their specialty, our guest artists, the Cayuga Vocal Ensemble, will show you some of the nifty ways the words of songs inspire and shape their melodies. They'll show you how Thomas Weelkes depicts the ups and downs of life in the ups and downs of the melodies in his madrigals.  They'll demonstrate James Cohn's witty way of  making words and melody go together in his "Statues in the Park"  and they'll even show you how a verbal pun can be matched by a musical pun!

Part Two:
"Part Two: Songs With and Without Words: What a Melody Can Do"
Whether you call it the tune, the song, the  line  or the melody, the thing that tends to grab you first off and that you go away humming is the part of music in focus in"The Magic of Melody"concert series.  Part II, "Songs, With and Without Words," will explore the happy marriage between melodies and their word-companions in works by Monteverdi, Bach, Mozart and Schubert.  Melodic gems by Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Debussy and Bartok will show what  melodies without words can do to move us in magical ways.

Part Three:
"What You Can Do to a Melody"
In our last two "The Magic of Melody" concerts we explored what a melody is, and what it can do.  Now we'll look at what you can do to a melody.  Sometimes a melody is so good that you want to keep hearing it again and again.  A clever composer can take a good melody and make a big composition out of it, like a sonata, a fugue, a set of variations, or a song with many different verses.  At the heart, there is always a melody that keeps coming back in new ways.   Come hear the ingenious ways Haydn, Bach, Purcell, Mozart, Vaughan Williams and others give their melodies new guises.

"Telling Stories with Music"
Music's Recreation takes its informal, family-friendly chamber music concert series in a new direction this year  by exploring ways that music can help to tell stories in consort with words, dance, mime and masks.   We are excited to have as collaborators many talented local artists working in the other lively arts who will help make this year's series unique.  Come prepared to hear our usual spirited music-making by professional musicians,  lively educational commentary and much more!

 "My Father's Dragon"
"My Father's Dragon," the children's classic by Ruth Stiles Gannett, beloved Trumansburg resident known locally by her married name, Ruth Kahn, will take on a new guise.  Set to original music composed by Eric Feinstein and performed by Music's Recreation musicians, a version of the story will be crafted for this production by Marie Sirakos who will also direct narrators/actors Joey Steinhagen  and Damien Carter.  Experience the way music and narration can make Wild Island's characters, action, setting and atmosphere come alive.

 "Red and Brown"
The mysterious and haunting Haitian folk tale, "Red and Brown," is told by masked actors who never speak a word but who use movement and gesture choreographed to music to recreate the story.  This magical merging of music and mime is conceived and directed by Italian-Swiss actor and mask-maker, Davide Giovanzana, and will be performed by The Notorious Company and Music's Recreation musicians playing a score consisting of selections from the classical music repertoire woven together by local composer Mark Simon.

"Dance That Story"
Choreographer/Director Rachel Lampert's charming and witty choreography takes on unexpected subjects including baseball, canines and falling objects. In a concert of music by Haydn and Mozart and choreography by Lampert, arpeggios become leaps, sustained passages become slides into the floor and pizzicato becomes tip-toeing over rocks. A company of local dancers and members of the New England Ballet will join Rachel and Music's Recreation musicians.