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The date for this issue of The Reader will be December 24, 2015, which, incidentally, means the next issue will be dated December 31, 2015. I think we’re bringing the Duluth Superior Arts world to a rich close for this calendar year. All the local hot spots will be celebrating the end of the year in great fashion. The Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra decided to close the year with An Evening with Frank Sinatra. Sinatra, however, died in May, 1998, so a vocal wizard named Michael Andrew will do his tantalizing best to take the audience back under the spell of Ol’ Blue Eyes. If this is music for your New Year’s Eve, come to Symphony Hall at the DECC at 7pm on the 31st. Tickets are ready for your purchase.

Our Duluth Community Orchestra really does exist

This past week featured the December performance by the Duluth Community Orchestra, conducted by Sam Marks. A program of Beethoven, Ravel, Warlock, and Haydn made for a musically warm evening in the auditorium at Lincoln Park Middle School. I think Haydn’s Symphony 104 (perhaps his last) was the highlight of the evening. The strings enjoyed the varied tempos of the four movements, and the winds enriched the warm sound of the auditorium. Watch for the spring concert and continued chamber concert variety.


Christmas choral music that is new to the ears

Arrowhead Chorale also offered its seasonal program this past weekend. I was in the audience at Weber Music Hall (UMD) on Saturday evening, and was entertained by about twenty-six singers and twelve instrumentalists, under the direction of Stanley Wold and Marcia VanCamp. All of the music was winter related, much of it connected to a Christmas context. We heard German chorales, a rich Ave Maria by Felix Mendelssohn, and O Viridissima Virga, a new setting of this Hildegard poem by Minnesota composer Janika Vandervelde. The Caribbean flavor of the setting added a new dimension to the text about spices and flowers in full bloom.
A cantata called A Day for Dancing, by American composer Lloyd Pfautsch (1921-2003) was the surprise of the evening. Nine different ‘dances,’ nine medieval poems, nine tunes from all across the medieval and Renaissance spectrum, along with flute, oboe, bassoon and percussion, made for an experience of variety and vitality very refreshing for this season overburdened with long-standing traditions. Special thanks to Wold and the Chorale for bringing this to Duluth this year.

Celebrate the musical levitation between Malta and Minnesota

The Rose Ensemble, led by its founder/director Jordan Sramek, featured about ten new singers last week, in a rich musical tribute to the Mdina Cathedral in the center of the island of Malta. Sacred Heart Music Center was quite full for this very special performance. Much of the music they shared was familiar in text, but the musical settings were being performed for the first time in North America. This was beautiful choral music from the late 1600s/early 1700s, accompanied by baroque violins, and Italian baroque triple harp, a gamba, and an unwieldy theorbo(go look that one up if you want a picture).
One mystical, musical moment was The Christmas Cradle, a poem by Alfred Cachia written over thirty years ago in the hybrid Maltese language. Minnesota composer Timothy Takach was commissioned to create this 2015 choral setting, which had voices and harmonies sliding back and forth across each other like geometric planes. Old music and new music, reaching across centuries into the human heart.

From the traditional to the unexpected, indeed

Finally, I have to bring attention to Eira, folk musicians Sue Spencer, Jim Ofsthun, Ed Willett, Cheryl Leah, and Liesel Wilson. Their Glen Tidings concert at Duluth Congregational Church on Sunday afternoon was a broad spectrum of music from Norway, Denmark, Scotland, Ireland, with a bit of the Nutcracker and Star Wars thrown in for special effect. The versatile cello playing of Willett ranges from Puccini opera arias to gigues based on Bach tunes. The resonant voice of Ofsthun has gotten richer over the last decade, and he’s willing to sing in Norwegian. Wilson brought her Er-hu - a unique two-stringed Chinese instrument - to share its throaty sound in several different pieces. Spencer’s guitar is always a driving force for the whole group to circle around. This was the most diverse holiday show I’ve come across this season, and my head is still filled with a midnight ‘Alleluia’ from an old Scottish Gaelic tradition.  What a great week it has been for music of all the seasons we are currently celebrating!