On February 23, I attended the 17th Annual Sphinx Competition held at the Detroit Orchestra Hall. The concert was phenomenal, and surprisingly enough to me I actually relished the performance. The reason the concert satisfied me was due to the fact of the meaning that was upheld throughout the concert. The Sphinx Orchestra is an amazing foundation in which supports Black and Latino string classical musicians and gives them a chance to better their life through the prodigious gift of scholarships. At this specific concert three finalist strived to see who truly has the utmost talent amongst the three. The three musicians included nineteen year old bassist, Xavier Foley; twenty-one year old cellist, Nicholas Mariscal; and twenty year old violinist, Clayton Penrose-Whitmore. Each musician did an extraordinary and gave the impression that they played their pieces flawlessly. Although all the young musicians achieved mere perfection; there had to be a winner and that was Xavier Foley. He received fifty thousand dollars in scholarships and by all means deserved it. The conductor of the concert was Maestro Brandon Keith Brown, who also did astonishing. In addition to all of those great musicians I also had the honor of hearing Simon Shaheen playing the oud. All together the performance was just incredible in my eyes.
Each young musician did their own piece as well as Simon Shaheen. Xavier Foley played an amazing piece by Giovanni Bottesini. Xavier performed Concerto No. 2 in A Minor: l. Allegro. Nicholas Mariscal selected a piece by Sir Edward Elgar, and was his Concerto in E Minor: lV. Allegro – Moderato – Allegro, ma non troppo, which translates to Lively – Moderate – Lively, but not too much. Clayton Penrose-Whitmore designated to a...
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...while performing the double bass, that nickname being ‘Paganini of the double bass’. This individual did things with three strings that most people on the face of the planet could not do with hundreds. His movements were so fluent and he possessed the greatest talent one could ever think of. This particular piece was written to achieve romance, and in my opinion he did just that. Xavier Foley has to have a fine taste in music in order to choose such a wonderful song.
The 17th annual Sphinx Orchestra Finals Competition Concert has changed my perspective on classical music. I fully enjoyed the performance and might even consider going to next year’s performance. The young musician upheld incredible talent and the orchestra was just as unbelievable. I applaud the Sphinx Orchestra for putting on such a miraculous performance that anyone would enjoy a classical concert.
On Sunday afternoon November 21, 1999, at 2:00 p.m.at 419th Concert Worldwide, 330th in New York, 218th in Carnegie Hall I attended a MidAmerica production that presented the New England Symphonic Ensemble. This concert contained several different compositions by large groups of musicians, including an orchestra band, and chorus. This concert was divided into three different parts. First there was the Vivaldi which was divided into 12 sections. Virginia-Gene Rittenhouse was the music director, Raymond Sprague was the conductor, Judith Von Housers Voice was the soprano, Mary Nessinger voice was the Mezzo soprano, and Elizabeth Hastings was the portative. There was a reprise in the first section Gloria which opened up the symphony.
In this piece, two male musicians took turns during the performance to sing their parts. It starts off slow, as opposed to most of the music played that afternoon. During the middle of the piece, the guitarron continued strumming while Stacy Lopez, the vihuela player, made noises that sounded as if the vihuela itself was being struck. “Para Que Me Haces Llorar” soon came to a close; at least, it sounded like it was. As immediately as that song ended, the next piece started just as quickly and it had a song that had a familiar rhythm- and sure enough, it was the song “Stand by Me” but in Spanish. This part starts off with violins being plucked and with a calmer tone with a pace that builds up. Later on, all the musicians snapped their fingers as one of the singers were singing. After the singer finished his part, the violinists took over the microphones and made a deeper sound than what was heard out of the eight pieces
One of the pieces the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra performed was Carnival Overture, op. 92, composed by Antonin Dvorak. The conductor at this concert was Christian Baldini and the main violinist was Shawyon Malek-Salehi. This piece was made in the Romantic era with an orchestra instrumentation. The genre for this piece is concert overture and has a sonata form in a similar formate to other sonata forms from the Romantic era, making it sound dramatic compared to the Classical era’s sonata era. The live performance was true to Dvorak’s original score, which took the traditional sonata form of the classical era and changed it to incorporate a common Romantic era sonata form. Although the live performance focused on the first violinist, it still maintained the dramatic atmosphere from the original piece by keeping the sonata form, rhythm, texture, and instrumentation.
The jazz band I observed played a series of six different songs. Although all the songs were categorized as jazz, each song had its own special style and sound to it. The band consisted of three different players. Paul Meyers, the guitarist and composer, Andy Eulau, the bassist, and Dave Rataczak, on drums. The songs performed were entitled “Love for Sale” by Cole Porter, “Once I Loved” by Antonio Carlos Jobim, “Stars” by Paul Meyers, “Blues for Mel” also by Paul Meyers, “Last Night When We Were Young” by Harold Arlen, and “Samba Novo” by Luis Eca.
I chose to do my concert critique on Eric Clapton-MTV unplugged full concert-HQ January 16, 1992 at Bray Film Studios in Windsor, England. Eric Clapton is my favorite rock n roll singer which has a mixture of genres. The concert was inside and on stage. The audience was seated up close to the stage which made the atmosphere comfortable; Eric and the band showed much warmth and connected with the crowd it wasn’t like the band was untouchable.
I attended the Los Angeles Philharmonic classical music concert at the Walt Disney Concert Hall on Friday 29 November 2013. The classical concert started at 8:00pm to the enjoyment of the huge audience that had been waiting for this amazing music extravaganza. Classical music concerts always offer magnificent entertainment and the audience in this concert was expectant to derive such entertainment or more. In attendance were Christian Zacharias who was the conductor and Martin Chalifour who was the LA Phil commanding Principal Concertmaster and Bach violin player. In readiness for the concert, I enjoyed a special dinner prepared for the audience. More specifically, LA Phil staffer introduced us to the evening classical concert amidst cheers from the audience. It was such a refreshing and joyous feeling to be part of this audience.
This Upper Strings Recital went exceptionally well, given the fact that we actually had more performers; the performances were great, the audience was nice, and the enthusiasm and effort were splendid. Once again, under the direction of Dr. Yu-Mei Huang, nothing could go wrong with her and her students at the helm guiding the flow of the concert. As we already know I was a spectator and a participant again in this performance and really enjoyed the trajectory of the concert and how it was managed. We the students thank Dr. Huang tremendously for allowing us to gain extra experience on the stage and creating a nice environment for us to perform. In this Concert Report, I will go into detailed information about each performance that I liked and
Music is virtually everywhere we go, no matter if it is background noise in a coffee shop or singing along while shopping for groceries, we can find music somewhere. The event I attended was the Flint Symphony Orchestra on October 8, 2016. I have never attended a symphony before so I was excited to go, especially since I had invited my friend to attend with me. For this event, I was already informed by my teacher that the symphony will be formal so we needed to look the part since others will be dressed fancy. This made me curious how this event will turn out. Walking past the ticket area and through the doors to the lobby made me feel instantly memorized at how grand it was on the inside. I went downstairs and there were a vast
I noticed he constantly switched from the synthesizer to the keyboard, and this was to change the tune and make it sound layered as I mentioned before. I also noticed that at times he played the keyboard slowly and other times he would play extremely fast. So rapidly that I even questioned how a man can first not only move his arms so fast but also play so beautifully at such high speeds. A tune he played even sounded like a swish-swashing sound, and I was amazed by how a synthesizer and keyboard can possibly make such sounds. I also noticed that for this song that both Lionel Loueke and Dave Holland played the guitar, and I think this was to match the fusion electric instrument style. Overall, the entire band did a great opening for their performance; everyone looked like they were doing their own thing and were very content.
During Jr. High I learned how to play the violin through the orchestra program. During one of our bi-annual concerts, my section of violins came into the song too early, which ended up ruining the entire song. I remember how terribly lost the first violins sounded as we muddled our way through the song, the melody being several measures ahead of the rest of the orchestra. We all seemed to be relying on someone else’s proper timing to some degree. After that concert and the depressing and disappointing reaction from our teacher, I knew that I needed to learn how to count and rely on my own timing rather than thinking I could just rely on someone else. I still haven’t mastered this concept, but I certainly have gotten better since that catastrophe. Teamwork is like that, you all have to work together to produce the proper result, but you can’t replace cooperation with individual mastery through practice.
The concert featuring the Ole Miss African Drum & Dance Ensemble took place on April 19, 2018 in the Nutt Auditorium (Oxford, MS). The ensemble’s program was entitled “Encourage Somebody”, and featured traditional as well as popular music of West Africa arranged by the drum & dance director, George Dor. The dynamic and visual striking performance was well received from the audience; the musicians and dancers’ attention to detail and passion created a truly incredible experience.
An orchestra concert is a show where people perform their music pieces to people like their parent, friends, or others. I had the same thing on May fifth. During that night, groups of students from sixth, seventh, and eighth played pieces the director, Mr. Dean chose. My classmates and I had many improvements from the year before but some mistakes were included. Instead of first telling what the groups or the group I was in I want to start out with saying what I did.
Dr. Anthony Radford opened up the concert with a piece by Ludwig Van Beethoven. The piece was called la Partenza. It starts with the man singing in another language and the piano follows suite. The style of this piece strongly
The first piece on the program was Polonaise from Eugene Onegin (1878). This piece is from the Romantic period composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikavosky (1840-1893). Very short piece probably around six minutes. The variations and the interesting theme made this piece the most interesting among the other compositions despite the length of this piece, but it was amusing. The piece started with trumpets playing short high notes as an introductory, with the accompaniment of violins playing quick short notes. It sounds like if it was played in a major key, very cheerful and very fast like if the tempo is Vivace. Moreover, trumpets throughout the piece reinforce the harmony. Throughout the piece varies styles were used such as legato (smooth connected style).The texture of this piece is homophonic ( one line of real interest with accompaniment). The rhythm of the piece is really catchy, pretty much predictable; most of the piece variations are centered on the main theme, but it is very pleasing to the ears (consonant).
This time the conductor conducted music by I. This was my favorite piece because of the dynamics between instruments. The music stated out with a trill and tremolo technique between the violin and cello. This this sounds like bees flying around in the summer. Then the other instrument joins in. The second part of the music was all the string instruments played pizzicato. While the other members of the orchestra imitate the same notes.