Chamber Music Sedona will bring this year's music season's most eclectic and unique concert to the Sedona Performing Arts Center stage on Sunday, January 7th, featuring violinist Tessa Lark, bassist Michael Thurber, and harpist Charles Overton. We held a concert that transcended genres. An afternoon of unexpected movement of stringed instruments.

Overton's appearance was particularly noteworthy, as it was the first time in CMS's 41-year history that a harpist was featured.

Lark and Overton opened the show with Camille Saint-Saëns' Fantasia for Violin and Harp, which was in some ways one of the strangest pieces of the concert. This is because, unlike many of the other pieces, this piece was actually written for violin and harp. They continued to play the arrangement. “Fantasy” is a melding exchange between his two instruments, giving Overton plenty of room to showcase both the confident handling of his harp and the tonal delicacy he can extract from it. Lark, on the other hand, showed off some lively fingerwork. Their performances also revealed Saint-Saëns' skill in structuring pieces to achieve maximum complementarity between the two stringed instruments. The mood of the music was constantly changing, from languid to vibrant to anguished to cheerful to frenetic to determined.

Overton then performed a solo performance of one of his earlier works, a gentle and reflective song titled “Once More.” Incorporating teasing, familiar melodic elements, the song was written more like a vocal than an instrumental piece, with the harp returning repeatedly to the chorus as the singer did. If the sight of the early summer sun glinting off the dew on the leaves could be translated into sound, this work gave me an idea of ​​what those rays would sound like.

The first time the entire trio took to the stage was an arrangement of the traditional Irish song “The Boy in the Gap,” which begins with the tingling notes of violin and bass, sounds almost Egyptian, and then fades. He became cheerful. It's cascading and infectious, featuring a pronounced harp midsection before peaking and fading away in the form of a parabolic note.

It's always amazing to see the effect that good beat Irish music has on an audience. The audience can never stop falling in love with the music.

Lark and Thurber then treated listeners to two collaborative pieces. “Wooden Soldier” combines both traditional and contemporary Appalachian styles, with some fast chords that also challenge Lark's virtuosity, and a nod to the Irish Rovers' “Drunken Sailor.” It was a combination of quotes. The low, intense preliminary notes of “Cedar and Sage” gradually melted into a surprising series of sweet, rounded notes from the violin, then morphed into a more folky, country atmosphere. Both works relied on rich plucking from servers.

Overton returned to accompany Thurber in the first and last movements of Henry Eccles' Violin Sonata in G minor, written for violin and basso continuo, as the title suggests. Overton reduced the harpsichord part to harp, and Thurber played the violin part as well, perhaps inspired by Serge Koussevitzky's arrangement. The first, plaintive movement is his take on the aria “Lascia ch'io pianga” from George Frederick Handel's opera “Rinaldo,” which Eccles premiered nine years before publishing his sonata in 1720. I was intrigued by the B section of the book. In contrast, the final movement was urgent and intense, with the harp standing out in bright colors against a background of gloomy bass.

Lark performed a solo performance of the final movement of Eugène Ysaÿe's Fourth Violin Sonata, followed by the fiddle etude Ysaÿe Shuffle, which she composed based on the classical original. Fast and technically brilliant, the sonata itself said a lot without actually saying anything – a volume without substance. “Shuffle” was more lively and approachable, and didn't require as complex fingering.

To close out the first half of the show, the trio concluded with a memorable setting of Chick Corea's “Spain.” At first it sounded like a very convincing Spanish evening, but then we took a detour to break the spell of the waves on the sandy beach below Sitges. We wandered to a cafe with lively music and plenty of wine. Gradually, as the listener is drawn deeper into the bar, the skirts swirl and sway, the energy of the music increases and the dance gets wilder, until the whole movement slows down and the dance moves a little. It started vibrato and stopped. The musicians had fun treating it like a jam session.

Overton and Thurber restarted things after the break with a Beatles tribute best described as a string duet, a charming stroller with a glorious role for the harp, and ending with a fist pump. Lark then replaced Thurber in arranging the first movement of Astor Piazzolla's “History of the Tango.” The harp was powerfully combined with the violin here, adding a lively, galloping, giddy, fun, and even a false ending, especially given the melodic nature of the song.

Lark and Thurber also returned to their roots as a duo act on the first piece of Johann Sebastian Bach's “Inventions in Two Parts,” with Thurber taking the left-hand part of what was originally written as a keyboard piece and Lark playing the left-hand part. I was in charge of the right hand part. This combination was surprisingly effective, allowing listeners to hear the interplay of phrasing within the piece, with one instrument dominating the passage and the other echoing it.

They then performed their own version of “Weathervane,” a rambling, sustained sound that emulated the creaks and sighs of the wind on a stormy day.

For his penultimate song, Overton chose Morgan Lewis' jazz standard “How High the Moon,” with a slow intro as his colleagues played extreme highs and lows around the harp. It started with Each then continued the theme established by the harp, creating excellent sustained harmonies in the process. And finally, Lark gets bold and decides to sing for dinner as he finishes his setting of Pete Seeger's “Little Birdie” (The High Flying Bird Fearing Death). The rapid fingering of the harp and violin, the pulsating urgency of the bass, and Lark's yearning vocals created another jamming performance that Seger himself would have enjoyed. A concert that leaves the musicians as satisfied as the audience is one that makes the most of humanity's artistic development potential.

sedona youth orchestra

Prior to the concert, CMS Artistic Director Nick Canellakis and Board Chair Bryn Barkey-Unger announced that, as part of CMS's commitment to musical advancement, CMS will partner with CMS to conduct a concert under the direction of Courtney Yates and Christina Beachel. announced the relaunch of the Sedona Youth Orchestra. Education in the community.

The concert was attended by more than 50 students in the orchestra and their parents, and CMS arranged for visiting artists to perform with the students in the classroom the next day. Some of the youth orchestra's more advanced students may have the opportunity to perform with the Sedona Symphony Orchestra in future concerts.