Heitor Villa-Lobos Website

Friday, December 4, 2009
Swarthmore College Orchestra
8:00 PM
Lang Music Building - Lang Concert Hall

Swarthmore College Orchestra Performs

A Midsummer Night's Dream - Mendelssohn
Overture - Nocturne - Wedding March

Excerpts from "The Fairy-Queen" - Purcell

Bachianas Brasileiras No. 4 - Villa-Lobos

Spain and the New World: A Holiday Concert

* Organization: Sacred and Profane
* Venue: St. Mark's Episcopal Church
* City: Berkeley
* Date: December 4, 2009 8:00 PM
* Price Range: $15 to $20
* Tickets: 415-388-5899

Additional Dates:
December 6, 2009 4:00 PM
First Presbyterian Church of Alameda
December 12, 2009 8:00 PM
St. Francis Lutheran

Christmas, Caliente
Sacred and Profane
By Michael Zwiebach

Sacred and Profane
Sacred and Profane is another Bay Area chorus that flies, or sings, underneath the radar. But in its 32-year existence, this Berkeley-based group (which still sports one original member) has been led by several well-regarded music directors, who have kept this community chamber chorus vital. For the last five years, their leader has been Rebecca Seeman, a director who approaches programming like a watchmaker. Seeman freely acknowledges that she spent a full year planning the 2009 holiday concert, which promises to be a fascinating and incredibly danceable romp through Latin American musical traditions that may tempt you to bust loose in the church aisles during the performances on Dec. 4, 6, and 12.

Seeman is not your average choral conductor (then again, is anyone?). She has even built herself a two-octave, chromatic, wine-glass organ on which she plays alternative and other "off-kilter" avant-garde music. (She's not saying which varietals she favors.) She has recorded music for theater productions, as well as played arrangements of songs by composers as varied as Kurt Weill and Brian Eno. These interests complement her traditional background (a DMA in conducting from the University of Iowa and a Master's from UCSC), so you won't be surprised to hear that the holiday concert she has assembled is an amalgam.

Rebecca Seeman

"I like to program in a way that has a thematic center," she says. "A program is most exciting when you come away knowing something about a region or period. And there's such a depth of transference of musical styles from Spain to Latin America, so I thought that would be an interesting topic to delve into. And within that unity, there's a tremendous amount of diversity. I always look for that contrast in unity."

The anchor for this concert is Ariel Ramirez' Navidad nuestra, a Christmas oratorio in six poems by Felix Luna. Ramirez was an ethnomusicologist and composer who is famous for his Misa criolla (Creole Mass, 1964), based on Argentinean folk music. In Navidad nuestra, which dates from the same year, he pairs each poem with an Argentinean dance. The first of these, a gentle chamané, recalls, in style and meter, the European pastorale, which is often associated with the Christmas story. This provides just one of the many back-and-forth connections that cement this program.

To help perform Ramirez' spirited work, Seeman has had recourse to musicians from the other end of the South American continent - the established Venezuelan tenor Jimmy Kansau; and the V-Note Ensemble, a four-member band that fuses traditional and folk music with jazz, veering from the joropo to swing and embracing calypso, bebop, and many other genres.

The rest of the program, the result of much winnowing, includes the 16th-century polyphonist Tomas Luis de la Victoria's beloved Christmas motet O magnum mysterium; Heitor Villa Lobos' The Manger, one of a number of brilliant choral works he composed as director of music education for Rio de Janeiro; the world-famous villancicos called E la don don and Ríu, Ríu, Chíu; four unpublished arrangements of South American carols by the Mexican composer Max Lifschitz, one of which is sung in Aymara, a native language of Peru (spoken by over a million people); and a modern setting of the Marian hymn Ave maris stella by Javier Busto.

"It's a much more rhythmically exciting program than we normally do," says Seeman, putting herself in contention for the understatement-of-the-year award. Don't think it'll be your average choral concert; instead, bring your dancing shoes.

Michael Zwiebach holds a Ph.D. in music history from UC Berkeley.

The Art of Time Ensemble
Dec 4 & 5, 2009

Brasil

8pm, Enwave Theatre at Harbourfront Centre
231 Queens Quay W
Tickets $19-$49

An eclectic program of Brazilian music featuring Bachianas Brasileiras #1 (for 8 cellos) by Villa Lobos, songs by Antonio Carlos Jobim, and a set of songs and compositions performed
by Rio's music legend Guinga.
Featuring
Guinga Singer/Guitarist/Composer
Emilie-Claire Barlow Singer

The Musicians
Maurizio Baccante Cello
Roman Borys Cello
Margaret Gay Cello
David Hetherington Cello
Rachel Mercer Cello
Tom Wiebe Cello
Paul Widner Cello
Winona Zelenka Cello

Davide Di Renzo Drums
Mark Duggan Percussion
Alan Hetherington Percussion
John Johnson Sax
Reg Schwager Guitar
Luis Simao Bass
& Others