By Rodger Skidmore
True Romance: Life Is a Festival
And, thankfully, the Sarasota Music Festival is a great part of our lives. Every June, the Sarasota Orchestra’s festival provides joyful, serious, invigorating, uplifting and soulful experiences for those who attend.
Musically, the festival begins at Holley Hall on June 5 with a concert titled Beethoven & Mendelssohn. The evening also features equally enjoyable compositions by Florence Price and Amy Beach (but, as they are shorter compositions, they don’t get their names on the marquee). The concert’s opening number is Price’s Adoration, written for string quartet and clarinet. This short, intimate, hymn-like piece was written in 1951 and only discovered in her abandoned summer home in 2009 (she died in 1953). For an interesting read, google “Florence Price wiki.”
Up next is Beethoven’s Septet in E-flat Major, often simply called his Septet, as he wrote only one, although he later arranged it as a trio. The Septet showcases diverse orchestral colors and mixed sonorities, while the trio version focuses on intimate dialogue and virtuosic piano writing. This work is followed by Amy Beach’s Quintet in F-sharp Minor. It is known for its emotional intensity, dark tone and rich harmonic language.
This concert ends with another sort-of one-hit wonder. Mendelssohn wrote only one octet, the String Octet in E-flat Major, which he composed when he was just 16. It is considered one of his best works and is recognized for its incredible technical maturity, melodic invention and innovative, orchestral-like treatment of the eight stringed instruments.
On the 6th, the festival continues with major works by Mozart and Schumann, but starts with a nonet by Louis Spohr, combining a wind quintet with a string quartet and blending classical structure with early German sensibilities. Mozart follows with his Serenade No. 11 in E-flat, a five-movement piece beginning and ending with brisk and lively allegro movements.
Ruth Crawford Seeger (who became Pete Seeger’s stepmother when he was 13, during her early folk music period) contributes her Suite for Wind Quartet (written during her late period in 1952). The style of this composition harkens back to her earlier modernist techniques while still incorporating the simplicity she absorbed during her folk years.
The evening ends with Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet, featuring Robert Levin on piano, accompanied by violins, viola and cello. This quintet is considered a cornerstone of Romantic chamber music, renowned for its energetic, piano-driven and lyrical character.
On the 12th, the festival, again at Holley Hall, showcases Tchaikovsky, Ravel and Dvořák, with added works by Richard Strauss (Sextet from Capriccio) and Valerie Coleman’s Tzigane, featuring Benjamin Kamins on bassoon and Jeff Scott on French horn. Tchaikovsky’s contribution is his Souvenir de Florence, the idea for which he conceived while there in 1890.
Ravel gives a nod to Charles Perrault’s tales of Ma mère l’Oye (Mother Goose) with his quintet of the same name. Ellen dePasquale, violin, is featured on Dvořák’s Piano Quintet No. 2.
The festival won’t break the Guinness World Record for the largest ball of string, but there certainly will be a lot of strings in the Sarasota Opera House when the SMF Festival Orchestra performs the evening of the 13th. The concert begins with Schubert’s Overture in the Italian Style. In this piece, Schubert deliberately imitated the popular Italian composer Gioachino Rossini to show he could write in that style after listening to Rossini’s Tancredi.
The evening continues with Mozart’s Flute Concerto No. 2 featuring Jasmine Choi on flute and ends with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7.
And now that you’ve read about the festival concerts, this sentence is to let you know that Robert Levin kicks off the series with one of his insightful lectures at Holley Hall on the afternoon of June 3. More information on concerts and the topic of Levin’s lecture is available at sarasotaorchestra.org.
True(?) Romance Rom-Com
Is June the start of summer, or the beginning of light beach reading and listening season? Well, the Asolo Rep is going all out for the latter June 6-27 at the Mertz Theatre in the FSU Performing Arts Center. It is a rolling world premiere (Madison, Wisconsin, and Sarasota, Florida) for Lauren Gunderson’s Lady Disdain.
People aren’t lazy when they listen to the CD version of a book; it’s just that they can garden while listening. Or eat chocolates while lolling at the beach and deliciously licking their fingers while listening — or perhaps there is another reason. How about the listener simply loves the sonorous, sensitive, sexy and seductive voice of a reader? Or the elevated tones of the literary guild reader who feels that “smut” is beneath him?
Does the bitchy back-and-forth between two rival readers remind you of the pointed bickering in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing? No wonder, as this is a modern adaptation requiring no royalties. Who knew an epic war of words could take place in an audiobook recording studio? And, as this is not just a rom-com but a romantasy, complete with witches and vampires, there will be more than words going on between the two. More information is available at asolorep.org.
Different Is Different
The Maxfield Parrish mural, Old King Cole, has been in the King Cole Bar at the St. Regis Hotel in New York since 1932. Why? Because it is so perfect, and people who sit in the bar like to look at it. But if they do tire of it, they should take a trip to Sarasota and stay at the Art Ovation Hotel, where there are many new works of art to see every few months.
A flock of large 5-by-5-foot paintings by Pascal Benichou runs the length of the hotel’s lobby gallery. His exhibit is titled Places and Landscapes. The pairing of Benichou’s Autumn Leaves with Julia Rivera’s resin sculpture The Older You Get, The Better You Are is striking. Her pieces are encased in plexiglass squares and placed throughout the lobby.
In the gallery behind the lobby, at the entrance to the event space, there is another exhibit, Echoes of Yesterday. Here, the Mara Art Studio + Gallery (on Main Street) is represented by 13 artists and 30 paintings. An exceptional painting, Fading Memories, acrylic on canvas, is by Deena Marie King. At the exhibition’s opening, harpist Tasha Robinson played lovely melodies on her 47-string concert grand harp to keep attendees relaxed as they viewed the artwork. Both art shows will remain on display through Oct. 26.
Mini-Alert
Musicians and restaurants have pop-ups where a group or chef appears at a particular location for a delightfully tasteful or tasty treat. Sarasota has pop-ups, too. JoAnna Ford, as part of the Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe’s Independent Artist Program, will appear the evening of June 6 at the WBTT’s Donelly Theatre on North Orange Avenue. Classically trained, but sidelined for seven years by an autoimmune illness, her program, Heart Wide Open: A Musical Lesson of Vulnerability, presents a rich mix of jazz, soul and storytelling. More information is available at westcoastblacktheatre.org.
