Close Encounters with Music Announces Grammy-Award-Winning LA Guitar Quartet
Great Barrington, MA) On Saturday, May 6, Close Encounters With Music presents the Grammy Award-winning Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, one of the most multifaceted groups in any genre. Playing consistently to sold-out houses world-wide, their inventive, critically acclaimed transcriptions of concert masterworks provide a fresh look at the music of the past, while their interpretations of works from the contemporary and world-music realms continually break new ground. Haunting works from the time of Cervantes, breathtaking transcription from the opera Carmen, Copland Mexican songs, Jazz, and an arrangement of the Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 as well as Far East and Irish classics will transport listeners around the world and through five centuries in a single concert experience. Also making an appearance on the program will be works by Chet Atkins and Path Metheny, arranged by the quartet.
Unable to pin them down to any one narrow identity,The Los Angeles Times has called them “Either the world’s hottest classical ensemble or its tightest pop band. However it helps you to think about the LAGQ, keep the emphasis on superlatives for its unrivaled joy, technical élan and questing spirits.”
CEWM Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani anticipates their performance: “It was the instrument of choice in the Renaissance, as seen in countless paintings from the age, and re-emerged in full force as the voice of the counterculture sixties. Leonardo da Vinci and Bob Dylan played it. It was a central erotic symbol in Braque’s work and the heartthrob of Mexican Latin American Music. Multiplied by four it’s a sonic extravaganza.
Members of the quartet are John Dearman, Matthew Greif, William Kanengiser and Scott Tenant.
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS ON THE RADIO/PODCAST
Close Encounters With Music concerts are broadcast on WMHT-FM, and audiences are encouraged to tune in to the new weekly broadcasts of “Classical Music According to Yehuda” on WAMC Northeast Radio or visit www.wamc.org.
ABOUT CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUSIC
Close Encounters With Music stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic director Yehuda Hanani puts composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time: Paul Schoenfield, Robert Beaser, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Jorge Martin, John Musto, and Thea Musgrave among others to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists Adam Neiman, Roman Rabinovich, Walter Ponce and Jeffrey Swann; violinists Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman, Itamar Zorman and Erin Keefe; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein and Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Jennifer Rivera, Kelley O’Connor, and Lucille Beer; the Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, and Dover quartets, and Cuarteto Latinamericano; and guitarist Eliot Fisk. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests, weaving narration and dance into the fabric of the programs.
TICKET INFORMATION
Tickets, $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine), $25 (Balcony) and $15 for students
Available at The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, 413.528.0100.
2016-2017 CALENDAR
Chamber Orchestra Kremlin—Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Haydn
Saturday, October 15, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA
The Passion of Camille Saint-Saëns and César Franck—Cherchez la Femme!
Saturday, December 3, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA
Mid-Winter Fireside Concert–The Intimate Bach
Saturday, February 18, 6PM
Saint James Place, Great Barrinton, MA
Beethoven Journey–Early, Middle and Late
Saturday, March 18, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA
The Art of the String Quartet
Saturday, April 15, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA
The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet
Saturday, May 6, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA
Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman—Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of Women’s Suffrage
Saturday, June 10, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA
The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center is at 14 Castle Street, Great Barrington, MA.
Saint James Place is at 352 Main Street, Great Barrington, MA.
A reception with light refreshments follows each concert.
Conversations With…
“Shattering the Glass Ceiling” with Prize-Winning Composer Hannah Lash at the Hudson Opera House (Hudson, NY) is on Sunday, November 20 at 3 PM. $15 per person includes light refreshments.
“Author Linda Hirshman and The Feminine Mystique” is at The Mount (Lenox, MA) on Sunday, May 14 at 3 PM. $15 per person includes light refreshments.
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“The Berkshires are home to distinguished cultural events, but none so brilliant, perhaps, as the chamber music series Close Encounters With Music.” —Berkshire Record
“…A stunning, majestic resolution, a brilliant ending to an unforgettable encounter with music. Bravi!” —The Berkshire Edge
“…To experience the finest music ever written, presented by leading musicians of the day, in the inviting atmosphere of the Berkshires, is the best of all possible worlds. . . The quality of Lincoln Center with an intimacy that exceeds it….”
—Yehuda Hanani, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
