Shwab Concert Critique

The first part of the concert played Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, also known as Fantasia, and it lasted less than 30 minutes. It opened with a lady named Anastasia Markina, and she introduced the piece with a slow virtuoso playing of the piano, to which later on the strings, cellos and basses, enter. Then Markina played an ornamented version of the choral theme, to

I chose the genre string quartet and attended a concert at First Presbyterian church on October 19th, 2014. Because of its location the sanctuary where the concert took place had many stained glass windows. It was marvelous and in my opinion well suited the feel of classical music. The audience was very responsive and attentive. They applauded when the musicians appeared, in between pieces, and at the very end. They were quick to join in the sing along portion of the concert. Overall the people attending were an older crowd but you could tell they truly appreciated the music. The concert’s duration was around an

I have never attended an orchestral concert. Although my taste ranges between several different types of music, the only concerts I have attended are of the rock and country variety. I was not sure what to expect in attending The Houston Civic Symphony’s performance on Sunday, October 9, 2016. It was held at the Dunham Theater within the Morris Cultural Arts Center at Houston Baptist University. Once inside I saw the beautiful stage with all of the performers warming up and three stories of seating. Many of the patrons were in the age range of 30 and up. I did see some kids and young adults but not many. The HCS marked its 50th year since the very first performance this season. The first performance happened in 1996 when a group of music lovers in Houston came together to play a concert just because they wanted to play and share their love of music with others. From that day they became known as the Houston Civic Symphony. Some of the players I watched in this performance have been with the Symphony for 25 years or more while others are barely reaching their first year if not their first performance; only two of the players have been there since the very first season. Out of the three pieces performed the one that caught my attention the most was the last, it hold a powerful message of fear and desperation for

The third song of the concert that I was interested in was called “Im Blue”. The general character of this song is mellow and has a New Orleans jazz melody to it. Rhythm in the song has a nice calming harmonious tone to it throughout. The timbre in this song is calming color to it making it a peaceful piece. The emotional content in this song come from the sax player when it’s his time to shine the whole band engages with everyone grooving out. The tempo of the song is very calming and brings you into a relaxing body feel. The emotional content also comes from the lyrics itself rather than from

The program was the American Music Journey, which was music that was played from when George Washington was president to modern day music. In the program there was a description of the ensemble, but no list of the pieces that they were going to be playing. The audience was pretty big, the auditorium was about three fourths filled. I think everyone enjoyed what was played that night. One of the bigger reactions was when the lights went out and the whole ensemble came out playing the theme to Pink Panther with lights on their instruments that would flash whenever they played a note. Once the lights started coming back on, you could see that all the members had on black sunglasses.

One would play for approximately ten seconds and then another would play. This seemed more improvised. And though they were short, they were complex improvisations. After they played, there was one trumpet playing. All of the playing occurred with the drums being played in the

The concert I attended was called the Faculty and Student Recital, which took place in the Cisco Auditorium on April 11, 2017. The music that was on the program was mostly what is called “classical” music, as well as a Chinese Folk Song, an electronic composition, and variations on an Indian Tala. In the classical pieces, the instruments that were used were the violin, the piano, the cello, and the oboe. In the electronic composition, the computer was used to make music. In the Chinese Folk Song, the piccolo was used to imitate the unique timbre of a Chinese flute. In the Indian tala, drums from Ghana were used to imitate the rhythm and sound of Indian drums. The piano, the violin, the cello, and the piccolo all originate

The concert night began with almost 20 minutes of performances by The Jazz Band that performed five songs: “Choo Choo Ch” (Horton et al., 1946),“Dreamsville” (Mancini, 1960), “Work Song” (Adderley,

I loved the improvisations for this recital, especially the saxophonist from Konrad Plays Klarinet, Colin Houlihan. As a former saxophonist, the tone and constant improvisation was incredible as he put his entire soul into that instrument. Sweating, smiling and happy, anyone could tell that Colin was happy to be there. “So Dance Samba” by Antonio Carlos Jobim also had a lot of improvises. “So Dance Samba” started with the frontline playing together for a certain section before individual solos played. The clarinet improvised with long notes at a high pitch and gradually got faster in notes as the sound increased. The trombone solo had a strong forte resonance with a percussion background and electric guitar background. The pianist solo used syncopated notes and many arpeggios that were in the higher register. The electric guitar solo slowly built up his part, the clarinet played another solo and then the last solo went to the percussionist. The percussionist and the entire band made it seemed like the piece had ended, and then they would play again which made me very

On Wednesday night I attended a jazz performance at Bandera restaurant in Brentwood, Los Angeles. Bandera has a jazz performance every weekdnights, and a band named “The Marbles” were playing on that magnificent night. The best songs I really enjoyed during the performance were “Embraceable You,” by Nat King Ko, “She is Funny that Way,” by Billy Holiday, and “Everybody Needs Somebody,” by Jimmy Scott.

The Jazz Ensemble I & Studio Orchestra, on Wednesday, April 19, 2017 showcased the talent of young musicians’ weather it was playing, singing or arraigning music. The first part of the concert was dedicated to the jazz ensemble, which presented its ability in both big and small band songs with different instrumentation. The studio orchestra was then introduced for the second half, with the jazz ensemble remaining on stage as they joined them for certain pieces.

I heard a ton of songs set up together from the accompanying instruments: guitars, drums, piano and trombone. The Brubeck Brothers Quartet began off playing introductory music that was a reflection of the group members before they presented themselves. The accompanying melodies were played: Dance of the Shadows, Cathy's Waltz, Jazzanians, Cool on the coast, Far more blues, In your own sweet way, and Blue Rondo a la Turk. As every melody was played it was much the same as if it was a piece of your body in light of the fact that the music was exceptionally alleviating to the ears and simply made you need to locate your internal peace. The entertainers presented themselves, gave an anecdote about their life, and told what their motivations were

The first half of the concert was only instrumental. There were two violins, two violas, and two cellos. They sat on stage with the violins one my right, then the violas in the middle, and the cellos on the end. The violins played a few songs solo. The second half of the concert was only the choir and a piano. Their performance started with the song Daybreak. The song Daybreak also had a few girls playing percussion, one of them had a tambourine. Using SHMRG, the Harmony of most of the choirs songs were very homophonic. The Melody of most of the songs were mainly slow, though a couple songs were very fast, and upbeat.

The concert was performed on the Southam Hall stage at the NAC; this is a large hall with extremely good acoustics. It is a nationally known stage, so the quality of the hall is very good. Generally, the audience was very receptive as it was composed of adults, who were all silent. The acoustics were very good as the hall spread the sound throughout the hall without making it echo. This had a positive effect on the performance, because it was possible for the orchestra to be clearly heard from any point in the entire hall. I was impressed by the large number of students that I saw that night because the show deserved to have been heard by many young people.

B. During the first performance there were many instruments such as the alto Saxophone and the drum set for the piece Mambo. The alto saxophone took the stage beautifully along with the drum set. It was honestly a beautiful performance, there were several people who took on playing the instruments and one could tell they were in unison,