By JAMES D. WATTS JR. Scene Writer on Jan 30, 2011, at 3:15 PM Updated on 1/30 at 3:15 PM
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As far as we were concerned, the Tulsa Symphony could have just stayed in Buenos Aires, and skipped that sojourn down Broadway altogether.
The orchestra’s concert Saturday at the Tulsa PAC was titled “From Broadway to Buenos Aires,” and featured as guest artists the Quartet San Francisco, perform string quartet arrangements of tangos and other Latin American music styles.
This ensemble – violinists Jeremy Cohen and Alisa Rose, violist (and sometimes Tulsa Symphony member) Keith Lawrence and cellist Michelle Djokic – has carved a unique niche for itself, performing music outside the standard string quartet repertoire. The quartet applies its considerable talents to jazz, pop songs, film music, original compositions and more, as well as Latin music forms.
And its performance in the second half of Saturday’s program was absolutely captivating. You could not miss the seriousness with which the players approached this music, or the exemplary musicianship they demonstrated. But at the same time, the tangos and sambas the Quartet San Francisco played had all the passion, all the energy, all the profound sadness and giddy fun one expects from this music.
Cohen arranged or composed all the music the quartet played, and whether the piece was for the quartet alone or the quartet with orchestra, one could not help but be impressed with the clarity and inventiveness of these pieces.
They began with a quartet-only piece called “Felicia,” which opened with blistering flourish by Djokic that immediately let the crowd know this was going to be something special.
The interactions among the individual players were sharp and knowing, as phrases moved fluidly among the four quartet members. And dynamic between quartet and orchestra was often impressive, especially in the Piazzolla medley of “Melodia” and “Libertango.”
However, the final piece, a Cohen original titled “Guamba,” gave the Tulsa Symphony under Crafton Beck’s direction more than its share of rhythmic troubles. There were moments when it sounded as if the orchestra was on the verge of lumbering out of control before some semblance of musical order was restored.
As for the first half of the evening, it began and ended well. The concert opened with the Overture to “Colas Bruegnon” by Kabelevsky, a brassy and rambunctious piece that, in its merry cacophony, sounded like the Overture to Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide” played with a Russian accent. And the concluding “Danse Bacchanale” from Saint-Saens’ “Samson and Delilah” writhed and rumbled and crashed and shrieked with all the volume and gusto the very large orchestra could muster.
The other works on the program – medleys from Lloyd Webber’s “Evita” and Bernstein’s “West Side Story – were competently played, but hardly memorable or exciting. And the orchestra’s version of Leroy Anderson’s “Blue Tango” was a very pale shade of blue indeed.
Still, when that piece was finished, someone in the audience shouted, “Play it again!” Beck was caught for a second off-guard, then replied, “Come back!”
The Quartet San Francisco will perform a solo concert, focusing on its jazz repertoire, at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Cascia Hall PAC, 2525 S. Yorktown Ave. The concert is sponsored by Choregus Productions, and tickets are available at tulsaworld.com/mytix.
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