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Los Angeles Times
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Orange Coast College Chamber Singers focus on ‘Requiem' for a theme
Orange Coast College choral director and conductor Eliza Rubenstein remembers moving to Orange County in the mid-1990s. She went to a recital for renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman at Segerstrom Hall, putting down $5 for a student ticket to see a childhood hero. 'I was walking up the stairs, and there was this old, white, rich couple walking down the stairs, all fancy,' Rubenstein recalled. 'As we passed each other, the woman sort of stopped and looked at me, up and down. She turned to her husband and she said loudly, 'She's going to the third tier. That's where the poorly dressed people sit.' 'I was like, 'You don't know it, but you just inspired my entire career.'' Rubenstein wants her students to know that iconic pieces like Mozart's Requiem are for them, too, and places like Carnegie Hall in New York are not out of reach. The OCC Chamber Singers will perform Requiem, accompanied by a full orchestra, on Saturday night, May 10 in the Robert B. Moore Theatre on campus. The show will also feature Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, performed by OCC music instructor Teresa de Jong-Pombo. For the Chamber Singers, Saturday's performance is a precursor to a show at Carnegie Hall on June 24, where they'll also perform Requiem with the New York City Chamber Orchestra as part of a four-day trip. Vincente Dang, a bassist, will be making his third trip to the famed concert hall with OCC. The group typically makes the trip every other year, and has performed works by Austrian composer Joseph Haydn in the past. 'It's so fun, having the experience of being on a different stage with all of the choir members that you've formed a bond with,' Dang said. 'Being able to spend more time with them, while still practicing the music at such a prestigious venue, is just so exciting. It's world-changing.' Taylor Cox, also a talented pianist, is looking forward to her first performance at the venue. She was born blind and reads music with braille for the show transcribed by Beth Syverson, a faculty member at OCC and Cox's longtime piano teacher. Cox, from Huntington Beach, said performance gives her equal footing. 'It's actually one of the few things that blindness doesn't affect,' she said. 'I have to deal with a lot of things in everyday life. I have to go everywhere with a cane, I can't drive anywhere, but I feel like performance is where things are truly equal for me. It's one of the spaces where there's not a lot of judgment. I've had a great experience overall, people have been wonderful on the campus in general, but it's kind of nice when blindness isn't the first thing that people notice when someone's performing.' Not every member of the OCC Chamber Singers is making the trip to New York, but Rubenstein said the group has been doing plenty of fundraising to make sure as many singers can go as possible. Mio Romero, an alto, said she is looking forward to both Saturday's concert and the trip to the East Coast. The group has been locking in on the material since the semester started in February. 'This work is just so massively famous,' Romero said. 'My boyfriend heard me practicing, and he was like, 'Oh my goodness, I've heard that before.' Like, yeah, it's in this video game.' I'm like, 'Yeah, it's also in this movie, and also in this other thing.' 'It's really humbling and amazing to be able to be part of it.' Tickets for Saturday's show are $10 for students and $15 for the general public, and can be purchased at OCC Tickets. Free parking will be available in Lot C. Rubenstein promises the tickets are well worth the money, adding that the choral department sings all types of music but there's something powerful about being in the presence of someone like Mozart. As for the Beethoven piece, she called de Jong-Pombo a world-class performer as well as a great teacher of OCC students of all ages and abilities. 'This is as much great music as you will get for your $15 anywhere in Orange County,' Rubenstein said. 'This is an incredible arts bargain.'
Boston Globe
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
An old favorite and an oddity from the BSO
How do you solve a problem like Dmitri? Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up According to music director Andris Nelsons and the BSO's performance on Thursday, you don't, and you probably leave with more questions than you had going in, but that isn't a bad thing. Take that 'William Tell' giddy-up refrain: Is Shostakovich dreaming of childhood fantasies, a la 'The Lone Ranger'? Could he be calling on something from the Tell legend itself: the brave folk hero standing up against a tyrannical ruler, or the rage and terror any parent would feel if their child might be in danger? Shostakovich never provided definitive answers, and Nelsons and the BSO reveled in those ambiguities throughout the evening's colorful performance. Advertisement The BSO has only performed this oddball piece a few times throughout its history, and with it they paired one of the most-performed standards in the symphonic repertoire: Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4, with the distinguished Mitsuko Uchida at the keyboard. Uchida's professional career has long since passed the half-century mark, and her repertoire selective but deep; no to much of the grand Russian repertoire, yes to Mozart, Schoenberg, Schubert, and Beethoven. She has also had a lengthy association with teaching and directing Vermont's summer Marlboro Music Festival, which has many alumni in the BSO, and there was a distinct current of mutual admiration and respect in the air as Uchida took the stage. From the keyboard, Uchida conjured an elegant interpretation on the classic concerto, sculpting her phrases with subtle rounded edges and bell-like intonation while making judicious, measured use of the sustain pedal. (Her pedalwork was easily visible even from the balcony thanks to her eye-catching silver shoes, which seem to be a signature piece in her closet.) Trills were as relentless and percussive as spring rain, and just as invigorating. Andris Nelsons conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Shostakovich's Symphony No. 15 on April 17, 2025. Hilary Scott/BSO In the second movement, when the orchestra faces off with the pianist in answering and overlapping statements, Nelsons and the BSO almost seemed to be goading the soloist, as if seeing what it would take to interrupt her calm contemplation; Uchida remained unassailable, answering with delicacy. Even the lively third movement was genteel in her hands, sparkling with bemused warmth. The audience appealed for an encore, and Uchida declined with a smile. After intermission, the Shostakovich symphony began with sounds of percussion clockwork, and Nelsons deftly conducted the mercurial first movement, leading the orchestra through delicate atonal latticework and the recurring 'William Tell' theme with equal confidence and momentum. In the second movement, the whole world briefly reduced itself to the sound coming from principal cellist Blaise Déjardin, as his instrument became a lonely and all too human voice crying out — first against stony silence, then versus even stonier chords from the brass section. Concertmaster Nathan Cole also proved his Shostakovich bona fides more than once, contributing sinewy and sweetly sardonic solo passages at several junctures. If Cole ever plays either of Shostakovich's violin concertos, with the BSO or any other orchestra, I'll be first in line for a ticket. Advertisement Through his career, Shostakovich was fond of the musical form passacaglia, which places gradually evolving harmonic variations over a repeated bassline, and the leadup to the finale of the 15th Symphony features a particularly intense example. As the BSO approached its emotional apex, the sound itself felt somehow blinding, the stage too bright to look at directly. Leipzig, if you're reading this, you might want to pack some sunglasses. BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA At Symphony Hall April 17. Repeats April 19. A.Z. Madonna can be reached at
