Free Admission GLENDALE NOON CONCERTS
Every First & Third Wednesday at 12:10-12:40 pm
has returned to live performances
in the Sanctuary of Glendale City Church!
RELAX DURING YOUR LUNCH HOUR WITH LIVE MUSIC
610 E. California Ave Glendale, CA 91206
On Wednesday MAY 1, 2024 at 12:10 -12:40 pm PT,
the Free Admission Glendale Noon Concerts program
will be performed live in the Sanctuary of Glendale City Church.
PARKING INFO:
https://glendalecitychurch.org/location
Glendale Noon Concerts 5/1/24
at 12:10-12:40 pm PT
Pianist NIC GERPE
Program:
Gernot Wolfgang (b.1957)
The Patience of Water (2021)
Karol Szymanowski (1882 - 1937)
Calypso, from Metopes, Op. 29 (1915)
Almeida Prado (1943 - 2010)
Ilhas (1973)
1. Ilhas dos nove vulcões
2. Ilha de pedra
3. Ilha de gelo
4. Ilha verde-azul
5. Ilha de coral
6. Ilha das flores
7. Ilhas afortunadas
8. Arquipélago
Timothy Peterson (b.1994)
Aries (2022)
SCROLL DOWN TO SEE ARTIST BIO:
STILL AVAILABLE! Watch
previous Glendale Noon Concerts streamed concerts
(April 2020-February 1, 2023):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oAfaPgGGMw&list=PLms1LJpnTpJzK7Yf6ryh2zyFMlkl7qC2z
Read about the previous programs:
http://glendalenoonconcerts.blogspot.com
Facebook 5/1/24 event page:
https://www.facebook.com/events/733023188713269
Preview of the NEXT CONCERT:
Wednesday MAY 15, 2024
at 12:10-12:40 pm PT
KEWA ENSEMBLE
Jacqueline Suzuki - violin
Patrick Marsh- viola
Clement Chow - cello
Program:
Richard Strauss
Variations on "'s Deandl is harb auf mi"
for string trio
Ludwig van Beethoven
String Trio No.5 in C minor, Op.9 No. 3
Allegro con spirito
Adagio con espressione
Scherzo-Allegro molto e vivace
Finale- Presto
Please check the link below for updates
http://glendalenoonconcerts.blogspot.com
PLEASE HELP THESE CONCERTS TO CONTINUE WITH A DONATION:
https://adventistgiving.org/#/org/ANPPGL/envelope/start
or by mailing it to 610 E California Ave, Glendale, CA 91206 to the Friends of Music.
The Glendale Noon Concerts series is presented by Glendale City Church every first & third Wednesday at 12:10-12:40 pm. www.glendalecitychurch.org
Concert schedule:
www.glendalenoonconcerts.blogspot.com
Much appreciation to the Hennings-Fischer Foundation for their mission to support art and education and their generous grant to GNC.
ARTIST BIO:
Pianist Nic Gerpe, a Los Angeles native, has been hailed as “magnetic” (Dan Johnson, L.A. Downtown News) and “prodigious… heroic” (Kevin McMahon, silverlakeblvd.com). L.A. Times music critic Mark Swed described his playing as “wonderfully illuminating… his tone is crystalline. His technique is dazzlingly fluid.” A dedicated proponent of new music, Nic has worked with composers such as Steve Reich, Gernot Wolfgang, Anne LeBaron, Michael Gordon and Donald Crockett, and has given numerous world premieres in the Los Angeles area and abroad. Nic has performed throughout Southern California and at festivals including the Beverly Hills International Music Festival, Banff International Keyboard Festival, the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice at the New England Conservatory, and the Tahoe Chamber Music Festival. Nic has performed in such venues as Walt Disney Concert Hall, Zipper Hall, the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, and the Roy and Edna Disney Cal Arts Theater. Nic’s performances have also been nationally broadcast on 91.5 KUSC and classicalkusc.org.
As one of four young pianists featured on L.A.-based Piano Spheres’ new Satellite Series, Nic recently performed a critically-acclaimed solo recital at the Roy And Edna Disney Cal Arts Theater. He also gave the world premiere of James Matheson’s “Chapter 1…” at Walt Disney Concert Hall as part of the Radical Light Tribute Concert for Steven Stucky. Nic recently performed on the Green Umbrella series’ “Noon to Midnight” concert, an all-day celebration of contemporary music, at Disney Hall. Nic has also performed on the Sundays Live series, the longest-running live music broadcast in L.A., at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Nic has performed as a soloist in modern piano concerti by some of today’s most talented emerging composers. He gave the World Premiere composer Dale Trumbore’s piano concerto “10,000 Hours” with the USC Thornton Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Donald Crockett. He also participated in the 2012 Piatigorsky International CelloFest, performing the American premiere of Thomas Demenga’s “Relations”, a double concerto for two cellos, percussion and prepared piano. He also recently performed Reena Esmail’s “Earth Speaks”, a concerto for piano, horn and SATB chorus, with the Pasadena Master Chorale, conducted by Jeffrey Bernstein.
Nic has performed with Los Angeles-based new music groups WildUP and The Industry L.A., and premiered new works for Magnetic Resonator Piano with People Inside Electronics. He has performed with such world-renowned artists as Andrew Bain, Michele Zukovsky, Jack van Geem and Judith Farmer. Nic’s playing is also featured on composer Gernot Wolfgang’s GRAMMY-nominated chamber music album “Passing Through”, released in 2016 on the Albany Label.
Additionally, Nic has given guest artist recitals and masterclasses at California State University Los Angeles, Cal State University Sacramento, Pasadena City College, and Los Angeles Valley College.
Along with violinist Pasha Tseitlin, Nic is the co-founder of Panic Duo, a violin and piano duo dedicated to the performance of contemporary music. The Duo has performed in Los Angeles, San Diego, Escondido, Paso Robles and other venues throughout the United States. Current season highlights include performances at Boston Court Performing Arts Center and The Phoenix Concerts in New York City, as well as guest artist recitals at Cal Arts and Cal State L.A..
Nic earned his Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in Piano Performance at the University of Southern California in 2012. He studied extensively with Bernadene Blaha, Kevin Fitz-Gerald and Stewart Gordon. He has also worked with Earl Wild, Arnold Steinhardt, Robert Lipsett, and Stephen Drury.
Nic has been on the Piano Faculty of the Pasadena Conservatory of Music since 2006.
PROGRAM NOTES:
The
Patience of Water (2021) – Gernot Wolfgang
The inspiration for my contribution to this wonderful project
was the third movement of Crumb’s Makrokosmos, Volume I, Pastorale (Taurus).
I focused on recurring elements in Crumb’s movement, and transformed them into
my own musical gestures. These would periodically return within my piece,
resulting in a modular structure not unsimilar to that of Pastorale.
Overall The Patience of Water turned out to be quieter, more pensative than its
source of inspiration. In nature, absent of human influence, water moves at its
own pace. Whether fast, slow or seemingly still, it is patient. It cannot be
hurried.
- Gernot Wolfgang
Métopes, Op. 29 -Karol Szymanowski
Szymanowski composed the three movement cycle Métopes in 1915, a full four
years after his Second Piano Sonata. During this break from writing piano
music, he made four extended trips with his friend Stefan Spiess throughout
Italy and Sicily, and during these excursions he became infatuated with the
literature, art, and architecture of ancient Greece and Rome. Particularly
inspiring to Szymanowski were trips to the ruins of Greek temples in Segesta,
Agrigento, Siracusa and Taormina. In 1911, he made a trip to a museum in
Palermo where he saw bas-reliefs from the 6th- to 4th- Century B.C. These
metopes, which are rectangular decorative panels with a painted or sculpted
scene, came from the temple at Selinunt and served at least partially as the inspiration
for Szymanowski’s triptych. Strangely, these particular metopes did not depict
the same scenes found in Szymanowski’s Métopes – as Teresa Chylinska points
out: “The composer… does not utilize the technique of leading motives; he does
not utilize ‘sound painting’, nor in any manner does the music ‘relate’ the
history of Odysseus. Similar to Debussy and Ravel, in giving programmatic
titles to his compositions, he defines only the circle of defined associations,
suggestions or allusions around them; the titles represent multi-meaning
symbols of the adventures, which are hidden and which – as in the metopes on
the friezes in the temple – keep changing, depending upon the intensity of the
light and shadows”.
Szymanowski was also particularly fond of the works of Homer, and the epic poem
The Odyssey features prominently in several of the composer’s works. The three
Métopes are each based upon a female character that Odysseus encounters on his
homeward journey following the Trojan War. Poseidon, the god of the sea,
attempts to thwart Odysseus’ travels at practically every turn, and it takes
Odysseus ten years to reach his home of Ithaca.
The Isle of the Sirens depicts the half-woman, half-bird creatures whose
alluringly beautiful song lures sailors to their demise, shipwrecked upon the
rocks of their island. Odysseus, passing by the Sirens’ home, orders his crew
to plug their ears with wax so as to be immune to the spell, while he is tied
to the mast and is able to hear their song.
Odysseus finds himself shipwrecked upon the island of Ogygia, where the
beautiful nymph Calypso offers him hospitality but imprisons him for seven
years. Only when she is ordered by the Gods to release Odysseus does she assist
him in building a raft and pointing him in the direction of home.
When Poseidon discovers that Odysseus has escaped Calypso’s island, he
shipwrecks the hero’s raft on the island of the Phaeacians. Washed ashore and
half-dead, Odysseus is discovered by Nausicaa, the daughter of the island’s
King. Nausicaa encourages Odysseus to seek the help of her parents, who welcome
him and ultimately hear his recounting of his voyages and adventures.
Ultimately, they provide him with ships and men to return him to his home to be
reunited with his wife Penelope; Nausicaa falls deeply in love with him but her
love is unrequited.
These trips throughout the Mediterranean also saw a major shift in
Szymanowski’s musical language. While his music up to the Second Piano Sonata
were heavily influenced by late German Romanticism, works composed through the
years of the First World War take on a distinctly Impressionistic flavor,
demonstrating the use of bi- and polytonality, as well as atonality with hints
of Scriabin and Schoenberg. Works composed during this period include the Métopes,
Masques, Etudes, Mythes for violin and piano, and Songs of the Fairy Tale
Princess. Despite having elements comparable to Debussy, Ravel, Schoenberg and
Scriabin, the music of Szymanowski is highly individual and unique and
influenced not only younger Polish composers, but also such composers as Bartók
and Berg.
- Nic Gerpe
Ilhas (1973) - Almeida Prado
1. The
Island of Nine Volcanoes - "Spitting fire, the blood of the earth,
explosions of incandescent rhythms, a strange liturgy of violence, a wild song
between lava and sea."
2. The Island of Stone - "A barren stillness, strange animals run over the
crevices. No vegetation to afford beauty, occasional bushes and an unrelenting
heat."
3. The Island of Ice - "Icebergs sailing on the waves like a white crystal
ship, with untouched majesty, impersonal, immense and solitary."
4. Green-blue island - "Lost in a sea of intensive blue, coconut palm
trees with thick foliage, birds, butterflies, the gentle song of the
wind."
5. Island of Coral - "A red collar, gripped by the redness of everything.
Luminous fish in the coral branches. Magical fullness."
6. Island of Flowers - "Possible fantasy... orchids, agapantos, magnolias,
jasmine... ruins of immense pyramids. Magic circles."
7. Islands of Happiness - "Toucans, song-thrushes, canaries, large blue
butterflies which fly around in wonderful circles."
Aries
(2022) – Timothy Peterson
Aries is a constellation that represents the winged, golden-fleeced ram of
Greek mythology. The ram first appears in the tale of Phrixus and Helle, twin
children who unwittingly become the object of their stepmother’s hatred. The
children’s birthmother summons the ram to whisk them away to the distant land
of Colchis (modern-day Georgia). While flying over the Mediterranean Sea, Helle
succumbs to vertigo and falls to her death. Phrixus, however, arrives safely in
Colchis, whereupon he sacrifices the ram to Zeus, who places it in the night
sky, creating the constellation Aries, which, according to Hellenic astrology,
the Sun enters at the beginning of Spring. Phrixus then gifts the local king
with the ram’s golden fleece to thank him for his hospitality. (Later, Jason
and the Argonauts embark on a quest to claim the prized fleece as their own.)
Some scholars believe that the myth of the Golden Fleece was inspired by an
early mining technique that was popular in the Caucasus region and likely known
to Ancient Greeks whereby sheep fleeces were stretched over a wooden frame and
submerged in a stream that held gold deposits. The fleeces would catch flecks
of gold that were later combed out after the fleeces had been hung from trees
to dry. These mythological, astrological, and historical associations were on
my mind as I composed Aries. Sparkly and twinkly playing in the piano’s upper
register evoke the sheen of the ram’s golden fleece and the starry quality of
its celestial reincarnation. Watery textures – sometimes gentle and at other
times more forceful, rising from the depths of the piano’s lower register –
evoke the Mediterranean Sea and the streams used in placer mining. Lyrical,
melancholic passages invite reflection on the more tragic elements of Phrixus
and Helle’s tale, while moments of triumph allude to the feelings of rebirth so
often associated with the Spring season that is rung in by the vernal equinox.
– Timothy Peterson
