David Noel Edwards is a writer, composer, and recording artist from Canaan, New York. He has been writing for the Berkshire Edge since 2015, mainly about music, but also about books, birds, and reptiles.
The group has a longstanding commitment to perform contemporary Chinese works reflecting sound worlds and musical languages that juxtapose the traditions of Eastern and Western music.
River of Dreams will do what no conservatory has ever required of its students: impersonate another artist's sound and physical appearance so faithfully that observers are deceived.
I expect Wallach's piece to carry subtle rumors of klezmer. In any case, it features a virtuosic role for the clarinet, and you can decide for yourself how klezmer-ish it is.
They negotiate these hazards with uncanny precision and unity of spirit, demonstrating a command of their repertoire so complete that everything they play sounds memorized.
They demonstrated their competence with musical forms that rely more on elegance than complexity to achieve their ends. And they succeeded in ways that some of their more "serious" works never could.
After jumping over the fire singing, "sorkhi-ye to az man, zardi-ye man az to" ("Your redness mine, my paleness yours"), adherents then put a coin in a pot and drop it from the roof.
These musicians will be backed on the 23rd by a rhythm section comprising Jocelyn Gould on guitar, Miki Yamanaka on piano, Charles Goold on drums, and Mark Lewandowski on bass.
Their diversity of skills, backgrounds, and predilections is extraordinarily broad, and on stage, this seems to translate directly into the richly nuanced and spiritually unified musical performances they are known for.
