Black History Month – Young Artists’ Showcase
In honour of Black History Month, 2013, Cathedral Arts, the arts programme at Christ Church Cathedral Ottawa, will present Young Artists’ Showcase on Saturday, February 16th at 2:00PM, at the Cathedral.
This wonderful event is being hosted by special guest, New York bass, Gregory Sheppard.
This event will feature some of the top young talent in and around Ottawa. Here is a sneak preview of some of the artists and the repertoire they will perform.
Gregory Sheppard
bass
Giuseppe Verdi: Mentre gonfiarsi l’anima (from Attila)
H. Leslie Adams: Prayer
Jacqueline Hairston (arr.): Don’t You Let Nobody Turn You ‘Round
Max Anderson, Kurt Weill: Lost In The Stars (from Lost In The Stars)
H. Leslie Adams & Jacqueline Hairston are both highly regarded Black American composers and Music Educators, and are both still living. Adams was educated at the famous Oberlin Conservatory & has won numerous awards. Hairston was educated at Juilliard & Columbia University. Both have had long, distinguished careers.
The musical Lost In The Stars is based on the famous South African novel “Cry, The Beloved Country”, which deals with some of the harsh realities of Black life in the apartheid era.The words of the title song, which in the musical are those of the minister Stephen Kumalo at the depth of his desperation, tell how God once “held all the stars in the palm of his hand” “and they ran through his fingers like grains of sand, and one little star fell alone.” Kumalo says that God sought and found the little lost star and “stated and promised he’d take special care so it wouldn’t get lost again.” But at times he thinks that God has forgotten his promise and that “we’re lost out here in the stars.”
Jacob Armstrong
saxophone
Eugene Bozza: Aria
Jacob ter Veldhuis: Billie
Billie is a fascinating composition for saxophone and electronic recording. Categorized by the composer as “Avant Pop”, the piece combines beautifully evocative writing for the sax with excerpts from rare recorded interviews with legendary Blues/Jazz vocalist Billie Holiday. In these excerpts, Holiday talks about her insecurities and fears as a performer, among other topics.
Gabriel Sanchez Ortega
bass
G.F. Handel: Ombra mai fu (from Serse)
J.-B. Lully: Bois épais (from Amadis de Gaule)
W.A. Mozart: In diesen heil’gen Hallen (from/de Die Zauberflöte
Ortega performs some of the most famous & beautiful bass arias in the operatic canon, including Handel’s renowned “Ombra mai fu”, known to many as the “Largo from Xerxes”.
Bryan Cheng
cellist
J.S. Bach: Suite No. 5 for Solo Cello (BWV 1011) – Allemande & Gigue
Zoltán Kodály: Sonata for Solo Cello, Op. 8 – Allegro molto vivace
Kodály’s sonata is widely considered the greatest of a small field of works for solo cello written since Bach’s cello suites (one of which Bryan plays earlier in the program). It has been opined that “Had he written nothing else apart from this magnificent sonata, Kodály would still deserve to be accounted one of the greatest musical geniuses that Hungary has ever produced”. It contains influences of Debussy & Bartok, as well as the inflections and nuances of Hungarian folk music.
Bryan Cheng will perform in memory of his recently deceased teacher, the late Yuli Turovsky. He will play the last two pieces they worked on together. Turovsky, who had come to Canada as an immigrant in the 1970’s, founded the famous chamber orchestra “I Musici de Montréal” and became a revered figure in Canada’s classical music world. Bryan began lessons with Turovsky when he was 8 years old, and they soon developed a special relationship. This led to Bryan being asked to play and offer a eulogy at his teacher’s funeral in January, 2013.
Maria Gubbels
soprano
Reynaldo Hahn: Si mes vers avaient des ailes
Stefano Donaudy: Come l’allodoletta
W.A. Mozart: Deh vieni, non tardar (from Le nozze di Figaro)
Antonin Dvořák: Měsíčku na nebi hlubokém (from Rusalka)
These four beautiful masterworks alternate between the anticipation of love and the pain of love. In “Si mes vers”, composed when Hahn was only 13 years old (!), the poet speaks of what (his) love could do if it had wings, and in “Deh vieni, non tardar” Susannah sings in eager anticipation of being with her beloved Figaro. Conversely, the Donaudy speaks to the pain that a gentle heart can suffer at the hand of love, while in the famous “Song to the Moon” Rusalka begs the moon to tell her where her absent lover is, that she is waiting for his return, and asks the moon to help him remember about her.
Welile Nxumalo
vocal
Luther Vandross: Dance With My Father
Prince: How Come U Don’t Love Me Anymore?
M. Gordon & H. Warren: At Last
Ms. Nxumalo, one of four Black artists on the programme, performs two songs by Black Americans highly regarded for their contributions to Popular Music, and “At Last”, made famous by the incomparable Black artist Etta James. The Prince song is written in a hard-driving style not often associated with the songs he is known for as a performer.
John Dapaah
piano
J.S. Bach: Partita No. 1 (BWV 825) – Prelude, Menuet, & Gigue
J. Dapaah: Improvisations on Over the Rainbow, Canon, and I’ve got Rhythm
The Bach Partita No. 1 is from a set of six partitas for harpsichord that Bach composed late in his career – however, they were among the first of his works to be published under his direction. Born in Ghana, Mr. Dapaah is also a talented Jazz player, and shows his versatility in his own arrangement of several well-known songs.
Keena Eloise
soprano
André Previn: From: Honey & Rue (Poems by Toni Morrison)
- 1- First I’ll Try Love
- 3- The town is lit
- 4- Do you know Him?
- 6- Take my Mother Home
The songs being performed by Black Canadian soprano Keena Eloise are from a cycle of six songs to poems by the famous Black American writer Toni Morrison, and were originally composed for Kathleen Battle. Honey and Rue refers to “the bitter and the sweet” that comes with life and love and is part of the African American experience. Capturing echoes of such European masters as Mahler and Berg, there a hint of Americana in the Copland-Bernstein vein, and elsewhere the engaging verve of jazz and the blues.