Music

In this selection from her composition Violin Woman, African Dreams, Diane Monroe draws on her decades-long genre-defying career to craft a musical memoir that bridges jazz, classical, and traditional African music, revealing an African American violinist’s trials and triumphs. Inspired by and in collaboration with visual artist Curlee Holton, and narrated by storyteller/librettist Charlotte Blake Alston, Violin Woman, African Dreams was written for violin, banjo, bass, the West African kora, and percussion, and performed with PUBLIQuartet.

Visual art was created on stage live by artist Curlee Raven Holton.  

Emily Wells, singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist, dedicated a live performance of “Love Saves the Day” to the memory and vision of environmental justice advocate David Stroh Buckel (1957–2018).She  performed on a “new instrument” of acoustic and electronic drums, synthesizer, and violin.

Bridging pop and chamber music, Wells’s work “explores concepts around human relation to the natural world rooted in a love for both.” This program was recorded in East Building Auditorium of the National Gallery of Art June 12, 2019.

Duo Sonidos, featuring William Knuth on violin and Adam Levin on guitar, performed Nana and Polo from Siete canciones populares españ olas by the great Spanish composer Manuel de Falla (1876–1946). Nana, a lullaby that de Falla’s mother reportedly sang to him when he was a child, is delivered in a soothing pianississimo (very, very quietly). Polo, the last song in this work, evokes the fiery flamenco melodies and rhythms of de Falla’s home region of Andalusia in Spain. This program was recorded in gallery 28 of the National Gallery of Art’s West Building, where several works by the artist El Greco hang. Originally from Greece, El Greco eventually found his way to Spain, where he made his mark as a painter and came to be considered the most gifted artist in all of Toledo.

Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D Minor, K. 466, was successful from its first performance due in no small part to the composer’s playing of the demanding solo himself. The presentation was further notable as the ink was still wet on some of the orchestral parts until an hour before the performance. It is the only piano concerto Mozart performed in public and the Mozart concerto that Beethoven admired above all others. This arrangement of the concerto for double bass, piano, and string quartet is by Alon Goldstein. The Ariel Quartet, along with pianist Alon Goldstein and bassist Alexander Bickard, performed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D Minor, K. 466, on Sunday, May 15, 2016, at the National Gallery of Art in the West Building, West Garden Court. The performance was made possible by The Gottesman Fund in memory of Milton M. Gottesman.

Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D Minor, K. 466, was successful from its first performance due in no small part to the composer’s playing of the demanding solo himself. The presentation was further notable as the ink was still wet on some of the orchestral parts until an hour before the performance. It is the only piano concerto Mozart performed in public and the Mozart concerto that Beethoven admired above all others. This arrangement of the concerto for double bass, piano, and string quartet is by Alon Goldstein. The Ariel Quartet, along with pianist Alon Goldstein and bassist Alexander Bickard, performed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D Minor, K. 466, on Sunday, May 15, 2016, at the National Gallery of Art in the West Building, West Garden Court. The performance was made possible by The Gottesman Fund in memory of Milton M. Gottesman.

The Rose Ensemble’s performance was presented in honor of the exhibition Three Centuries of American Prints from the National Gallery of Art, which surveyed how America and its people have been represented in prints made by American and non-American artists between 1710 and 2010. Their program surveyed centuries of folk, spiritual, and cultural traditions, showcasing the evolution of American musical heritage. The selection “The Sweet By and By” from their concert is by Wisconsinite Joseph P. Webster and arranged by Jake Endres with original lyrics by Mark Dietrich. The Rose Ensemble’s instrumental accompaniments are improvised and arranged based on the vocal harmonies of the original scores, as well as traditional, regional, and historical performance practices. The Rose Ensemble performed a concert on Sunday, April 10, 2016, at the National Gallery of Art in the West Building, West Garden Court.

The Rose Ensemble’s performance was presented in honor of the exhibition Three Centuries of American Prints from the National Gallery of Art, which surveyed how America and its people have been represented in prints made by American and non-American artists between 1710 and 2010. Their program surveyed centuries of folk, spiritual, and cultural traditions, showcasing the evolution of American musical heritage. The Rose Ensemble’s instrumental accompaniments are improvised and arranged based on the vocal harmonies of the original scores, as well as traditional, regional, and historical performance practices. The Rose Ensemble performed a concert on Sunday, April 10, 2016, at the National Gallery of Art in the West Building, West Garden Court.

J. S. Bach’s six sonatas and partitas are the culmination of one hundred years of multiple-voice writing for unaccompanied violin in Germany. The sonatas are in sonata da chiesa (church sonata) form, which alternates slow and fast movements. The first movement of the A-minor sonata is filled with highly elaborate ornaments. Bach leads directly from the first movement into the fugue, which is brief and compact in structure. The fugue features a countersubject in a descending chromatic line and inverts both themes of the sonata. The Andante, in a contrasting key of C major, features two voices—each with a distinct role, melody and accompaniment—with a third and fourth voice occasionally enriching the harmonies. The last movement is single voiced and in binary form, though with complex multivoiced writing buried within and numerous cross rhythms throughout. Bach wrote out more dynamics in this sonata than in any other within the cycle, with various echoes and a subito piano near the end. In this video violinist Rachel Barton Pine performs Sonata no. 2 on Sunday, March 27, 2016, at the National Gallery of Art in the West Garden Court.

HABITAT, a composition for percussion with video and computer transformations, is a concert-length technology venture by Steve Antosca, percussion performance and video content by Ross Karre, and audio technology by William Brent. Premiered November 10, 2013 in the National Gallery of Art East Building Atrium. The conceptual framework of HABITAT involves a percussionist operating comfortably within the domain of his instruments, emerging over the course of his performance into a larger, more profound environment through his roles as a performer and activator of the technology. This involves his movement to and performance within a “spiral galaxy” of unique percussion stations, distributed throughout the performance space. As the percussionist moves through the space on his transformational journey, a multiplicity of effects—visual, aural, and architectural—enters into the complex formula that comprises the performance of HABITAT. Used uniquely in the Gallery premiere as one of the percussion stations, Harry Bertoia’s Tonal Sculpture (1977) is a gift to the Gallery’s permanent collection from Bernard and Audrey Berman. HABITAT stems from the tradition of intermedia art, in which a variety of media are employed for the mutual benefit of underlying concepts. From the outset of the compositional process, HABITAT treats percussion instruments, monitors, and projection surfaces as installed sculptures and unifying elements of the project. The varying placement and instrumentation that define the percussionist’s journey allow the audience to adjust its auditory perspective through spatialization cues and timbral shifts, constantly reformulating their perception of the performance.