Producer/Host Kimberly Powell  

This week on Performance Oklahoma 

Two performances offered by faculty and colleagues on the University of Central Oklahoma's Faculty Artist Concert Series this Spring are featured this Sunday, May 20th on Performance Oklahoma.   

Flutist Emily Butterfield gave her faculty recital on Tuesday, February 28th and we'll enjoy her performances with pianists Samuel Magrill and Sallie Pollack of Sonatas by Samuel Zyman and Francis Poulenc and Four Contemporary French Recital pieces as well as the 2nd Fantasia from a set of twelve written by Georg Phillip Telemann for solo flute.  Emily teaches applied flute, flute choir, chamber music and woodwind methods at the University of Central Oklahoma, is a flutist with the University’s faculty wind quintet and serves as president for the School of Music's Pi Kappa Lambda chapter.  She has served on the faculties of a number of colleges, has performed at a number of regional and national conventions and is the founding member of Favorable Winds, a wind quintet based in Columbus Ohio.  Samuel Zyman is acknowledged as one of Mexico's leading composers on the international scene today and offers a brilliant virtuosic work for the flute and piano.  20th century French composer Francis Poulenc demonstrated his fondness for woodwinds with a particular deftness in the handling of those instruments, especially noted in his chamber music pieces, and the sonata for flute and piano is truly a modern classic.

Dr. David Forbat heads the keyboard division at the University of Central Oklahoma and has been a member of the faculty there since 2005, teaching applied piano, piano ensemble, group piano and keyboard functional skills.  An active recitalist and collaborative pianist and he also pursues cross-disciplinary projects and shared the 2011 College of Fine Arts and Design Collaborative Team Award with the dance department’s Robyn Pasternack.  On Tuesday, April 10^th David presented a recital at the UCO Jazz Lab featuring the Six Pieces for Piano Op 118 by Johannes Brahms, the Piano Variations of Aaron Copland and the Holberg Suite, Op 40 by Edvard Grieg.  Upon completing his Op 118 and 109 Klavierstucke, Johannes Brahms wrote no more piano music and his contemporaries registered his melancholy moods while acknowledging Brahms' mastery of the small forms.  Even some 82 years later, Copland's Piano Variations still startle us with their astringincy.  And Edvard Grieg's Holberg Suite continues to be one of the most cherished short works of the 19th century, heard here in its original form.  I hope you'll tune in at 5:00pm CST on Sunday to hear terrific works from these gifted musical artists and teachers.  

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Coming up later this month, we'll hear performances of two trios from Brightmusic Society of Oklahoma's concerts honoring the legacy of Mae Ruth Swanson on March 12th and 13th.  The programs, entitled Musical Exoticism included the Piano Trio No. 39 in G Major (Gypsy) by Franz Joseph Haydn, and the Trio for Piano, Violin and Cello in g minor, Op 15 by Bedřich Smetana featuring violinist Gregory Lee, cellist Tomasz Zieba, and pianist Amy I-Lin Cheng.  

  We'll also hear the Brightmusic Society of Oklahoma's final program of the regular season. Offered in duo venues and entitled Musical Narratives, the program presents works that illustrate the capacity of instrumental music to convey narrative themes. Featured are Three Short Stories for clarinet and bassoon by Garnet Wolfgang, the String Trio in B-flat Major D581 by Franz  Schubert, Serenata in Vano by Carl Nielsen and the Nonet for Winds and Strings Op 31 by Louis Spohr. And stay tuned to hear more about the Bach and Brahms Festival coming up in late May!

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On Sunday, April 8th, Performance Oklahoma celebrated the release of the 2012 Festival brochure for the OK Mozart International Festival to be held June 8th through the 17th in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.  In the first hour of the program devoted to celebrating performances from the Festival held this past June we heard the Amici New York Orchestra with guest conductor James Bagwell in Aaron Copland's "A Lincoln Portrait" with guest narrator Joe Sears. Listeners also met composer Callen Clarke and violinist Kyle Dillingham and heard the world premier of Clarke's Tone Poem for Violin and Orchestra "Wiley Post." And in the second hour the program offered performances from Paul Neubauer's Classical All Stars chamber ensemble.  Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the great American film music composer Bernard Herrmann's birth the musicians offered his final piece of concert music, "Souvenirs de Voyage." After that Paul Neubauer and chamber music artists offered four salon pieces scored for solo viola and gypsy band for the Festival’s Chamber Music Gala concert entitled Evening in Budapest.    

OKM Promo featuring the Amici NY Orchestra and the Chamber Music All Stars in performances from the 2011 OKM Festival

Listen here  to Part I     Listen here to Part II 

 Performance Oklahoma was delighted to present pianist Ann Schein, in conversation and in recital on Sunday, March 18th.  She appeared as a special guest of the College of Fine Arts and Design in recital at Mitchell Hall on Saturday, February 18th offering a program in the great romantic tradition of the piano featuring the Sonata No. 26 in E-flat Major, Op 81a by Ludwig von Beethoven, the Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, L'Isle Joyeuse by Claude Debussy, the Tarantella from Venezia e Napoli by Franz Liszt and the Sonata No. 3 in b minor by Frédéric Chopin.  Fascinating commentary about these works, sixty years of music making and the legacy of Mieczyslaw Munz, Artur Rubinstein and Myra Hess offered by this remarkable pianist rounds this special program.  

Ann Schein in recital at UCO's Mitchell Hall

Listen here to Part I     Listen here to Part II 

Listen here to Part III

Taking inspiration from the energy and culture of the people of Norman Oklahoma, and her long friendship with Richard Zielinski, composer Libby Larsen joined the community’s efforts to celebrate the creation of a new chamber orchestra with the writing of a city anthem and symphony dedicated to the City of Norman.  On March 11th, Performance Oklahoma presented the inaugural concert given by the newly formed Norman Philharmonic on Sunday January 15th at the Nancy O’Brian Performing Arts Center.  The program featured the world premiers of the new city anthem and symphony by Libby Larsen as well as her Fanfare for the Women and included works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Norman Dello Joio, Franz Joseph Haydn, and George Gershwin, guest soloists trumpeter Karl Sievers, pianist Richard Dowling and the ensemble’s music director Richard Zielinski.  

The Norman Philharmonic's Inaugural concert with Libby Larsen

Listen here to Part I            Listen here to Part II

On February 5th Performance Oklahoma was pleased to offer  “Present Beauty” featuring ETHEL.  Acclaimed as America's premier postclassical string quartet, ETHEL invigorates contemporary concert music with refreshing exuberance, fierce intensity, imaginative programming and exceptional artistry. Formed in 1998, New York's ebullient ETHEL performs adventurous music of the past four decades, with emphasis on works composed since 1995.  The program centered around their concert presented on OCU's Distinguished Artist Series on Sunday, January 15th.  "Present Beauty" features the quartet’s arrangement of a suite from the film score “The Hours” by Philip Glass, To Whom It May Concern:  Thank you by Mark Stewart, Huang Ruo's The Flag Project, Wed by David Lang, Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector by Terry Riley and Julia Wolfe's Early That Summer. 

Listeners enjoyed commentary from ETHEL's cellist Dorothy Lawson and violist Ralph Farris about the ensemble's history and name, the program, "Present Beauty,"  2012 projects and their most recent CD OSHTALI, an exciting collaboration with contemporary classical music students of the Chickasaw Summer Arts Academy in Ada, Oklahoma and Thunderbird Records.  

Listen here to ETHEL at OCU, Part I        Listen here to OSHTALI (Intermission)         Listen here to ETHEL at OCU, Part II

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Performance Oklahoma is KCSC’s weekly radio broadcast showcasing concerts and recitals presented across the state of Oklahoma. Airing each Sunday from 5:00-7:00pm CST, the program features the Oklahoma City Philharmonic's Classics Series concerts and performances from Chamber Music in Oklahoma, Brightmusic Society of Oklahoma, OK Mozart International Festival, Armstrong Auditorium, Rose State Live!, OCU's Distinguished Artist Series, OCCC's Cultural Arts Series, OU's Norton Visiting Artist Series, UCO's Faculty Artist Concert Series, the Canterbury Choral Society and others. The broadcasts are edited, produced and hosted by KCSC’s Director of Production & Syndication, Kimberly Powell. 

Kimberly has met and interviewed a number of the world's leading musical artists and composers for the program including Steven Isserlis, Stephen Hough, Marc-André Hamelin, André Watts, James Ehnes, Jon Kimura Parker, The King's Singers, Midori, Peter Wiley, Rachel Barton Pine, Libby Larsen, Phillip Ying, Vladimir Feltsman, Michael Daugherty, David Kim, Carter Brey, The Eroica Trio, Paul Neubauer and colleagues from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, members of Chanticleer and a number of exciting young international artists including Stefan Jackiw, Sarah Coburn, Shai Wosner, Julie Albers, Orion Weiss, Susanna Phillips, Andrew von Oeyen, Alexander Sitkovetsky and the co-gold medalists of the 2009 Van Cliburn International Competition Haochen Zhang and Nobuyuki Tsujii. In August of 2009, Kimberly and Performance Oklahoma were profiled in the Sunday edition of the Daily Oklahoman by Fine Arts Editor, Rick Rogers and in April of 2010 a feature article by Terry Clark appeared in Oklahoma's Journal Record. Her program showcasing the American Organ Institute's Gala Weekend Celebration in September 2009 was nominated for a Governor's Award. The 2010 and 2011 OK Mozart International Festival chamber music broadcast series were presented by KXMS Fine Arts Radio International in Joplin, Missouri and by KWTU Classical in Tulsa, Oklahoma.    In 2011 and again in 2012, Performance Oklahoma was awarded a grant from the Kirkpatrick Foundation and has secured sponsorship from locally owned Homeland Grocery Stores, Hudiburg Subaru of Oklahoma and Armstrong Auditorium.    

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