A silly concert
Oct. 16th, 2004 11:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacAll I knew of this evening's free concert in Stanford's tiny recital hall was that it would consist of music on inappropriate keyboard instruments. Sounded like fun, and I got there early (dropping off Corflu PR2 mailing labels with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
spikeiowa on the way - members should look for them next week or so), figuring it'd be popular, and it was: the usually mostly-deserted room was packed.
So was the performance stage, with keyboard instruments of all kinds.
This was a treat, a real treat. One of the most delightful little concerts I've ever attended.
Here's what happened: for each of eight instruments, first a music student named Mahan Esfahani would play a Baroque or Renaissance work - while dressed as a cool jazz cat, in black with a beret. Then, a professor named Mark Applebaum would play a jazz improvisation - while dressed in a 16th-century fop stage costume. The Baroque music was by Handel, Couperin, Bach, and cats like that. The jazz composers whose work Applebaum was using included Mercer Ellington, Bill Evans, and Miles Davis, to name the ones I'd heard of.
The parade of instruments followed the history of the keyboard. First the virginals, then the clavichord, harpsichord, 18th-century fortepiano, and a modern grand piano. Each sounded very different from each other. (The clavichord was by far the quietest, though making a more pungent sound than the pretty damn quiet virginals.) But these did not sound as different from each other as the last three did, from each other and everything else:
A celesta.
A Fender Rhodes electric piano.
And lastly, a children's toy keyboard. With a range of maybe 2 or 3 octaves, and a little stool the men had to crouch down to sit upon.
I can't say what was the most fun to hear: boogie-woogie on the virginals? A stormy Bach toccata trying to make an impact on the clavichord? A funk piece on the harpsichord? Handel's Harmonious Blacksmith Variations on the electric piano? Any music at all (a Telemann fantasia, rewritten rather heavily to fit the narrow range, and Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man") coming out of that little toy piano?
More concerts should be this enjoyable.
spikeiowa on the way - members should look for them next week or so), figuring it'd be popular, and it was: the usually mostly-deserted room was packed.So was the performance stage, with keyboard instruments of all kinds.
This was a treat, a real treat. One of the most delightful little concerts I've ever attended.
Here's what happened: for each of eight instruments, first a music student named Mahan Esfahani would play a Baroque or Renaissance work - while dressed as a cool jazz cat, in black with a beret. Then, a professor named Mark Applebaum would play a jazz improvisation - while dressed in a 16th-century fop stage costume. The Baroque music was by Handel, Couperin, Bach, and cats like that. The jazz composers whose work Applebaum was using included Mercer Ellington, Bill Evans, and Miles Davis, to name the ones I'd heard of.
The parade of instruments followed the history of the keyboard. First the virginals, then the clavichord, harpsichord, 18th-century fortepiano, and a modern grand piano. Each sounded very different from each other. (The clavichord was by far the quietest, though making a more pungent sound than the pretty damn quiet virginals.) But these did not sound as different from each other as the last three did, from each other and everything else:
A celesta.
A Fender Rhodes electric piano.
And lastly, a children's toy keyboard. With a range of maybe 2 or 3 octaves, and a little stool the men had to crouch down to sit upon.
I can't say what was the most fun to hear: boogie-woogie on the virginals? A stormy Bach toccata trying to make an impact on the clavichord? A funk piece on the harpsichord? Handel's Harmonious Blacksmith Variations on the electric piano? Any music at all (a Telemann fantasia, rewritten rather heavily to fit the narrow range, and Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man") coming out of that little toy piano?
More concerts should be this enjoyable.
