Dick Ainsworth
Two piano players at a grand piano on stage.
Jeffrey Sykes and Randall Hodgkinson playing piano four-hands.
For the past 31 summers, the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, Madison’s eclectic chamber music group, has offered a broad array of music from mainstream classical to third-stream classical (a mix of classical and jazz) and other intriguing combinations.
Its 32nd summer festival, which will have all of that and more, begins June 9 and goes to June 25, with nine concerts over three weekends; each weekend offers three different programs. Concerts will be in Collins Recital Hall in the Hamel Music Center, except for the June 17 concert at Stoughton Opera House.
Artistic directors Stephanie Jutt (flute) and Jeffrey Sykes (piano) have prepared a diverse summer season with music from the 1700s to the present, including a world premiere. The music choices are carefully vetted. “Stephanie and I take our role as curators very seriously,” says Sykes. “We never program anything unless we are completely convinced it’s worth the audience’s time and attention. Everything this season has passed the Steph and Jeff test.”
This summer’s festival is titled “Off the Cuff,” and Sykes thinks it says it all. “The most exciting musical performances are when you are totally in the moment as if you are creating the piece as you play,” he says. “We aim to bring that excitement, spontaneity, and in-the-moment quality to all our performances.”
Here are some highlights.
June 9, 10, 11
On June 9, the Incendiary Artist spotlight is on violinist Axel Strauss in a show called “Quintuple Axel.” The Incendiary Artist concerts last about an hour and give audience members an opportunity to meet the artists and listen to stories about their lives and what inspires them about the music they play. It’s part talk, part interview and part concert. Sykes will be the collaborative pianist for this event as well as for all Incendiary Artist concerts in the festival.
Strauss will play works by Stravinsky, Ravel, Fritz Kreisler and Jessie Montgomery. Montgomery is the Mead composer-in-residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and also a violinist. The two pieces that Strauss will play, “Peace” and “Rhapsody” for solo violin, show Montgomery’s wide emotional range from static calm to wired energy. She is a nuanced artist and her music is best experienced in a live performance by someone of Strauss’ caliber.
The June 10 concert, “Hanging by a Thread,” features a newly commissioned world premiere by Black American composer John Wineglass. His composition, And the summer was over, is based on “The Flowers,” a short story by Alice Walker. “Performing new music and creating it through commissioning has always been an important element at BDDS,” says Jutt. “Programming the works of living composers has been a huge part of our festival since the very beginning.”
Sykes learned of Wineglass’ interest in composing a work for BDDS through longtime friend and colleague Stephanie Sant’Ambrogio, the concertmaster for the Fresno Philharmonic. “She floated the idea by John of writing a piano quintet and he was very interested,” says Sykes. “John has written primarily for movies and TV and his music has a definite pictorial/narrative quality.” Wineglass has won several Emmy Awards for his compositions for daytime television shows.
The Wineglass world premiere is in good company with works by Mozart, Haydn, and the award-winning French composer Guillaume Connesson. Jutt’s excited to play his La Rire de Sarai for flute and piano with Boston pianist and BDDS regular Randall Hodgkinson.
American composers Ned Rorem and George Gershwin are featured in “Blue Velvet,” the June 11 performance. Sykes is looking forward to playing Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with Hodgkinson in “a fantastic arrangement for one-piano-four-hands,” says Sykes. “It’s great music that everyone will recognize, but we give it that special BDDS flair.”
Rorem’s piece, Bright Music, is a series of musical sketches. In a composer’s note to his publisher, Boosey & Hawkes, Rorem says that his inspiration for the music came in part from Picasso’s Blue Period paintings, Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor, and the idea of a scurrying rat.
Also on this program are Manuel de Falla’s sunny Suite Populaire Espagnole and Dora Pejačević’s lovely melodies in the Piano Quartet.
June 16, 17, 18
The Incendiary Artist who starts off the week on June 16 with “Eminently Emily” is a BDDS audience favorite, soprano Emily Birsan. She will sing selections by Francis Poulenc, known for simple, ear-pleasing melodies, and Henry Purcell, whose songs sometimes pull at the heartstrings. The Romantic era heavyweight Franz Liszt also makes an appearance, as well as Erich Wolfgang Korngold and his lush, thought-provoking songs from Opus 22.
The concert at Stoughton Opera House on June 17, “Kid Gloves,” focuses on music written by composers during their youth. Franz Schubert’s Auf dem Strom is a song about a river that takes the narrator away from a lover. It was written in 1828, the year Schubert died at age 31.
Also in this concert are Miguel del Águila’s Wind Quintet No. 2, written when the composer was about 37, and Trio, op. 38, by a 32- or 33-year-old Beethoven.
Back in Collins Hall, the June 18 concert, “Dressed to the Nines,” begins with Madeleine Dring’s jazzy Trio for flute, oboe and piano, followed by Ravel’s Shéhérazade for voice and wind quintet, also starring Emily Birsan. Dvorak’s Sextet for piano and wind quintet, which is an arrangement of his Piano Quintet, op. 81, is an example of his lyricism infused with the folk music of his native Bohemia.
June 23, 24, 25
On June 23, the Incendiary Artist spotlight is on violinist Stephanie Sant’Ambrogio. The “Steffy by Starlight” program ranges from Brahms’s Sonatensatz in C Minor, WoO 2 to “Aria” by contemporary composer Kevin Puts. This event is far-reaching in its emotional scope. Many pieces have folk elements, while others are traditionally classical. There’s also some blues.
Karalyn Schubring’s music opens “Iron Fist, Velvet Glove” on June 24 with her “Lua Azul,” a lively jazz trio for piano, flute and percussion. Schubring composes in many styles and is one of today’s most innovative composers.
Beethoven’s Piano Trio op. 70, no. 2, for piano, violin and cello, won’t be as finger-popping as Schubring’s trio, but it’s just as exciting. Beethoven was, after all, a maverick who invented new combinations of sounds that ushered in a new musical era.
C.P.E. (Carl Philipp Emanuel) Bach, son of the great J.S. Bach, leaned toward leaner textures in his music than that of his father. C.P.E. 's music isn’t performed much, so it’s encouraging to see his Quartet in D Major on this program. It has sudden tempo and dynamic shifts that may have seemed quirky in the 1700s but may be just right for our fast-paced, unpredictable times.
Sounds of the city will come to life in Gershwin’s An American in Paris, which Sykes and pianist Christopher Taylor will play on two pianos. We usually hear the popular orchestral version of the piece, but it was originally written for two pianos and orchestrated later. “It’s super fun to play and such fantastic music,” says Sykes. “This is a don’t-miss kind of piece.”
“Stitch in Time,” the final concert on June 25, is bookended with exquisite melodies in Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Ballade in C Minor for cello and piano and Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, arranged for two pianos and percussion.
Also on the program is Dick Kattenburg’s Quartet for flute, violin, cello and piano, composed in Holland in 1940. It has youthful vigor with a tinge of jazz and, except for a ghostly ambiance in the slow section, there is no hint of the horror gathering to a climax when he was killed in Auschwitz in 1944.
Works by contemporary composers Kenji Bunch and Kevin Day are a fusion of many styles, with rhythm at the core. In Bunch’s Concerto for piano trio and percussion, one gets the impression that the music is almost composing itself, spinning freely from one motif to the next. Day’s “Ecstatic Samba” has similar off-the-cuff energy interspersed with Latin rhythms.
Altogether, just playing live in a concert hall for audiences again is a thrill for the chamber music group. “Wear your mask if you like, but please give yourself the gift of live music in a gorgeous setting,” Jutt says, underscoring that it’s not a festival without the audience. “Every listener is precious to us.”
Advance tickets can be purchased on the BDDS website or at Campus Arts Ticketing. Tickets will also be available at the venue.
