Podcasts about caf concert

De taquito a la mañana recibió a Carlos Perciavalle, apodado “El Rey del Café Concert” que vino a presentar su nuevo show donde hablará de la actualidad en materia de política uruguaya, famosos y más.

The four members of the Dublin Guitar Quartet do not specialize in bouncy jigs and reels. Nor do they play in Guinness-soaked pubs. But while the ensemble is certainly connected to its Irish heritage, its repertoire goes further afield, to minimalist and post-minimalist composers including Philip Glass, Arvo Part and Michael Nyman, as well as modern masters like Igor Stravinsky and György Ligeti. Quartet member Brian Bulger says that the group chose to focus on modern repertoire – frequently in arrangements – as a way to distinguish itself and emphasize its unanimity of sound. "Guitar quartets traditionally tend to be a collection of soloists," he said. "They sit in a straight line and there would be a lot of virtuosity. We thought it would be a great idea to create a quartet that was the equivalent of a string quartet, sitting in a semi-circle and concentrating on string quartet repertoire and choir repertoire as opposed to the standard repertoire." The ensemble's Café Concert highlighted this in two pieces by Glass, starting with an arrangement of his String Quartet No. 2, subtitled "Company."   Earlier this year, the Dublin Guitar Quartet released its latest album, a collection of Glass arrangements, which Q2 Music named an Album of the Week. In his review, Daniel Stephen Johnson praised for its "flawless rhythmic unison and tonal blend makes the four instruments sound like one." Of course, arranging piano or string quartets for guitar can be a logistical stretch: there are questions of how to adjust to the guitar's range and articulations. The Dubliners perform with three six-string instruments along with an eight-string guitar with an extra high string and an extra low string, all designed by Bert Kwakkle, a Dutch guitar maker. When it comes to capturing the intricate rhythmic churn of Glass's scores, the guitarists say it simply comes with time and hard work. The group was formed in 2001 at the Dublin Conservatory of Music and Drama, and in recent years, they have toured frequently in North America, Europe and South America. Composers are also writing new works for the ensemble. The guitarists say their next frontier lies in electric guitar quartet repertoire, both through existing pieces like those of the composer Steve Reich, and in a commissioned work by the New York composer Michael Gordon, due to premiere in March 2015. Watch the quartet's performance of Glass's Quartet No. 3, "Mishima," below. Video: Amy Pearl/Kim Nowacki; Audio: George Wellington; Interview: Jeff Spurgeon; Text/Production: Brian Wise

The classical guitarist Pablo Villegas has made his home in New York City for a decade, but his performances have a strong sense of his roots in La Rioja, a region in the north of Spain celebrated for its complex red wines as well as its earthy, indigenous folk music. That includes the Spanish Jota, a folk dance that is normally played with mandolins and guitars, singers and dancers. Performing solo, Villegas featured the colorfully virtuosic dance in a Café Concert performance of Tarrega's Gran Jota de Concierto, which featured a variety of strumming and percussive effects. Villegas came to WQXR on the cusp of a busy season. He's making debuts this year with seven U.S. orchestras, including the Pittsburgh, Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Oregon Symphonies. For six of those seven he'll be playing Rodrigo’s soulful and challenging Concierto de Aranjuez. He also has a new album due out in early 2015, called "Americano." But as Villegas stated at several points during his visit, "music is a journey" and for him, it began at age six when he saw the celebrated Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia performing on television. "I was really touched by it and I told my parents I wanted to learn guitar," he recalled. Villegas's parents enrolled him in a music school and at age seven he gave his first public performance. "Music is a social tool and as a musician I assume the responsibility of connecting to the audience in a way that I can make them feel things that perhaps they've never felt before." Villegas went on to study in conservatories in Madrid and Weimar, Germany, before becoming "attracted by the multicultural nature of New York." In 2004, he began postgraduate studies with professor David Starobin at the Manhattan School of Music. Villegas paid homage to Segovia in this performance of the Prelude No. 1 by Villa-Lobos, who wrote this piece for the guitar legend. Villegas's own career took off after winning the Andrés Segovia Award at age 15. He went on to receive many more prizes, while making debuts with a number of American and European orchestras. Currently, he is a cultural ambassador to the Vivanco Foundation in Spain, which combines a winery and museum of wine culture. "Wine, art – we used the same words to lexicon to express what we are feeling," he noted. "It's about emotions, it's about getting inspired by it." For this last piece, Tarrega's Recuerdos de la Alhambra (Memories of the Alhambra), Villegas suggests pairing it with a Reserva, a red wine. "It's more calm and mature," he said. "It does go deeper into your emotions." Video: Amy Pearl; Audio: Edward Haber; Text and production: Brian Wise; Interview: Naomi Lewin

The pianist and composer Conrad Tao seemed remarkably relaxed when he sat down at the Yamaha to perform his Café Concert at WQXR. The calm demeanor might seem at odds with the heavy load Tao has been carrying. Having recently given a recital to a packed house at Le Poisson Rouge, on Tuesday, he inaugurates the Unplay Festival, a three-day event that he is organizing at Powerhouse Arena, a bookstore and art space in Dumbo, Brooklyn. Also on Tuesday, Tao releases "Voyages," his full-length debut album on EMI, a collection of his own music as well as pieces by Rachmaninoff, Ravel and Meredith Monk. By no coincidence, he also turns 19 that day. Tao is the first to acknowledge the “incestuous cross-promotion” in the way events came together. “It happens,” he said, with a wry smile. “I must acknowledge that.” But after several years on the concerto-and-recital circuit – and now a student in the Juilliard-Columbia double-degree program – Tao is also at a point where he wants to explore bigger ideas around classical music and its place in society. Tao has had a considerable past decade. A native of Champagne, Illinois, he gave his first recital at age four. At nine, he and his parents moved to New York and he began studying piano in Juilliard’s pre-college division with Yoheved Kaplinsky. Around the same time, he began composition lessons with Christopher Theofanidis, an in-demand composer who now teaches at Yale. Tao signed with professional management and, by age 16, orchestras were calling, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony and Detroit Symphony. Awards also poured in, including eight Ascap Morton Gould Young Composer Awards; a 2012 Gilmore Foundation Young Artist Award; and a U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts recognition. Tao has studied the violin, has written pop songs and is currently working on a commission for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, about the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination, slated to premiere in November. Yet Tao clearly isn’t content with the post-prodigy treadmill and admits to a restless, oppositional streak. The Unplay Festival he said “is about what does music and do musicians occupy. I was interested in how I could find performers who are engaging in this act of ‘unplaying’ insofar as they’re dismantling certain basic traditional ideas of what it means to be a classical performer.” Those performers will include Sideband (an ensemble using laptops and speakers), the violinist Todd Reynolds, the Face the Music Ensemble, Iktus Percussion and ThingNY, a multimedia ensemble. Programs will explore ideas of genre-blurring and the use of technology in performance (Tao himself has written music for piano and iPad). "Since so much of the intellectual process of music is unlearning what you take for granted to be true a lot of this is about applying this to my own practice of being a performer," Tao said of the festival's title. Planning the festival has taken Tao some 18 months, during which time he's had to juggle his studies at Columbia, where he is pursuing a concentration in ethnicity and race studies. “It’s a lot,” he said. “Sometimes it’s easy to justify because I really love everything I’m doing and sometimes it’s harder. It is ultimately about galvanizing all these different things.” Video: Amy Pearl; Audio: George Wellington; Text & Production: Brian Wise

Behold the many sides of Benjamin Verdery. Seated in the WQXR Café with his baritone guitar in hand, Verdery lets introspective pieces by Bach and Randy Newman spill forth with a hushed introspection. But speaking behind a microphone, Verdery becomes garrulous and animated, expounding on squeaky strings, the music of Elvis Presley and teaching in the age of YouTube. Verdery is nothing if not steeped in the world of classical guitar: he travels the globe appearing at specialized guitar festivals, delivering week-long master classes from Maui to Amsterdam, and overseeing the guitar department at Yale University, a post he has held since 1985. His website contains the requisite sections devote to instruments, gear and teaching tips.   Verdery has a populist streak too. As artistic director of the guitar series at the 92nd St Y, he curates a series of guitar recitals and performs there himself, as he will on Thursday in a solo concert of works by Albeniz, Bach and Ezra Landerman as well as arrangements of songs by Prince and Presley. Adapting pop songs for the classical guitar, Verdery says, isn’t as straightforward as it may seem. He says that an arrangement like “Kiss” by Prince (listen above), is conceived as a kind of collage. “I generally gravitate towards something that sounds really exciting and cool on the classical guitar,” he told host Jeff Spurgeon. “With the Prince, who doesn’t want to do that?” Verdery will transcribe bits of the tune, then adapt the bass line or the drum part into a thicker accompaniment parts. “There I have to do some composing because I’m not singing. It’s so joyful.” Verdery ends his Café Concert with "In Germany Before The War," a 1977 song by Randy Newman inspired by the Fritz Lang film M, which featured Peter Lorre as serial killer Hans Beckert. Newman has said the brooding song was intended as a metaphor for a nation about to enter a period of horror and transgression. It’s finding unlikely songs like this or working with younger composers that seems to keep Verdery going. "The astounding thing is the instrument still fascinates me,” he said. “As you get older pieces seem to grow with you, especially the great ones. “[Pianist] Dinu Lipatti said, ‘You don’t pick pieces, pieces pick you. As you go through life, even the simplest pieces can mean so much. You’re always humbled – by both the instrument because it still sounds fresh and unusual – and by the music.” Video: Amy Pearl; Sound: Edward Haber; Interview: Jeff Spurgeon; Text & Production: Brian Wise

When the members of the Endellion String Quartet were leaving the WQXR studios after their Café Concert, a curious question arose: Where could they find a Checker cab on the street? The iconic, boxy taxis, of course, have long been absent from New York City streets but the musicians could be forgiven for the oversight. The London-based quartet was in town for their first New York appearance since 1995. The longtime absence is something of a puzzle, as group has maintained an active presence in the UK. The quartet has released major recording projects that have received awards from the British press, appeared on BBC radio and television, performed at the Proms in London and toured through Europe and beyond. Making up for lost time, the quartet is performing all of Beethoven's string quartets at the Metropolitan Museum of Art over the course of six concerts through February 24. So why the absence? "Because you didn’t ask us,” said David Waterman, the quartet’s cellist, with a laugh. “We used to play here quite often in our early days because we were the winners of the YCA Competition.” The ensemble won the 1981 Young Concert Artists competition in New York and appeared here regularly throughout the 1980s and early '90s. In the WQXR Café, the ensemble performed a movement of Beethoven's Quartet Op. 130. "For us as a quartet, it’s one of the great pinnacles of the work we do,” said Endellion violist Garfield Jackson, referring to the Beethoven cycle. “It is a mountain to climb and at the moment, because we haven’t done the first concert yet, I feel we’re staring up from base camp.” The Endellion was formed in 1979 by four London freelancers who convened at a chamber music festival in St. Endellion, England. The ensemble has had only one personnel change since, when Ralph de Souza replaced Louise Williams in 1986. To what do they owe their longevity? “I think laziness is a very useful thing,” said Jackson, half joking. “It takes energy to fight. I think none of us are very good at wasting our energy fighting. Personally I need as much as I can to play concerts.” Taking a more serious tact, he adds, “I think over the years, you learn where to nudge and push and where not to waste one’s energy. Time does build a confidence to do it the way that seems to suit the people involved.” While some quartets of the past kept a single-minded approach by forbidding one another to take outside performing or teaching engagements, the members of the Endellion say they've adopted a more carefree attitude. They have sought to reduce the intensity of their performance schedule over time and encourage each other to do performing outside the group as well as teaching and conducting. And unlike some famed quartets that travel and eat meals separately, "usually we eat together,” said Waterman. “Normally we’ll arrange to meet for lunch or supper or whatever." "It does seem that it’s been a general trend to reduce intensity rather than crank it up.” Video: Amy Pearl; Sound: George Wellington; Production & Text: Brian Wise; Interview: Naomi Lewin

VIDEO: Chilly Gonzales performs in the WQXR Café If Franz Liszt were alive today, he may find a certain kinship with Chilly Gonzales. The German-based Canadian pianist and composer is the current holder of the world record for longest solo concert, at 27 hours, 3 minutes and 44 seconds. He has crowd-surfed at a BBC Symphony concert in London, challenged the rocker Andrew W.K. to a piano battle (and won), and has pioneered his own brand of “orchestral rap.” A self-proclaimed "musical genius," Gonzales has made a two-decade career out of straddling musical styles and genres. His ridiculously prolific resume includes producing albums by big-name pop artists like Feist, Drake and Daft Punk; getting his music on the first iPad commercial; and writing solo piano pieces that evoke the melancholic grace of Satie or Franck. Gonzales’s Café Concert stressed the classical side of his creative output, featuring his original songs (watch a mash-up of his "Otello" and "Minor Fantasy" below). And while many pianists would shutter at playing on a (slightly creaky) upright, Gonzales embraced the task. “I luckily have a lot of experience playing pianos,” he told Jeff Spurgeon. “Once in a while you can’t figure certain women out; you can’t figure certain pianos out either. You do your best. In this case, I managed to flirt a little bit and make a few jokes and had her laughing pretty quickly.” Gonzales was in New York to perform his Piano Concerto No. 1, backed by an 11-piece chamber orchestra at Lincoln Center’s David Rubinstein Atrium. Despite the concerto's formal title, he insists that his compositions are “songs,” not “pieces,” even as he acknowledges the influence of French and Russian romantic composers. “We’re not in the 19th century anymore. We’re in the 21st," said Gonzales, who was born Jason Charles Beck. “For me, for example, the obsession with structure was a huge thing for classical composers, but that’s not really an issue for me. I grew up watching MTV. There’s nothing wrong with verse-chorus-verse-chorus. That’s the currency of our generation these days.” Gonzales studied classical music at McGill University in his hometown of Montreal, graduating in the same class as the songwriter Rufus Wainwright. He says he never quite fit the formal conservatory mold. “I was traumatized by the institutions but fell in love with the meaning of the music,” he said, noting his love of Liszt and Tchaikovsky. “My favorite composers tend to be ones who were conscious of the audience. And for better or for worse, they had personalities that meant that they needed some sort of approval of the audience, but on their own terms.” He continued: “I’ve always focused on the noble profession of being a showman. To me, being an entertainer – which is what I prefer to call myself rather than artist – is a way of saying entertainment doesn’t have to mean pandering to the lowest common denominator.” Gonzales admits that his Guinness World Record performance, set in Paris in 2009, was an attempt at “selling the idea of me as a musical genius and what I’m capable of doing.” He said that the hardest part of the event was not staying awake but maintaining the quality of his performance. He got through it by “letting the adrenaline flow to not only keep me awake but communicating with the audience at all times.” With his many creative channels (he's also a filmmaker), is Chilly Gonzales a bit desperate for attention? And what do his audiences think? "I have an oppositional personality that likes to surprise people," he said. "I find I generally need to have an approval of an audience – but on my own terms. It's not enough for me to play into traditional expectations for how to please people. So I always need to be shaping and redefining that relationship." Video: Amy Pearl; Sound: Chase Culpon; Interview: Jeff Spurgeon; Text & Production: Brian Wise

VIDEO: New York Polyphony Perform Byrd and a modern lullaby Making recordings of quiet, spiritual music from the 16th century isn't so easy in 21st-century New York. So to record its last album, "Endbeginning," the all-male vocal ensemble New York Polyphony traveled to a medieval church in rural Lanna, Sweden. There the noise floor – the technical term for background noise – was exactly zero. In New York City, it's around 40 decibels. “We recorded our first two CDs here and we competed constantly with New York City as you can imagine,” said Craig Phillips, the group’s bass. He remembered losing one pristine take to a car horn outside the church. The group will be going back to Sweden next January to make their next album, a program of English masses by Byrd, Plummer and Tallis. “Don’t tell anybody because we’re still New York Polyphony,” joked Philips. “We're not Scandinavian Polyphony.” When the ensemble came to the WQXR Café, the production team did its best to silence the station's own auditory distractions – the refrigerator ice machine, the humming of the water cooler. Despite the prosaic surroundings the ensemble evoked an otherworldly place with a program of sacred Renaissance music as well as a lullaby by Philips (“Sleep Now,” written under his pen name Alexander Craig). This performance marked New York Polyphony’s second Café Concert and its first with a new lineup: Last fall, Geoffrey Silver, the group’s tenor since its founding in 2006, left and was replaced by the tenor Steven Caldicott Wilson (rounding out the ensemble is the countertenor Geoffrey Williams and baritone Christopher Dylan Herbert). Below is the ensemble's performance of the Agnus Dei from William Byrd's Mass for Four Voices. The piece was composed in 1592, a time when the Catholic Mass was outlawed in England. As a result, it had to be performed in small, private settings. The café may not be such a stretch after all. Video: Amy Pearl; Sound: Edward Haber; Text & production: Brian Wise

VIDEO: Ryu Goto Plays Kreisler and Ÿsaye in the WQXR Café Ryu Goto opened his Café Concert with Fritz Kreisler's Liebesleid (Love's Sorrow), a bittersweet waltz that evokes a kind of aristocratic grace from another era. But Goto is hardly a violinist stuck in the past. As he launched into his second piece, Ÿsaye’s Sonata No. 6, he seemed to adopt a martial arts-like stance in his posture – a byproduct his years of training towards a black belt in karate. “It’s probably influenced by karate,” the 23-year-old violinist acknowledged. While avoiding finger injuries, Goto said karate has provided him with a necessary sense of balance and "mental maintenance." Having a well-rounded childhood was key for an artist who hails from a kind of classical royalty. The son of two violinists, Goto was born in New York and began playing at age three. His teachers included violinists Yoko Takebe (the mother of Alan Gilbert), Cho-Liang Lin, and his own mother, who remains an active presence in his career. His sister is Midori, the celebrated violinist who rose to child stardom in the 1980s. Goto’s burgeoning solo career has been carefully groomed both in the U.S. and Asia, and he has been particularly active in Japan, his family’s homeland. Yet he didn’t follow the straight-and-narrow path of a child prodigy either. Instead of entering a conservatory, he studied physics at Harvard University, where he took on a full slate of extracurricular activities, including golf, lacrosse and guitar (he told one interviewer that he developed a freer style of playing by watching Jimi Hendrix). Goto admits that “my mother was much more liberal with my education like that than with my sister." At the same time, the younger Goto said he learned from watching his sister and “what it means to be a professional, what it means to be a violinist." “I got the impression that being a musician isn’t the be all and end all,” he continued. “But she’s gone above and beyond that kind of categorization. She’s become almost something more – a humanist kind of thing.” Goto alludes to his sister’s involvement with nonprofit organizations including her own Midori and Friends, a nonprofit organization providing concerts for underprivileged and hospitalized children. In 2010 Goto launched the Ryu Goto Excellence In Music Award, an annual $1000 scholarship for high school-age musicians in New York City. The program is administered with the New York City Department of Education. Does Goto ever hope to combine his background in physics with music? “I was a very bad student so I probably wouldn’t be qualified to talk about physics,” he said, laughing. But he has put his love of karate to professional use. The composer Tan Dun enlisted him as a soloist in his Martial Arts Trilogy, a multimedia work with orchestra. Last summer he gave the piece's New York premiere at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park. “It certainly helped that I have an image ready for this piece,” he said of his training, adding, “I love the movies and I’ve done karate forever.” Video: Amy Pearl; Sound: Edward Haber; Text: Brian Wise