Classics with an edge
Symphony goes experimental
If you’re one of those people who thinks classical music is dull, you probably just haven’t heard the right classical music.
Tonight, the Spokane Symphony leaves the formality of the Fox and heads across the street to the Knitting Factory for an evening of more obscure, experimental music.
Friday’s performance will include music by living composers such as Steve Reich, Chen Yi, Michael Daugherty and Hans-Peter Preu, the brother of conductor Eckart Preu. Established 20th-century composers like Manuel DeFalla and Dmitri Shostakovich are on the program, too, so is Frank Zappa with his “Tornado G-Spot.”
Several of the orchestra’s principal players will be featured on the concert. Clarinetist Chip Phillips will perform as the only live player in the finale of Reich’s “New York Counterpoint” for solo clarinet and 10 recorded clarinets. Concertmaster Mateusz Wolski will play the violin solo part of Chen Yi’s Chinese Folk Dance Suite. One of the orchestra’s newest members, pianist Mina Somekawa, will play the solo part of Daugherty’s wacky “Le Tombeau de Liberace.”
Contrabassoonist Luke Bakkan will perform Hans-Peter Preu’s “The Beastly Beast is Back,” a concerto written especially for Bakkan and the instrument he affectionately calls “Hagrid.” The beast in question is from Ravel’s “Beauty and the Beast” from his “Mother Goose” Suite.
The concert will open with DeFalla’s “Ritual Fire Dance” and will include movements from Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony and Ernest Bloch’s Concerto Grosso No. 1.
Concertgoers are encouraged to dress casually, and the bar will be open for those over 21.
– From staff reports