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The Bucks County-based Concordia Chamber Players close the 2018-2019 season Sunday, April 28 at Trinity Church in Solebury (near New Hope) with a program pairing two works by contemporary composer Andy Akiho with a string quartet by Prokofiev. Featured will be Akiho’s “21” for cello and marimba, his “LIgNEouS” for marimba and string quartet, and Prokofiev’s String Quartet No. 2. Akiho, described by The New York Times as “mold breaking,” and “vital,” is a New York City-based composer and percussionist with a special interest in works for the marimba and steel pans, which he began playing while a student at the University of South Carolina. “21” was inspired by the 21st measure of the Fugue movement of Bach’s Violin Sonata No. 1. It calls for the cellist to also play a kick drum and trigger a looping pedal, joined by the marimba player who has some multitasking of his own in store. Featured are cellist Michelle Djoric, who is also Concordia Chamber Players artistic director, and Ian Rosenbaum on marimba. “LIgNEouS” refers to anything made, consisting of, or resembling wood. “This title was chosen because the marimba, violin, viola, and cello are all primarily made of wood,” says Akiho in …

Article from The Morning Call – April 2019 READ MORE »

With the Philadelphia Orchestra and Opera Philadelphia going full throttle, the region’s year in classical music was bound to be excellent. And it was, with particularly distinguished activity in the outlying areas involving specialists in music both ancient and modern from Chestnut Hill to Princeton. That doesn’t mean everything worked out. But while lapses and misfires aren’t as satisfying as successes, they can be just as interesting. Pope Francis’ visit, for example . . . Most distracted concert. Though Saturday showed Philadelphia at its best – Center City closed to cars and everybody in a mellow mood – during the Festival of Families concert on the Parkway, soprano prodigy Jackie Evancho sang to an audience that was looking in the opposite direction because the pope was thought to be arriving. And hours later, when the pontiff left, most of the crowd followed, so the Philadelphia Orchestra closed the concert with fire and fireworks that were mostly enjoyed by the cleanup crew. The best and worst of John Eliot Gardiner. The venerable British conductor arrived at Princeton’s Richardson Auditorium in April with a rare performance of Monteverdi’s Orfeo. The 1607 opera reached across the centuries in ways that don’t often happen. …

A classical year: The best, the worst, the squid brains READ MORE »

One of the better-kept musical secrets in Bucks County is the Concordia Chamber Players, which performs in a number of venues near Doylestown and New Hope that are scenically beautiful but can also require a good GPS to find. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s David Patrick Stearns arrived at a recent concert in Solebury, and this is what he found. 
David Patrick Stearns: Any professional musician should be able to perform Vaughan Williams’ great song cycle On Wenlock Edge just as easily in a coal mine as in the lovely Trinity Episcopal Church of Solebury. But for tenor Nicholas Phan, exploring the music’s melancholy undertones was unquestionably enabled by being in the kind of countryside that inspired the British poems that he sings. Nicholas Phan: Today was easier than normal. One of the first times I did this was at the Marlboro Music Festival, but, you know, it’s the middle of the summer, everybody’s partying and Fall is always the season for me where I think, you know, things slow down, it goes darker earlier. You kind of naturally go to those darker places. DPS: However rural the setting, this is hardly the boondocks. The programs are spiced with modern works by Anton Webern, Daron Hagen and Michael …

Over The River and Through The Woods: Listening to Chamber Music in Bucolic Bucks County READ MORE »

By David Patrick Stearns, Inquirer Music Critic.  In theory, musicians can inhabit pastoral music just as convincingly in a coal mine as in the late-autumn graciousness of Bucks County. Musical poetry, after all, comes from within. But Sunday’s Vaughan Williams and Elgar program by Concordia Chamber Players (the second in the group’s five-concert season) benefited not only from its setting – Trinity Episcopal Church at a picturesque hilltop crossroad in Solebury – but the sense that the season’s days are numbered. Tenor Nicholas Phan, who has a prestige career in concerts more than in opera, sang Vaughan Williams’ Merciless Beauty and On Wenlock Edge, supported with vibrant synergy from the quintet of Concordia regulars, all conspiring to give extra dimensions to the total effect of the composer’s word settings. Many believe this repertoire wants British performers; the Merciless Beauty texts are attributed to Chaucer and On Wenlock Edge is based on A.E. Housman. But the outsider status of American-born Phan yields objectivity that takes him places British singers don’t think go. His diction is perfect, but not in the well-drilled fashion of, say, Ian Bostridge. The primary intention is communication, not correctness – a great asset in the antiquated Chaucerian …

Review: Phan highlights Concordia Players concert READ MORE »