The Peru Gazette

Violin-Saxophone-Piano Trio Playing At U.S. Oval Gazebo On June 12

Metamusic, the professional violin-saxophone-piano trio that has evolved into one of the region’s favorite classical chamber music ensembles in recent years, will continue the Curbside At Harborside concert series with a concert on June 12 at 7:30 p.m. at the U.S. Oval Gazebo.

Featuring Marilyn Reynolds — a veteran of performance venues from Broadway to the Orchestra of St. Luke’s — on violin, international performing artist Daniel Gordon on saxophone, and acclaimed Piano By Nature Artistic Director Rose Chancler on piano, Metamusic presents classical music that explores the singing and coloristic possibilities of their instruments in dialogue with each other. (Bios of the artists are below).

Inspired by a World Saxophone Congress performance that Gordon attended in Montreal, the saxophone recruited Chancler and Reynolds to engage in this unique musical endeavor. After reading through a stack of music written for this configuration of instruments, the three highly tenured professionals realized that they had found an ideal combination: beautifully written, under-appreciated repertoire to perform in an atmosphere of mutual collegiality and respect.

The trio has remained together ever since, performing everywhere from Finland to Texas. By continuing to mine the gems of this often-overlooked repertoire, commissioning composers to create new works for their group, and developing carefully transcribed arrangements of larger-scale compositions, the three artists have realized that their possibilities as a group are endless.

“Song and Dance” is the theme of their concert in Plattsburgh, featuring music by Camille Saint-Saens, Sergei Prokofiev, Aram Khachaturian, and Sergei Rachmaninoff, along with several composers who are not household names but whose music deserves far greater attention than it presently receives. Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance will be a guaranteed highlight, with its pulsating theme familiar to anyone who has ever seen a tense chase scene in a black-and-white movie or a Bugs Bunny cartoon, or anyone who ever marveled at the plate spinners on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Prokofiev’s Overture on Hebrew Themes — authored by the composer in just two days while he was living in New York City, having escaped from Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution — will be another crowd-pleasure, laced with plenty of familiar folk melodies. Gordon’s arrangement of the first of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances will take center stage at this program, featuring one of the most beautifully nostalgic solos ever crafted for alto saxophone.

Reynolds and Chancler will join forces for Saint-Saens’s Danse Macabre, depicting a churchyard on All Hallows Eve, an eerie call for the skeletons to rise and dance the night away. Of far lighter character is a duet that Gordon and Chancler will play: two of the Songbooks sketches by American composer David Maslanka, including the shimmering melodies of the breathtaking Song for Allison.

Carl Anton Wirth brings the three instrumental voices together in Jephthah, telling the Biblical story of a man who asked God for strength to defeat his enemies, vowing to sacrifice the first living thing that he saw when he came back from battle, only to find that his daughter was the first living thing whom he encountered after he returned home. Marc Eychenne’s Cantilene et Danse and Kristina Arakelyan’s A Song Without Words and Burlesque provide enthralling dialogues among these three instruments with memorable tone paintings.

Gates open at 6:30 p.m. for this concert, with tickets available at the gate and seating provided on a first-come, first-served basis. All attendees are seated with the members of their party in a socially distant manner and are not required to wear masks while they are seated and remaining socially distant from other parties at the concert. Any attendee who is not fully vaccinated is respectfully requested to wear a mask for the duration of the concert.

This concert is generously sponsored by Nine Platt Hospitality Group, whose kind financial contribution has allowed this program to take place as an affordable live music offering in the North Country.

For more information, please contact Benjamin Pomerance at pomerance.benjamin58@gmail.com.

About The Artists

Violinist Marilyn Reynolds, a resident of Rouses Point, is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the Royal Conservatory of Music of Brussels, Belgium, where she attained First Prize with Distinction as the student of Andre Gertler. She also studied violin with Margaret Pardee, David Cerone, Richard Young, and Shmuel Ashkenasi. Ms. Reynolds attended the Meadowmount School of Music and has participated in the Tanglewood, Blossom, and Caramoor Music Festivals, as well as the Cleveland, Binghamton, and other chamber music workshops. She was first violinist in the Astor String Quartet, which toured the Eastern U.S. and France, and for seven years was the violinist with the All Seasons Chamber Players, playing hundreds of concerts in the northern N.J. and N.Y. area.

 

Ms. Reynolds was a longtime member of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s based in New York City, with whom she performed, recorded, and toured internationally, under conductors such as Leonard Bernstein, Charles Mackerras, Michael Tilson-Thomas, and Pablo Heras-Cassado. Highlights of her years with St. Luke’s include touring the U.S. with the Vienna Boys Choir, performing Paul McCartney’s “Standing Stone” in Carnegie Hall with Sir Paul in attendance, and making several recordings with soprano Renee Fleming. She has also performed in dozens of Broadway musicals, from “Into the Woods” to “Les Miserables” to Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas,” both as concertmaster and assistant conductor.

After living for many years in the New York City area, she now teaches violin, viola, and directs the string orchestra at SUNY Plattsburgh, as well as at the Strand Center for the Arts, and at her home in Rouses Point. She regularly performs chamber music with groups throughout New York’s North Country and beyond.

 

Westport, N.Y., resident Rose Chancler is an active and wide-ranging pianist who, in addition to performing internationally, has given hundreds of concerts in 25 American states. Ricochet Duo – Dr. Chancler’s collaboration with marimbist Jane Boxall – performs regularly throughout the U.S., with concert highlights including Vermont’s Flynn Center, the Chautauqua Institution, Eastman School of Music, and a Manhattan showcase for the New York State Presenters Network.

 

Dr. Chancler has also enjoyed a long association with double bassist Volkan Orhon, resulting in two acclaimed CD releases of violin and cello masterworks on the Centaur label.  Rose has performed with Volkan on BassEurope recitals in Prague, the Friends of Chamber Music series in Tucson, Concert Artists Guild in Pittsburgh, a spotlight concert at the American String Teachers Association convention, and several International String Bass conventions.

Dr. Chancler additional chamber music performance experience includes recitals with internationally known artists Linda Rosenthal, Jeffrey Solow, Harvey Pittel, Carol Wincenc, and Tony Award-winning actor George Hearn. Currently, she is focused on performing chamber music and presenting concerts in New York’s Adirondack Park as Artistic Director of the Piano by Nature concert series.

Dr. Chancler has held teaching positions at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, the Baylor University School of Music, and the University of Iowa School of Music. She has been a faculty accompanist and coach at the Chautauqua Institution for many years, and also worked at the Meadowmount School of Music. She has served on the faculty of SUNY Plattsburgh, and now maintains a private studio in Westport, NY.  She holds a bachelor’s degree in Piano Performance from the University of Texas at Austin, and master’s and doctoral degrees in Piano Performance and Literature from the Eastman School of Music.

 

Plattsburgh resident Daniel Gordon directs the Symphonic Band and Saxophone Ensemble, instructs the saxophone studio, and teaches various classroom courses in music theory and history at SUNY Plattsburgh. He is the founder and director of the Adirondack Wind Ensemble, a group consisting of music educators and outstanding community musicians from around the Plattsburgh area, which has given two annual concerts since its inception in January 2002. Mr. Gordon also served as the music director of the Adirondack Youth Orchestra from 2001–2005.

Mr. Gordon is an active saxophonist as well as conductor. He was part of the saxophone teaching corps at the Domaine Forget International Summer Music Festival in St. Irenee, Quebec from 1997–1999, and has taught in residence at the Suomen Tyovaenmusiikkiliitto Summer Music Festival in Teisko, Finland, since 2005. He has performed with the Frontier Saxophone Quartet, comprised of players from the North Country and Montreal, since 2003.

His performance credits as a conductor or saxophonist include appearances at the Alice Tully Hall and Bruno Walter Auditorium at New York’s Lincoln Center, the American Embassy in Paris, the Circle of Fine Arts in Madrid, and several sites in Spain, France, Finland, Canada, and the U.S. Mr. Gordon is also a widely published author, with works ranging from scholarly articles in musicological journals to Sax On The Streets: Confessions of an American Street Musician in Europe, his book about busking with a friend across 13 European counties in the 1980s.