Performances

Caballito Negro presents its inaugural concert "Beginnings". You can hear an interview with Tessa Brinckman and Edmund Stone about the program on the KBPS show, "Northwest Previews", on April 17th 2008.

Tessa Brinckman - flutes
Terry Longshore - percussion

Featuring:-

Isang Yun - Salomo - alto flute
Terry Longshore - Crash - cymbals
Howard Hersh - Braided River Nights - alto flute/marimba
Maximo Pujol - Candombe de los Buenos Tiempos - flute/marimba
Gareth Farr - Kembang Suling - flute/marimba
David P. Jones - Music for South Africa - I. Amandla II. Ububele III. Hamba Kahle - alto flute/marimba, vibraphone, shekere

Caballito Negro repeat their program "Beginnings" for PSU students and the public, with a masterclass for PSU students following.

Tessa Brinckman - flutes
Terry Longshore - percussion

Featuring:-

Howard Hersh - Braided River Nights - alto flute/marimba
Maximo Pujol - Candombe de los Buenos Tiempos - flute/marimba
Gareth Farr - Kembang Suling - flute/marimba
David P. Jones - Music for South Africa - I. Amandla II. Ububele III. Hamba Kahle - alto flute/marimba, vibraphone, shekere

Bursting with music and dance, color, action, and romance, this 2,000-year-old Indian classic by Sudraka —utterly Shakespearean in spirit — proves that great storytelling transcends the centuries. Jewels are stolen. A Brahmin faces execution. A beautiful courtesan is at the mercy of the King’s bad-boy brother. Journey through a world where gamblers, holy men, political fugitives and royal scoundrels intersect and good people triumph. Don’t miss new Artistic Director Bill Rauch’s sensual and celebratory opening-season gift.

The play has live music composed by Andre Pluess, featuring:
Tessa Brinckman performing on alto, flute, piccolo, and hybrid flutes
Terry Longshore performing on Indian and Western percussion
Ed Dunsavage performing on guitar, sirod and oud

Caballito Negro repeats its inaugural concert "Beginnings" in Ashland.

Tessa Brinckman - flutes
Terry Longshore - percussion

Featuring:-

Isang Yun - Salomo - alto flute
Terry Longshore - Crash - cymbals
Howard Hersh - Braided River Nights - alto flute/marimba
Maximo Pujol - Candombe de los Buenos Tiempos - flute/marimba
Gareth Farr - Kembang Suling - flute/marimba
David P. Jones - Music for South Africa - I. Amandla II. Ububele III. Hamba Kahle - alto flute/marimba, vibraphone, shekere

A Concert-Theatre Piece by:

Christine Williams - soprano/actor
Tessa Brinckman - flutes/alto/piccolo/cymbal
Terry Longshore - flower pots, tom-toms, crotales, timpani, marimba and more!
Michael Maag - lighting design
Chris Bolender - stage managing

Concert-Theatre erases the boundaries between classical music and traditional theatre by expanding the definition of the concert experience. Believing that live music performance is inherently theatrical, we think that people are hungry for a new form – one that utilizes the languages of chamber music, poetry and theatre to speak to our contemporary questions in ways that are viscerally moving, intellectually stimulating, and emotionally engaging. We embrace our roles as storytellers and seek to reach an audience with a new kind of tale spinning: the staged presentation of thematically linked pieces resulting in a whole that is larger than the sum of its parts.

Works to be performed:

Frederic Rzewski - To the Earth - flower pots/narration (extant text from 700 B.C.)

John Cage - Forever and Sunsmell (poetry by ee cummings) – soprano/percussion

George Crumb - Madrigal Book II (poetry by Federico Garcia Lorca) – soprano/flutes/percussion

Albert Roussel – Rossignol Mon Mignon (poetry by Pierre de Ronsard) – soprano/flute

William Shakespeare – Ophelia's text from Hamlet; music is improvised; additional text to be created in July 2008 by Christine Williams – soprano/flutes/percussion

Some program notes....
To the Earth uses dactylic hexameter in a prayer to Ge, or Gaia, goddess of the Earth. Because of its humanly altered metabolism, the earth is rapidly becoming a symbol of the precarious human condition. In this piece
the flower pots are intended to convey this sense of frangibility.
Crumb’s music has often concerned itself with the theatre of performance as much as with the music itself, and is the centerpiece of our collaboration.
John Cage's setting of e.e.cummings is an invitation to our world with spare texture and joyful word painting.
“Antique” meets “Modern” with Albert Roussel and Pierre de Ronsard. Here the prolific French poet, Ronsard, born just after the publication of Williams Shakespeare’s First Folio, becomes muse for 20th Century composer, Roussel, with Rossignol (Nightingale)., in this duet for flute and voice. A true dialogue between bird and girl, it’s exquisite lyricism, so comely to our ears now, may have struck the listeners of 1924 as “like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh.” Ophelia’s words.
The character of Ophelia has been muse to many in the 400 years since Shakespeare wrote Hamlet. Iconic and archetypal, each generation must grapple anew with the contradictions of her presence, silence, obedience, and defiance through madness and suicide. And song. Here is a girl using music as a means of resistance – something every adolescent knows about – and our strategy in the struggle is to start with a question: “What is she REALLY trying to say?” And then we “talk” to each other, using the language of musical improvisation rooted in Shakespeare’s text.
Completing the theatricality of the event will be evocative lighting and staging.

Named by their actor colleagues from The Clay Cart this once-in-a-lifetime trio perform two 30 minute shows in the OSF Green Show. Watch this space for repertoire to be performed...

Tessa Brinckman - flutes
Ed Dunsavage - oud, sitar, guitar
Terry Longshore - percussion