thirteen ways

The Cincinnati Enquirer published a review of Sunday’s final concert of CCM’s Music08 Festival, which - due to funding cuts - may be the last hurrah of an annual festival that has been a staple of 8bb’s calendar for almost a decade. I will write more posts about last week’s festivities in the coming days. (This will include a much-anticipated report on a visit the Phot and I made to the Creation Museum. A sneak preview: the great flood explains everything.)

Here are some excerpts from the piece, written by Mary Ellyn Hutton:

Music08 went out on a high… [In the Reich, p]ianist Lisa Kaplan took off with a be-bop flair after her recorded self, setting the energetic work in rapid, ostinato motion. Succeeding this was a tender violin melody (a touch of romance?) that got fragmented and traded among the musicians. It was back to white-hot motion then, ending like a slam against a wall. Reich, in his trademark cap, rushed to the stage, where he hugged the players and acknowledged the crowd’s ovation…

In Wolfe’s “singing in the dead of night,” a table (bed) was covered with bird seed, which swished and spilled audibly to the floor as Kaplan and Duvall tossed and turned on it. Each rose sleepless and there were some chaotic-sounding “nightmares.” You could hear the blustery “Winter” of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” and a chorale-like passage suspended as Kaplan crawled back “in bed.”