At the gateway of August, summertime looks like it will never end—but it won’t be long until it begins to fade. On Now Is the Time, Saturday, July 30th at 9 pm on WRTI-HD2 and the all-classical webstream at wrti.org, Dan Becker starts us off with a cut from his Fade album that looks forward and back, ReInvention 1a. Imagine a J. S. Bach invention run through a digital piano with postminimalist leanings, and maybe you can imagine the excitement and quirkiness of this piece. Then, Jennifer Higdon’s Dash for flute, clarinet, and piano is all that and a cloud of dust.
Joseph Fennimore’s Sixteenth Romance for piano is filled with beauty and warmth, and three dances inhabit the introspective Summermusic of Robert Sirota, a pavane, notturno, and round dance. From Emma Lou Diemer’s CD Summer Day, her complete works for violin and piano, is Three Hymns. Diemer accompanies Philip Ficsor here, but as organist she may have played these any number of times for Vacation Bible School: “’Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus,” “Amazing Grace,” and “Great is Thy Faithfulness.”
Higdon, also a flutist, returns to really make the solo flute fly in rapid*fire, a tour de force in the repertoire. In Summertime, cellist Maya Beiser covers Janis Joplin, one of the many who had covered Gershwin’s song from Porgy and Bess. This arrangement by Evan Ziporyn is from Beiser’s CD Uncovered.
PROGRAM:
Dan Becker: ReInvention 1a
Jennifer Higdon: Dash
Joseph Fennimore: Sixteenth Romance
Robert Sirota: Summermusic
Emma Lou Diemer: Three Hymns
Jennifer Higdon: rapid*fire
Gershwin/Joplin/Evan Ziporyn: Summertime