The Next Festival of Emerging Artists also has its eyes on the future. An annual event founded by composer-conductor Peter Askim in 2013, it brings together young like-minded string players and cutting-edge composers for a week of intensive preparation followed by a pair of performances.
After watching these guys suck up gallons of air and force it through all those yards of brass tubing, "Ride of the Valkyries" will never be the same.
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The program blends the magic of tango, chacanas and sarabands – tracing the dance forms’ origins in Latin America from baroque times to the present -- with early music selections that are the hallmark of Aston Magna.
Enjoying Bach in full-blown glorious detail is something both Yehuda Hanani and Kivie Cahn-Lipman have been doing as a matter of course all their lives. They revel in it.
It was heartfelt, honest, and original expression by strikingly beautiful, muscular, tall, linear humans to music of depth and profundity. Notably absent were rote patterns, fixed poses, and showy acrobatics.
Jeannette Sorrell, harpsichordist and passionate conductor of Apollo's Fire, considers "the most distinctive thing about our style is that we are really focused on the concept of Affekt, the idea that the music is there to move the emotional mood of the listeners.