music
BY BRETT CAMPBELL
Swingle to Swing
A jazz and classical music smorgasbord
W
ay back in Mad Men-era Paris, a group of crack
Paris session singers — vocalists hired to provide
background sounds for stars like Edith Piaf,
Michel Legrand and Charles Aznavour — warmed up their
sight-reading skills by singing through that perennial source
of musical exercises, J.S. Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier.
Originally written for keyboard as a sort of demonstration
of tuning possibilities, the pieces turned out to sound pretty
swinging when parlayed by eight skilled singers. They made
a recording with rhythm section for friends and family; it
caught the ear of radio programmers and then listeners. Soon
they had a number one record, 1963’s Jazz Sebastian Bach,
arrangements of Beatles, classical tunes and more.
Those of us too young to recall the glory days of the
Swingle Singers might hear the seemingly silly name
and think of them as some kind of lightweight, easy
listening ensemble but in fact, American-born founder
Ward Swingle’s group was respected enough to earn
collaborations with the Modern Jazz Quartet, formidable
composers such as modernist Luciano Berio, minimalist
Michael Nyman and microtonalist Ben Johnston. After the
original French octet disbanded in 1973, Swingle started
a successor group in London and they’ve been going
ever since, collaborating with contemporary stars such
as Jamie Cullum and covering everyone from Bjork to
Piazzolla. On April 16, the Swingles join our own Eugene
Concert Choir and Eugene Vocal Arts Ensemble ,
plus instrumentalists including Barbara Baird , for two
performances of a program called Bach to Beatbox .
They’ll sing music from popular contemporary choral
composer Eric Whitacre, Chick Corea, Chopin, Gershwin,
Falla and more, including Bach, of course.
This Thursday at the Hult Center, the Eugene
Symphony makes a commendable and welcome foray into
contemporary music by bringing the music of one of today’s
most respected composers, John Harbison , to Eugene.
The orchestra will perform his Flute Concerto and The
Most Often Used Chords, along with Tchaikovsky’s
Symphony #1. The 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner has written a
vast amount of admired chamber music, operas (including
The Great Gatsby), several symphonies, choral works,
vocal works and more.
The Oregon Bach Collegium plays music by Bach’s
oldest son Wilhelm Friedemann and other seldom heard
Baroque 18th century music, April 16 at United Lutheran
Church. It’s a nice opportunity to hear lovely period
instruments like oboe d’amore and Baroque violas. Then
on Sunday afternoon, April 17, at Episcopal Church of
the Resurrection, and Friday evening, April 22, at First
Christian Church, you can hear one of the most popular
of all Baroque masterpieces, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s
magnifi cent Stabat Mater — which he fi nished shortly
before dying way too young (age 26) in 1736.
Classical music of a different but no less beautiful
tradition — North Indian Hindustani music — is on stage
April 15, when the school’s estimable world music series
brings the great sitar virtuoso Kartik Seshadri (perhaps
Ravi Shankar’s most renowned disciple) and tablawallah
Arup Chattopadhyay to the University of Oregon’s Beall
Concert Hall. They’ll also do a free lecture demo that
afternoon at the UO’s Jordan Schnizter Museum.
Finally, the UO honors one of America’s greatest musical
fi gures, composer/pianist/bandleader Duke Ellington,
at Beall on April 20. Two of the school’s jazz ensembles
will be joined by faculty jazz masters Idit Shner , Steve
Owen , Mike Denny , Carl Woideck and more in some of
the master’s greatest hits, including “Prelude to a Kiss,”
“Come Sunday,” and even more ambitious works, like
Such Sweet Thunder.
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Tina Malia & GuruGanesha
with Hans Christian and Craig Kohland
Opening with Jaya Lakshmi and Anandaji
BLITZKID
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