Very old music beautifully performed by teen and adult musicians

 Concerto Concert

performed by Valley Strings

featuring three teen soloists: Isaac Houghton, Jennifer Noh, and Gideon Richard

Teen and adult musicians who play stringed instruments come together each Monday to play music they love. On Monday, May 22, the group performs its final concert of the 2022-2023 school year. The concert features three accomplished teen soloists playing very old music.

On the program are two complete concerti. About 1720, Vivaldi wrote four violin concertos themed on the four seasons, using sonnets describing the seasons as his guide. Gideon Richard, a junior at Fryeburg Academy and Isaac Houghton, a sophomore at the academy play the virtuosic violin solo parts. Valley strings provides the beautiful and descriptive accompaniment. From the comfort of spring, listeners can look back on the rigors and pleasures of the season just behind us.

Jennifer Noh, a fine flute player who attends the academy, is our soloist for a flute concerto written in Mannheim, Germany around the time Mozart was in Mannheim. Carl Philip Stamitz wrote this concerto in G Major in 1780, following in the footsteps of one written by Mozart two years earlier. It's a beautifully crafted piece of very classical repertoire—full of perfect proportions, contrasts, and consonant harmonies.

The orchestra will perform an Overture by Johann Christoph Pez, composed around 1700. The concert will take place at the Leura Hill Eastman Performing Arts Center on the campus of Fryeburg Academy on Monday, May 22 at 7 PM. It is free and open to the public. Donations to support the future work of the ensemble are welcome. Contact ellen.m.schwindt@gmail.com for more information.

 Spring is the Time for Visions

I have a vision these days of a very local life. That life needs to include the basics of human existence--food, warmth, and love. It also must include culture: specifically, music. Out of this vision was born my idea to have open piano concerts. I think of these events as opportunities for the musical among us to share their talents and for all of us to enjoy basking in music that we love. And why stop at music? In my vision, there is certainly room for poetry amid the musical selections. 

Now that there is a piano worth playing in Fryeburg (the village I visit to fulfill many of my other needs), it's even easier to realize this vision. The next open piano concert takes place on Sunday, April 16, at 5 PM at Fryeburg New Church. The church is located at 12 Oxford Street in Fryeburg.

The theme of Sunday's concert is "To Spring." The title is eponymous with a piece Grieg included in Opus 43 that I will perform in the concert. Its music is full of promise, but is not without reference to the dark days when the snow returns. Charlotte Gill will be sharing two movements from one of the Bach French Suites. She and I will play together on a set of pieces called Method Book Miniatures. These are little musical jokes inspired by famous teaching pieces. 

The program’s musical selections will be seasoned with spring poems. Other players and readers are welcome to contribute. To join in the performance, please contact me at ellen.m.schwindt@gmail.com a few days before the concert. Admission to the concert is free. Donations will be gratefully accepted to help take care of the piano, and to support my organizing work. 

Classical Chamber Music Concert

 

Classical Chamber Music Performed by Teen Musicians

Rescheduled to Thursday, April 6 at 7 PM

“Deep,” “exciting,” “the most beautiful piece of music in the world;” these were some responses when teen musicians participating in a classical chamber music program described the music they are playing. These teens will perform on Wednesday, April 5, at 7 PM at the Fryeburg New Church.

The term chamber music describes music composed for small groups of players for performance in small settings. This form offers musicians a chance at musical leadership. Each person is responsible for his or her own part so musicians develop a great deal of skill and can explore their own interpretations of the notes and instructions written on the page.

While much of the music in the concert was composed more than 100 years ago, some of it is more modern. On the program is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty Waltz arranged for four-hand piano by Sergei Rachmaninoff, part of Jean Sibelius's famous violin concerto, a truly lovely Nocturne for violin and piano by Lili Boulanger, and some modern movie music by Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerard from the movie Gladiator. One piece on the program, by Quaker radical Soloman Eccles, was composed in the 1600s. The opportunity to hear this music performed by these dedicated young musicians is a refreshing spring treat.

The teens participating in the program range from 14 to 18 years of age. Many have been studying music since early childhood. They are Maisie Brown, Zachary Yuengling, Gideon Richard, Le Bao Phuoc, Zebudah Davis, Kaitlyn Sakash, Jameson Consentino, and Enzi Moore. The concert is free of charge, but donations are gladly accepted. Fryeburg New Church is located at 12 Oxford Street in Fryeburg. It is the home of a newly-acquired Chickering baby-grand piano that the church is pleased to share with the community. Ellen Schwindt organized this program; contact her for more information at ellen.m.schwindt@gmail.com.

Light, Come, Light

 

Many of us were recently in the dark when our region lost man-made light and power for a few days. That experience, which came at the very darkest time of year, brought with it the truth that light comes out of the dark; that light is the reciprocal of dark and we can't have light or dark without the other—they are balance itself.

On Sunday, February 5 at 3 PM at the Fryeburg New Church at 12 Oxford Street, Fryeburg, Ellen Schwindt and friends offer a program of mostly classical music and readings titled Light, Come, Light.

Fryeburg New Church recently purchased a Chickering grand piano. The new instrument fills a beautiful sanctuary with resonance. In the vibrations of the music and light in the room, there is space for enjoyment and rest. To share the gift of this new piano, the Fryeburg New Church is hosting this concert. Music on the program includes solo piano pieces composed by Schwindt, a violin and piano sonata by W.A. Mozart that is filled with light and dark passages, and a pastorale praising light that comes from darkness. Admission to this concert is free, but donations are gratefully accepted and will support more community music events. For more information or if you have a reading or piece of music that celebrates the return of light, please contact Ellen Schwindt at ellen.m.schwindt@gmail.com.

 

Open Piano Evening 

at the Little White Church in Eaton, New Hampshire

There is a newly-refurbished piano in our seven-town-universe. It's at the Little White Church in Eaton, New Hampshire. To share this grand gift of the community in Eaton, I'm planning an open piano evening on September 15, from 7-8:30 PM. An open piano evening is a lot like an open mic with some key differences. It's a piano, not a microphone. There won't be any amplified music at this event. There is some planning involved. People interested in playing need to contact me at ellen.m.schwindt@gmail.com. I'll be planning for a diverse program that will truly fit inside an hour and a half.  After all, September 15^th is a school night.

I'm excited to offer this music opportunity to my fellow musicians and listeners in the community. As you might expect, if you've followed some of my work over the last several years, there will be classical music on the program. Anchoring it are two canonical pieces. Charlotte Gill and I will perform Mozart's piano and violin sonata, K. 304, composed in Paris in the early summer of 1778. It's one of my favorite pieces of music; perfectly proportioned and full of pathos. I never tire of returning to it. Maisie Brown, a teen pianist in my studio, offers us a chance to hear Debussy's Arabesque number 1, a piece sure to evoke memories of all the bubbling brooks you've had a chance to sit beside this summer.

Admission to this open piano concert is by donation. Donations will go to the support of The Little White Church and to the upkeep of the fabulous piano there. For more information, please contact me at ellen.m.schwindt@gmail.com or at 603-307-0825.

How to Live in America is a musical about three calamities we hear about all the time: homelessness, wildfire, and random gun violence. The plot follows three characters who experience each of the calamities first-hand. Virgil is a middle-aged professor turned reporter who is fired for saying the wrong thing. Vince is a young person who experiences homelessness; whom Virgil mentors as he works his way into a stable housing situation. Kristen is a young woman who loses her husband in an urban wildfire. The music deals with how these characters cope with their misfortunes. The play is meant to encourage us all to reflect on this question how do we live this heavy life with an easy heart and an open soul when every day there's trauma around each bend.

I am presenting this original musical in a performance on June 24^th at 7 PM at the Nativity Lutheran Church at 15 Grove Street in North Conway, NH.

The performance on June 24^th is the culmination of a collaborative workshop lasting a week. Musicians, cast, and crew will influence the final form of this musical—which is a work in progress. It is designed in a skeleton form with room for including individual stories. These stories will be woven into the play during a week of rehearsals. After this performance, I hope the play will be produced in other venues.

A cast and crew of about 20 people bring the musical to life. The talent showcased includes singers ages 11-ish and older; musicians playing guitar, bass, violin, and oboe; organizers; and a teen singer/songwriter.

I hope the workshop and performance will raise community awareness of the calamities we face, in particularly the problem of homelessness and housing insecurity in our own community. The Way Station is a resource center that can offer help to our neighbors in need. For more information, contact Ellen Schwindt at ellen.m.schwindt@gmail.com. 

 

 

Violin and Piano Recital May 5, 2022

Dreaming the Intricate Details

The Little White Church in Eaton, NH

Playing music is how I make sense of the world in times of trouble. I have often thought, and sometimes said, “Beethoven is the only thing that makes sense right now.” The rational way notes fit together to make a line, compounded with the logical way lines fit together to make a part, and parts fit together to make a whole, brings me comfort and a door to trusting in the ultimate beauty of the world.

It's my good fortune to have friends who like to bring music to life. Margaret Hopkins and Chris Nourse, both fine violinists, join me to realize some beautiful music. The concert is planned for Thursday, May 5, at 7 PM at the Little White Church in Eaton. Admission is by donation. Donations will support the church and the musicians. The program presents a series of sonatas and a set of folk songs from the Slavic world.

Many years ago, Chris Nourse and I worked up our first Beethoven Sonata to perform at the Little White Church. Around that time, I asked him which Sonata of Beethoven's he wanted to play. His reply was “all of them.” We haven't yet achieved that goal, but we keep playing them. This particular Sonata, Opus 30, number 2, was written in 1802 and published in 1803.

More recently, I began to write in the Sonata form. Slowly, my writing got smaller and smaller. I've completed several sonatinas for various instruments and piano. These are much shorter pieces, using the same kind of fast-slow-fast format as many Sonatas. Two of my Sonatinas are on our program. One was composed in 2019-2020, and one in 2016.  You can give it a listen here. Margaret Hopkins helped me record the more recent one last autumn.

When Margaret and I first played together we talked about other pieces we'd like to try. One of these was a sonata published by Henry Eccles. Scholars think that this Sonata was mostly Eccles's own composition, but the second movement—the Corrente—came from one of Francesco Bonporti's Sonatas. Perhaps people in those days had more of a “share and share alike” attitude than is prevalent now. I was already familiar with this Sonata. I found it when researching Solomon Eccles, Henry's father, who was a famous early Quaker but burned his instruments when he converted to the new faith.

Because we all hope for peace, we will play some songs from the Slavic part of the world where violence is erupting. One is called “Storks on the Roof.” It asks for peace for the whole world, and for storks—a symbol of peace—to stand on every rooftop.