The SCMS Lecture Series deepens your understanding and appreciation of classical music by exploring the history, analysis, and nuances of select chamber works performed at Seattle Chamber Music Society. By exploring the history, analysis, and nuances of select chamber music works, the series helps deepen your understanding and appreciation of classical music.
Date: Tuesday, May 19
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Center for Chamber Music, Kennan Hollingsworth Living Room
Lecturer: The Balourdet Quartet
For this lecture, the Balourdet Quartet will be featuring a new piece which inventively draws on 300 years of music, Strange Machines by renowned Canadian-American composer Karim Al-Zand. Through double-entendre and visual imagery of fantastical music machines, Al-Zand creates a witty and even humorous tribute to Bach, Mozart, and the dawn of the symphony. This event also serves as a teaser for the Balourdet Quartet’s upcoming studio album featuring Strange Machines and will be followed by an Q&A session.
This event is free but registration is required.
Date: Tuesday, June 23
Time: 11:00 AM
Location: Online, Zoom
Lecturer: Michael Kannen
Cellist Michael Kannen explores the roots of truly American classical music with examinations of music by Dvorak(!), Aaron Copland and John Adams, all composers who will be performed at this year’s Summer Festival.
This event is free but registration is required.
Date: Tuesday, June 23
Time: 6:00 PM
Location: Center for Chamber Music, Kennan Hollingsworth Living Room
Lecturer: Michael Kannen
Cellist Michael Kannen explores the roots of truly American classical music with examinations of music by Dvorak(!), Aaron Copland and John Adams, all composers who will be performed at this year’s Summer Festival.
This event is free but registration is required.
Date: Thursday, June 25
Time: 11:00 AM
Location: Online, Zoom
Lecturer: Michael Kannen
A good number of pieces on this year’s Summer Festival programs exist in orchestral, as well as chamber music, versions. What is the difference when a piece is played by a chamber ensemble, as opposed to an orchestra? Does it have a different impact? Does its meaning change? Cellist Michael Kannen will explore works by Samuel Barber, George Walker and Aaron Copland.
This event is free but registration is required.
Date: Thursday, June 25
Time: 4:00 PM
Location: Center for Chamber Music, Kennan Hollingsworth Living Room
Lecturer: Michael Kannen
A good number of pieces on this year’s Summer Festival programs exist in orchestral, as well as chamber music, versions. What is the difference when a piece is played by a chamber ensemble, as opposed to an orchestra? Does it have a different impact? Does its meaning change? Cellist Michael Kannen will explore works by Samuel Barber, George Walker and Aaron Copland.
This event is free but registration is required.
Date: Thursday, July 9
Time: 11:00 AM
Location: Center for Chamber Music, Kennan Hollingsworth Living Room
Lecturer: Kian Ravaei
A Free People was commissioned by the Mimir Chamber Music Festival, Seattle Chamber Music Society, and Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The first and last movements set the Declaration’s opening and closing words, while the second movement deals with its longest, yet least often talked about, section: a list of grievances against a cruel and tyrannical king. Musical references from the Revolutionary era abound, including drum and fife music, bugle calls, the British patriotic song Rule Britannia (which is also the opening theme of Beethoven’s Wellington’s Victory), and a paraphrase of The Star-Spangled Banner. The unnarrated third movement, “Of Bondage and Freedom,” reflects the history of the American people up to the present day, asking if we have lived up to the ideals of the Declaration over the last quarter of a millennium
This event is free but registration is required.
This series is made possible by the Kathryn Grow Fund
Cellist Michael Kannen has distinguished himself as a musician and educator of uncommon accomplishment who is comfortable in widely diverse musical situations and venues. He was a founding member of the Brentano String Quartet and for seven years performed with that group on concert stages around the world, on radio and television, and on recordings. During those years, the Brentano Quartet was awarded the first Cleveland Quartet Award, the Naumburg Chamber Music Award, a Royal Philharmonic Award and was the first participant in the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center II program.
Mr. Kannen continues to perform chamber music around the country as a member of the Apollo Trio, on period instruments with the Houston-based group Context and at major music festivals such as Yellow Barn, Chamber Music Northwest, Portland Chamber Music Festival and the International Musicians Seminar in Prussia Cove, England. Mr. Kannen has collaborated with such artists as Jessye Norman, Phyllis Bryn-Julson, Sergiu Luca, Donald Weilerstein, Pamela Frank, Leon Fleisher, Mitsuko Uchida, Peter Frankl, Paula Robison, David Krakauer, Jörg Widmann, Steven Isserlis, and with jazz artists Michael Formanek and Uri Caine. His activities range from performances on period instruments to premieres of the music of our time. He has recorded for the CRI label. Mr. Kannen has served on the faculties of Dartmouth College and the Purchase College Conservatory and he is currently the Director of Chamber Music at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, where he holds the Sidney Friedberg Chair in Chamber Music.
This series is made possible by the Kathryn Grow Fund
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