According to Carl Jung, stories, myths, and legends from around the globe revolve around common characters by which individuals can measure their own personalities and identities. That is the focus of “Archetypes,” a new musical program devised by guitarist Sérgio Assad, his daughter the pianist and vocalist Clarice Assad, and the ensemble Third Coast Percussion.
For the past month, Daniel Alexander Jones has been dazzling audiences as a legendary rock, R&B and disco songstress in the immersive musical spectacle “Black Light.”
Each night of Black Light, Daniel Alexander Jones straps on his platform heels, wears his assortment of sequined gowns and dons a beautiful wig, transforming into Jomama Jones. She’s an intimidating woman of contradictions who takes the audience on a musical journey that fuses everything from the Black American Freedom movement to Afromysticism and the musical influences of Prince, Sade, Diana Ross and Tina Turner.
Every pianist must come to terms with music of Chopin, whose scores extended the possibilities of the instrument in ways still being explored to this day. But few pianists dispatch Chopin’s work as poetically, idiomatically or dexterously as George Li, who made his Grant Park Orchestra debut Wednesday night at the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park.
George Li is a young pianist on the rise. At age 10, he gave his first public concert and at 15, he won a silver medal at the revered Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Li recently released his debut album on a major label and has been fielding offers, performing with some of the world's great orchestras.
This was less a scientific exploration than a poetic one carried out in a remarkable late-20th-century musical composition, Gerard Grisey's "Le Noir de l'Etoile" (1990).
David Skidmore, one of the founding members, gives us a little insight on how dance and percussion work together, as well as what he's most excited about for the Fall Series.
Last year Chicago quartet Third Coast Percussion won their first Grammy: Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance, for a 2016 album of music by minimalist icon Steve Reich.
