A Refreshing Orchestral Experience
I needed a little time to decompress Tuesday after a couple of long, hard days, and the invigorating Sphinx Chamber Orchestra and Harlem Quartet turned out to be the perfect antidote.
These wonderful young musicians played with verve and plenty of entertaining personality at E.J. Thomas Performing Arts Hall in Akron. The 20-member chamber orchestra is made up of musicians ages 19 to 27 who are winners of the national Sphinx Competition for black and Hispanic string players.
The Sphinx organization is based in Detroit but its winning musicians come from all over the country and the world, several of the artists told me following the performance.
Expect the refreshingly unexpected with these sparkling musicians, who played a huge range of music from traditional classical — my favorite was the sumptuously beautiful Tchaikovsky Serenade for Strings — to some spicier fare featuring Argentinian, Cuban and American composers.
The ultra-bold, Latin-flavored Autumn in Buenos Aires, by the late Argentine Astor Piazzolla, was so remarkable it brought me to tears. This piece featured the lovely Elena Urioste (of the Harlem Quartet) as solo violinist.
Cuban composer Guido Gavilan’s Mi Menor Conga was surprisingly fun as the musicians turned their stringed instruments into percussive vehicles, with violinist Ilmar Gavilan making an unexpected entrance striking the wood body of his violin percussively with his hand.
The Harlem Quartet’s Hellbound Highball, by Wynton Marsalis, was relentlessly fun, depicting a train bound for hell. Every time you thought the train was about to stop, it surged on. It’s amazing what a sense of play Gavilan, Melissa White, Juan-Miguel Hernandez and Desmond Neysmith brought to their instruments, creating the sound of screeching brakes, a choo choo effect, a train bell and the rhythmic feel of a locomotive bouncing along the tracks.
The Harlem Quartet was so excellent, I wished they had played as many pieces at the full chamber orchestra did. Those artists are Sphinx laureates who have formed their own quartet with the mission of creating a varied repertoire by highlighting the works of minority composers.
Only one part of this fantastic program felt off: In Bach’s Concert for Two Violins and String Orchestra, the violin duo featuring Urioste and White was lacking in confidence. The solo line alternates but Urioste definitely played second fiddle to White, playing too quietly and not making her upper melody sing as beautifully as her counterpart. I kept wanting Urioste to play more legato, and the overall effect was lacking.
For the finale, the two groups joined together for Delights and Dances, a commissioned piece for Sphinx’s 10th anniversary. It had an easy, jazzy rhythm as well as a lovely lyricism, combining jazz and bluegrass. At one point, Harlem Quartet had the melody traveling up and down a line, passing it from viola to violin to violin and back.
The crowd was so appreciative, the quartet played a zippy encore, the standard jazz classic Take The ‘A’ Train, composed by Billy Strayhorn and made famous by Duke Ellington. In some strikingly educational patter, Neysmith explained that Strayhorn composed the famous tune on his way to a piano audition, naming it off-the-cuff after the New York subway he took to get there.
This evening of diverse performance certainly opened one’s eyes to the wondrously diverse styles that can be created with stringed instruments. It’s satisfying to hear such young, highly accomplished musicians mix it up so brilliantly.
