Oct. 1 – MITHAS presents Neela Bhagwat, khyal and light-classical music. 7pm, Stata Center. Tickets: MIT Students Free; $30 (adults); $20 (seniors); $10 (student).
For further information, please contact mithastimes@gmail.com or (617) 258-7971. http://web.mit.edu/mithas/www/concerts.html
Oct. 7 – MITHAS presents Gayathri Venkataraghavan, Carnatic vocal, 7pm, Stata Center. Tickets: MIT Students Free;
$30 (adults); $20 (seniors); $10 (student).
For further information, please contact mithastimes@gmail.com or (617) 258-7971. http://web.mit.edu/mithas/www/concerts.html
Oct. 8 – MIT Composing for Jazz Orchestra (21M.342) presents the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra, Mark Harvey, Music Director. Aardvark will present original works by music director Mark Harvey that cover many styles and facets of music for large jazz ensemble. Harvey’s commemoration of 9/11 Blood on the Sun/New Moon Rising will be a centerpiece of the evening’s program. 8pm, Killian Hall. Free.
Oct. 12 – MIT Guest Artists in Residence. The Ascoli Ensemble. Sneak preview performance of vocal music from 1350-1450, including monodic pieces (Oswald von Wolkenstein, Gruuthuuse Manuscript, Utrecht Manuscript, Gregorian, Hildegard von Bingen) and relatively simple polyphony (Modern Devotion, Burgundian chansons). 5:30pm, MIT Lobby 7, 77 Mass. Ave., Cambridge.
Oct. 13 – MIT Guest Artists in Residence. The Ascoli Ensemble performs vocal music from 1350-1450. The program will focus on the polyphony of the Ars Nova and Ars Subtilior, including music of Johannes Ciconia, Zacara da Teramo, Petrus de Brugis, and Guillaume de Machaut. 8:30pm, MIT Chapel. Free.
The Ascoli Ensemble (www.ascoliensemble.com) is a Holland-based vocal ensemble specialized in the performance of rare and unknown music from the Middle Ages. The ensemble gained international recognition in 2009 for its reconstruction and modern world premiere of a recently discovered 14th-century Italian manuscript, in collaboration with musicologists Michael Scott Cuthbert (MIT) and Agostino Ziino (Rome). Its first CD, “I Frammenti Ascolani,” came out in 2010 with a world premiere recording of late medieval polyphony. Since then the ensemble has been in high demand in Europe and beyond for its unusual combination of musicianship and scholarly rigor. This concert is part of the Ascoli Ensemble’s first US tour, which also includes performances in New York City. Artistic director and tenor Sasha Zamler-Carhart is a professor of medieval music and Latin at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague. All the singers in the ensemble are former students of the Royal Conservatoire. Each is both a specialist of early music performance and a scholar, contributing to the ensemble’s musicological work of deciphering, transcribing and interpreting medieval manuscript sources. They are: Niels Berentsen (tenor, Netherlands); Benjamin Eastley (tenor, England); Marine Fribourg (soprano, France) ; Oscar Verhaar (countertenor, Netherlands); Alejandra Wayar Soux (mezzo-soprano, Bolivia); Sasha Zamler-Carhart (tenor and director, France) .
Oct. 14 – Family Weekend Concert. A Special Tribute to our Troops. MIT Wind and Festival Jazz Ensembles. Frederick Harris, Music Director. Kenneth Amis, assistant conductor. MITWE will perform music by Berlioz, Vaughn Williams, Holst, and Randall Thompson. FJE will perform music by Wayne Shorter, Thad Jones, Bob Brookmeyer, and others. Special guest jazz vocalist, Beth Logan Raffeld, will also be featured. 8pm, Kresge Auditorium. Free.
Oct. 17 – MIT Folk Music 21M223 presents
a lecture demonstration by folk singer
Brian Peters. Peters will speak about
the child ballads and folk songs
of the British Isles.
7:30pm, Killian Hall. Free.
Oct. 20 – MTA Composer Forum features Tod Machover
in a talk about some of his recent non-operatic work,
focusing on the new CD, …but not simpler….
5pm, MIT Lewis Music Library, 14E-109.
A Reception will follow. Free.
Funded in part by the Council for the Arts at MIT.
Oct. 21 – MIT Symphony Orchestra, Adam K. Boyles, Music Director. Bach, Overture to Orchestral Suite #1 ; Weber/arr. Mahler, Entracte to Die Drei Pintos ; Mahler, Songs of a Wayfarer ; Strauss, Death and Transfiguration. 8pm, Kresge Auditorium. $5 at the door.
Oct. 23 – MIT Guest Artists Series presents The Makanda Project. Makanda Ken McIntyre (1931-2001), born and bred in Boston, was a brilliant composer and jazz instrumentalist whose work is only now gaining long overdue recognition. Organized by John Kordalewski, The Makanda Project broadens and enriches the jazz repertory by presenting the original work of Makanda Ken McIntyre. The MIT community will have a rare opportunity to experience the complex and engaging music on this concert. Offered in conjunction with Composing for Jazz Orchestra (21M.342). 8pm, Killian Hall. Free.
Oct. 29 – The Supernatural in Music (21M013J) presents Martin Marks and Ellen Harris in a performance of the score for piano and soprano by Martin Marks for a screening of Murnau’s silent film Faust. 7pm, Killian Hall. Free.
Faust, a lavish 1926 silent film directed by F. W. Murnau, with a new musical score, created and performed by Martin Marks, piano, with Ellen Harris, soprano (members of the MTA faculty). Starring the great Emil Jannings as Mephisto, Faust has achieved legendary status as one of the key German films of the 1920s, noted for its fine acting, brilliant camerawork, and stunning art design (it was all shot at the UFA studio). Murnau originally subtitled his film “A German Folk-Saga,” to make clear that his was a different take on the story from Goethe’s two-part poetic masterpiece, though numerous borrowings are there. Marks and Harris will perform a compilation-score that draws upon many different landmarks of “Faust” music (including works by Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz, and Gounod). It also incorporates music by other great German composers, along with numerous bits of silent period “mood music.” At times the soprano “speaks” for and empathizes with Gretchen; but she also gives voice to the supernatural forces and themes that suffuse the story, both for ill and for good. The music, performed live, brings a great film to life once more!
