Another local artist, Heidi Leitzke of Lancaster, will be featured in an exhibit at the Gross McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia. The show, “Inquiry: Five Painting Practices,” focuses on five painters — Leitzke; Rachel Wren, Susan Ziegler and Chris Bunside, all of Brooklyn, N.Y., and Jenny Haver of Los Angeles — who, in the view of curator Mark Brosseau, “take forms and energies from the observed world and distill this visual information into a vocabulary with which they create new worlds and visual experiences.” (Read more here.) The show opens Tuesday, July 8, with a reception 4-8 p.m. Saturday, July 12, and runs until Aug. 1. The gallery is located at 127 S. 16th St., Philadelphia.

It’s all so much simpler for Marvin, the painting dog: “I sort of encourage him, say he’s a good boy, and I give him treats. That gets the tail going.” (via the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research, which is actually this guy’s blog)

For the Friday concert, the students were grouped in various duos, trios, quartets and quintets. Two pairs of piano students performed: Duo-piano performers Shihan Lin and Liang Wang, in Johannes Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Josef Haydn, navigated the piece’s ringing bell-like chorales, romantic diversions and Bachian complexities with great spirit and synchronicity. Pianists Hexin Qiao and Lanjiabao Ge performed Debussy’s “Petite Suite” on one piano, a fascinating sight and a delight to hear.

Clarinetist T.J. Wissler delivered a standout performance, with violinists Qing Fan and Fei Xia, violist Lulu Liu and cellist Jeufei Wang, in the entertaining and athletic Allegro Moderato from Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Clarinet Quartet. The same quartet of string players appeared with Niannian Jiang on piano in a forceful performance of the Scherzo from Shostakovich’s Quintet to conclude the concert on a fiery note.

Other highlights included Kurtis Copley on flute and Chris Orr on piano in a movement from Paul Hindemith’s Sonata for Flute and Piano, a clean bit of musical modernity that calls to mind Bauhaus architecture or a painting by Piet Mondrian. Copley and fellow flute players Mary Beth Seitz-Brown, Evangeline Krajewski and Claire McRee took the stage for two short pieces from Jacques Casterede’s “Flutes en Vacances” and Catherine McMichael’s “A Gaelic Offering.” (Where else are you going to get a chance to hear a flute ensemble?)

Weighing in with more mainstream fare were Valerie Horst on violin and Liang Wang on piano in the Allegro Moderato from Beethoven’s “Spring” Sonata; violinist Amy Hess, cellist Karen Lau and Lanjiaboa Ge in the Adagio-Vivace from Dvorak’s “Dumky” Trio; and violinist Eva Dove, violist David Houck, cellist Ellen Hartshorne and pianist Christin Cooper in the Allegro from Mozart’s Piano Quartet in G Minor. Less familiar pieces (to me, anyway) were the Scherzo from Anton Arensky’s Trio in D Minor, played by violinist Melody Brubaker, cellist Nathan Doan and pianist Shihan Li, and the Moderato from Gioachino Rossini’s Quartet, played by violinists Melody Brubaker and Claire Jordan, cellist Kathryn Westerlund and Claire McRee on flute.

The new performance space is a wonderful place to hear music (the only thing lacking is some art in the lobby), and I’m looking forward to many more outstanding concerts.

(Edited on July 1, 2008 to change photographs to thumbnails.)

When the Dave Matthews Band rolls into Hershey Friday, it’ll be bringing along volunteers from the non-partisan group HeadCount in an effort to register voters. Talk about multitasking!

One of the pleasures of chamber music, what sets it apart, is its air of conversation among equals. Two recent concerts, at Millersville and the Pennsylvania Academy of Music, brought some memorable conversations to the area.  

The Miami String Quartet – Benny Kim and Cathy Meng Robinson, violins; Yu Jin, viola and Keith Robinson, cello – gave the String Quartet No. 9 in E-flat Major by Dmitry Shostakovich a scorched-earth performance Tuesday evening, June 24, at the Pennsylvania Academy of Music. The work, which was composed in 1964, is in five continuous movements. A repeated two-note semitone figure drives the music forward, laments grow out of areas of calm, and pizzicato sections range from delicate to furious, string-busting passages that push the music toward dissonance. The players piled intensity on intensity and the results were breathtaking.

Also on the program was Mozart’s melancholy yet genial String Quartet No. 15 in D Minor (1783), played with rich and full-bodied approach, and Claude Debussy’s String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 10 (1893). As they did in the Shostakovich, the players gave the work a dramatic reading, playing up Debussy’s unusual, colorful harmonies and hints of exoticism, but making room for passages of pearly calm.

Awadagin Pratt, pianist and artistic director of the Next Generation Festival, brought together a group of fine musicians in differing configurations for some amazing musical conversations at Millersville University Friday, June 20. The concert opened with Erno Dohnanyi’s 1902 Serenade in C for string trio, played by Tai Murray, a 26-year-old violinist with a lively stage presence and an impressive record of performances already; Susan Gulkis-Assadi, principal violist of the Seattle Symphony, and Tom Kraines, a cellist active in the Northeast. The crowd-pleasing Dohnanyi, full of spicy rhythms and extroverted playing, was followed by a more cerebral performance of Brahms’s Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Major, with Pratt on piano and Australian Ben Breen on violin. After the intermission, all five musicians took the stage for an iridescent performance of Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E Flat Major (1842), a study in emotional contrasts and ingenious use of form. 

 After the performance, the five musicians gathered on the stage for a question and answer session with the audience. (Shown from left are Susan Gulkis-Assadi, Tai Murray, Awadagin Pratt, Ben Breen and Tom Kraines.) They discussed their instruments, the musical selections (Pratt hopes for more new music next year) and the future of classical music. Kraines has a hopeful outlook: “I think there will always be people who listen. It will always remind us of what humanity is,” he commented.

Vivace! continues tonight with the Academy Hop: different performance spaces in the new Academy building will be featured, with performances of Beethoven and Grieg sonatas, Mendelssohn, Dvorak and Haydn piano trios, a Mozart piano quartet and a Shostakovich piano quintet scheduled. The event is free and starts at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy, 42 N. Prince St. An all-Schubert evening of chamber music will be held Thursday, June 26, at 7:30 p.m.; cost is $25. The Grand Finale will be Friday at 7:30 p.m.; cost is $25. The festival rounds off with two performances Saturday: student recitals at 1 p.m. (free admission) and Cabaret Night at 7:30 p.m., with light refreshments and music featuring works by P.D.Q. Bach (a.k.a. Peter Schickele). Tickets are $40. Details available here.

This is how WITF-FM’s schedule looks now.

A different take on street art: Reverse graffiti.