The Arts Council of Central Louisiana, founded in 1980, exists to help fund, promote, and produce the Arts in Central Louisiana parishes. We provide assistance to artists and emerging organizations through arts advocacy, leadership, grant opportunities, and cultural opportunities for underserved populations. The Arts Council of Central Louisiana believes that art shapes the lives of our friends and neighbors.

The Arts Council Thanks These Individuals for Their Continued Support

Abendmusik Alexandria presents serious, high-quality chamber music in a jazz club setting at the Hearn Stage in downtown Alexandria. With a focus on new or unfamiliar music, this series appeals to the serious listener who is interested in hearing something outside the standard repertoire. Musicians Paul Christopher and John De Chiaro are curators and regular performers of the concert series. Their programs are selected to complement the programs presented by other local music organizations, often featuring local performers and occasionally highlighting local composers. MusicCentral blogger Jackson Harmeyer directs the series and provides program notes to complete the musical experience.

Supported in part by a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture, Recreation & Tourism, in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council. Funding has also been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, a Federal agency.

With additional support from the Central Louisiana Community Foundation

An Evening with Scott Joplin THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4. Classical guitarist John De Chia-ro recreates his recent Carnegie Hall program for its Central Louisiana debut.

Folk-Tale and Fauré THURSDAY, OCTOBER 2. Pianist Elena Bogaczova joins RSO cellist Paul Christopher for a program that includes Folk-Tale by Arnold Bax, Glissées for solo cello by Isang Yun, and the Second Cello Sonata by Gabriel Fauré.

Young People’s Concert THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13. The Young Artists Chamber Orchestra of Alexandria directed by John De Chiaro will perform a classical program including music by Camille Saint-Saëns, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Soon Hee Newbold, Larry Clark, and others.

Popular Inspirations THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4. Featuring Lin He and Jay Kacherski, this program contrasts the unique sounds of vio-lin and guitar in several classical pieces with popular inspirations. Musical selections include Centone di Sonata No. 1 by Niccolò Paganini, Seven Spanish Folk Songs by Manuel de Falla, and Histoire du Tango by Astor Piazzolla.

Romantic Sounds of Classical Guitar THURSDAY, JANUARY 8. Classical guitarist John De Chiaro warms the winter evening with romantic selections by Franz Schubert, Charles Gounod, Isaac Albéniz, Francisco Tárrega, Leo Brouwer, and others.

Trio de Llano in Concert THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5. A wind trio composed of NSU mu-sic faculty Dennette McDermott, Malena McLaren and Douglas Bakenhus, Trio de Llano presents music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Walter Piston, Shreveport-based composer Todd Gabriel, and others.

A Night of Popular Favorites THURSDAY, MARCH 5. The Young Artists Chamber Orchestra of Alexandria performs selections from film, musical theatre, and popular song. Hear music from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, Hans Zimmer’s Pirates of the Caribbean, and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera, alongside John De Chiaro’s own arrangement of the popular song “Aubrey.”

Jacques Offenbach, the Cellist THURSDAY, APRIL 2. Closing the first season of Abendmus-ik Alexandria, cellists Paul Christopher and Milovan Paz introduce you to the cello duets of Jacques Offenbach — for-gotten music by the composer of the Can-Can and a series of well-loved operettas.

Concerts in this Series Thursdays. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. Concert at 6.

Rebecca Alexander Joan Ashby Ronald Bailey Margaret E. Brian Candy Brame Scott & Mary Ann Brame Lee Breithaupt Edwin & Jacqueline Caplan Bob Carroll Jason E. Cobb Gerald Crise Richard B. Crowell Stephen P. Deptula Elizabeth S. Gaiennie Jenifer Jones Gilchrist Edwin Hadley Joy Hodges

David & Nicole Holcombe Dr. James Knoepp & Dr. Ulla Ule Phillip & Nelda Laborde Roger & Linda Lejeune Nick Lena Betty Fay & Joseph Lipsey Jr. Ann & Cedric Lowrey M&M Sound Russ & Irene Marsh Maggie & Jonathan Martin Mary Moser Lisa Nugent Bill & Nancy Owens Pineville High School Music Dept. Dianne Read Red River Music Aline Showers

Harry B. Silver Sara L. Simmonds Dale Starkey Glenda Stock Gayle Underwood Dr. & Mrs. Charles Van Oppen Dr. & Mrs. Edward Villamez II Jim and Ruth Weinzettle Lynne Weis Nancy & Zebulon M. Winstead Dr. Maan Younes Alice Young

Popular Inspirations The Hearn Stage at the Kress Theatre

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Lin He, Violin Jay Kacherski, Guitar

PAGANINI Centone di Sonata No. 1

I. Introduzione - Allegro maestoso

II. Rondoncino. Allegro

FALLA Seven Spanish Folk Songs

1. El paño moruno

2. Seguidilla murciana

3. Asturiana

4. Jota

5. Nana

6. Canción

7. Polo

PIAZZOLLA Histoire du Tango

I. Bordel 1900

II. Café 1930

III. Nightclub 1960

IV. Concert d’aujourd’hui

Lin He, Violinist Violinist Lin He will make his Carnegie Hall debut during the 2014-2015 sea-son. In January, 2015, he will appear as the soloist with the Louisiana Sinfonietta. The past season, he made his

Rapides Symphony Orchestra debut with the Korngold Concerto. In January, 2014, he performed in Carnegie Hall for the Chil-dren of Syria, sharing stage with principal players from the Metropolitan Opera, New York Philharmonic, and Philadelphia Or-chestra.

As a soloist and chamber musician, violin-ist Lin He has performed concertos with the Jiang Su Symphony, the Lake Charles Symphony, and the Tuscarawas Philhar-monic. He has also presented recitals at universities across the United States as well as at the East China Normal University, the Nanjing School of the Arts, the Xi'an Con-servatory of Music and the Xinghai Con-

servatory of Music. Most recently, he performed solo recitals and gave master classes at Arizona State University, Florida State University, Pennsylvania State University, SUNY Fredonia, Tulane University and University of North Texas.

As an orchestral player, Mr. He has performed with the Shanghai Sympho-ny, Rochester Philharmonic and New World Symphony, and has worked under the direction of Marin Alsop, James Con-lon, James DePreist, Seiji Ozawa, Andre Previn, David Robertson, Christopher Seaman, Leonard Slatkin, Robert Spano, Edo de Waart, and David Zinman. He is a regular addition to the Louisiana Philhar-monic Orchestra.

Summer festival appearances have taken Mr. He to venues such as the Music Acade-my of the West and the Tanglewood Music Center where he had a solo performance in Ozawa Hall in 2001. In 2005, Mr. He appeared at the Aspen Music Festival, where he served as Assistant Principal Second Violin for the Festival Orchestra and was the featured violinist for the world premiere concert of American-Chinese composer Huang Ruo. Lin He has been a

laureate of the Padesta Solo Competition and the ASTA competition. Mr. He re-ceived the 2003 John Celentano Award for Excellence in Chamber Music from the Eastman School of Music.

Mr. He is now serving as the Associate Professor of Violin at the Louisiana State University School of Music, Associate concertmaster of the Baton Rouge Sym-phony and the Vice President of the Ameri-can String Teachers Association Louisiana Chapter. During the summer, he teaches at the Sewanee Summer Music Festival and the Alfredo De Saint Malo Festival in Pan-ama City, Panama.

Born in Shanghai, China, Mr. He began his musical training at the age of five. Mr. He received his doctorate from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied under the tutelage of Zvi Zeitlin. Other major influences include Sylvia Rosenberg and Paul Kantor.

His CD release from Centaur Records of French Sonatas for Violin and Piano with pianist Gregory Sioles received favorable reviews.

© Lin He 2014

Jay Kacherski, Guitarist

New York native Jay Kacherski has given solo and en-semble performanc-es throughout the United States and Mexico. Recent performances in-clude concerts at the Festival Inter-

nacional de Guitarra del Conservatorio Nacional de Musica, Mexico City; the Ollin Yoliztli Center for the Arts in Mexico City; the famous Cactus Cafe in Austin, Texas; Tulane University; McNeese State University; the concert artist series at the Museo Mural Diego Rivera in Mexico City; the XI Concurso y Festival de Guitar-ra de Taxco; and the concert artist series at the Atlas Performing Arts Center in Wash-ington D.C. Mr. Kacherski has also been a performer and soloist for the Louisiana Choral Foundation and at the Louisiana Summer Music Festival. Mr. Kacherski

was the runner-up finalist in the Texas A&M International Guitar Competition and Symposium in 2010 and has been featured on 90.5 FM - KUT Austin radio.

In 2007, Mr. Kacherski was a member of the guitar faculty at the Escuela Nacional de Música, the music conservatory for the National University of Mexico (the Univer-sidad Nacional Autonoma de México, UNAM). In 2008, Mr. Kacherski returned to Mexico as a Fulbright Scholar research-ing, performing, and promoting contempo-rary classical guitar music of Mexico. His guide and teacher for his Fulbright work was the world-renowned Mexican guitar-ist Juan Carlos Laguna. Mr. Kacherski has continued his work in contemporary music by premiering many new solo and chamber music works by Mexican composers in the United States.

Jay Kacherski completed the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts in Classical Guitar Performance (DMA) from the University of Texas at Austin with one of the premier U.S. guitarists and pedagogues, Profes-

sor Adam Holzman. Prior to that, Mr. Ka-cherski earned a Master’s Degree in Guitar Performance and Literature from the East-man School of Music in Rochester, New York where he studied with master guitar-ist Dr. Nicholas Goluses. Mr. Kacherski completed his undergraduate studies with Pepe Romero protege, Dr. Mark Switz-er and Eddy Lugo at Florida Southern Col-lege where he graduated with honors. Jay is currently a Contributing Editor for Sound-board Magazine, which is the journal of the Guitar Foundation of America and is Visit-ing Lecturer in Music Theory at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisi-ana.

Mr. Kacherski has also been a performer in master classes with classical guitar icons Manuel Barrueco, Sharon Isbin, Kazuhito Yamashita, Eliot Fisk, and the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet among others.

© Jay Kacherski 2014

Popular Inspirations Notes by Jackson Harmeyer, Series Director

Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840) Centone di Sonata No. 1

Italian composer Niccolò Paganini – remembered today as the first superstar of the violin – was also a guitarist, and he was appar-ently quite talented on this instrument. Paganini consid-ered the guitar “my constant companion in all my trav-els” and once remarked “I love the guitar for its har-mony.” In the same way that Paganini wrote so much music for violin, he

also wrote a considerable amount of music for guitar. These include 37 guitar sonatas, many character pieces, and also a series of 43 Ghiribizzi or Whims reminiscent in their diversity to the more famous set of 24 Caprices for solo violin. Yet, whereas his music for violin was written to amaze the public with its fierce technical displays, Paganini’s guitar music was mostly written to be played among friends in quieter settings. Therefore, much of his guitar music is comparatively subdued next to his radical and innovative violin compositions. In addition to the many works he wrote for solo guitar, Paganini also wrote duets combining the unique sounds of his two instruments – guitar and violin. Among these are a set of 18 Centone di Sonate, a phrase which roughly translates to “Medleys of Sonatas.” By calling these works such, Paganini was disclosing that many of these pieces do not follow the strict dictates of Classical sonata form – exposition, development, and recapitulation – which at that time was still so prevalent in instrumental composi-tions. A century earlier, such a distinction would not have had to been made: many of the pieces in this set more closely resemble the Baroque sonata which was simply

an instrumental composition often in several short move-ments. By 1828 – the approximate date of composition for this group – the term “sonata,” however, implied too much to be broadly applied to all of the works included in this set. The first piece from this collection of 18 is the one heard on this evening’s program. An A minor composition in two brief movements, this work has little to do with Clas-sical sonata form. Not unlike the other pieces of this set, the guitar takes a secondary role to the violin. The dra-matic Introduzione provides a fiery opening which seems insistent on revealing nothing more than the mood of what is to follow. Suddenly, a demonic jig breaks loose to initi-ate the Allegro maestoso. The central section of this movement has a much more sentimental character than heard previously. After the jig returns, there is a quick reminiscence of the Introduzione material to conclude the first movement. The second movement is marked Ron-doncino and its recurring refrain melody hints at the rondo form its title implies. Between the statements of this refrain, there are several entertaining variations, including one that requires the violinist to take-up plucking as if a guitarist. In the closing measures, the guitarist playfully mocks the violinist’s plucks with light plucks of his own. Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) Seven Spanish Folk Songs By 1914, Manuel de Falla the renowned Spanish compos-er had spent seven years living in Paris, working alongside and befriending France’s leading composers. Yet, with the outbreak of World War I that year, Falla was forced to return to Spain. Despite his years abroad, the music of his homeland never became foreign to Falla as imitations of Spanish folk music would continue to appear in his com-positions. Nor did his associ-ates forget he was a Spanish composer among Frenchmen – his friend the composer Paul Dukas for example would fondly call him “the little black Spaniard.” When approached by a Span-ish singer who had been a part of the Parisian production of Falla’s opera La vida breve to write for her something Span-ish, Falla was happy to oblige. The result was the set of Siete canciones populares españolas or Seven Spanish Folk Songs which Falla completed in Paris just before his mandatory departure for Spain. For these songs, Falla uncharacteris-tically drew on actual Spanish folk tunes. While at least five of the seven songs are based directly on Spanish folk tunes, Falla did amend some of the melodies and added his

Next in this Series

Romantic Sounds of Classical Guitar THURSDAY, JANUARY 8

Classical guitarist John De Chiaro warms the winter evening with romantic selections by Franz Schubert, Charles Gounod, Isaac Albéniz, Francisco Tárrega,

Leo Brouwer, and others.

own accompaniments to all seven. Soprano Luisa Vela gave the premiere on January 14, 1915 at the Ateneo in Madrid with Falla himself accompanying her at the piano. The first song is titled El paño moruno or The Moorish Cloth. The tune that serves as its basis is from the province of Murcia located in southeastern Spain. This song des-pairs that a piece of fine cloth has become stained and has in turn lost its value. The second song Seguidilla murciana – a Seguidilla from the same region – places the first song in context by telling of a girl whose fickleness eventually causes her to be ignored. An Asturiana – a song from the northwestern region of Asturias – follows, telling of a tree who pities and weeps with a rejected lover. The lively Jota with its origins in the northeastern region of Aragon relates a secret and forbidden love affair. Nana is a lullaby from Andalusia, a region in southern Spain traditionally associat-ed with both Muslims and Gypsies; therefore, Nana has somewhat of an oriental character. The melodies of the final two songs Canción and Polo are believed to be origi-nal compositions by Falla. Canción radiates with renewed strength as a dejected lover finally overcomes feelings of betrayal. The fiery Polo is its opposite with exclamations from an outcast lover discovering betrayal for the first time. Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) Histoire du Tango Celebrated Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla skillfully com-bined his love for the tango tradi-tion of South America with his training in classical composition and experience with jazz. Alt-hough Piazzolla was born in Ar-gentina, he and his parents relo-cated to New York City when he was just four years old. When he was eight, his father gave him a bandoneón – a type of accordion often found in tango ensembles – and he soon became quite profi-cient on this instrument. Meanwhile, piano lessons intro-duced him to classical music as the jazz of Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway was also becoming familiar. When he was sixteen, he and his family returned to Argentina and soon he was playing with notable tango groups. Under the tutelage of the eminent Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera, he studied the music of twentieth-century classical composers like Stravinsky and Bartók, and for a while adopted their European language wholesale. While studying in Paris with the famed pedagogue Nadia Boulan-ger, however, she convinced Piazzolla to consider his tango heritage more seriously. This was a turning point for him, and upon his return to Argentina he set-out to reinvigorate the tango tradition with all he had learned from classical music and jazz. Throughout his career, Piazzolla wrote some 750 composi-tions including everything from orchestral works and

chamber music to film scores. There are plenty of tangos, and some works even comment on the tango as a genre. The four-movement suite Histoire du Tango traces the de-velopment of the tango from its origins as an erotic dance music found in the slums of Buenos Aires to its contempo-rary recognition as a vital and exciting addition to the con-cert hall repertoire. Piazzolla wrote this piece in 1985 by which time his music was not only world famous, but also beginning to find acceptance in his native Argentina. Originally conceived for flute and guitar, Histoire du Tan-go was dedicated to the Belgian flutist Marc Grauwels who also gave its premiere.

Each of its four movements depicts a particular phase in the evolution of the tango genre. The first movement is titled Bordel 1900 and portrays the tango as the genre is first emerging around the turn of the twentieth century in the brothels of Buenos Aires. It is a cheery sort of music reflecting the good times had by the attractive women and the men they enticed. Café 1930 depicts the tango approx-imately thirty years later after it had become a much slow-er, gloomier sort of music full of the sensual embrace we often associate with the tango. Nightclub 1960 illustrates a period of international exchange and excitement for the tango; it also depicts the arrival of Piazzolla’s own wide-reaching influences as jazz elements begin to be heard. In its final movement Concert d’aujourd’hui or Concert of Today, Piazzolla shows the concert hall tango that he him-self had envisioned with its advanced vocabulary – an ex-ample that by 1985 most tango composers were following.

© Jackson Harmeyer 2014

Read more of Jackson’s music writings and keep up with local music at MusicCentral:

www.ticket-central.org/music-central.

Jackson Harmeyer – Series Director

Jackson Harmeyer studied music history while at the Louisiana Schol-ars’ College – Louisiana’s designated honors college. There he completed an undergraduate thesis entitled “Learning from the Past: The Influ-ence of Johann Sebastian Bach upon the Soviet Composers.” In his first year living in Alexandria, he has continued his music scholarship writing program notes for the Rapides Symphony Orchestra and Arts Council of Central Louisiana while also consulting to the Louisiana International Piano Competition and conducting much independent research. He has also expanded into arts pro-motion – writing about Central Louisiana’s many music offerings at MusicCentral, part of the larger TicketCentral program he has helped develop. Mr. Harmeyer is also an emerging composer and has already organized several per-formances of his exciting and challenging music.

Manuel de Falla

Niccolò Paganini

Astor Piazzolla

Jackson Harmeyer