Read my review for Voice Magazine of the third and last recital of 2022 in the Music Academy’s new Maricopa Series

Alumni All-Star Cello Choir – The Eight Immortals

The number eight is powerful. Throughout folkloric history it has been considered a symbol for luck and prosperity and is the atomic number for the element water. Aside from the infinity of its design, eight (8) also represents organization, perseverance, and control of energy. The Eight Immortals, of Chinese legend had extraordinary powers that could be transferred to each of their “power tools.”

Not that the cello is a power tool (cellists would disagree), but the imagery was appropriate last Saturday at the Music Academy in Santa Barbara. A conflation of marketing genius and artistic purpose brought eight cellists, all Music Academy alums, together for the first time in years to play a big program together in an intimate salon (Lehmann Hall in the main house) which was packed to the wainscoting with a sold-out crowd of a hundred or more eager Music Academy patrons.

The third and last recital of the 2022 season for the new Music Academy Mariposa Series featured the Music Academy Alumni All-Star Cello Choir, eight colleagues gathered from hither and yon a couple days earlier to rehearse and perform a program of mostly transcriptions (Grieg, J.S. Bach, Johann/Joseph Strauss, Wagner, Piazzolla) together with cellist Paul Wiancko’s 2017 Cello Quartet, Op. 1 “When the Night.”

Opening the program with a transcription for eight cellos of three movements from Edvard Grieg’s Holberg Suite, Op. 40 (1884), the All-Stars - Katrina Agate, Chas Barnard, Shirley Kim, Jennifer Kloetzel, Noah Seng-hui Koh, Marcie Kolacki, Maki Kubota, Emma Lee – brought the first of the three, Praeludium, into satisfying simile with the string orchestra version, including the replication, high on the cello fingerboard, of the violin tunes. Nice.

The Sarabande transcription, perfectly suited the rich timbre of the cello choir. Lovely. The last and trickiest of the three transcriptions, Gavotte, gave the eight cellists opportunity to levitate a bit.

Colin Hampton’s arrangement for cello quartet - Agate, Kloetzel, Kubota, Lee - of two movements from Bach’s unaccompanied Cello Suite No. 6 in D Major, BWV 1012 gave this listener a “puzzle me this” moment. How could it be? The first movement, Sarabande, found the brain remembering decades of solo cello performances, while the ears heard harmony and counterpoint - the arrangement’s magic. Fabulous!

The Gavotte I & II was also a delight in this skillful transcription. Little wonder, Colin Hampton (1911-1996) was a world-famous cellist and founder of the California Cello Club (1950) the oldest in the nation.

American composer/cellist Paul Wiancko’s Cello Quartet Op. 1 “When the Night” (2017) – Barnard, Kim, Koh, Kolacki – transported the listener through eight minutes, yes, eight minutes of vaporous cello quartet intoxication; a rich while also transparent palette of colors, a rhythmic pulse that waxed and waned with sometimes ecstatic frenzy, pizzicato and col legno effects to enhance moments of leisurely magic, then away softly into the night, like a dream. A splendid performance.

The last three programmed pieces, all transcriptions for the gang of eight to play together, included a fun Pizzicato Polka by the father/son team of Johann and Joseph Strauss, conducted discreetly as needed for rubato, by one of the team; Friedrich Grützmacher’s brilliant arrangement of Feierlliches Stück from Wagner’s Lohengrin; and a dynamite arrangement by James Barralet of two movements from Astor Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires – Winter (1969) and Summer (1965). For encore, a simply beautiful arrangement of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. A good time was had by all.

Daniel Kepl | Performing Arts Review

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