Guitar and Friends at 1867 Sanctuary

Thursday night (July 6) I had the great pleasure of attending a recital by a friend of mine, classical guitarist StanleyAlexandrowicz, at the 1867 Sanctuary, a de-commissioned Presbyterian church in Ewing.

To be accurate, I only heard half of the recital. A family obligation meant I couldn’t get there until 9 p.m. and it started at 8. The bit I missed was some rarely heard 19^th century repertoire – when I walked in, Stanley was just finishing up the pieces at the end of the first half.

Composer Kendall Kennison has written a few pieces for guitar and Stanley played two of them on the second half of the program. Kendall is a friend from my Rutgers days when we were both students of Robert Moevs and has for many years now been a professor at Goucher College. He was there with his wife Debbie, also a good friend and a former piano student of mine, and they were celebrating Debbie’s birthday.

The half of the program I heard was worth the trip. Stanley is a excellent player and a thoughtful interpreter of music of all styles. He uses a guitar modeled after 19^th century types that uses additional bass strings over a second, unfretted neck. These come in handy in both period music and some contemporary pieces written specifically to take advantage of the extra low notes. Guitar builder Tom Sommerville of Hamilton was also in attendance. [see correction at the end]

Kendall’s music (we heard the difficult Sonata No. 1 and the short romp, “Backanally”) has a jewel-like geometry – Stanley said some people have heard a darkness and unsettled quality, but I don’t hear that. I hear a kind of logical love – a fluid, sparking architecture.

Carlton Wilkinson, Stanley Alexandrowicz and Kendall Kennison.  Photo courtesy Stanley Alexandrowicz

Also in attendance was composer and conductor Robert Butts, director of the Baroque Orchestra of New Jersey [http://baroqueorchestra.org]. Stanley played his “Early Morning Suite.” The style here is so conservative as to verge into historic homage (in styles ranging from Ralph Vaughan Williams to J.S. Bach), yet Butt’s music remains surprising and engaging, robust and beautiful.

The 1867 Sanctuary is a newer space and the managers are trying to increase the audience for it, to make the venue an active, vital community center for the arts. Operating costs are roughly $25,000/year, most of which is insurance, putting pressure on the group that now runs it, Preservation New Jersey, to ramp its activities and its visibility as a statewide arts attraction.

For me – who spent nearly 20 years in Trenton, moving away from there about 20 years ago – coming to the former church was the completion of a full circle: we held both my mother’s and her sister’s memorial services there when they died. My Mom went first, way back in 1982. My aunt, who was held in a kind of saintly esteem by the members of my family and her extensive community of friends, died much later, in 2007. My aunt learned the flute late in life, and got a lot of joy from it, turning it, as she did everything else, into an opportunity to make new friends and explore new horizons. I think she (and my mom) would be thrilled to see the church being developed as an arts venue.

It was great to catch up with my friends, if only for a few minutes at intermission and after the concert, sitting on benches in the old cemetery. I look forward to attending other concerts in the space.

--C.
7/8/17
theandofone.blogspot.com

CORRECTION: This post originally said Stanley's guitar "was built by Tom Sommerville of Hamilton." That was incorrect and my misunderstanding. See Stanley's note in the comments of this post.
--C. 7/8/17

10-String Guitar Recital

My friend Stanley Alexandrowicz will be playing a guitar recital 8 p.m. Saturday Nov. 13 at the Paul Robeson Center for the Arts, 102 Witherspoon St., Princeton. The program consists of half 19th Century music and half more recent works. One of the first things that interested me about Stanley when I met him over 20 years ago was his rigorous scholarship, a seemingly fathomless curiosity and knowledge of guitar repertoire and classical music history in general. Performing with him--either in historical or newly written music, sometimes even my own--is always a thrill.

In this concert, he'll be using a 10-string guitar favored by many 19th century guitar virtuosos. I had never heard of such thing until he brought it up recently. He sent me an explanation that he had prepared for other curious musicians and I'm including some excerpts here:

By the mid 1830's MOST of the virtuoso guitar composers were adding a string or two for enhanced harmonic/sonic possibilities. … By the END of the Romantic period, nearly ALL of the great virtuoso guitar composers had found that ten strings would serve their needs. … As I explored the 19th C. repertoire, I realized that MANY of these pieces just don't "sound right" on the modern guitar. For example, one piece I found ONLY needed a low D as part of its structure—but if I tuned the sixth string [normally tuned to E] TO low D, the fingerings to get the low E were impossible! So with ten one can have all the options.

Stanley goes on to talk about how this style, used by guitar builders of the "Viennese/Russian" school, was overshadowed by the popularity of the Spanish style guitar, largely due to the influence of world-acclaimed virtuoso Andres Segovia.

Even the SIZE of the guitar fingerboard was influenced—Segovia had big, FAT fingers, so a wide … fingerboard became standard.

But with the rise of interest in historical accuracy, guitarists are rethinking the reliance on the 6-string model and finding that some of the 19th Century compositions really require the extra low strings. He also implies that the interior construction, and thus the sound of the instrument generally, is better than the Spanish model.

Composers on Stanley's Nov. 13 program include Ivan Padovec, Napoleon Coste, Witold Lutaslowski, Vaclav Kucera and Manuel Ponce. For more information call 609-924-8777 or visit The Arts Council of Princeton website.

--C.
www.theandofone.blogspot.com
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Stanley Alexandrowicz at Christ's Church

Guitarist Stanley Alexandrowicz, a friend of mine from way back, is playing a solo recital 4 p.m. this Sunday at Historic Christ's Church, 2 Paterson St., New Brunswick. The recital is part of the church's Evensong presentations.

In addition to being a tremendous player, Stanley is also a great researcher of guitar music, uncovering gems new and old all the time. Sunday's program is a veritable "Who's Who" of whos you never heard of:
-Ouverture de la Grotte de Versailles (de Lully)--Robert de Visee
-Andante in C-Major (WoO)--Napoleon Coste
-La Source du Lyson (Fantasie), op. 47--Napoleon Coste
-Grand Caprice pour la Guitare Op. 34--Luigi Legnani

Of course, the unknown is always more interesting until it becomes known. But in Stanley's case, I think we're guaranteed that the music will be interesting on its merits and not merely as curiosity.

Like all Evensong concerts at Christ's Church, this is free. For more information, phone 732-545-6262 or visit http://www.christchurchnewbrunswick.org.

--C.
http://www.theandofone.blogspot.com

Kucera 80th Birthday Tribute

On Wednesday, Oct. 21, at 8 p.m., guitarist Dr. Stanley Alexandrowicz will be performing at Goucher College in Baltimore with members of the Music Department Faculty in a program dedicated to the 80th birthday celebration of Czech composer Vaclav Kucera. On the program will also be a world premiere of mine, a fantasy for solo guitar called In Perilous Seas that Stanley commissioned from me last year.

Stanley is a great performer, a former student of Manuel Barrueco, a graduate of Manhattan School of Music and an Albany recording artist. I've known him since the mid-80s and he has always been a relentless explorer of the guitar literature, turning up scores and composers that have, in turn, become major influences on me and others of his contemporaries.

Kucera is a great example. A remarkably original and inspired composer, he is not well known in this country and I would know nothing of him were it not for Stanley's research. Of Kucera's works, the birthday program will present a U.S. premiere, with a string orchestra conducted by Goucher's ensembles director Elisa Koehler, of the Concierto Imaginativo „Homenaje a Salvador Dalí” and the Maryland premiere of his solo Diario: Omaggio a Che Guevara. The program will also include work by Ernst Bacon, Brian Fenelly and Eric Sessler.

Stanley will be repeating elements of this program at the Composers Voice concert Nov. 29 at the Jan Hus Church in New York in the last week of November and I'll post information on that concert as it approaches.

--C.
www.theandofone.blogspot.com