The Harlem String Quartet plays on July 19th in a program strangely included in the “Jazz at the Maverick” series. It does include works of Chick Corea and Wynton Marsalis, but I’ve heard the Marsalis and although it’s excellent music, it’s not jazz. The program also includes non-jazz composers Borodin and Piston. On August 4, the Modigliani Quartet of Paris makes its Maverick debut with works of St.-Saëns, Schumann, and Ravel. The Amernet String Quartet performs twice the weekend of August 9/10: a Young People’s Concert at 11 a.m. on the 9th (with Maverick’s Music Director Alexander Platt narrating Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf”); and yet another collaboration with string quartet and piano, as Jon Klibonoff joins the ensemble in works of Mahler (his early one-movement Piano Quintet) and Korngold. Klibonoff will play solo Schoenberg, and the Quartet will play Dvorák’s “American” Quartet. On August 24, the Jupiter Quartet brings yet another collaborating pianist, Ilya Yakushev, for works of Strauss and Brahms. Yakushev also plays Busoni’s arrangement of Bach’s Chaconne, and the Quartet alone plays Mozart’s K. 575. The Pacifica Quartet plays on August 31, “Celebrating Carter,” including two of the late American master composer’s worksThe Shanghai Quartet is one of several highly-regarded string quartet ensembles appearing at Maverick this summer. On July 6, the Calder Quartet, “one of America’s most satisfying — and most enterprising — quartets” according to Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times, plays works of Thomas Adès, Janácek, and Beethoven. On July 13, the Enso Quartet returns to Maverick — also with a pianist, Frederic Chiu — for an enterprising program called “The World of Richard Strauss: The Radical Conservative.” (This year is the 150th birthday of Strauss, being commemorated during the Maverick season.) The concert includes a movement from a Strauss String Quartet, music of Mozart (Strauss’s favorite composer), and works of two Strauss contemporaries, Erwin Schulhoff and Franz Schmidt. Having just completed a Schulhoff project of my own (a reissue of his piano recordings), I am particularly eager to hear this program.
(he died in 2012 at 103) along with quartets of Mendelssohn (the superb and tragic Op. 80) and Beethoven. Finally, the American String Quartet closes the season on September 7 with a Friends of Maverick benefit concert, a substantial program of works by Haydn, Mendelssohn, and Brahms.
Guitarist Benjamin Verdery makes his Maverick debut on Saturday, July 5, with a program called “Music of the Americas,” one in a season-long series of “American Landscapes.” On July 20, Duo Parnas and violist Tim Kantor, making Maverick debuts, play string trios of Beethoven, Dohnányi, and Andrew Norman. Cellist Zuill Bailey, a Maverick favorite, and pianist Natasha Paremsky play the most substantial Strauss work of the season, his youthful and romantic Cello Sonata, along with Stravinsky’s “Suite italienne;” Paremsky also takes on Rachmaninov’s daunting Piano Sonata No. 2. The fine trio Latitude 41 plays trios of Dvorák (not the familiar “Dumky”!) and Schubert on July 27. Two members will play the Duo for Violin and Cello by Russell Platt, a fine composer who just happens to be Alexander Platt’s twin brother. Another favorite trio, Trio Solisti, plays the First Piano Trios of Beethoven and Brahms on August 17, along with the Trio No. 3 by Lowell Liebermann, one of America’s most popular concert music composers.
Pay special attention to the annual Chamber Orchestra Concert on August 23, a celebration of the friendship between Manuel de Falla and Federico Garcia Lorca. Mezzo-soprano Maria Todaro, whom I would travel long distances to hear, joins mezzo-soprano Lucy Schaufer, pianist Jenny Lin, and the ensemble conducted by Alexander Platt in works of Revueltas and Ginastera (both great favorites of mine), Simon Holt, and 5 works of Falla, including the magnificent and rarely heard Harpsichord Concerto. In addition to the Harlem Quartet, Jazz at the Maverick presents pianist Lara Downes (“Lady Day Remembered”) on July 12; pianist Fred Hersch and guitarist Julian Lage on August 2 (8 p.m); Perry Beekman & Friends in a Gershwin program on August 9 (8 p.m.); and the Anthony Wilson Guitar Quartet (yes, four guitars) on August 30 (8 p.m.). Happy Traum and Friends play a folk concert on September 6 (8 p.m.). Actors and Writers takes over the Maverick stage on June 28 (“A Beastly Evening”) and August 16 (“Speak, Memory”). Except as noted, the Saturday concerts take place at 6:30 p.m., the Sunday concerts at 4 p.m. And in addition to the Amernet Quartet program noted way above (August 9), there will be Saturday 11 a.m. Young People’s Concerts by Erica Pickhardt & Friends (June 28), Kim and Reggie Harris (July 12), and Elizabeth Mitchell & Family (July 19). Much more information on the Maverick season, including advance postings of the program notes, can be found at www.maverickconcerts.org/schedule.
