In Monday’s (3/23) Times Union (Albany, New York), Joseph Dalton reviews the Albany Symphony Orchestra’s American Music Festival program at Troy’s Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, led by Music Director David Alan Miller. “It was impossible not to be touched by the opening strains of ‘The Eric Canal,’ a five-song cantata by Dorothy Chang that featured 83 fifth-grade students from Poestenkill and George Washington Elementary Schools. Music teacher Martha Bove deserves credit not just for conceiving the project but also for the fine performance. The unison singing was crisp and disciplined but also lively and stylish. Chang’s upbeat music borrowed liberally from vernacular styles of both the 19th and 20th centuries.” Chang’s work was product of the Music Alive program, a project of the League of American Orchestras and Meet The Composer. “The orchestra did its best and most serious work in the opener, Joan Tower’s ‘Tambor,’ a major piece by a titan from our region.” Also on the program were Jerome Kern’s “The Folks Who Live on the Hill” and Gershwin’s Concerto in F, both performed by pianist and vocalist Kevin Cole.
Posted March 25, 2009
