Liner
notes by Ellis Finger, Director of the Williams Center
It
has been such a pleasure putting together this audio excursion of
the wonderful concerts that took place last season at the Williams
Center. Your gifts, as Friends of the Williams Center, helped us to
present such splendid performances; to repay your support with this
lasting record of the concert year, as a token of our gratitude, is
very fitting indeed. For the many Friends who are part of the immediate
Lafayette family, hearing, once more, the artists you have experienced
firsthand will be a special treat. For our many Friends who live outside
the Lehigh Valley this recording may be your first direct contact
with the splendor of a Williams Center concert.
We begin with piano music of Beethoven: the popular “Für
Elise,” with which Ignat Solzhenitsyn ended his memorable September
12 concert (as his third encore!). Next comes Orpheus, with Mozart’s
rousing Cosi fan tutti Overture, and then the spirited finale to Mendelssohn’s
“Octet,” performed by Concertante. Orpheus returns with
a Telemann concerto movement, featuring flutist Susan Palma Nidel
and bassoonist Frank Morelli. There is more music by Orpheus, with
Dvorak from its February 1 concert, as well as two selections from
the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. We’ve included renaissance
wind music by the period instrument ensemble Piffaro (pictured on
the cover—yes, they really are playing bagpipes!). And there
is extraordinary music by two jazz ensembles whose artistry creates
a classical beauty of its own: Turtle Island String Quartet, performing
“Latin Music” by Paquito D’Rivera and an arrangement
of Ravel’s “Tombeau de Couperin” by vibraphonist Gary
Burton and pianist Makoto Ozone.
These twelve selections, brief excerpts from lengthier movements,
will connect you with the extraordinary spirit of satisfaction that
happens at the Williams Center every time great artists share their
craft with the extended Lafayette community: students just beginning
to acquire a passion for live performance of music, guests from the
community who look to Lafayette for the cultural enrichments that
help define their lives, and faculty and staff at Lafayette who value
these programs as primary perks of investing their careers in Easton.
And yet, as vivid a snapshot as these selections may provide, there
is so much more from the 2001–2002 season that we were not able
to include, such as the expressive vocal programs of Grammy winner
Dianne Reeves and of Mali songstress Kandia Kouyate, and the centuries-old
epics of the Norse Eddas, restaged with contemporary verve by Ping
Chong. There were also marvelous dance programs by Noche Flamenca,
Philadanco, Washington Ballet, Susan Marshall & Company, and hip-hop
phenom Rennie Harris. There was glorious jazz by Roy Hargrove and
powerful taiko drumming by Wadaiko Yamato. There was also vivid and
intriguing theater, with Aquila Theater’s Wrath of Achilles
and Lafayette student productions of Brian Friel’s Translations,
Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer, and Eric Bogosian’s
subUrbia.
Your gifts helped sustain this extraordinary level of accomplishment,
while providing the foundation for 2002–2003’s presentations,
teeming with jewels and triumphs, from Tallis Scholars, Orpheus, and
Academy of Ancient Music to Limón Dance Company, Urban Bush
Women, and jazz and world music greats McCoy Tyner, Charlie Haden,
and Anoushka Shankar.
W
e
look forward to reconfirming this partnership of generosity with you
next year!
A
few seasons ago, we produced our first "Live from the Williams
Center" recording, with excerpts from some of the best performances
given in 2001–2002 at the Williams Center, with comments by Ellis
Finger.
