DECEMBER 10, 2023: Performance of Evenings’s Sabres by students of Nancy Zeltsman at Boston Conservatory at Berklee. This is third time in the past two decades that she’s coached the piece at Berklee (also in 2003 and 2017). In the photo below, the players are, from left to right, Amy Wu, Jaiyu Luo, Rhiannon Mueller, and Miko Lau.
SEPTEMBER, 2023: Multi-channel sound installation of Elliott Schwartz Memorial Practice Rooms Project at the Emery Community Arts Center at the University of Maine at Farmington. This aimed to recreate the spatial experience of the original concert, given at the Portland Conservatory of Music in January 2020, which consisted of nine pieces for eight pianos in eight separate rooms. It was recorded by Steve Drown, who was my collaborator on this installation. For a sense of what it was actually like to be at the original, here’s a video of the afternoon rehearsal of my piece Dem ESCHART von Brunswick gewidmet.
APRIL 30, 2023: Premiere performance of flute octet Cool Mosses Deep by Mt. Holyoke College Flute Choir, Alison Hale, director.
APRIL 7, 2023: Concert at Bowdoin College by the Articulation Quartet, with Carl Dimow on flutes, Brian Shankar Adler on tabla, me on cello, and Frank Mauceri, the leader, on saxophones. Each of us contributed pieces that incorporated plenty of free improvisation, including my Imaginary Numbers.
JANUARY 14 and 15, 2023: At the last minute, because of the illness of our regular conductor, I was called on to conduct the concerts of the Midcoast Symphony Orchestra, in which I normally play cello. Here’s a clip of our performance of Rimsky-Korsakov at the Franco Center in Lewiston, Maine.
AUGUST 7, 2022: Buttonwood Trio concert at the University of Maine at Farmington. Mary Hunter, violin, James Parakilas, piano, and Philip Carlsen, cello. Here’s a brief clip from Arno Babajanian’s piano trio.
MAY 2, 2022: Performance of Polka Folks (marimba, four hands) at Berklee Marimba Concert by students of Nancy Zeltsman.
JANUARY 15 and 16, 2022: Performances of Rowing in Eden by Midcoast Symphony Orchestra, Lewiston and Topsham, Maine.
JUNE 2021: Studio video recording of Able was I, a piece that constituted acts 8 and 9 of Amy Stacey Curtis’s installation/performance piece Op Hand, a series of conceptual meditations (with dance, music, and sculpture) on the themes of symmetry and entropy. Able was I is for two cellists and two percussionists, exactly mirroring one another. (I played the cello backwards.) For Act 8, we wore noise-cancelling headphones and were turned around so we couldn’t see the other players. For Act 9, we did the same piece, but situated so that we could see, hear, and sync our playing in the normal chamber-music way.
MAY 7, 2021: Premiere of Ephemera by Transient Canvas (Amy Advocat, bass clarinet, and Matt Sharrock, marimba) at online SCI National Conference.
NOVEMBER 2020: Recording of Asa Nisi Masa by Karen Dekker, violin, and Steven Beck, piano, for The American Composers Alliance Shelter Recordings, an initiative to support professional musicians sheltering at home during the pandemic.
AUGUST 13, 2020: Online concert performance of Frangipani Blossoms for solo khaen (Lao free-reed mouth organ) by Christopher Adler from his home in San Diego. (Video includes Adler’s brief introduction to the piece.)
MAY 24, 2020: Online performance of Chompling by Danielle VanTuinen, euphonium, and Danielle Moreau, marimba. The piece was written for their miniatures project.
FEBRUARY 23 and MARCH 1, 2020: Premiere performances of Strolling Grover’s Row by Our Big Band at Steve Grover tribute concerts, Portsmouth, NH, and Portland, ME.
FEBRUARY 1, 2020: Premiere of earth dance (SATB chorus with piano) by Reprise Choral Ensemble, Augusta, Maine.
JANUARY 18, 2020: Premiere of Dem ESCHART von Brunswick gewidmet for eight pianos at the Elliott Schwartz Memorial Practice Rooms Project, Portland Conservatory of Music.
MAY 22, 2019: Performance of Impromptu (euphonium and marimba) by Moreau/VanTuinen Duo at International Women’s Brass Conference, Arizona State University.
MARCH 29, 2019: Performance of Susurrus by Daniel Hallett on his senior recital, Berklee College of Music.
DECEMBER 11, 2017: Premiere of In Search of Holly, transcription for three marimbas and snare drum of scene from my Christmas ballet Holly and Ivy. Berklee Marimba Concert, with students of Nancy Zeltsman.
APRIL 7-9, 2017: My second year directing the Back Cove Contemporary Music Festival. Concerts April 7 and 8 at Portland Conservatory of Music, and April 9 at Portland’s SPACE Gallery. Tracey Jasas-Hardel, Bryan Brash, and I premiered my All the Desanctified Places, a trio based on the first section of Robert Bringhurst’s New World Suite No. 3. I was also cellist in chamber works by John Newell and Bruce Fithian. Here are Allan Kozinn’s reviews of the Friday and Sunday concerts.
MARCH 30, 2017: Performances of Evening’s Sabres and Susurrus at Berklee College of Music Marimba Showcase concert. Coached by Nancy Zeltsman, the players were Daniel Hallett, William Land, Joanna Chen, and Ryan Aguilar.
DECEMBER 12, 2016: Performance of a portion of my marimba quartet, Evening’s Sabres, by Berklee and Boston Conservatory students coached by Nancy Zeltsman.
SEPTEMBER 10, 2016: At the wedding of my son Eric and Melanie Knight on the shores of Messalonskee Lake in Sidney, my other son Melsen Carlsburg and I performed Moving Day, a new piece for cello and piano I had written for the occasion.
JUNE 17-19, 2016: Asa Nisi Masa, for violin and chamber orchestra, was premiered by Trond Saeverud and the Passamaquoddy Bay Symphony Orchestra at three concerts in downeast Maine: June 17 at the Eastport Arts Center in Eastport; June 18 at the Centre Street Congregational Church in Machias; and June 19 at the First Congregational Church in Calais.
APRIL 8-9, 2016: I directed the Back Cove Contemporary Music Festival at the Portland Conservatory of Music. The festival was a tribute to Elliott Schwartz in celebration of his eightieth birthday. Besides a variety of chamber works by the composers in attendance, the three concerts included five of Elliott’s compositions, and thirty miniature pieces written for the occasion by his friends and former students. I compiled the pieces into a Festschrift that was available for purchase at the festival. (Cover to the right.)
For their miniatures, most of the composers employed, as source material, Elliott’s musical motto ESCHART, a version of “E. Schwartz” minus the non-musical letters W and Z. ESCHART is also the beginning of a 12-tone row that Elliot created for his orchestral piece Voyager, in which the second half is an upside-down and backwards transposition of the first half (E-Eb-C-B-A-Bb-G-Ab-Gb-F-D-C#). Several pieces in the collection are based on that row.
Besides my own compositional contributions to the festival (a solo piano piece for the ESCHART Variations called Emergent, and my a cappella vocal quintet Soft Voices), I was the cellist in the festival quintet that performed the miniature pieces, and joined pianist Jesse Feinberg in a performance of Elliott’s duo for cello and piano, Prelude, Memorial, and Aria. Here are reviews of the Friday night concert by Christopher Hyde and Allan Kozinn.
DECEMBER 2017: St. Mary Schola performances, with me on cello. Concerts Dec. 8, 7:30 pm, in Portland (Cathedral Church of St. Luke), Dec. 10, 4:00 pm, in Falmouth (Episcopal Church of St. Mary), and Dec. 12, 7:30 pm, in Portland (Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception).
JUNE 2017: St. Mary Schola performances, with me on cello. Called “A Musical Banquet,” the program featured excerpts from Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, with the marvelous young countertenor Christopher Garrepy singing Orfeo. Performances June 10 in Falmouth, June 11 in North Conway, NH, June 13 in Portland (Cathedral of St. Luke’s), and June 16 in Portland (Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception). Here is Allan Kozinn’s review.
DECEMBER 2016: St. Mary Schola performances, with me on cello. Program includes Charpentier’s Christmas cantata, In Navitatem Domini Canticum. Performances Dec. 11 in Falmouth (Church of St. Mary’s), Dec. 13 in Portland (Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception), and Dec. 14 in Portland (Cathedral of St. Luke’s).
NOVEMBER 27, 2016, 4:00 pm: Choral Evensong at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Falmouth. I’ll be playing cello in Pergolesi’s Magnificat.
JUNE 24, 2016: Played cello at the CD-release performance of Jimmy Dority’s Jimmy Do Right & Pop Go Boom at Portland’s Space Gallery. A somewhat expanded rock ensemble on stage, including four back-up singers, and about a dozen orchestral musicians on the floor. With each player miked, the sound check was quite a process. I was older than any of the other performers, by about three or four decades in most cases. It was a blast.
MAY 2016: Played cello and viola da gamba with St. Mary Schola in a program called “Ode to Music” that included works by Handel, Purcell, and others. Performances May 1 in Farmington, May 8 in Falmouth, May 10 in Brunswick, and May 13 in Portland.
MARCH 2016: Played cello with St. Mary Schola in Handel’s Dixit Dominus, plus works by Schütz, Monteverdi, and others. Performances March 8 in Portland (Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception), March 10 in Portland (Cathedral of St. Luke’s), and March 13 in Falmouth (Church of St. Mary’s). In his Press Herald review, Allan Kozinn wrote “Fithian led his choir and a period instrument ensemble in cohesive, energetic performances, beautifully sung and deftly played.”