Eine Kleine Freemusik: PDX Cellos, Drums, & War Music

By Alexander Hough in Arts & Entertainment on Aug 2, 2010 2:00PM

You don't have to break the bank to see live classical music, and with so much great free stuff going on, we're putting it all in one place so you can plan your week.

Today, August 2
The Attacca Quintet
This talented wind quintet (flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and french horn) will perform a free lunchtime show at the Cultural Center. The program includes pieces by a couple Chicagoans, Attacca bassoonist Collin Anderson and Robert Muczynski. Anderson's "Tangram" was written in 2004, while the Chicago-born-and-educated Muczynski, who died just this past May, wrote his Quintet for Winds in 1985. The brief concert will end with Gunther Schuller's arrangement of Maurice Ravel's "Le Tombeau de Couperin" which the Frenchman wrote to honor various friends who had died during World War One.
12:15 p.m., Preston Bradley Hall at the Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington

Portland Cello Project
As genre boundaries become less distinct, the question of what classical music is and how it relates to other music is an obsessive concern of many a classical composer, musician, and fan. Composer Sarah Ritch explored the issue in a performance of "Duet for Solo Cello" at a concert of her small but promising oeuvre last Thursday night; slow notes, plucked and bowed, were fed through a computer to produce an amplified, distortion-laden echo, an interplay that was insightful and mesmerizing. Another tack, also using the cello as the medium, is taken by the Portland Cello Project, which opens Millennium Park's month-long Dusk Variations, a series dedicated to genre-overlap. PCP's shows consist mostly of covers, with the chosen music sprawling across genres as seemingly opposed as classical and hip-hop. Some of the best results are the collaborations with Thao Nguyen and fellow Portlander Justin Power from their latest album, "The Thao and Justin Power Sessions," although the arrangements of group leader Douglas Jenkins are consistently lush, unique, and catchy. We know PCP will perform with local group the 1900s, but beyond that it's hard to predict what will be on the concert since Jenkins churns out new work at a frenzied pace. But even if a PCP cover doesn't surpass the original - like, say, "Toxic," which attained haunting perfection in Britney Spears's original (her tantalizing peak before her hard-to-look-away dive to her nadir - you'll always be a sexy flight attendant to me, Britney) - there's always the rich sound of the greatest of all string instruments, the cello (sorry, violin and bass, it was a tough decision; viola, you never had a chance).
6:30 p.m., Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park

Tuesday, August 3
Third Coast Percussion
Third Coast Percussion returns to the Rush Hour concert series to fill St. James Cathedral with "Threads," contemporary composer Paul Lansky's cantata for percussion ensemble. Throughout the ten-movement piece, Third Coast members will play on a range of instruments, from pitched metallic percussion to drums to found objects like flower pots and bottles. As always, this Rush Hour event will open with free wine and snacks at 5:15 before the music starts at 5:45.
5:45 p.m., St. James Cathedral, 65 E. Huron (entrance on Wabash, just south of Huron)

Wednesday, August 4
Pianist Tomo Matsuo
Chicago native Tomo Matsuo returns to Chicago to perform at the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts at the Cultural Center. Matsuo will perform a 30-odd minute mini-recital featuring J. S. Bach's Toccata in C Minor and Beethoven's "Appassionata" Sonata.
12:15 p.m., Preston Bradley Hall at the Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington

Grant Park Music Festival
Dmitri Shostakovich's Ninth Symphony headlines the Grant Park Music Festival's Wednesday program. Composed almost entirely following his country's victory in World War Two, after his gargantuan, war-themed Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, and accompanied by the historical mystique of writing a ninth symphony that had burdened or inspired every composer since Beethoven's majestic opus, interested listeners - Stalin, most especially - assumed that Shostakovich's Ninth would sound, well, like anything besides what it turned out to be. It's amazing that this short, satirically humorous piece ultimately led to Shostakovich's second official condemnation, this one as part of the Zhdanov Decree of 1948. Brilliant violinist Christian Tetzlaff will perform Antonín Dvořák's Violin Concerto, and the concert will open with "Lollapalooza" by John Adams, probably the most renowned living American composer. Despite its name, Adams wrote this piece in 1995 as a birthday present for Berlin Philharmonic conductor Simon Rattle, not in honor of the festival. Although in honor of the flood of humans and amplified music sweeping through the lakefront area, the Grant Park Music Festival will move its weekend concerts indoors to the Harris Theater (tickets to these shows are unavailable).
6:30 p.m., Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park