BSR Classical Interludes, November 2024

Tea with Mimi
Wednesday, October 30, 12pm
Streaming online

During the pandemic, Dolce Suono flutist Mimi Stillman began a modest series of conversations and performances from her home. She’s continued and expanded this series, and there are now 35 archived sessions available to access free of charge. This latest one, coming up on October 30, will be a conversation with esteemed flutists Sir James Galway and Lady Jeanne Galway, and like the others, it will be archived. You can subscribe to Stillman’s series and be notified of upcoming conversations. And as an added treat, here’s Stillman playing an encore at a recent concert of improvisations on Piazzolla’s Libertango.

Music at Westminster: Grant Youngblood and Marvin Mills
Friday, November 1, 7:30pm
Westminster Presbyterian Church, 1502 West 13th Street, Wilmington

Inaugurating their new concert series, Music at Westminster will present a song recital featuring acclaimed operatic baritone Grant Youngblood and collaborative pianist Marvin Mills. The concert of arias, chansons, and lieder will be packed with works by Handel, Purcell, Rachmaninov, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, and others. Advance sales only; no tickets sold at the door.

The duo appears together again the following day—also in Wilmington, presented by Market Street Music—in Brahms’s German Requiem, with Youngblood as soloist, Mills as one of the two pianists (Hiroko Yamazaki is the other), and the Mastersingers of Wilmington choral ensemble conducted by David Schelat.

Astral Artists: Hilda Huang, piano
Sunday, November 3, 3pm
American Philosophical Society’s Franklin Hall, 427 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia

Huang comes to Philadelphia from Amsterdam for the world premiere of a solo keyboard work entitled Missa Brevis by Pulitzer-winning sacred music composer John Harbison, one that was commissioned for her. The program will also include works by Bach, Chopin, Liszt, and Poulenc. Huang is an Astral artist; this will be the final concert she’ll play for them, a performance that’s free and open to the public. No tickets or registration are required.

The concert also marks an unwelcome milestone—it’s the final recital and final commission that will be presented by Astral Artists. After 30 years of nurturing artists during the formative stages of their careers, Astral is closing its doors. The organization is committed to ensuring that their roster artists, like Huang (who’s been supported by them for four years), will leave with individualized portfolios to help them plan for the future. This valuable organization has encouraged music and musicians in so many ways over its three decades, and it will be missed.

Penn Live Arts: The Gesualdo Six
Thursday, November 7, 7:30pm
St. Mary’s Church Hamilton Village, 3916 Locust Walk, Philadelphia

This wonderful British consort of six singers—acclaimed for flawless intonation and “precision and fluency” (The Guardian)—makes its Philadelphia debut in a performance of English Renaissance masterpieces spanning 200 years. The concert includes florid medieval-sounding pieces by Forest and Sheryngham, intricate polyphonic works by Tallis and Byrd, and the beautiful simplicity of Gibbons and Tomkins. Through mid-November, the ensemble is on an American tour that includes this concert of motets, as well as the remarkable performance piece Secret Byrd (an immersive staged mass, only in the US in Boston and New York City).

Filament: The Cries of London
Friday, November 8, 7pm
Fleisher Art Memorial, 719 Catharine Street, Philadelphia

In a concert held in the evocative Fleisher, this early music ensemble will be joined by mezzo-soprano Meg Bragle (also a popular WRTI-FM classical host) to explore how English musical culture stood apart from that of the European continent. Their concert will feature the Elizabethan “consort song,” perhaps the most typically English musical expression of its time, in a varied selection of rarely heard songs by William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons alongside the vocal and instrumental works of their contemporaries.

Philadelphia Youth Orchestra
Sunday, November 10, 3pm
Kimmel Cultural Campus, Marian Anderson Hall, 300 South Broad Street, Philadelphia

Opening their 85th season, Philadelphia Youth Orchestra, conducted by music director Louis Scaglione, will feature the world premiere of In Tyset by American composer Paul Frucht, featuring Emmy- and Grammy-winning double bassist Ranaan Meyer. The program also includes some iconic American works: Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue featuring pianist Peter Dugan (host of that wonderful radio broadcast From the Top), Barber’s Overture to The School for Scandal, and Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. It’s hard to believe that these are high school students. Hear them and judge for yourself!

At top: Dolce Suono flutist Mimi Stillman. (Courtesy of Mimi Stillman)