Rush Hour Concerts - great music for busy lives

Do you wonder what defines “the Rush Hour experience”? These remarks, delivered before the August 14 Rush Hour concert, will give you an idea:

Good evening, I’m Tom Orlando, a member of the Rush Hour Concerts Board of Directors.  It is my pleasure to welcome you to today’s concert by the Spektral Quartet, a new performer to Rush Hour and an ensemble that has received critical acclaim.

At Rush Hour, we believe that audiences who desire to have a true listening experience are as vital to artistic achievement as the artists who make the sounds we hear, and that the relationship between audience and performer is a very healthy co-dependency.  Isn’t this why we leave the comfort of our homes to experience a live performance?  We need to.  We are nourished by it.  And, I believe, they, the performers, draw energy from us and achieve even greater feats of artistry as a result of our interaction with them.

But in too many cases, live performances are cost prohibitive or in settings that are large and impersonal or intimidating.  Our mission at Rush Hour is to bring you top quality, free programming in an environment that is intimate, communal, informal and welcoming.

After you hear the Spektral Quartet, I am confident you will agree that we have again fulfilled our goal of featuring top quality performers.

And we have St. James to thank for allowing us to feature performers in this intimate, communal, informal and welcoming space.

We also thank our generous donors for making our programming free for you and without whom this would not be possible.

That leaves you, our audience, without whom none of this would be relevant.  We thank you for helping us make the music making experience the dynamic experience we believe it is meant to be.  If you like what we do, please think about one or two other people in your life who have either not heard about us or are a little unsure about what we do, or perhaps even unsure if they would like what we do.  We welcome the uninitiated and believe this is an excellent format for people to test the waters of the kind of music we present.

There are two more concerts left this summer after today.  Encourage them to come, or bring them along to one of the remaining concerts with you, or keep them in mind for next summer.  Help us reach more listeners, and we promise to provide you with more artists like those you have enjoyed all summer, including the ones you are about to hear.

In just a moment we will go to the live broadcast by WFMT 98.7 and our host, Dave Schwann, who will be speaking with Doyle Armbrust, a member of the Spektral Quartet.

Thank you again for joining us tonight.  We hope you enjoy the concert.

Rush Hour Concerts - great music for busy lives

Rush Hour’s Consular Collaboration program is a distinctive aspect of our summer offerings. Now in its eighth year, the program offers our audiences the opportunity to “dip into” the culture of countries from around the world through music and culinary offerings.

This season, we will partner with the Consulates General of Switzerland, Germany, France, Spain, Great Britain, and Austria. Each program features music and pre-concert reception treats from each native land.

This Tuesday, we are delighted to welcome Consul General Martin Bienz to our concert as we feature the Männerstimmen Basel, the award-winning men’s a cappella group from Basel, Switzerland. They are presenting a varied program of works from the last five centuries – from traditional classical men’s choir music to modern finds. Special thanks to Margreth Trümpi Martin for her wonderful logistical work in making this concert possible for all of us.

I hope you will “travel the world with us” without leaving home in the upcoming weeks!

Deborah Sobol
Creative Director

Rush Hour Concerts - great music for busy lives

Watch or hear extended interviews with Rush Hour artists, Rush Hour advisors, and other innovators in the world of arts and culture today, hosted by Rush Hour Artistic Director Deborah Sobol.

Rush Hour Concerts - great music for busy lives

Celebrate Independence Day early with Rush Hour Concerts this Tuesday, July 3! Quintet Attacca will perform John Steinmetz’s Wind Quintet and John Philip Sousa’s patriotic piece The Stars and Stripes Forever. Click here for more information.

Rush Hour Concerts - great music for busy lives

• $5 for every large pizza sold
• $5 for every gluten free pizza sold (available in 10” only)
• $2 for every large salad sold
• $1 for every breadstick order sold
• 20% from every gift card purchase

Place your order online at homemadepizza.com, or call (312) 595-0900; online orders can be placed up to 3 weeks in advance, and phone orders can be placed as early as 1 PM.  Save the date, and help Rush Hour turn dinners into dollars on the 27th!

Rush Hour Concerts - great music for busy lives

Meanwhile, WCIU’s You&Me This Morning interviewed Creative Director Deborah Sobol:

Come see Fifth House Ensemble at Rush Hour Concerts next Tuesday, June 12, and be sure to check out the rest of our Summer Series!

Rush Hour Concerts - great music for busy lives

In anticipation of Fifth House Ensemble’s upcoming June 12 performance with Rush Hour Concerts, Fifth House’s Adam Marks was kind enough to answer some questions for our audience members:

 

Adam Marks

What inspires you to do what you do?

Fifth House Ensemble taps the collaborative spirit of chamber music to create engaging performances and interactive educational programs, forging meaningful partnerships with unexpected venues, artists of other disciplines, educational institutions, and audiences of every type. In particular, we are delighted to celebrate the inaugural year of the fresh inc festival, bringing together adventurous and talented musicians from across the country to create new music and pave the way for the next generation of chamber music artists.

You can read the rest of the interview after the break. For more details about next week’s performance, click here.

Here’s the full text of the interview:
How did you choose the repertoire for this performance?
The opening work, Party at the Last Resort, by Alex Temple, was awarded this performance as a special prize at the fresh inc festival. From the twenty-four works commissioned for the festival, Fifth House voted to select this work for performance on the Rush Hour broadcast. Its charming reinterpretation of bossa nova made us smile in our first sight reading, and we knew the Rush Hour audience would love it as well.

To complement Alex’s piece, we’ve selected a few short movements from one of our favorite pieces to play, Pacquito D’Rivera’s Aires Tropicales. The sweeping dance gestures remind us of warm summer evenings much like Rush Hour concerts themselves!

And finally, we wanted a way to incorporate all of the participants from the fresh inc festival. We couldn’t imagine a better celebration of young musicians exploring new works together than a large-scale (but sadly quite short) performance of Terry Riley’s landmark work from 1964, In C.

Is there anything interesting about the program that our audience should know?
Our first two pieces are traditionally scored. The closing piece (Riley) is partially indeterminate. It is scored for any number of players on any instruments, and consists of 53 cells of music to be played in succession to a common pulse. Each cell can be repeated any number of times, creating a joyous cacophony of harmony that will ring throughout the cathedral.

What inspires you to do what you do?
Fifth House Ensemble taps the collaborative spirit of chamber music to create engaging performances and interactive educational programs, forging meaningful partnerships with unexpected venues, artists of other disciplines, educational institutions, and audiences of every type. In particular, we are delighted to celebrate the inaugural year of the fresh inc festival, bringing together adventurous and talented musicians from across the country to create new music and pave the way for the next generation of chamber music artists.

How do you see yourselves as musical innovators?
There are many musical innovators out there, and we are excited to be a part of Chicago’s vibrant community. In particular, we’ve been interested in pursuing narrative chamber music, working with artists of other disciplines to illuminate the stories inherent in the music we choose to play. In particular, we developed the Black Violet series with graphic novelist Ezra Claytan Daniels, twisted fairy tales together in The Weaver’s Tales, and explored the impact of social media on our individual storytelling through our most recent series, In Transit.

How do you see classical music changing?
It’s exciting to see more performers and ensembles taking their music to new venues and finding common ground with new audiences. There is an exceptional bounty of rising talent creating music that breaks down boundaries between genres, and audiences are taking note.

How did your ensemble form?
Fifth House Ensemble was founded by members of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago in 2005. Mainly as an outcropping from experiences as part of MusicCorps program, the players decided to continue their work bringing music to people where they were. This began by operating on physical spaces, playing in cafes and bars, but expanded over the years to create experiences that serve as a meeting point for communities of different interests and backgrounds. At the end of the day, doesn’t everyone want to hear a good story?

What is the fresh inc festival, and how is it connected to the performance on June 12?
fresh inc is a one-of-a-kind chamber music festival that redefines the training process for emerging musicians. Fifth House Ensemble is joined by Composers-In-Residence David Rakowski (Brandeis University) and Stacy Garrop (Roosevelt University) to guide aspiring composers and instrumentalists in creating performance experiences for audiences of all types, covering repertoire both canonic and newly inked. Participants perform with 5HE members at venues including the Ravinia Festival, Milwaukee Art Museum, Rush Hour Concerts at St. James Cathedral, University of Wisconsin-Parkside, and The Boys and Girls Club of Kenosha.

Having a piece played on Rush Hour was a prize for one of our participating composers. ALL of the festival’s commissioned works will be performed over two concerts in the weekend following our Rush Hour appearance. We’ll present new works at Ravinia’s Bennett Gordon Hall on June 16th at 6pm and University of Wisconsin Parkside at 2pm.

Rush Hour Concerts - great music for busy lives

Be sure to join us and Mayor Emanuel on June 21 in celebrating Make Music Chicago Day!

Rush Hour Concerts - great music for busy lives

Here is what Creative Director Deborah Sobol had to say about this exciting time here at Rush Hour Concerts:

Deborah Sobol

In the midst of this glorious and extended Spring in Chicago with Nature’s bounty all around us, Rush Hour Concerts is experiencing unprecedented programmatic growth. I am so pleased to welcome Kelly Jocius to Rush Hour’s leadership team as Executive Director. Together we will continue to broaden ways to serve Chicagoans with access to world-class music and participation in great music for busy lives.

In a few weeks, we will launch our 13th Summer Series at St. James Cathedral of “Great Music for Busy Lives.” Throughout the summer, our weekly audiences will experience virtuosic music-making by over 60 nationally and internationally acclaimed artists in an aural journey beginning in the Renaissance period and traveling through a luminous soundscape of music from the Classical, Romantic, Modern and Contemporary periods. Please click here to view the complete schedule of our summer programs and artists.

As always, Rush Hour’s distinctive Access Program will offer our audiences numerous opportunities for engagement in our weekly concerts, from conversations with our artists during the pre-concert receptions and preview online postings of our program notes, to our Rush Hour Conversations podcast series and the popular “In-A-Flash” program, enabling folk to take the weekly concert experience home with them.

I look forward to keeping in touch with you electronically in this very exciting period for Rush Hour and to greeting you weekly at our Summer Tuesday series at St. James Cathedral!

- Deborah Sobol
Creative Director

We hope you’re excited for a summer filled with incredible music – and we hope to see you on Tuesday, June 5th beginning at 5:15 PM!

Click here for this summer’s complete concert schedule.

Rush Hour Concerts - great music for busy lives