Toledo’s classical music scene next week will focus intensely on youth music education — both performers designing programs to interest and inspire young audiences, and youthful performers revealing their capabilities in concerts and recitals.
Topping the list is Project Trio.
If you’ve never thought of the flute, the cello, and the bass as percussion instruments, then you’ve clearly missed out on this young and energetic musical trio. Energetic young New Yorkers playing on classical-music oriented instruments are ready to free Northwest Ohio of such limited thinking.
The players — bassist Peter Seymour, cellist Eric Stephenson, and flutist Greg Patillo — who met while studying at the Cleveland Institute of Music, have applied a fresh new face and sound to the idea of chamber music through clever improvisation and fresh arrangements of standards.
Absolute technical masters of their instruments — Patillo is renowned as the leading beatbox flutist in the United States, Stephenson is a regular in major chamber performances — they amp up the energy playing together, mixing styles from classical, jazz, urban, and original works with skill and wit.
Project Trio is coming to Bowling Green State University for a residency and to Toledo for several youth concerts Nov. 19-22. Their big marquee appearance will be at 8 p.m. Nov. 22 in Kobacker Hall. Tickets are $5-$15 at 419-372-8171. A preconcert talk for ticketholders will start at 7 p.m. in nearby Bryan Hall.
Project Trio will work with musicians at high school and college level in a variety of settings locally.
One highlight will be the trio’s appearances as special guest artists during the Toledo Symphony’s Young People’s concerts, the first of the season, at 9:45 and 11 a.m. Nov. 29 in the Toledo Museum of Art Peristyle.
Andres Lopera will conduct the symphony in music by Rossini, Bach, Brahms, and Beethoven. Then, Patillo will offer a beatbox tutorial.
Beatbox is extended and expanded use of the flute to achieve a wide array of rhythmic and percussive effects through breathing, tonguing, and fingering variations.
Area flutist Brandy Huddelson has demonstrated beatbox in this region, but Patillo will bring his amazing array of techniques to show what is possible.
The symphony also will participate in the annual reading session at BGSU, during which select graduate composition students are given the chance to hear their works performed by a professional orchestra.
That highlight is set for 3:30 p.m. Nov. 19 in Kobacker Hall.
● The Perrysburg Symphony Orchestra will presents its first 2014-2015 season concert at 7 p.m. Nov. 22 in Perrysburg High School, 13385 Roachton Rd., Perrysburg. Music director Robert Mirakian will conduct.
Highlight of the program will be Merwin Siu’s performance of Samuel Barber’s very beautiful, very difficult Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. Siu is Principal Second Violin in the Toledo Symphony, a busy chamber music performer, and an active teacher in the Toledo area.
Also on the program will be Beethoven's Symphony No. 7.
Joining the pro musicians of the orchestra in a side-by-side performance of selected works will be string students from Perrysburg Junior High School.
Tickets for the concert will be $10-$12 at the door, with children and students free.
● Young musicians in the University of Toledo jazz program will be in the spotlight when the Guitarkestra performs, 7 p.m. Tuesday in the UT Center for Performing Arts Recital Hall. Tickets will be $3-$5 at the door.
● UT faculty pianist Robert Ballinger is slated to perform a solo recital at 3 p.m. Nov. 23 in the Toledo Museum of Art’s Great Gallery. Admission will be free, with a reception to follow.
● Musica Antigua de Toledo is to open its season with Concert I: An Earlie Musick Mosaic at 3:30 p.m. Nov. 23 in Epiphany Lutheran Church, 915 N. Reynolds Rd. This venerable group of dedicated musicians will perform works first heard from around 1100 to mid-1400.
The program will reveal the development of Western music from single-part compositions to progressively more difficult polyphony (multiple musical lines).
Tickets are $2-$10 at the door.
● She’s only 14, but already pianist Umi Garrett is winning hearts and minds and especially ears in what has become an international whirlwind of highly acclaimed concertizing. Miss Garrett made her orchestral debut with the Desert Symphony in Palm Desert, Calif., at age 9 and since has won the Osaka and the Chopin International music competitions.
A chance to see and hear this phenom is offered by the Williams County Community Concert Association, as part of its Live On Stage series, at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 21 in the Bryan Arts and Education Auditorium, 120 S. Beech St., Bryan. Tickets are $5-$25 at the door.
For information, call 419-636-1437.
● More fine piano playing, both solo and in ensemble, is in store in Ann Arbor when University Musical Society presents pianist Yuja Wang and violinist Leonid Kavakos in performance, 4 p.m. Nov. 23 in Hill Auditorium.
On the program for this joint recital will be the Brahms Sonata No. 2 in A Major, Op. 100; Schumann's Sonata No. 2 in d minor, Op. 121, plus Ravel's Sonata No. 1 (Posthumous) and Respighi's Sonata in b minor.
Ukelele master Jake Shimabukuro will perform at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in another UMS production. This concert also is in Hill Auditorium. Accompanying the Hawaiian virtuoso will be bassist Nolan Verner. Tickets for either event are $10-$60 at ums.org or 734-764-2538.
Send News of Music items so svallongo@theblade.com at least two weeks in advance of the event.
First Published November 13, 2014, 5:00 a.m.
