In The Press

Praise for the Taos Chamber Music Group!

The Taos Chamber Music Group’s 17th season continues with a music and dance celebration of spring called “Equinox” on Sunday, March 21, 5:30 p.m. at the Taos Community Auditorium. Featured will be Amber Vasquez’s choreography to Nancy Laupheimer’s Equinox for alto flute and cello as well as music by Beethoven (String Trio in C minor), Guy Ropartz (Prélude, Marine et Chansons for flute, harp and strings) and Mozart (Concerto for flute and harp). Performers are Amber Vasquez and Megan Yackovich, dancers; Rosalind Simpson, harp; Nancy Laupheimer, flutes; Gabriel Gordon, violin; Elena Sopoci, viola; Dana Winograd, cello; and Patrick Neher, bass.

Continuing its ongoing tradition of multi-disciplinary collaborations in Taos, TCMG welcomes the opportunity, according to Director Nancy Laupheimer, “to work with the electric artistry of Amber Vasquez. In a short time, Vasquez has established a well-deserved presence in the Taos cultural scene as not only an accomplished choreographer and dancer but as an inspirational teacher. When I started hearing about her and saw the Taos Youth Ballet program that she presented at the Taos Community Auditorium this past fall, I knew she was someone with whom I wanted to collaborate.”

Vasquez began her ballet training at the age of 3 and grew up performing with the New Mexico Ballet Company. At age 14, she moved to New York City to study at the Alvin Ailey School through the prestigious fellowship program. She went on to dance with Neo Labos, Richard Chen See, the Paul Taylor Dance Company and Bernier Dance. Over the past 17 years Vasquez has performed, choreographed and taught for numerous dance companies, including the New York Theater Ballet, Dance Educators of America, University of Utah and University of New Mexico, as well as her own dance company, Vasquez Dance Ensemble, founded in New York City. She was one of the youngest recipients of the Sundance Award for Excellence in Choreography and was awarded for her work in the Anne Frank Traveling Exhibit. Vasquez directs Taos Youth Ballet which currently has 200 students.

Describing the choreography for Equinox Vasquez says: “The equinox is derived of two portions, two points in space, two equal halves of a day. The idea of a circle being divided in two halves is what the choreography is built upon - linear vs. circular movement - with one dancer representing the circular dimensions of space and one representing the linear strength that cuts through the center. The dancers work within their own themes as well as interact within each other’s realms. Nancy’s music contains both dynamic, staccato rhythms as well as lyrical, rolling themes and lends itself beautifully to this geometric relationship.” Vasquez will be joined by dancer Megan Yackovich for the performance with live music played by Laupheimer and Winograd.

Harpist Rosalind Simpson, a TCMG favorite, will be featured in two works on the program. She had proposed a performance of the Mozart Flute and Harp Concerto in a reduced form for strings (instead of full orchestra) and Laupheimer jumped at the idea. “This gracefully elegant and uplifting music is a perfect way to usher in spring,” says Laupheimer. Written for the French Duke of Guines who played flute and his daughter, a harpist, it is the only work that Mozart composed for the newly emerging harp, an instrument that is now frequently paired with flute.

By the turn of the nineteenth century, the harp was well established in both the orchestral and chamber music repertoire of such musical giants as Claude Debussy, a composer who influenced Joseph Guy Ropartz, the self-described Celtic Breton composer who lived from 1864-1955. Also a student of César Franck, his work is imbued with the enchanted elements of fairies and goblins that “populate the moor and dance by the moony nights” (Ropartz) of the countryside of Brittany, and frequently uses Breton folk melodies, as in the last movement of Prélude, Marine et Chansons.

TCMG’s program will open with one of Beethoven’s greatest string trios, opus 9, number 3 in C minor. Laying the groundwork for the genius of his ensuing string quartets and symphonies, this trio in particular, provides a glimpse into Beethoven’s early musical mastery as well as emotional depth. “The use of the key of C minor was the first of many of Beethoven’s greatest compositions (i.e. the Fifth Symphony) in that key, and his skillful chamber music writing creates a world of characteristic, Beethovian sound with only three voices,” according to Laupheimer.

Joining TCMG for the first time on this program will be the young violinist Gabriel Gordon, a member of the New Mexico and Santa Fe Symphonies and conductor of the Albuquerque Youth Symphony, as well as a recent Taos transplant Patrick Neher, who has been recognized as one of the world's leading double bass soloists and composers of music for double bass. Awarded a Master of Music Degree with Honors from the Juilliard School of Music, Neher has been on the faculty of the University of Arizona since 1984, played with leading orchestras and chamber music festivals around the country, and toured throughout the world as a soloist.

Tickets are $17 in advance at the Taos Center for the Arts office, 133 Paseo del Pueblo Norte in Taos, 758-2052, or can be charged on TCMG’s website. Ticket stubs may be used for dinner discounts at Joseph’s Table, Lambert’s, Dragonfly Café and Doc Martin’s restaurants before or after the concert for which you have a ticket. Visit taoschambermusicgroup.org or call 575-758-0150 for more information.

Review: Taos Chamber Music Group’s Stupendous Concert
Fowler, Mirabal, Laupheimer, Guenther
October 21, 2007
By Bill Whaley

The Taos Chamber Music Group's marked its 15th Anniversary with a remarkable concert on Sat. Oct. 20. The collage of juxtaposed classical, traditional, and pop styles managed to celebrate its virtuoso musicians-Flutist Nancy Laupheimer, Cellist Sally Guenther, multi-music-master Robert Mirabal, while featuring the creativity of composer and arranger, the classically trained Paul Fowler. Fowler's tropes on musical styles pushed the envelope of chamber music well beyond this layperson's expectations or experience. Last night's sold-out concert not only delighted the audience with Antonio Vivaldi's fairly traditional "Trio Sonata in A minor" and presented Sally Guenter solo in Fowler's “La Vie Zazou” and Nancy Laupheimer in Rhonda Larson's “Movin' On' for solo flute, which required the flutist to play without seeming to take a breath, but also displayed Robert Mirabal's facility on traditional Native American (or other?) flutes during “The Ancient Language of Breath.”

Contrary to expectations that Mirabal would improvise or be featured as an addendum to the program, whether singing, drumming, playing one of several flutes, he and his Native American creative voice were fully integrated into the concert. Robert's ease and facility gave the impression he'd been rehearsing and playing with formally trained classical musicians as a matter of course. Whether Mirabal improvised on flute with Fowler on piano or took center stage with”The Ancient Language of Breath” with Laupheimer and Fowler, or participated with all three musicians, including the fabulous cellist Sally Guenter (a Taos School of Music grad of yore) in the grand finale, “On Taos,” composed for the occasion by Fowler, Robert's mastery of the form and presentation of the quasi-classical styles displayed the fruits of one of the hardest working musicians in Taos.

If there was a star in the concert, apart from the ensemble and the music, it was composer and keyboardist Paul Fowler. He played the synthesizer, rattles, drums, and strummed the strings on the piano not unlike a Harpo Marx liberated from conventional expectations. I mean Fowler manhandled that baby grand piano, running his fingers or a hand across the strings, slapping the grand from below, above, and on its sides to get the percussive sounds, while also tending to the ivories for their sweet sounds. As he turned that baby upside down and inside out, I was reminded of one of those street musicians, who use their hands on body parts and beat garbage cans while creating compositions with their urban licks. You could also see Fowler's influence in “ZaZou,” the piece he composed for Cellist Sally Guenter, who, similarly, took advantage of the cello's percussive potential with a slap or two beside the throat. Before and after the bows, Paul played prop man and stage manager, setting up the chairs, checking the sound and making himself as useful to the technical presentation as he did to the musicians and audience members for whom he composed and arranged an evening of tasty musical pleasure. Bravo Nancy (the founder and director of TCMG) for a concert well done and well appreciated. You raised the standard. Just as the Harwood will be hard pressed to surpass the Diebenkorn show, so the Taos Chamber Music Group will be hard pressed to step beyond last night's “Special Anniversary Event with Robert Mirabal.”

Bill Whaley, Editor, Taos Horsefly

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