May 25th, 7:30pm
at the venerable, elegant
Noe Valley Ministry
music for voices and instruments by Maurice Ravel
Teatro Mistral presents a concert of the sensuous, pictorial music of Maurice Ravel for voices and instruments at the Noe Valley Ministry. Including a performance of the extraordinary Chansons Madécasses! This haunting, impassioned song cycle caused a debacle at its Paris premier due to the text of the second song which describes in eloquent detail the rebellion against the European invaders by North African natives! Framed by two lyrical intimate songs, this rarely performed art song tryptich for piano, cello, flute and voice is a musical voyage filled with languid delicacy and smoldering fire! Sung by Vismaya Lhi with Amy Brodo, cello and Amy Likar, flute.
Also included: Tristan Robben, baritone, performing Ravel’s exquisite set – Don Quichotte a Dulcinee. Rachel Warner, contralto, offering the Chants Populaires as well as the Vocalise en forme de Habanera in an arr. for solo flute and the plaintive Kaddisch/L’enigme eternelle transcribed for cello solo. All with the exceptional collaborative playing of Dwight Okamura at the piano.
A note from the artistic Director……
I often wonder where my life might have led if I had not, on a sunlit southern California afternoon in my late teens, encountered the music of Maurice Ravel! As anyone knows who has tried to do it, it is very, very difficult to describe what happens when you come across something so extraordinary, so intriguing, so deeply inspiring that it demands that, as the poet Rilke says “You must change your life”! For a baffled mixed-race teenager unsure of her place in a confusing and often overwhelming world, the music offered a mysterious answer to my dilemma –- a place of imaginative beauty to explore, an open land filled with mystery and revelation. A door opened to me on that day, one that later filled with many other composers and musics, many extraordinary people from many worlds. That afternoon began an unnamed journey. And, as journeys often do, it led me places that I could never have imagined and have never once regretted. A musical life. A life in music. Through it, I learn and continue to learn what it is to be human in this curious world of ours. Continue to engage what I know to be the best in us. Continue to grow and transform. This concert, then, is a tribute to the composer that changed my life on that sunny afternoon, what his music offered me, which I now have a name for – Hope. The hope that music offers of beauty and understanding…..love and transformation for us all.
Voyage with us through the music of Maurice Ravel!
Teatro Mistral continues it’s flight in 2021!!!
See you at the theatre!
Vismaya Lhi
and don’t forget to join us for Opera Cocktales at Martuni’s piano bar-
……..with singers from all over the bay area operatic universe