April 8, 2022

Last night was another exciting night for the Lansing Symphony. It was our second installment of “LSO at the Robin,” our series of concerts at Lansing’s Robin Theater in REO Town. Again, the place was sold out, and again the audience was hanging on every note. Since it was chamber music, I could sit back and enjoy, and part of the enjoyment was observing the audience response.
 
The program consisted entirely of works from living Michigan composers, and one can see what a font of musical creativity this state really is. Three were on hand and offered remarks on their works. LSO Composer-in-Residence Patrick Harlin opened the program with his “Molasses” a look at how a musical idea might respond to different densities of resistance. Alexis Bacon, a member of Michigan State’s faculty, joined us for a vibrant performance of her “Capriccio,” and Michael Daugherty came over from Ann Arbor for two of his works, “Six Riffs after Ovid” (kudos to oboist Stephanie Shapiro for her very engaging performance of this work), and “Walk the Walk.”
 
Also on the program, we heard Carlos Simon’s moving “Catch on Fire,” and Eve Beglarian’s “I will not be sad in this world” (kudos here to Bryan Guarnuccio for his mesmerizing performance). The concert closed with David Beidenbender’s mashup of funk, Motown, dub-step, music of the French Renaissance, folk, death metal and pointillistic music (not even kidding about that) called “Refractions”. The movement titles say a lot about that work 1)Death Metal Chicken 2) Kyrie 3) Goat Rodeo. It was a blast to say the least.
 
Many thanks to our fantastic musicians for their outstanding performance last night. I would gladly listen to the whole thing again.
 
#michaeldaugherty #alexisbacon #carlossimon #lansingsymphony #robintheater #lansingmichigan #evebeglarian #davidbiedenbender #bryanguarnuccio #stephanieshapiro