Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Newman and Oltman Guitar Duo

Raritan River Music Festival NJ 2024

More accurate than a Farmers’ Almanac is a prediction for enjoyable music-making in scenic West-Central New Jersey. That’s right, the first of the warm-weather music festivals is practically upon us. Now in its 36th year, Raritan River Music will beat the summer crush, once again presenting acclaimed soloists and ensembles in a variety of programs to be performed at historic venues in Raritan and Warren Counties.

The first of this season’s concerts will take place this Saturday at 7:30 pm, at Bethlehem Presbyterian Church in Pittstown. A trio of musicians from the Philadelphia-based Tempesta di Mare Baroque Orchestra will perform music by Bach, Couperin, Marais, and Telemann, among others, on flute, recorder, viola da gamba, cello, theorbo, and lute.

On Saturday, May 17 at 7:30 pm, at Old Greenwich Presbyterian Church in Stewartsville, pianist David Korevaar will share repertoire from his new release, “Beethoven: Heroic to Hammerklavier,” on the Prospero Classical label. The program will include the Sonata in F Major, Op. 54, the Sonata in F Minor, Op. 57 “Appassionata,” the Sonata in E Minor, Op. 90, and the Sonata in A Major, Op. 101.

On Saturday, May 24, at 7:30 pm, at Stanton Reformed Church in Stanton, Raritan River Music founders (and Warren County residents) Michael Newman and Laura Oltman, a.k.a. the Newman and Oltman Guitar Duo, will be joined by the Bergamot String Quartet for “Music from the NEW World: 21st Century Masterpieces.” The program will include RRM-commissioned works by Daniel Binelli and Lowell Liebermann, the premiere of a new string quartet by New Jersey composer Payton MacDonald, selections by Bergamot violinist and composer Ledah Finck, and a work by Pulitzer Prize-and-Grammy Award-winning Princeton University alum Caroline Shaw.

The festival will conclude on Saturday, May 31, at 7:30 pm at Historic Hunterdon County Courthouse in Flemington, with “Americana Meets Old Masters.” Classical favorites and showpieces by Gershwin, Piazzolla, Bach, Rimsky-Korsakov, and others will be played on marimba, vibraphone, and piano by Greg Giannascoli, Behn Gillece, and Ron Stabinsky. Sounds like a good time to me.

The festival can also be accessed via online streaming. For more information, directions, and archived videos of past concerts, visit raritanrivermusic.org.

May 8, 2025
Raritan River Music Festival NJ May Concerts

That’s right! It’s already upon us! The first of the warm-weather music festivals will begin this weekend, as Raritan River Music presents its 35th season at historic venues in West-Central New Jersey throughout the month of May. All concerts will begin at 7:30 p.m.

This Saturday, the Daedalus Quartet will perform William Grant Still’s “Lyric Quartet,” Béla Bartók’s String Quartet No. 4, and the New Jersey premiere of “Deep Summer Folklore” by Andrew Davis at Stanton Reformed Church in Stanton.

On May 11, Hot Club of Philadelphia, inspired by the Quintette du Hot Club de France, which flourished in Paris in the 1930s and ‘40s under the direction of guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stéphane Grappelli, will bring its distinctive blend of Manouche Jazz (a.k.a. Gypsy Jazz), Hot Jazz, and French Swing, along with Americana styles, to Bethlehem Presbyterian Church in Pittstown (Grandin).

On May 18, festival directors and curators Michael Newman and Laura Oltman of the Newman and Oltman Guitar Duo will welcome special guests Celil Refik Kaya and João Luiz for an evening of new commissions and a Leo Brouwer 85th birthday celebration. Through Raritan River Music’s New Music Commissioning Program (and an acclaimed “Music from Raritan River” CD of world premiere recordings), dozens of new compositions have been performed and published worldwide. Newman & Oltman have developed an especially significant relationship with Cuban master Leo Brouwer, several of whose pieces they have premiered and recorded. The concert, which will take place at Historic Hunterdon County Courthouse in Flemington, will also feature new music by Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Moravec.

The festival will conclude on May 25 with the Manhattan Chamber Players performing piano quartets by Johannes Brahms and Antonín Dvořák at Old Greenwich Presbyterian Church in Stewartville.

For more details and information about online streaming, visit raritanrivermusic.org.

May 3, 2024
Raritan River Music Fest Returns to NJ & PA

Attention, music-loving Jerseyites and Eastern Pennsylvanians!

The robins and catbirds are scarcely settled-in, and already the first of the warm-weather music festivals is upon us!

For the 33rd consecutive year, Raritan River Music will beat the summer crush, in presenting a winning combination of spring, music, and historic venues in Raritan and Warren Counties. Internationally-renowned soloists and ensembles will venture in to scenic West-Central Jersey to present a wide range of musical programs in a variety of genres.

The first of the concerts will take place this Friday at 7:30 pm at Stanton Reformed Church in Stanton. The Bergamot Quartet will perform works by living composers, with a special emphasis on women (including Pulitzer Prize-winner Tania Leon), in dialogue with music by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel. The program will also include selections by Paul Wiancko, Suzanne Farrin, and Ledah Finck, from their album “In the Brink.”

On Saturday, May 14, at 4 pm, outdoors under cover at Blue Army Shrine in Asbury (NOT to be confused with Asbury Park), fiddler Eileen Ivers will return with her all-star band, The unIVERSal Roots (on Irish fiddle, guitar, Irish accordion, whistles, trumpet, bass, and percussion, with vocals) to share music from her new album, “Scatter the Light.”

On Saturday, May 21, at 7:30 pm, at Greenwich Presbyterian Church in Stewartsville, Raritan River Music founders (and Warren County residents) Michael Newman and Laura Oltman, a.k.a. the Newman and Oltman Guitar Duo – for 35 years ensemble in residence at the Mannes School of Music – will be joined by leading Mannes faculty. They’ll perform a new Raritan River Music commission from esteemed Cuban master Leo Brouwer, entitled “Through the Looking Glass.”

Also on the program will be Brazilian composer Clarice Assad’s “Dusty Grooves” and Yenne Lee’s arrangement of her YouTube sensation (with 19 million views) “Autumn Leaves.” In addition, Hannah Murphy and Phil Goldenberg will play selections from their groundbreaking project “Changing the Canon,” featuring nine eminent Black American composers, here represented by Mason Byrnes and Thomas Flippin.

The festival will conclude on Saturday, May 28, at 7:30 pm at Prallsville Mills in Stockton, with the improvisatory ensemble 9 Horses, a group that blurs the line between “folk art” and “fine art,” playing selections from their critically-acclaimed albums, on mandolins (acoustic and electric), violins, Hardanger d’amore, and bass.

This year’s festival may also be accessed via online streaming. If you attend in-person, please bring proof of vaccination status. Also, exercise common sense in terms of maintaining appropriate face coverings at the venues, so you don’t get or spread the bug!

For more information and directions, visit raritanrivermusic.org.

COUNTER-CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: The Bergamot Quartet, Eileen Ivers & the unIVERSal Roots, the Newman & Oltman Guitar Duo, and 9 Horses

May 3, 2022
Irish Music This Sunday on The Lost Chord

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we anticipate St. Patrick’s Day, with two contrasting works with ties to the Emerald Isle.

John Kinsella was born in Dublin in 1932. He combined composition with a career in music administration until 1988, when he left his position as Head of Music at RTE, Ireland’s national broadcasting organization.

As a composer, he was influenced by contemporary trends in the European avant-garde, until 1977. Then, following the completion of his String Quartet No. 3, he wrote nothing for a period of 18 months. He emerged from this self-imposed silence a renewed artist, crafting wholly tonal works of great beauty and integrity. Since then, he has completed eleven symphonies, a second violin concerto, a cello concerto, a fourth string quartet, and various other works.

Kinsella’s Symphony No. 3 was composed in 1989-1990. The work falls into two substantial movements, framed by a brief Prologue and Epilogue, and separated by an Intermezzo, all of which return to material stated in the symphony’s opening bars. The movements are performed without break.

Although it is not a programmatic work, the composer dedicated the symphony, with gratitude, to his parents. He intended the piece as a personal expression of certain aspects of the joy of life. Hence, the subtitle, “Joie de vivre.”

More overtly folk-inflected is “Laments and Dances from the Irish,” after melodies by Irish harper Turlough O’Carolan (1670-1738). Philadelphia-born composer Arnold Black was afflicted with cerebral palsy from birth, resulting in limited mobility on his right side. Yet he managed to become a master of the violin. So successful was he on his instrument that following graduation from the Juilliard School, he was hired as assistant concertmaster of the Baltimore Symphony, and ultimately concertmaster of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, DC.

Black’s “Laments and Dances” was commissioned by the Newman and Oltman Guitar Duo. Michael Newman and Laura Oltman reside along the Delaware River in Warren County, NJ. Together or between them, they have taught or been guitarists-in-residence at the Mannes College of Music in New York City, Princeton University, The College of New Jersey, and Lafayette College in Easton, PA. They are also directors of the Raritan River Music Festival, held in historic venues in Central Jersey throughout the month of May. The duo is joined in this recording by the Turtle Island String Quartet.

Pour yourself a pint of stout and find your bliss. We laugh and weep along with the Irish, on “Airs from Erin,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

March 14, 2021
Brouwer Premiere LIVE on The Classical Network

¡Hola!

Tune in this afternoon on The Classical Network to get a taste of LEO BROUWER, LIVE.

Join me for a special visit from Michael Newman and Laura Oltman of the Newman and Oltman Guitar Duo. Newman and Oltman will drop by to talk about the final concert of this year’s Raritan River Music Festival, which will take place this Saturday at 7:30 p.m., at Stanton Reformed Church, in Lebanon, NJ, and will include the WORLD PREMIERE of Brouwer’s “El Libro de los Seres Imaginarios” (“The Book of Imaginary Beings”).

Brouwer, who turned 80 in March, is Cuba’s foremost composer and arguably the most important living composer of music for the classical guitar. “El Libro” is a 16-minute, four movement work, inspired by a compendium of mythological beings by Jorge Luis Borges.

The fulfillment of the commission, which was planned to coincide with Newman and Oltman’s 40th anniversary as a guitar duo and the 30th anniversary of the Raritan River Music Festival, has been years in the making, the culmination of a successful pentathlon of sorts, guitarists and composer bounding over the hurdles of language, geography, culture, politics, and bureaucracy.

What makes Newman and Oltman’s visit today particularly exciting is that they plan to perform selections from Brouwer’s new work, LIVE, IN-STUDIO, which means the music will be heard FOR THE FIRST TIME ANYWHERE. Following Saturday’s premiere, the couple will take the piece to New York City for the opening of the New York Guitar Seminar on June 26. The duo holds exclusive performance and recording rights to the piece.

Saturday’s program, “New Music of the Americas: Compositions from Brazil, Cuba, & USA,” will also include music by Paul Moravec and works by festival guests Clarice Assad and João Luiz.

The Raritan River Music Festival was founded by Newman and Oltman in 1989, as a stimulating series of concerts that embrace new music, world music, and straightforward classical repertoire, presented by professional musicians, in intimate, historic venues in Hunterdon and Warren Counties.

This year’s festival has included concerts by the Horszowski Trio, performing Schumann and Elliot Carter, at Greenwich Presbyterian Church in Stewartsville; Eileen Ivers and the unIVERSal Roots Band, in a celebration of Americana music and its Irish roots, at Clinton Presbyterian Church in Clinton; and harmonicist Robert Bonfiglio and flutist Clare Hoffman, performing works by Native American and Grand Canyon-inspired composers, at Prallsville Mills in Stockton.

For more information about Saturday’s concert and the Raritan River Music Festival, visit raritanrivermusic.org; to learn more about Newman and Oltman, look online at guitarduo.com; and for scintillating music and conversation, tune in at 5:00, the core of today’s broadcast with Classic Ross Amico, which will take place, as always, from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

May 20, 2019

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