Somewhere between the return of Catbird and the reopening of the public pool comes the 37th Raritan River Music Festival. The festival, curated by Laura Oltman and Michael Newman of the Newman & Oltman Guitar Duo, gets a jump on the festival-heavy summer months with a series of May programs that honor, in one way or another, the 250th anniversary of the founding of our nation. These will be presented over four concerts in historic venues located in New Jersey’s Hunterdon and Warren Counties.
Since it’s been a very busy week – chockful of everything except sleep, apparently – and I’m running on fumes right now, I’m going to turn it over to this encapsulation from the Raritan River Music website:
“This season RRM celebrates the 250th anniversary of the founding of our nation. Many of our festival venues pre-date the American Revolution. The congregations of our churches were founded by people who were among the first European settlers in North America.
“So far from anything they had ever known, they fashioned a government and a culture separate from their origins, whose modern global appeal surely derives from the multiplicity of those who created it. A core mission of Raritan River Music is to embrace the creation and performance of new music from the New World and to build a recorded archive of these musical compositions – music that is as original, dynamic, and aspirational as our nation.”
Now back to me:
Duo Jalal will return to the festival with works for the striking (and bowed) combination of viola and percussion. The program, “Threads of Sound: Voices of American Composers,” will consist of new music by Kenji Bunch, Caroline Shaw, Dafnis Prieto, Kurt Rhode, and Dawn Avery. The concert will be performed at Historic Hunterdon County Court House, 71 Main St., in Flemington, on May 2 at 7:30 p.m.
Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw’s music will also be represented on a concert by Trio Ondata, alongside works by Shostakovich, Haydn, and Chicago-born composer of Indian and Western classical music Reena Esmail. “American Mycelium: Explorations of the New World” will take place at Old Greenwich Presbyterian Church, 17 Greenwich Church Rd., in Stewartsville, on May 9 at 7:30 p.m.
Newman & Oltman will bring the “Greatest Hits of 1776,” as works by Haydn, Rossini, and Yankee tunesmith William Billing share a program with Early American-related works by Gaspare Spontini, Fernando Sor, and Stephen Jenks, along with an RRM commission, “Raritan Triptych,” by another Pulitzer Prize-winner, Paul Moravec. The concert will be held at Bethlehem Presbyterian Church, 2 Race St., in Pittstown, on May 16 at 7:30 p.m.
The series will conclude with “Two by Two: Harpsichord Duets Across the Centuries” – music performed on two harpsichords by ARTEK, Gwendolyn Toth and Peter Sykes, with an emphasis on composers for the virginal, clavichord, harpsichord, and chamber organ in the late 1500s, early 1600s, the peak period of English exploration of the New World. The program will be given at Stanton Reformed Church, 1 Stanton Mountain Rd., in Stanton, on May 23 at 7:30 p.m.
Concerts will also be available for streaming.
Stick a feather in your cap, call it macaroni, and visit https://www.raritanrivermusic.org/!
Tag: Newman & Oltman Guitar Duo
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May Is for Music at the Raritan River Music Festival
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Newman & Oltman Guitar Duo TCNJ Concert Friday
After being pinned down in the house for a few days by torrential rain, maybe you’d like to get out for an evening and enjoy some guitar music. If so, I have the very thing, as the Newman & Oltman Guitar Duo will perform at The College of New Jersey on Friday at 7:30 p.m.
The recital will be held at the Mayo Concert Hall (located in the music building), 2000 Pennington Rd., in Ewing, NJ.
Together ensemble-in-residence at Mannes College of Music, Michael Newman and Laura Oltman are founders and artistic directors of the New York Guitar Seminar at Mannes and New Jersey’s Raritan River Music Festival. Michael serves on the faculties of Mannes and TCNJ. Laura serves on the faculties of Princeton University and Lafayette College.
I have no idea what’s on tomorrow’s program, but I’d be very surprised if the evening doesn’t include at least some Leo Brouwer, as the artists have enjoyed a close working relationship with the composer in recent years and had a couple works written specifically for them. In fact, they’ve released an all-Brouwer album on the MusicMasters label.
This is also an excellent opportunity for me to give advance notice of the Raritan River Music Festival, which always manages to sneak up on me, as the first of the warm weather music festivals. The concerts are held in historic venues in Central Jersey’s Raritan and Warren Counties throughout the month of May. Learn more about the rapidly-approaching 35th season at raritanrivermusic.org.
In the meantime, Laura and Michael, who make their home along the banks of the swollen Delaware, will slalom down to TCNJ for tomorrow night’s appearance.
For tickets and information, visit tcnjcenterforthearts.universitytickets.com or call the box office at 609-771-2585.
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Newman & Oltman Guitar Duo Princeton Concert
My old pals, Michael Newman and Laura Oltman – collectively known as the Newman & Oltman Guitar Duo – will be in Princeton tonight for a concert at Nassau Presbyterian Church.
The program will feature works by Spanish composers Isaac Albéniz and Manuel de Falla, Brazilian composers Paulo Bellinati and Celso Machado, Pulitzer Prize winner (and Princeton-raised) Paul Moravec, and several pieces created specifically for the duo by Cuban master Leo Brouwer – including, from what I understand, a world premiere.
Nassau Presbyterian Church is located at 61 Nassau Street. The concert begins at 7:30 p.m., and admission is free.
The event is part of the Princeton Summer Chamber Concerts series. For more information and a complete schedule, visit princetonsummerchamberconcerts.org.
Brouwer’s “Through the Looking Glass”
PHOTO: Joined by Newman & Oltman in my radio daze
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Raritan River Music Festival: May Concerts
The Raritan River Music festival will continue this weekend, with its second concert (of four) held in historic venues in West-Central New Jersey throughout the month of May.
Festival directors Michael Newman and Laura Oltman of the Newman & Oltman Guitar Duo will join the Bergamot Quartet on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at Stanton Reformed Church for “Laments & Dances: Music from the Folk Traditions.”
The musicians will celebrate Philadelphia-born composer Arnold Black, who would have been 100 this year. Black, who was afflicted with cerebral palsy, nonetheless earned degrees for violin and composition from the Juilliard School and went on to perform with the NBC Symphony and as assistant concertmaster of the Baltimore Symphony and National Symphony Orchestras.
As a composer, he provided music for the play “Ulysses in Nighttown,” starring Zero Mostel, and the film “Illuminata,” directed by John Torturro. For television, he scored segments for “3-2-1 Contact,” orchestrated Schubert for the Nickelodeon series “Little Bear,” and worked on the animated specials “Simple Gifts” and “A Soldier’s Tale” for R. O. Blechman.
Black’s “Laments & Dances,” based on melodies by the 17th century blind Irish harper Turlough O’Carolan, will be performed on Saturday. If you take a fancy to it, Newman & Oltman made a recording of it, which is available on the Musical Heritage Society label. Also on the program will be new works inspired by traditional music as interpreted by Ledah Finck (Irish), Anna Roberts Gevalt (Appalachian), and Princeton’s own Dan Trueman (Norwegian).
Black’s influence will continue to loom large over the remaining concerts in the series, as he also helped found western Massachusetts’ Mohawk Trail Concerts in 1970. Next week, on May 20 at 7:30 p.m., the Mohawk Trail Piano Trio will perform works by Anton Arensky and Florence Price. That concert will be held at Old Greenwich Presbyterian Church in Stewartsville.
Finally, Black’s chamber work, “Serenade for the Grand Canyon,” will be included as part of a celebratory concert inspired by the long-running Grand Canyon Music Festival. GCMF founders, flutist Clare Hofmann and harmonica virtuoso Robert Bonfiglio, will be joined by electric violist/composer Martha Mooke and the Newman & Oltman Guitar Duo.
The program will also feature “Fairy Fantasy,” a new work commissioned by Raritan River Music from venerable Cuban composer Leo Brouwer; and a new piece by Diné-American composer Raven Chacon, recipient of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Music. That concert will take place on May 27 at 7:30 p.m. at Bethlehem Presbyterian Church in Pittstown.
Last Saturday’s concert of the Four Nations Ensemble performing music by François Couperin and friends at Clinton Presbyterian Church is now posted on YouTube, for your enjoyment, at the link.
For more information about Raritan River Music concerts, visit raritanrivermusic.org.
PHOTOS (counter-clockwise from top): the Bergamot Quartet, Arnold Black, and the Newman & Oltman Guitar Duo
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Newman Oltman Premiere Brouwer’s “Looking Glass”
On the final concert of this year’s New York Guitar Festival, the Newman and Oltman Guitar Duo will present the world premiere of a new work written for them by arguably Cuba’s most venerable living composer, Leo Brouwer. “Through the Looking Glass” will be streamed today at 4:00 EDT. As the title suggests, the piece is inspired by Lewis Carroll.
The festival is presented each year by the Mannes School of the Music – The New School. The programming of this year’s concerts has been curated to honor the legacy of legendary guitarist Julian Bream.
Michael Newman and Laura Oltman, who make their home in Warren County, New Jersey, are artistic directors of the Raritan River Music Festival. The duo has been ensemble-in-residence at Mannes for 34 years. Between them, they’ve also held teaching positions and residencies at Princeton University, Lafayette College, and the College of New Jersey. Newman has been on the guitar and chamber music faculty of Mannes since 1979.
Previously, Brouwer composed for them a work titled “El Libro de los Seres Imaginarios” (“The Book of Imaginary Beings”), for which they hold exclusive performance rights. The piece has been recorded and released on the MusicMasters label. I am proud to say, I hosted the duo in the WWFM studios in 2019 for the world broadcast premiere of selections from the work, performed live.
Music and interview are still posted on Soundcloud. Some of the information may be outdated, but the music is timeless. Listen, and then tune in to the world premiere of “Through the Looking Glass,” AT THE LINK ABOVE, THIS AFTERNOON AT 4 PM!
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