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
