A little 'Song and Dance': Metamusic to perform at Curbside at Harborside

Jun. 10—PLATTSBURGH — It's not the same old "Song and Dance," Metamusic's program theme for its Curbside by Harborside concert at the U.S. Oval Gazebo on Saturday.

Metamusic — Marilyn Reynolds (violin), Dan Gordon (saxophone) and Rose Chancler (piano) — performed at Curbside by Harborside's inaugural season last summer.

"It was a successful concert," Reynolds said.

"We are playing some music that we've played before. It's not something we played last summer or very recently in the Plattsburgh area. And, we have a few new things."

"Song and Dance" features music by Camille Saint-Saens, Sergei Prokofiev, Aram Khachaturian, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Carl Anton Wirth.

"It's a lot of pieces, but it's almost one movement," Reynolds.

"It's not a very long concert. I think it will be very entertaining."

Composer Marc Eychenne's "Cantilène et Danse" is a piece the trio has performed a lot of places.

"It's sort of a French impressionist type of piece," Reynolds said.

"Usually, we start the concert with that piece, but this time we're not. He worked in the 20th century. He lived in Algiers, but he was a Frenchman.

"You find a lot of French composers wrote well for the saxophone. This piece by Marc Eychenne was written for our combo. We didn't have to adapt it. The name of the piece is 'Cantilène et Danse,' which is basically song and dance. It fits perfectly with our theme."

The trio bridge language with Kristina Arakelyan's "A Song Without Words" and "Burlesque."

The award-winning composer and pianist studied at the Royal Academy of Music and the University of Oxford and is currently a doctoral student at King's College, London.

Reynolds described "A Song Without Words" as a lovely, new piece.

"Then, we're doing a piece for violin and piano by Saint-Saens," she said.

"Camille was really an important composer from the 19th century.

"He wrote this very famous danse that I'm doing called, 'Danse Macabre,' very often done around Halloween. But, it doesn't matter. It's a really effective piece."

Khachaturian's "Sabre Dance" is "just a quick, very fun dance," Reynolds said.

"Then, Dan and Rose are doing some pieces."

As a duet, Gordon and Chancler will play two of the "Songbooks" sketches by American composer David Maslanka, including "Song for Allison."

"That's a good taste of what we're doing," Reynolds said.

"It should be an entertaining program."

Gates open at 6:30 p.m. for this concert, with tickets for $10 at the gate and seating provided on a first-come, first-served basis.

All attendees are seated with the members of their party in a socially distant manner and are not required to wear masks while they are seated and remaining socially distant from other parties at the concert.

Any attendee who is not fully vaccinated is respectfully requested to wear a mask for the duration of the concert.

This concert is generously sponsored by Nine Platt Hospitality Group.

Email Robin Caudell:

rcaudell@pressrepublican.com

Twitter:@RobinCaudell

ARTISTS' BIOS

Violinist Marilyn Reynolds, a resident of Rouses Point, is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the Royal Conservatory of Music of Brussels, Belgium, where she attained First Prize with Distinction as the student of Andre Gertler. She also studied violin with Margaret Pardee, David Cerone, Richard Young, and Shmuel Ashkenasi. Ms. Reynolds attended the Meadowmount School of Music and has participated in the Tanglewood, Blossom, and Caramoor Music Festivals, as well as the Cleveland, Binghamton, and other chamber music workshops. She was first violinist in the Astor String Quartet, which toured the Eastern U.S. and France, and for seven years was the violinist with the All Seasons Chamber Players, playing hundreds of concerts in the northern N.J. and N.Y. area.

Ms. Reynolds was a longtime member of the Orchestra of St. Luke's based in New York City, with whom she performed, recorded, and toured internationally, under conductors such as Leonard Bernstein, Charles Mackerras, Michael Tilson-Thomas, and Pablo Heras-Cassado. Highlights of her years with St. Luke's include touring the U.S. with the Vienna Boys Choir, performing Paul McCartney's "Standing Stone" in Carnegie Hall with Sir Paul in attendance, and making several recordings with soprano Renee Fleming. She has also performed in dozens of Broadway musicals, from "Into the Woods" to "Les Miserables" to Irving Berlin's "White Christmas," both as concertmaster and assistant conductor.

After living for many years in the New York City area, she now teaches violin, viola, and directs the string orchestra at SUNY Plattsburgh, as well as at the Strand Center for the Arts, and at her home in Rouses Point. She regularly performs chamber music with groups throughout New York's North Country and beyond.

Westport resident Rose Chancler is an active and wide-ranging pianist who, in addition to performing internationally, has given hundreds of concerts in 25 American states. Ricochet Duo — Dr. Chancler's collaboration with marimbist Jane Boxall — performs regularly throughout the U.S., with concert highlights including Vermont's Flynn Center, the Chautauqua Institution, Eastman School of Music, and a Manhattan showcase for the New York State Presenters Network.

Dr. Chancler has also enjoyed a long association with double bassist Volkan Orhon, resulting in two acclaimed CD releases of violin and cello masterworks on the Centaur label. Rose has performed with Volkan on BassEurope recitals in Prague, the Friends of Chamber Music series in Tucson, Concert Artists Guild in Pittsburgh, a spotlight concert at the American String Teachers Association convention, and several International String Bass conventions.

Dr. Chancler additional chamber music performance experience includes recitals with internationally known artists Linda Rosenthal, Jeffrey Solow, Harvey Pittel, Carol Wincenc, and Tony Award-winning actor George Hearn. Currently, she is focused on performing chamber music and presenting concerts in New York's Adirondack Park as Artistic Director of the Piano by Nature concert series.

Dr. Chancler has held teaching positions at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, the Baylor University School of Music, and the University of Iowa School of Music. She has been a faculty accompanist and coach at the Chautauqua Institution for many years, and also worked at the Meadowmount School of Music. She has served on the faculty of SUNY Plattsburgh, and now maintains a private studio in Westport, NY. She holds a bachelor's degree in Piano Performance from the University of Texas at Austin, and master's and doctoral degrees in Piano Performance and Literature from the Eastman School of Music.

Plattsburgh resident Daniel Gordon directs the Symphonic Band and Saxophone Ensemble, instructs the saxophone studio, and teaches various classroom courses in music theory and history at SUNY Plattsburgh. He is the founder and director of the Adirondack Wind Ensemble, a group consisting of music educators and outstanding community musicians from around the Plattsburgh area, which has given two annual concerts since its inception in January 2002. Mr. Gordon also served as the music director of the Adirondack Youth Orchestra from 2001 — 2005.

Mr. Gordon is an active saxophonist as well as conductor. He was part of the saxophone teaching corps at the Domaine Forget International Summer Music Festival in St. Irenee, Quebec from 1997 — 1999, and has taught in residence at the Suomen Tyovaenmusiikkiliitto Summer Music Festival in Teisko, Finland, since 2005. He has performed with the Frontier Saxophone Quartet, comprised of players from the North Country and Montreal, since 2003.

His performance credits as a conductor or saxophonist include appearances at the Alice Tully Hall and Bruno Walter Auditorium at New York's Lincoln Center, the American Embassy in Paris, the Circle of Fine Arts in Madrid, and several sites in Spain, France, Finland, Canada, and the U.S. Mr. Gordon is also a widely published author, with works ranging from scholarly articles in musicological journals to Sax On The Streets: Confessions of an American Street Musician in Europe, his book about busking with a friend across 13 European counties in the 1980s.