The Grand Canyon Music Festival – Week Three

In this third program from the 2023 Grand Canyon Music Festival on “Arizona Encore,” there’s music for guitar duo, solo piano and piano quintet.

Brazilian dances form the basis of the Images from the Northeast of Celso Machado. He is a Brazilian native multi-instrumentalist and composer now residing in Canada. In the two movements from the suite on this program, he explores the samba and choro maxixe, two dance genres found in the region. The Newman and Oltman Guitar Duo is featured.

David Koerner is both a musical and scientific figure in Arizona, having started as a violinist and pianist before attaining academic credentials in astronomy. He is an emeritus professor of astronomy at Northern Arizona University and astronomer in residence at the Grand Canyon. On this program he performs his own piano piece named after the asterism (star formation) the Summer Triangle. Altair, Deneb and Vega are the three constituent stars, belonging to the constellations Aquila, Cygnus and Lyra. The piece is accordingly in three parts and has Impressionist harmonic elements.

The second piano quintet of Antonín Dvořák is one of just a handful of such works for piano and string quartet to be commonly played. It is among his best known chamber works for its instantly memorable melodies and consistently high quality. He wrote it only after giving up on revising a first attempt where he refined his compositional process. Members of the Manhattan Chamber Players conclude the concert from the 2023 Grand Canyon Music Festival.