Just cashed in two savings bonds to help defray the cost of my beautiful new Essex grand piano. Thank you, Papa (my grandfather, David Donner z”l) and Dr. Hubbard for making this investment in me 29 years ago. I couldn’t be happier with this purchase–here’s to a lifetime of Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, Gershwin, and Schubert in my very own space, at last.
Honored to have the opportunity to perform again at Temple Beth Zion, the congregation where I was raised, became bar mitzvah in 1999, and was confirmed in 2002. I was a guest performer on a concert featuring Kol Rina, the JCC of Greater Buffalo‘s new community choir, and over 100 people were in attendance! Photos by Cantor Penny Myers:
What an amazing time yesterday! The debut performance of “The American Piano,” a new program celebrating the music of the great Jewish American composers of the 20th Century, was a success with over 150 people in attendance.
The concert was presented by North Shore Congregation Israel in Glencoe, Illinois, and made possible by the Marilyn and Robert Mitchell Sternberg Cultural Enrichment Fund and Cantor David Goldstein.
Friends: the fabulous Aurea Silva Trio is playing my piece again tonight at the White Lake Chamber Music Festival! This great group has performed all over the Midwest and at IDRS 2013 and are great champions of new music. Wish them break a leg with me!
So great to work again at my alma mater Interlochen Arts Camp!
This summer I served as rehearsal pianist for the High School Musical Theatre Production. In my spare time there was lots of good food, great concerts, and lots of fun times.
Thanks to Thompson Street Opera Company for a great performance of “Ile” this weekend!
from a review by Peter Jacobi, HeraldTimesOnline.com, May 7, 2014 –
“2 New Operas Provide Food for Thought, Fun”
“Ile,” pronounced with a broad “I,” sets to music a play by Eugene O’Neill. “Ile” is the way the central character, the captain of a whaling ship in the 1890s, pronounces “oil.” He is fanatic when it comes to filling the ship with whale oil; there can be no return to home, he decrees, without the oil, no matter what the circumstances. It so happens, on this particular journey, the ship gets caught in ice for an extended period, causing the trip to become endless enough for the crew to consider mutiny and the captain’s wife, who had begged to come along rather than once again be left alone for a matter of months, to lose her mind, literally.
The score is Italian verismo, updated and made American through language, O’Neill’s inescapably stark New England and composer Donner’s own gift at establishing mood and tone. The music strongly hints of Puccini and his disciples. It draws one in, being melodic, lushly orchestrated and dramatic, eminently suited to O’Neill’s tragic material.
A chamber ensemble of 12 instrumentalists complemented the vocals, thanks to the score itself and to conductor Carlos Andres Botero. He and stage director David Kote gave the cast sufficient underpinning to make O’Neill’s six troubled characters once again come to life. Baritone Reuben Walker and soprano Natalie Weinberg as Captain Keeney and his wife entered totally into that unhappy world. So did bass-baritone Andrew Richardson as a grumpy, griping seaman and baritone Ryan Kieran as Keeney’s supportive Second Mate. Baritone Bruno Sandes and tenor Jake Gadomski added their portrayals of other seamen caught on the gloomy vessel.
Tune in today at noon to hear Ben Smith, Eric Lindsay, and me on WFIU talk about our upcoming premieres with the New Voices Opera!
On Saturday, March 29, the fabulous Akropolis Quintet will premiere a new composition of mine at Heidelberg University in Tiffin, Ohio.
The composition is entitled Street Beat and was composed as part of the Quintet’s Project Sonata commissioning project.
The quintet’s latest release, Unraveled, is available now on CDBaby, iTunes, Amazon, and Spotify.
Honored to have been a part of the First Readings Project last week in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It was a special treat to hear a new composition for choir beautifully performed in an intimate setting. Thanks to J. David Moore and Studio Z for the opportunity.
Ezra Donner 