Music Magg

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2023 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine • All rights reserved My husband Charles had the last two days off work, and after a pretty long and lazy day on Monday, June 26 we went out in the evening for the first of the summer organ festival concerts in Balboa Park, celebrating the 35th anniversary of them. Last night’s program was billed as the “Young Artist Concert,” said young artist being James Kealey, British-born organist from Rochester, New York (where he moved after he decided to pursue further organ studies in the U.S. and he works as a church organist and music director at Third Presbyterian Church). The program proclaimed him as the winner of the 2022 National Young Artists Competition of the American Guild of Organists, but what was most remarkable about Kealey is he does not play like a competition winner – or at least the typical stereotype of a competition winner: fast, loud, bombastic and with little soul or introspecti...

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2023 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine • All rights reserved Charles and I decided to hang out in Balboa Park Tuesday, June 27 and await the “Twilight in the Park” concert, which was given by a five-piece group called the “Marcia Forman Band,” which turned out to be an excellent neo-swing ensemble who played a wide variety of songs. Marcia Forman herself is a 60-something alto saxophonist, and her husband of 35 years, Floyd Fronius, plays violin with the band as well as several others, including a group called “Ass Pocket Whiskey Fellas” which I presumed was a country band but instead plays Irish folk music. Their Web site says the band’s purpose is “to explore the connections between Irish traditional and American roots, and infusing a rock band delivery, while still utilizing all acoustic instruments.” Among the eight members of Ass Pocket Whiskey Fellas is Media Arts Center San Diego head Ethan Van Thillo, someone my husband Cha...

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2023 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine • All rights reserved Yesterday was a pretty quiet day until about 3:30 p.m., when my husband Charles and I set out for St. Paul’s for what turned out to be a really stunning concert featuring solo pianist John Solari. I’d seen him there a couple of times before as an accompanist for saxophonist Benson Lee on February 25 and soprano Michelle Pérez on May 20, but last night he gave a solo recital consisting of a wide variety of pieces. He began with Five , a series of five pieces by Chinese-American-Canadian Dorothy Chang (b. 1970), the only living composer on Solari’s program. Five consists of five movements, “Ephemera,” “Toccatina,” “Reverie,” “Echoes,” and “Quicksilver,” and it was composed in 2012 on commission from pianist Corey Hamm. Solari explained that the piece was “a struggle between freedom and rhythm, between flexibility and rigidity. The first movement represents pure freedom, th...