In Sunday’s (3/22) Daily Camera (Boulder, Colorado), Kelly Dean Hansen writes, “It’s probably safe to assume that many concertgoers attending the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra’s fourth subscription program of the season had no idea what a ‘tabla’ was upon entering Macky Auditorium on Saturday evening. By intermission, there would never again be any question. Lebanese musician Rony Barrak is an absolute master of the instrument, a drum in the shape of an hourglass. … For Barrak, Bill Douglas arranged his Concerto for Percussion Ensemble from 1997 for tabla. The drum is amazingly versatile, producing distinct sounds on different parts of its head and body, so Douglas was able to assign most of the percussion lines to the single instrument. The performance was a world premiere of this version. … Barrak followed this performance with his own composition, ‘Beirut Sensations,’ an extremely effective tone poem with complex meters and rhythms. It was also a world premiere. Here, the tabla part was subordinate to the orchestra. Barrak’s program for the work, describing the effects of war on a beautiful city, is graphically depicted in the music.” Also on the program, led by music director Michael Butterman, was Ginastera’s Estancia and Dvorák’s Eighth Symphony.
Posted March 26, 2009
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