JAVS Summer 1997

70

Ohyama, presented A String Around Autumn, which is a short concerto for viola and orchestra by Toru Takemitsu. The concert was advertised as a tribute to Takemitsu, who died in 1996. The soloist was Yasushi Toyo shima, principal violist of the New Japan Philharmonic. Ohyama, former principal vio list of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, was featured in a Sunday L. A. Times interview article (complete with large picture) in early April, where his many musical activities were traced. Presently, these do not include viola performances. Some brief Los Angeles viola intelligence: Jan Karlin, the Southwest Chamber Music Society's dedicated twentieth-century specialist, premiered in April a solo viola work called "Amid the Winds of Evening" by Anthony Payne, the British composer known for his Elgar scholarship. The Armadillo Quartet, at this point a familiar Los Angeles ensemble whose violist is Raymond Tischer, continued their long rela tionship with composer Peter Schickele, by presenting ''An Evening with Peter Schickele," in Pasadena, 17 March. An encore on that program was a quodlibet titled "Viola Dreams," a new piece by Schickele. In May, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, a vio list at the Crossroads School for the Arts and Sciences, was a grand prizewinner ($1000) of the Emerging African-American Artists Awards, sponsored by public television KCET, Los Angeles.

Helen Crosby, and Phyllis Moss. These are competent, but not virtuoso players, and they presented a varied, informal program of viola ensemble music to a small but discerning audience. Two of the works were actually written for four violas: the Fantasie for Four Violas by York Bowen, which is something of a staple of the genre, and a less familiar entree, Divertissement by Claude-Henry Joubert, a 1992 work by this Paris-based composer. The Divertissement is most attrac tive in rhythmic content, partaking freely of jazz, blues, French music hall and cabaret ele ments ... characteristics not often found in viola repertory. On 19 April The Long Beach Sym phony, with Paul Freeman as guest conductor, presented Harold in Italy by Berlioz with Kazi Petelka, the orchestra's principal violist, play ing the solo part. The problem of all the rests for the soloist in the last movement was han dled in a novel way. After the "reminiscences" at the outset of the movement, the soloist retired to the rear of the stage and took a seat next to the percussion section. As the "Orgy of Brigands" got underway in earnest, the two violinists and 'cellist who were to make up the little trio called for toward the end of the movement moved from their symphony seats to stage-rear also. All four played their final few measures from the back, and then they all left the stage. One critic carped that it was "staging," and distracting. Perhaps, but it might be better than standing idle in front of the orchestra; it was an interesting solution. Sunday afternoon, 18 May, the Asia America Symphony, conducted by Heiichiro

Thomas G. Hall Chapman University

Nokuthula Ngwenyama, whose New York debut in the Young Concert Artists Series was widely praised, was announced in April as recipient of a 1997 Avery Fisher Career Grant. She was winner of the Primrose Memorial Scholarship Competition at the 1993 AVS sponsored Viola Congress. Her

teachers have been Alan de Veritch and lately Karen Tuttle at the Curtis Institute.

Milton Katims was given, in May, the award of Lifetime Achievement in the Arts by the Seattle Corporate Council for the Arts.