Monday, March 16, 2015

Violist Tia Allen & Trumpeter Herb Smith in 'Music from The Gilded Age' by Orchestra of the Longfellow Chorus, 4 PM Saturday, March 21, 2015, Portland High School





Five Outrageous Reasons to Attend
Music from The Gilded Age this Saturday

[Charles Koppitz's self portrait at the top of the oboe part to "Telegraph Polka."]

March 15, 2015
Portland, Maine



A busy copyist with pressing deadlines, Charles Koppitz 
nonetheless took pride in his work, often leaving his 
mark with distinctive scrolls, frills and other 
embellishments.

Such is the case with the caricature sketch in ink of his 
own good-natured, goateed face looking out from the 
capital “O” of the word “Oboe” at the top of the oboe 
part to Telegraph Polka.

And in copyist’s ink, Koppitz has humorously labeled 
“On the Alps, Ländler for Two Horns Obbligato and 
Orchestra" (on today’s program) his Opus Number 
4,009—this, after being active for less than a decade 
as a theater orchestra leader in Boston.

Enough said about the overburdened, unrecognized—
and in Charles Koppitz’s case—brief life of a middle-
class Victorian-American theater music director.
[From the program notes to "Music from The Gilded 
this coming Saturday, March 21, 4 pm, in John Ford 
Theater at Portland High School, 284 Cumberland Ave., 
Portland, Maine  -- Charles Kaufmann]


Here are five outrageous reasons to attend Music 
Collection, 1869-1877 this Saturday at 4 pm, John 
Ford Theater at Portland High School, 284 Cumberland 
Ave, Portland, Maine.

[Tickets here, or at the door, $20 regular, $10 student/
senior; call 207-232-8920 for more information].
1. To see a half dozen kids from Woodside One 
Wheelers (WOW) perform on regular unicycles, 5-foot 
giraffe unicycles and 7-foot three-wheeled unicycles to 
Charles Koppitz's Velocipede Galop for orchestra, written
 in 1869 during "velocipede mania" in Boston -- the year 
the bicycle was introduced to the United States.

2. To see and hear an antique telegraph machine from 
19th Century Willowbrook Village used as a percussion 
instrument in Charles Koppitz's Telegraph Polka (1870), 
during which bassoonist-magician Wren Saunders will 
turn herself into the dancing transatlantic telegraph cable 
of 1866.

3. To witness up-close the talented members of the 
Orchestra of The Longfellow Chorus -- placed in front of the 
stage -- performing a series of never-ending circus leaps: 
John Boden and Sophie Flood as horn soloists in On the Alps
Betty Rines and Herb Smith as cornet soloists in Amazon 
March; Melissa Mielens and Krysia Tripp as piccolo soloists, 
diving through flaming hoops in In the Forest Polka
percussionist Richard Kelly cranking his anchor chain device 
in Yacht Nettie Waltz. This is virtuosic music; these are 
outrageously good players.

4. To get to know two versatile, young singing actresses from 

New York, Cree Carrico, soprano, and Kaitlyn Costello, mezzo, 
who will recreate the roles of Evangeline and Gabriel in an 
historic 21st-century reawakening of a lost 19th-century 
orchestral medley, Selections from Evangeline, or, The Belle of 
Acadia (1877) -- originally billed as "the first American comic 
opera."

5. Because you will love this concert.

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