05/08/2019
Austin FraktI’m in two concerts the weekend of May 18-19.
8pm, Saturday, May 18 in Jamaica Plain, MA: I’ll be playing in Nocturno by Mendelssohn (here’s a recording). It’s part of a larger program by the Weston Wind Quintet & Friends. Details here.
3pm Sunday, May 19 in Arlington, MA: I’ll be playing with the Mystic Brass Ensemble. There’s a lot to the program (details here), which ends with suites from Star Wars.
If you come to either, please say hello. If you come to both, say hello twice!
02/25/2019 Austin FraktOn Sunday, March 10 at 3pm, the Mystic Brass Ensemble takes a winter trip to Saxony for “An Afternoon in Leipzig,” featuring the music of Bach, Mendelssohn, and Wagner, all of whom spent a substantial portion of their careers in the city of Leipzig, Germany. I am one of the trumpet players in the group, and I hope you will join us. If you do, please find me during intermission or afterwards and say hi.
Location: First Baptist Church of Arlington, 819 Massachusetts Ave, Arlington, MA
Time: 3pm, March 10
Program
J.S. Bach:
Mendelssohn:
– Intermission –
Wagner:
Suggested donation: $10.
01/06/2019 Austin Frakt
What: “An Evening in Vienna”
Beethoven: Overture to Egmont, op. 84
Schoenberg: Chamber Symphony No. 1
Mozart: Symphony No. 41 (“Jupiter”)
When: Friday, January 11, 2019 at 8 PM
Where: St John’s Church, 1 Roanoke Ave, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts 02130 (House open 30 min before concert. Venue is wheelchair accessible, restrooms require assistance for wheelchairs.)
Tickets: Available online or at the door
$25 General Admission
$20 Senior
$10 Student
Pay What You Can
Season Passes Available
More About the Concert: Beethoven’s most loved concert overture, his overture to Egmont starts this exciting program. This is followed by an early masterpiece of Schoenberg’s, his Chamber Symphony No. 1. Written before he developed his famed twelve-tone technique, this work grows out of Richard Strauss’ style and provides a fascinating bridge between the music of the late German Romantics (Mahler, Strauss, and even Brahms, in particular) and 20th century modernism. Indeed, Schoenberg is able to successfully channel the immensely diverse color palette of a Mahler symphony into a work for only 15 instrumentalists. A brief intermission will follow, and the evening will close with Mozart’s greatest symphonic masterpiece, his “Jupiter Symphony.”
About the Apollo Ensemble: Founded in the summer of 2018 by Elias Miller and Michael Tabak, the Apollo Ensemble of Boston is a new, 40-member chamber orchestra made up of some of the area’s best musicians. Apollo’s inaugural concert, a performance at the First Baptist Church of Medford in June, 2018 featured the music of Strauss, Wagner, and Stravinsky. Elias Miller conducted the well-attended and well-received event. In the future, the Apollo Ensemble looks forward to many more community concert performances in the Boston area featuring music written for both chamber orchestra and for large chamber ensemble.
(I am honored to join the ensemble on trumpet. If you attend the concert because of this post, please find me during intermission or afterwards and say hello.)
11/05/2018 Austin FraktI’m one of seven trumpets (as well as other brass instruments and percussion) playing in the Mystic Brass Ensemble on Sunday, November 11 at 3PM at the First Baptist Church of Arlington (819 Mass. Ave., Arlington, MA). Come hear us! The concert is free, though donations are welcome.
Below is the line up of music, with links to others playing the pieces. The first half of Renaissance music will be antiphonal. That means half our group will be in a choir loft at the front of the church, the other half about 100 feet away in an even higher choir loft at the back of the church. How do we coordinate across this massive distance and still sound amazing? Come and find out!
Once we tire of dazzling you with antiphonal play, we’ll gather up front for the second half for modern pieces. It’ll be heroic and inspiring, because we’re brass (plus percussion).
If you come, please stop by to say hello.
Program
I. The Renaissance
Monteverdi: Toccata from L’Orfeo (as played by Concentus Musicus Wien)
Gabrieli: Canzon Duodecimi Toni (as played by the Empire Brass)
Gabrieli: Canzon Primi Toni (as played by the Philadelphia and Cleveland Brass Ensembles)
Gabrieli: Canzon Octavi Toni (as played by the Philadelphia and Cleveland Brass Ensembles)
Gabrieli: Canzon Septimi Toni No. 2 (as played by the Philadelphia and Cleveland Brass Ensembles)
II. The Modern
Copland: Fanfare for the Common Man (as played by the New York Philharmonic)
Hindemith: Morgenmusik (as played by the Chicago Symphony Brass Ensemble)
Ewazen: I. Andante, Allegro from Symphony in Brass (as played by Summit Brass)
Higgins: Colorado Fanfare (no recording available)
06/10/2014 Austin FraktLyrics of “If it were up to me,” by Cheryl Wheeler:
Maybe it’s the movies, maybe it’s the books
Maybe it’s the bullets, maybe it’s the real crooks
Maybe it’s the drugs, maybe it’s the parents
Maybe it’s the colors everybody’s wearin
Maybe it’s the President, maybe it’s the last one
Maybe it’s the one before that, what he done
Maybe it’s the high schools, maybe it’s the teachers
Maybe it’s the tattooed children in the bleachers
Maybe it’s the Bible, maybe it’s the lack
Maybe it’s the music, maybe it’s the crack
Maybe it’s the hairdos, maybe it’s the TV
Maybe it’s the cigarettes, maybe it’s the family
Maybe it’s the fast food, maybe it’s the news
Maybe it’s divorce, maybe it’s abuse
Maybe it’s the lawyers, maybe it’s the prisons
Maybe it’s the Senators, maybe it’s the system
Maybe it’s the fathers, maybe it’s the sons
Maybe it’s the sisters, maybe it’s the moms
Maybe it’s the radio, maybe it’s road rage
Maybe El Nino, or UV rays
Maybe it’s the army, maybe it’s the liquor
Maybe it’s the papers, maybe the militia
Maybe it’s the athletes, maybe it’s the ads
Maybe it’s the sports fans, maybe it’s a fad
Maybe it’s the magazines, maybe it’s the internet
Maybe it’s the lottery, maybe it’s the immigrants
Maybe it’s taxes, big business
Maybe it’s the KKK and the skinheads
Maybe it’s the communists, maybe it’s the Catholics
Maybe it’s the hippies, maybe it’s the addicts
Maybe it’s the art, maybe it’s the sex
Maybe it’s the homeless, maybe it’s the banks
Maybe it’s the clearcut, maybe it’s the ozone
Maybe it’s the chemicals, maybe it’s the car phones
Maybe it’s the fertilizer, maybe it’s the nose ringsMaybe it’s the end, but I know one thing.
If it were up to me, I’d take away the guns.
@afrakt
03/01/2014 Austin FraktA new music video by James McCormack:
H/t Gary Schweitzer who lists some of McCormack’s other videos.
11/23/2013 Austin Frakt 09/21/2013 Austin FraktWhere are the macroeconomics or health policy versions? Internet, make that happen!
09/12/2013 Austin Frakt 08/23/2013 Austin FraktDespite what you think, it’s not based on sound.
This set of seven experiments [] suggests that novices’ judgment mirrors that of professionals; both novices and experts make judgments about music performance quickly and automatically on the basis of visual information. Given the relative lack of consensus about competition outcomes noted among even expert judges, the fact that novices are able to quickly identify the actual competition winners at such high rates through silent videos alone is of both statistical and practical significance. These findings point to a powerful effect of vision-biased preferences on selection processes even at the highest levels of performance. […]
Professional musicians and competition judges consciously value sound as central to this domain of performance, yet they arrive at different winners depending on whether visual information is available or not. This finding suggests that visual cues are indeed persuasive and sway judges away from recognizing the best performance that they themselves have, by consensus, defined as dependent on sound. Professional judgment appears to be made with little conscious awareness that visual cues factor so heavily into preferences and decisions.
The paper is ungated. H/t Amitabh Chandra.
