Classics and jazz will combine in February 3 benefit concert
 

Submitted by Eleanor Mathews
 

The Performing Arts Center at Watchung Hills will host its second major event since its gala opening four months ago: a benefit performance featuring the acclaimed Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra of Hungary. The proceeds for the concert, to be held on Saturday, February 3, at 8:00PM, will benefit the high school’s performing arts program.

The Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra of Hungary, as the name suggests, focuses on the works of the nineteenth century composer Felix Mendelssohn. However, the sixteen-member group’s repertoire goes beyond the baroque to the contemporary – Mendelssohn and more. Its artistic director and principal violinist, Peter Kovats, declares that “it is important for us to play different styles, different composers.” Thus, as the group has performed at various festivals throughout the world, touring England, France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Slovenia and Romania, jazz selections have been added to their repertoire.

The eclectic February 3 concert will thus also highlight two well-regarded figures in the jazz world: Bob Magnuson, tenor saxophone and Perry Robinson, clarinet. Watchung Hills Regional High School senior Helen Kim, an accomplished pianist, will also perform.

Saxman Magnuson has been called “a fixture on the New York studio scene,” an artist who has performed on countless TV and radio commercials and featured on CDs by Patti Austin, Whitney Houston, Phoebe Snow, Cleo Laine, Marc Cohen, Michael Bolton, BB King, Isaac Hayes, Eddie Murphy and others. He has had many CD releases on the CIMP and Cap labels, leads his own quartet, AURA, and plays lead with Mike Longo’s New York State of the Art Jazz Ensemble.

Robinson, son of folk music composer Earl Robinson, began playing clarinet at the age of nine and studied under many of the greats in modern jazz, composers as well as theorists. He traveled abroad, to Spain and Finland, where he heard and was heard by artists in his field, and recorded his first album as leader in 1962 in Newark for Savoy Records. He worked with the Jazz Composers Orchestra in the early 1970’s, and was involved with the Two Generations of Brubeck ensemble. He continues today with the Galaxie Dream Band, leads his own groups, released albums under the West Wind label, has led his own clarinet band (with up to seven clarinets), the Licorice Factory, and the Spaced-Time Swing Band.

A clarinet concerto was written for Robinson, in fact. It premiered in 1985, with its composer, Gary M. Schneider, leading what is now known as the Hudson Chamber Orchestra. Thus, it is no mere coincidence that the February 3 Benefit Concert at the Performing Arts Center will not only include the Schneider Concerto for Jazz Clarinet and Strings, featuring Robinson, but also the composer himself as director. The concerto is a one-movement composition “heavily influenced by the work of Leonard Bernstein, and involves windows of clarinet improvisation that flow seamlessly into written sections,” composer-conductor Schneider says.

The classics coupled with jazz. How did these two unlikely ingredients get together?

Schneider, who will conduct the performance, has an imposing array of credentials. His conducting experience runs the gamut—orchestral, opera/musical theatre, dance, choral—in venues as widely separated as Hoboken, Bethesda, Annapolis, Princeton, Savannah Germany, France and of course Hungary. He has lectured and taught at several universities, led workshops in conducting, and composed. Along the way, he has become close to individual artists and performing groups across the continents.

As guest conductor of the Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra, Schneider had formed special ties with the group and its Artistic Director, Kovats. He learned that the group would be in New York City before the United Nations on January 30 to perform a new work commemorating the genocide of the gypsy peoples. Having a son at Watchung Hills Regional High School, Schneider also knew that the directors of the school’s newly-inaugurated Performing Arts Center were seeking benefit programs for the venue. He offered to initiate inquiries to extend invitations to perform to the Hungarian artists and to the jazz musicians. What’s more, he volunteered his own services as conductor and the talents of his wife, soprano Susan May Schneider.

The benefit, which reflects the diverse talents of both the classicists and the jazz artists, will include in its program such selections as Mendelssohn’s Symphony for Strings in B Minor, Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, Schneider’s Concert for Clarinet and Strings, Mozart’s Exsultate Jubilate, Kurt Weil/Schneider’s My Ship, and Ferenc Farkas’ Air and Hungarian Rondo.

Advanced tickets for the performance may be purchased in the main office of Watchung Hills Regional High School, 108 Stirling Road in Warren Township, or ordered through the school web-site www.whrhs.org. Orchestra seats are $20 for adults, $10 for senior citizens and students; rear orchestra and mezzanine seats are $10 for adults and $7 for seniors and students. Tickets will also be available on the night of the performance.

The Performing Arts Center at Watchung Hills was built not only to serve the educational needs of the school’s growing population, but also to serve as “a point of congregation,” a means of bringing the performing arts into the community at large. The February 3 concert is the first big step in that direction.

For further information contact: Judith Mulder, Arts Supervisor

Watchung Hills Regional High School

908-647-4800 X 5021