News

Terry Umstead and Karin Ann Park are this year’s winners of the Valley Women’s Club Hammer-Marcum Awards, recognizing the pair’s contributions to the San Lorenzo Valley.

Our “music man” is Michel Singher, Conductor of Espressivo, a small, intense orchestra.On September 13 at 4:00 p.m. at the San Lorenzo Valley Performing Arts Center in Felton, Espressivo will play selected pieces by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Jacques Ibert, Richard Wagner, and Paul Hindemith. The program, Music on the Mountain, will be brought to SLVPAC by the San Lorenzo Valley Foundation for Education to benefit San Lorenzo Valley schools.Michel Singher conducted the Hamburg State Opera and now resides in Felton with his wife, renowned abstract oil painter, Elizabeth Kaminski. Less than one year ago, Singher was retired. Now, he is engaged in an quest that he had never imagined would occur. “It is a totally consuming adventure to be organizing this program. Last year, I was retired and catching up on my reading and now I am a very busy man,” said Singher.Asked about the challenge of creating Music on the Mountain, Singher explained that because the orchestra is small, there are few pieces for them to play. Small groups between three and eight players and up to 17 players might be playing chamber music and would do so without a conductor. Espressivo is made up of seven players and will be conducted by Singher. He said that the main challenge for them is finding enough pieces by excellent composers that can be played by a small orchestra.Espressivo will perform “Capriccio” by Ibert. Singher describes this piece as “urbane, smooth and suave.” He contrasted that piece to Hindemith’s “Kammermusik Nr. 1, Op. 24.” He said that work “was one of the most important of the 20th century.” Describing it as “youthful, brash, complicated, loud but catchy,” he felt that it would be another appropriate piece for Espressivo to perform.Singher compared the visual art of a painter to that of a musician. He said that a painter starts with nothing and pulls out of themselves what they need to express; with music, the artist is given a recipe.“The way that works is the composer writes a score, each player has a piece of it, and the conductor brings all pieces together to create the final result,” said Singher. He talked about the whole ‘shape’ of the piece being made of implied ‘shapes’ and ‘forms.’ “These are the patterns of repetition that make up the composition. It’s like seeing the whole picture when you recognize the shapes and forms made by rhythm, notes, harmony, and melody,” he said.Come listen to Espressivo at Music on the Mountain and hear the ‘shapes’ and ‘forms’ of the music produced by our man of music as he conducts this small, intense orchestra.Tickets are on sale at: slvfoundation.org. For more information, call: 234-0236

Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office

Mountain Community Resources in Felton has been selected as one of the 2009 Good Times Community Fund recipients.