At the February 2 Quad City Symphony Orchestra concert, the crowd was noticeably perplexed by the divergent Barber Violin Concerto and seemingly in pain sitting through Mahler’s lengthy but cheery Fourth Symphony.
Take a fairly intelligent three-chord progression and pair it with minimalist vocal melodies executed at a snail’s pace, and you’ve accomplished 90 percent of what decent “slo-core” music requires. The other 10 percent isn’t so easy to pull off, but smart lyrics, musicianship, and the power to evoke an emotional response bring the package to completion.
It’s doubtless Beethoven was a genius of rare proportion and that his music stands as a monument in the canon of classical music, yet his placement on the musical timeline put an unusual burden on his output. On one hand, he was a classicist, falling at the end of the classical period and tutored by one of its masters, Franz Joseph Haydn.
Variety is the order of the day on the local music scene. Two new releases by local bands are now available, and fans of electronic music and straight-ahead heavy metal should have a good time with both albums. Also, we finally caught up with a recent recording by a local singer that should please people who like soft ballads and light country.
Undoubtedly Dvorak’s Cello Concerto is the most famous piece of its type ever written. In fact, composers such as Brahms – upon hearing Dvorak’s piece – lamented that they hadn’t written a cello concerto themselves.
It was a great idea by the Blackthorn Pub & Eatery. Host local bands on four consecutive Sundays in late summer, record their sets, compile the best performances on CD, and sell it as a benefit for two charities, Gilda’s Club of the Quad Cities and the Mississippi Valley Blues Society’s BlueSKool program.
Zuill Bailey was a rambunctious child. The cello changed him. Bailey's first encounter with the cello was at a symphony concert as a young child. Running through the halls, he "smashed into a girl holding a cello," breaking the instrument, he recalled.
With a robust musical tradition to draw on, the Quad City Symphony Orchestra (QCSO) has released its first full-length CD, an assembly of movements and snippets drawn from recordings by Augustana’s WVIK public-radio station.
One of the primary goals of any artist, especially a jazz musician, is to have a distinctive style. Knowledgeable jazz musicians and even fans can hear just a few bars of Clark Terry, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Milt Jackson, Thelonious Monk, and many others and easily recognize who is playing.
Sergei Rachmaninoff was an average composer and an excellent performer. He composed mainly in the 20th Century, yet the Romantic idiom dominated his work; while other composers were exploring the edges of modern composition, Rachmaninoff was unable to move beyond the high drama of the 1800s.

Pages