Community Update

Baroque Orchestra’s Fresh Breezes Festival Concert

Brings Enchantment, Awe as Young Performers Cast a
Spell

           By Jon
Plaut

Two prize-winning young
musicians topped the Baroque Orchestra of New Jersey’s opening concert in the
2013 Music Festival.  They were
award-winning performers at the music competitions held by The Baroque
Orchestra in the last two years. 

Soyeong Park is
a violinist who is able to transmit uncommon texture and feeling, and she did
so in a Chaconne by Tomaso Vitali. 
Her bow work is so exquisite, particularly when she plays on more than
one string at a time.  Ms. Park
traveled this year with Joshua Bell and the National Youth Symphony Orchestra
to the London Proms.  Those who have
experienced her musicianship with the Baroque Orchestra have had the special
treat of witnessing this emerging talent.

Constance Kaita played the brilliant first movement of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #3, the allegro con brio with the Baroque
Orchestra.  And it was a
“brightness” that she, teamed with Beethoven and Dr. Butts, produced.  Ms. Kaita’s musicianship, too, simply
overwhelmed the audience as this prize-winning young pianist put on full
display her multi-faceted talent. 
An electric excitement moved from Ms. Kaita’s Steinway piano across the
Dolan Performance Hall on this Sunday evening concert. 

The program was greatly
augmented by the first performance of Dr. Butts’ Concerto for Bassoon with
its newly-added third movement, a composition he wrote for the Orchestra’s
principal bassoonist Andrew Pecota who has performed the work (now complete)
several times with the Orchestra. 
Dr. Butts added into the program an intriguing Requiem for three cellos,
performed by The Monticelli Trio, and a precise performance of Haydn’s Symphony #101, The Clock. 

This program was the first
in a week-long Summer Music Festival series by The Baroque Orchestra of New
Jersey under Dr. Butts’ leadership. 
The series will include organ concerts at Grace Church, Madison, a
chamber music presentation, also at Grace Church, and an original comedic work
about Oscar Wilde in America, by playwright Jewel Seehaus-Fisher and Dr. Butts
and Verdi’s operatic masterpiece, Otello, presented in conjunction
with the Eastern Opera Company of New Jersey at Dolan Hall, College of Saint
Elizabeth. Aug. 11.

The two brilliant young
female musicians, Soyeong Park on the violin, and Constance Kaita on the piano,
played  great
classical pieces launching the Summer Festival in a spell-binding manner. 

                                              
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Jon Plaut writes
reviews on culture for area newspapers and publications.  He teaches at Rutgers University.