Chamber Innovista, the new chamber music series being launched at USC this year, has its second installment of the season this Sunday at 3 PM, at the School of Music's recital hall. The series does its bit for the centennial of Olivier Messiaen's birth, with a performance of his "Quartet for the End of Time," with violinist William Terwilliger, cellist Robert Jesselson, clarinetist Joseph Eller, and pianist Marina Lomazov. It's the start of a stellar week for music in town: Wednesday night brings us a piano recital at the School of Music by the always interesting and enlightening Joseph Rackers. The next night, Thursday the 10th at the Columbia Museum of Art, the return of the Miro Quartet on the Wadsworth Series. You can't ask for a better week than this!

As I was up in the area anyway last weekend for another installment of the Beethoven violin sonata cycle with Aaron Berofsky (a concert in Lansing), it worked out beautifully for both of us to be able to take part in a tribute concert in Ann Arbor for composer William Bolcom, who is retiring from the University of Michigan at the end of this year, ending a remarkable 35-year association with the school. Aaron and I did a couple of movements from Bolcom's second violin sonata. Article from the Ann Arbor News on the special evening here, and photo of some of us onstage together at concert's end with Bill here.

Southern Exposure, besides being the only real presenter of new concert music here in the Midlands, is also the only presenter here that occasionally branches out into what could be called world music. Many of you will recall the electrifying performance a couple of years ago by Kartik Seshadri; this Saturday night brings the ensemble Gamelan Galak Tika, in residence at MIT under the directorship of composer/performer Evan Ziporyn. Details on the concert can be found here.

Richard Wagner: "Tristan und Isolde." Live High-Def simulcast from the Metropolitan Opera, on the big screen at Villages at Sandhill, out in northeast Columbia, this Saturday afternoon. Deborah Voigt singing. James Levine conducting. The Met Orchestra. Heck of a lot cheaper than seeing it live. (Especially if you factor in the cost of flying to NYC). Five and half hours. You won't be the same person when you walk out of the theatre. Here's where to go.

Enrique Graf,  who has been on the piano faculty of the College of Charleston for some years now, will be the soloist this Saturday night with the South Carolina Philharmonic. On the program: Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto...the two-handed one...few concerti seamlessly integrate soloist with orchestra as well as this one, and it's generous with the solos it hands out to principal players all throughout the orchestra, especially winds and brass. It manages to be a showcase for both the pianist and the orchestra. The influence of jazz is pervasive. Then there's that slow movement...here it is, played by Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli:

Also on the program Saturday: John Adams' "Chairman Dances" and Rachmaninoff's "Symphonic Dances."