Koen Beets
Flanders Recorder Quartet
Milwaukee’s Early Music Now brings one of the world’s top ensembles, the award-winning Flanders Recorder Quartet, to Milwaukee’s East Side for a concert titled “The Final Chapter: 30 Years.” After three decades of live performances—more than 1,800 concerts in 42 countries spanning five continents—they’re disbanding at the conclusion of 2018. They’ve been acclaimed worldwide for, as Early Music Now’s Charles Grosz describes, their “clarity of ensemble playing, technical perfection, homogeneous sound and true-to-style interpretation” of great music.
Their Milwaukee concert features a program focused on recorder transcriptions of music spanning nearly five centuries; composers include Michael Praetorius, Pieter Campo, Robert Parsons and Johann Sebastian Bach. The concert’s location, Grosz explains, includes a most apropos “Flemish tapestry created in 1510” as well as “the largest stained-glass windows ever created by the Tiffany studios.” (John Jahn)
Saturday, Feb. 17 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 914 E. Knapp St. For tickets, call 414-225-3113 or visit earlymusicnow.org/this-season/flanders.
Peter Stathas Dance
Hales Corners native Peter Stathas was a professional dancer and emerging choreographer in New York City from the late ’70s to the mid-’80s when he left his dance career to study physical therapy. In the early ’90s, he returned to Milwaukee to open the highly successful Freedom Physical Therapy Services. In 2016, after raising a son as a single dad, he revived his NYC dance company, Peter Stathas Dance, and presented new and old works.
This weekend, he’s showing Conundrum, a new work-in-progress for four dancers to Brahms String Quartet No. 1. The showcase/lecture demo is both a fundraiser for his dance company and a chance for audiences to meet him and see him work. The finished Conundrum will be performed later this spring with three other pieces. (John Schneider)
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2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 18 at Danceworks. For tickets, call 414-277-8480 ext. 6025 or visit danceworksmke.org/purchase-tickets.
Classical Music/Dance More-To-Do
Turtle Island Quartet
Winners of two Grammy Awards, this string quartet consists of violinists David Balakrishnan and Alex Hargreaves, cellist Malcolm Parson and violist Benjamin von Gutzeit. Their upcoming concert is titled “Bird’s Eye View: The Legend of Charlie Parker,” and is thus something of a classical-jazz-fusion homage to the legendary musician. Iconic Parker works will be juxtaposed with original responses by Turtle Island players—intertwined with other thematic material from the bebop era and beyond.
Friday, Feb. 16 at the South Milwaukee PAC, 901 15th Ave. For tickets, call 414-766-5049 or visit southmilwaukeepac.org/event/turtleisland.
Globalfest on the Road
This event, subtitled “The New Golden Age of Latin Music,” reflects the music of the emerging Mexican American communities of the U. S. Southwest. Two exciting bands that specialize in this music and which are forging new paths for the Latin sound, Orkesta Mendoza and Las Cafeteras, will join forces for a lively concert that blends eras and styles galore.
Friday, Feb. 16 at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts, 19805 W. Capitol Drive, Brookfield. For tickets, call 262-781-9520 or visit wilson-center.com.