Recent Events
and some critical comments

After its 10th annual "SchickelFest" with Peter Schickele in 2000, MARK SWED wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "The performances were ever appealing. The Armadillos and their friends gave the heartening impression that they had become musicians just so that they would enjoy evenings like this."

DilloWeen XXIV
The Armadillos (with Barry as Hansel, Ray as Gretel, Steve as the Angel and Armen as the Witch!) played to their costumed audience (as usual in a private home, this time in Mar Vista in late October, 2007) music from Humperdinck’s “Hansel & Gretel”, music from P.D.Q. Bach’s “Hansel & Gretel & Ted & Alice”, F.B.I. Bach’s “The Fugue-ative” and other favorites of the DilloWeen season.

P.D.Q. Bach & Peter Schickele
The Jekyll & Hyde Tour
This performance, recorded live for the CD of the same name, now available, featured Schickele, enabler, Michèle Eaton, off-coloratura soprano, David Düsing, tenor profundo and the Armadillos in works by P.D.Q. & Schickele.
June 16, 2007, Gordon Performing Arts Center
Owings Mills, Maryland

17th Annual Music by Peter Schickele
There were two performances this year with Peter and the Armadillos and guest artists oboist Keve Wilson and pianists Susan Svrcek and Alan Steinberger in a program which included: The World Premiere of “After Hearing Bach oboe, violin, viola & cello and the Quintets for Piano and Strings Nos. 1 & 2
April 7 & 9, 2007, at Contrapuntal Performance Hall in Brentwood
and Caltech’s Dabney Lounge

Music at LACMA
The American West: Music of Aaron Copland
Armadillo String Quartet and Dave Grusin
The Armadillos played music of Aaron Copland with guest artists
clarinetist Gary Bovyer and pianist Christopher Weldon;
Dave Grusin performed his compositions in this new series.
March 19, 2007, Bing Theater, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

DilloWeen XXIII
The Armadillos (with Barry as the scarecrow, Ray as the tin man, Steve as the lion and Armen as Dorothy!) played to their costumed audience (as usual in a private home, this time in La Canada in early November, 2006) the modern premiere of F.B.I. Bach's "1801, a Spaced Oddity" as well as favorites such as "Variations on Traümerei" by Robert Hurwitz, "FinTango" by Jan Sibelius as recomposed by Barry Socher and "Prelude to the Afternoon on a Farm" by Debussy Fields.

The Henry J. Bruman Summer
Chamber Music Festival
The Armadillos played their 6th annual program for this Festival in a program celebrating 3 composers' birthdays: Mozart’s 250th with his Divertimento in D, K 136, Shostakovich’s 100th with his String Quartet No. 7, Op. 108, and Taneyev’s 150th with his String Quartet No. 2, Op. 5; on July 20, 2006, at UCLA’s Korn Convocation Hall, at The Anderson School.

16th Annual Music by Peter Schickele
Peter and the Armadillos were joined by guest artists oboist Keve Wilson and pianist Guy Hallman in a program which included: The Emperor’s New Clothes for narrator, oboe, violin, viola, cello & piano, String Quartet No. 3, “The Four Seasons” and the West Coast Premiere of Mountain Music II for viola & piano
April 26, 2006, at Caltech’s Dabney Lounge

40th Anniversary PDQ Bach Concert in NYC
The Armadillos performed the Upper West Side premiere of the
PDQ Bach String Quartet, "The Moose", in 3 performances
at Symphony Space in Manhatten December 27, 28 & 29, 2005

“To describe the music in any detail would be to give away Mr. Schickele's jokes, but suffice to say that only at a P. D. Q. concert can you hear a string quartet - ‘The Moose’ (S. Y2K) - in which fragments of Beethoven, Stephen Foster, Shostakovich and Rossini (as well as a few jazz cadences) jostle for the spotlight...
Mr. Schickele's roster of fine musicians included... the Armadillo Quartet and the American Serpent Players, as well as a handful of vocal soloists, all of whom contributed straight-facedly as Mr. Schickele made an art of tomfoolery.”
Allan Kozinn, New York Times

A Little Jewish Night Music
The Jewish Music Commission of Los Angeles presented
the Armadillos with clarinetist Zinovy Goro and pianist Alan Steinberger performing works by Los Angeles Jewish composers Aminadav Aloni, Robert Strassburg, & Michael Isaacson, and by Sergei Prokofiev, Grzegorz Fitelberg, Alexander Krejn & Abraham Ellstein at Temple Valley Beth Shalom’s Lopaty Hall - November 29, 2005

Music by Charles Ives: Ives + 50
Commemorated the 50th anniversary of the death of Charles Ives, which featured music composed or arranged for string quartet, with guest artist Juliana Gondek, soprano, on May 11, 2004, at Zipper Concert Hall, Colburn School of Performing Arts

“...leave it to the Armadillos, as the group likes to refer to itself, to be the only local organization properly acknowledging a significant anniversary in American music. Next Wednesday is the 50th anniversary of Charles Ives' death, and Tuesday night the Armadillos played a program devoted to the composer's string quartet music.
...the demanding program was more than capably played by musicians alert to a composer of many levels.
At its and Ives' best, as in the last movement of the Second Quartet, the evening's performance rose to a level of transcendence.”
--Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times

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