Dario Acosta Teich Wants You to Feel the Music
Dario Acosta Teich grew up in a musical family in Tucumán, one of the smallest provinces in Argentina. He first began playing the guitar with his father, and he says that his parents sent him to a conservatory when they recognized his passion for music.
Acosta Teich will bring that passion to Wellfleet Preservation Hall (335 Main St.) with his quartet on Saturday, Feb. 18 at 5 p.m.
While his background includes South American musical genres like the Afro-Latin candombe of Rio de la Plata and the chacarera and huayno of the Andes, Acosta Teich says he has always been curious about “other musics” like classical and jazz, all of which he describes as different languages. His current repertoire combines traditional folk music roots with those other languages.
“It’s a whole universe of sound,” he says. “I investigate different kinds of rhythm, structure, harmony, and melody. People who go to my concerts are looking for something different.” During his performances, he tells the background and the stories of the songs he plays, including where they come from and the genres that inspired them.
Acosta Teich left Tucumán when he was 19 and now lives in New York City. He says playing his kind of nontraditional jazz with Argentinean roots helps him feel connected to his family and homeland.
The show in Wellfleet will be the first time the band has brought his new project to Cape Cod. Along with Acosta Teich on guitar and vocals, the quartet includes Fernando Huergo on bass, Stephen Langone on drums, and Yulia Musayelyan on flute.
Despite his many years of performing, Acosta Teich says he still gets nervous before a show. So far, audiences have responded well. “I hope people like my concerts,” he says. “But more than that, I hope people can understand them. That’s when they close their eyes and feel the music.”
Tickets are $25 at wellfleetpreservationhall.org. —Dorothea Samaha
Love Is in the Air … and on the Page
When you think of books about love, a certain kind of “romance novel” probably comes to mind. But according to writer Indira Ganesan, the students who take her classes usually aren’t interested in romance. “They want to write about love in families and different kinds of love,” she says.
Ganesan will teach a three-session course on writing love stories at Wellfleet Preservation Hall from Tuesday, Feb. 21 to Thursday, Feb. 23. The class will meet from 1 to 4 p.m. daily.
As well as writing fiction, including three best-selling novels, Ganesan teaches at Emerson College and hosts a global music program on Provincetown’s WOMR-FM Community Radio. She began teaching the “Writing Garden” workshops about a year ago.
Participants in the workshop will read writing by Virginia Woolf and Toni Morrison, among others. They will then begin to write their projects — which can take the form of short stories, memoirs, novels, or poetry — and share them with other students. Ganesan says that writers of all experience levels can participate, and that the interaction between students is an integral part of the experience. “Writing is a three-part act,” she says. “One is the writing, two is the sharing, and three is the feedback.”
See wellfleetpreservationhall.org for registration information. —Eve Samaha
Telling Stories Through Music
In classical music, a leitmotif is a musical phrase or piece of repeated melody that is used for narrative effect, one that can express a character’s personality or convey the impression of a landscape or weather. Motifs in music are more subjective than those in literature.
“A story told through music can have as many meanings as the number of people listening,” says Craig Combs of Provincetown’s Red Door Chamber Quartet. The ensemble, formed last year to add to classical music programming on the Outer Cape during the off-season, will be performing its next concert, “Storytelling Without Words,” at the Provincetown United Methodist Church (20 Shank Painter Road) on Saturday, Feb. 18 at 3 p.m.
The concert includes works by five 19th- and 20th-century composers, including Black American composers Henry Thacker Burleigh and William Grant Still. Antonín Dvořák’s 1875 Piano Trio No. 1 will be performed alongside Burleigh’s “Southland Sketches” (1916) in a kind of musical dialogue: Combs says that Burleigh taught Dvorak many of the traditional spirituals that influenced Dvořák’s towering New World Symphony.
Carl Maria von Weber’s “Shepherd’s Lament,” a movement from an 1818-19 trio for flute, cello, and piano, tells the story of a lovelorn shepherd tending his flock — a melancholy piece that finds unexpected echoes in Still’s “Blues” (1937), a meditation on life along Harlem’s Lenox Avenue, and “Summerland” (1935), which tells the story of the soul after death. Ned Rorem’s 1983 Dances for Cello and Piano will round out the program.
The musicians in the quartet are a mix of Provincetown residents and visitors. Combs, who plays piano, and flutist Eric Maul live in town, while violinist Jeffrey Thurston is a longtime seasonal resident, and New York City-based cellist Luke Krafka will be visiting for the third time.
There is a $20 recommended donation for the concert; those age 17 and under are admitted free. See reddoorchambermusic.com for more information. —John D’Addario
Celebrating the ‘Big and Bold’ Art of Shirley Glasser
“Big and Bold,” the title of an exhibition of paintings by Shirley Glasser at the Wellfleet Adult Community Center (715 Old Kings Hwy.), is an apt description of her art. The boldness is conveyed through Glasser’s use of pure, bright color and large graphic shapes, often based on natural forms from the landscape or the garden. Her gutsy sensibility just as easily veers toward abstraction in paintings with gestural marks and undefined shapes.
As her son Len Glasser says, Glasser’s work also represents “a diverse body of forms and media.” The exhibition also includes five sculptures, prints, and pastels.
Glasser, a long-time Wellfleet resident, died in 2021. This memorial retrospective celebrates her 45-year artistic journey. Glasser enrolled in art school at age 48 and earned a B.F.A. at SUNY Purchase. A perpetual learner, she learned bronze casting later in life.
The exhibition is on view until Feb. 28. See the community center’s Facebook page for more information. —Abraham Storer
