“Richman opened the concert with one of his own works, An Overture to Blanche, an 11-minute concert expansion on part of his incidental music for the recent Clarence Brown Theatre production of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. As a solo tenor sax passage sets the stage, I found myself pleasantly immersed in the smoky, jazzy environs of New Orleans’ French Quarter. Just as quickly, I found myself falling for the musical seduction of overlapping instrumental voices and tonalities. Seductive as well was the contrast of Blanche’s naive vulnerability via a simple string quartet melody, with the trumpet’s raw, brutish depiction of Stanley Kowalski.”
