Announcing: the Hatchfund Campaign for our Mentoring Program

Dear Friends,

We are excited to share our latest news with you: today, September 1, we are officially launching our Mentoring Program campaign on Hatchfund, a non-profit crowd-funding website dedicated exclusively to supporting art and artists like us.  I am happy to say that with the support of donors like you, we have already raised $1600, or an astounding 40% of our target goal! Now we need your help to reach our “stretch goal” of $6,000 by September 30 so we can expand our mentoring program for the coming year.

In Winsor Music’s Mentoring Program, high school students and a professional mentor play together in a small chamber music group. Last January, we started our first mentoring ensemble, Violobos, with Alma Bitran, Njioma Grevious, Mitsuru Yonezaki and myself.  This ensemble rehearses 2 hours every two weeks over the course of the academic year. The ensemble also performs for the Boston community in Winsor Music’s outreach concerts, as well as on our chamber series alongside professional soloists and ensembles. This season, we are formalizing and expanding the program to include more students, and violinist Gabriela Diaz will lead the next ensemble.

The money raised through this campaign will be used as a stipend to fairly compensate our mentor Gabby for her time and commitment to the program and her students. All donations are tax-deductible. Any surplus raised over the original goal will be used to fund the mentoring project in future years. We’re offering some great rewards for your donation, like VIP attendance at a closed dress rehearsal or even a house concert!

Please check out our project page here: http://www.hatchfund.org/project/mentoring_program and don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you have any questions about the program, the campaign, or anything else.

Thank you so much, as always, for your support of Winsor Music. You have told us, and we agree, that the future of our organization is in educating and supporting the next generation of musicians and music lovers. We love this work, and we are so grateful that you help us to do it.

Open Auditions for the Bach Institute!

It’s hard to believe, but this is the fifth year that the Bach Institute, a collaboration between Emmanuel Music, Winsor Music, and Oberlin College, has been in operation! Exciting enough that it’s our fifth anniversary, but even more exciting is the fact that we are holding competitive auditions for the first time this year! 

The Bach Institute is now open to college students, graduate students and young professionals from all over the world. There are openings for: soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone/bass-baritone, violin, oboe, flute, cello, and keyboard. (Keyboard players should know or expect to learn figured bass.) If you or someone you know is interested in applying, please visit our web page, which has all of the information you could ask for and an online application and audition form. Singers are asked to provide an mp3 of any Bach aria in German, and instrumentalists must submit a single mp3 containing both a fast and slow movement of any instrumental Bach work. Applications are due by October 7, 2015.

All of the collaborators on the Bach Institute are incredibly proud of this program. It provides students and young professionals with the opportunity to explore and perform Bach cantata arias. For nearly three weeks in January, students participate in the weekly cantatas at Emmanuel Church, study Bach cantata arias and perform them on outreach concerts in Boston and the surrounding area. The culmination of the Bach Institute is a public concert at Emmanuel Church. 

Please share with your friends, colleagues, and students: winsormusic.org/bachinstitute, and email bachinstitute@emmanuelmusic.org with any questions you might have. 

What's in our toolbox? CoSchedule!

Guess what, everyone? We just hit 500 likes on Facebook last week, something we’ve been working on all year! At least when we had the time… when we remembered to think about it… Maintaining our blog and social media profiles is a lot on top of our day to day work as a three-person staff, but we know it's the best way to keep in touch with all of you. We've got plenty of ideas but not a lot of time, so we figured we needed a good tool to pull it all together.

This summer, I asked our intern Tricia to research some social media management tools. She presented me with a few well-known names, but told me right away that her favorite was CoSchedule because their application has a drag and drop calendar. (She’s been paying attention! I think drag-and-drop calendars are great for flexibility and adaptive planning.) 

CoSchedule is more than a calendar, more than a posting queue, and more than a spreadsheet. It’s a comprehensive editorial calendar that allows you to plan blog posts, schedule social posts, communicate with your team, assign tasks, and get a birds’ eye view of it all. We’ve only been using it for a few weeks, but it’s changed our approach to content, social networking, and our digital presence. 

We have a three-person staff, but we know we need to make the time for content marketing and social media. One of the time-saving features I love about CoSchedule is the notes function. When I stumble across a link that I want to post, I throw it onto my CoSchedule calendar as a note.  Later on, I turn it into a full-fledged social post, usually when I’m doing my planning for the next few weeks. If I want to move the post or the note because something more relevant comes up, all I have to do is drag and drop. 

As far as blogging goes, you can use CoSchedule solely as an editorial calendar. If you’re on a WordPress website (we’re not — Squarespace all the way!) you can connect your blog to CoSchedule and write your content within the CoSchedule interface, or work with CoSchedule’s great social integrations in WordPress. If you use another content management platform like we do, there's a simple workaround. You can connect CoSchedule to services like Google Docs or Evernote and easily export your content in multiple formats. Meanwhile, you're keeping track of tasks, comments, and social media related to that blog post in CoSchedule. 

I have a Google Alert set up for several of our organization’s key interests and mission topics. J.S. Bach is a particularly lively one! I glance over those results as they come into my inbox, and if any are useful, I put them on the CoSchedule calendar as a note. I try to generate at least one piece of content daily from within CoSchedule. After that, I’ll spend fifteen minutes a day scrolling through our peer organizations to share their posts. Audiences seem to respond well when we cross-promote!

CoSchedule integrates with most social media networks, Bit.ly, Google Calendar, and Buffer. There’s a 14-day free trial, and the subscription costs are certainly cheaper than hiring another staff member. Their customer service is helpful and responsive. I’ve been in touch with them several times and they've always given a great response. 

If you want to try a free trial, use our referral link (here and above) and please reach out to me if you have any questions. They also have great content and free tools on their website that anyone can use and make good use of, whether they’re a CoSchedule user or not. I encourage you to check them out, and please do reach out if you have any questions. And if you like it, make sure to thank Tricia! 

New Music, New Pathways: An Interview with James Baker

For the last two weeks, our Artistic Director Peggy Pearson has been working with and performing the new works of ten composition fellows at the Wellesley Composer’s Conference, one of the oldest and most prestigious conferences of its kind. Guided for nearly 40 years by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Mario Davidovsky, the Composers Conference & Chamber Music Workshops offer participants a unique two-fold experience. First, it provides a select number of emerging composers with an intense two-week program of seminars, public colloquia, and performances of their recent works. It also provides talented amateur chamber musicians with a stimulating workshop environment that includes coachings by nationally-renowned faculty, opportunities to attend masterclasses, concerts, and much more. The final concert will take place this Saturday, August 2nd at 8pm, in Houghton Chapel on the Wellesley College Campus (click here for directions and here for the complete program). 

James Baker is Music Director and Conductor of the Composers Conference at Wellesley College, Director of the Percussion Ensemble at the Mannes College of Music, and Principal Percussionist of the New York City Ballet Orchestra. Mr. Baker was the Conductor of the New York New Music Ensemble and is Principal Conductor of the Talea Ensemble. As instrumentalist or conductor he has premiered music by many of the great composers of the 20th and 21st centuries including: Boulez, Cage, Carter, Messiaen, Dillon, Harvey, Wourinen, Davidovsky, Glass, Aperghis, Reich, Reynolds, Henze, Crumb, Babbitt, Neuwirth, Furrer, Billone, Fernyhough and many, many others, often working closely with the composers. Through his work with his groups, at conferences, universities and festivals, he is an advocate for the music of a whole new generation of composers from around the world, premiering hundreds of new works over the course of his career. He very graciously took some time out of his jam-packed schedule at the Composers Conference this week to speak with us about his love of new music, his work at the conference, and his unique vantage point as a percussionist, conductor, and composer of electronic music.

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What do you most look forward to at the Composers’ Conference every year?

I think the two things I look forward to most are: one, getting together with the amazing ensemble of musicians that we have here. The ensemble of twenty-seven players is an amazing group of people. I really look forward to working with them; they’re incredibly talented, incredibly giving, and generous with their time, both in rehearsal and in preparation; they’re very well prepared. Two, it’s very important for me to spend as much time as possible with Mario Davidovsky, and I look forward to being able to see him on a daily basis. In New York, we see each other often, but not daily, and it’s really great to be here with him. He’s one of the great masters and one of the really important people in my life, and I really love him, so it’s always a pleasure to be able to see him every day and talk to him about philosophy, music, architecture, religion, and a wide range of subjects on which he is an absolute authority. Those are the two things that I most look forward to. 

How did you become involved with the Composers’ Conference?

Mario Davidovsky, Composer and Conference Director

I was invited by Mario around seven years ago. The previous music director here, Efrain Guigui, was here for many, many years with Mario, and they basically established the paradigm that exists here, and were really responsible for how this place runs, and the ethos under which it operates. So Guigui was taken ill, and Mario just called me and asked me if I would want to substitute for Guigui for the summer, and I said sure. I had heard from a lot of people who came up here to play — I’d never come up here as a player myself — I had played and conducted a lot of Mario’s music in New York, so he knew me and invited me. Just before I arrived here, Maestro Guigui passed away, so I did the first summer here, and then was invited back for a second summer. After that second summer, they offered me the job as music director, which I gladly took because it’s such a special place, and that’s how I got here. 

What sets the Wellesley Composers’ Conference apart from others of its kind?

There are a couple of things. One is that there are a limited number of fellows — ten fellows —invited to write, and since there are only ten, they get a pretty good amount of attention from the musicians, from me, and from Mario, and the invited guest composers. We invite a distinguished guest every year to run the seminar with the composers. I also know from my contacts in the outside world who sit on panels adjudicating composers who have submitted their work for prizes — I hear that our recordings are some of the best that these young composers are submitting for adjudication. So not only are they getting personal attention, they get a very good performance. We provide them with a fully professional recording. We have a great recording engineer, Tony DiBartolo, he’s a super-great recording engineer, so the recordings are top-notch, and the performances are top-notch. Also, the fact that there are amateur participants here, the fact that it’s also a chamber music center sets us apart, as opposed to just a conference. So as well as a staff of unbelievably talented professional musicians and this group of [composition] fellows, we have a whole group of dedicated amateur players who just love to play. They come here every summer, they’re coached by the staff of professionals on traditional chamber music, and then my professional staff plays some traditional chamber music on every one of our concerts as well. So it’s a super mix of brand new and old, and a dedication to coaching the amateur players. There’s a very utopian atmosphere of professionals and amateurs getting together and working together and experiencing together as much as we can. It’s a really amazing place. At times, when it’s all clicking, the synergy is really fantastic. Everyone is co-existing musically, the coachings are going well, the pieces are going well, the records are going well, it can be just a fantastic experience. 

What sparked your interest in new music and working with composers?

It goes back pretty far. When I was a young kid in high school, I started listening to a lot of jazz, I was playing a lot of jazz music. At that time, I was listening to progressive jazz, Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, post-bebops, and then I started getting more into experimental jazz. At the same time, I had a teacher, I was was maybe fourteen or fifteen years old, and my percussion teacher also taught at Albany State University, so I used to go down there with him to take my percussion lessons and also to play in an ensemble there. At that time, there was an experimental studio for electronic music at Albany State. It was run by Joel Chadabe, and I think John Gibson was one of the guys that was there; these guys were doing some amazing, early experiments in electronic music. I used to just watch these guys wire stuff up and put things together, and I played in a couple of pieces were they were mixing live and electronic performances, and I was just completely fascinated by it. So I started getting really interested in new composition and new ideas about how to make music, and then at the same time I had a crazy record store in my town, a small town in upstate New York. When I would go to the record store to buy jazz records, all of a sudden I was finding these records by Elliott Carter and Pierre Boulez, and I didn’t really know who they were, but I started talking to my teacher about them, and he started telling me who they were, and I started listening to these records as a sixteen year old. That was it, it changed my life forever when I started hearing Boulez and Carter and Charles Wourinen and guys like that, I just knew that’s what I wanted to do. I’m really in love with classical music, and I still love jazz, but I’ve had a long love affair with living composers and contemporary music. 

With that background, it seems like you’re a great fit for the Composers Conference and Chamber Music Center!

I learn a lot, especially from the staff players; they’re so giving. I’ve been working with many of these people for most of my life, I learn a tremendous amount from them, and they’ve been very helpful in making me a better musician, no question. 

Have you tried your hand at composition yourself? 

I write music, I do. I don’t write as much as I make music. I make electronic music. I write things out that need to be performed by live players that I will then transform electronically. I have written things for live musicians and electronics, but these days I’m writing mostly electronics. I write a lot of music for dance. I’ve been commissioned by the NextWave festival at BAM, the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, I’ve had stuff performed all over the world, as relates to music for dance. It’s not something I advertise. I don’t consider myself to be the level of composer that we get here. I’d be completely mortified to play any of my music for Mario; I want him to love me! If he listened to any of my music, he wouldn’t love me anymore. It’s not that I’m ashamed of it; I’m like any composer in some ways, although I’m not as diligent. My work comes and goes. I just do a big chunk and then I won’t do it for a long time. I don’t consider myself a composer in that way, sitting down at a desk every day and working out issues. I like electronic music and I like experimenting with ways to produce it.

And I’m sure that it influences your work with the composers and musicians who are writing and performing this new music; your work must give you some insights into what they’re doing.

Yeah, it does, certainly. There are a lot of conductors who are not necessarily composer-friendly, and they can make the process very difficult because they can get angry about a lot of things that I would never get angry about. I really love composers and I give them a lot of leeway because I know how hard it is, and I give the players a lot of leeway because I know how hard it is to play! I’m always striving for the most collaborative process possible. I like to surround myself with people that are equal collaborators. 

That’s a nice transition into my next question. You have the perspective from your composition work when working with composers, and as a very active performing musician you have that perspective when working with the musicians, so how did you transition into conducting from percussion?

I started a long time ago. In high school, I had a music teacher in high school, not one of my private instrumental teachers, but a choral director, a very smart, sensitive musician named Wesley Sandberg. He took a real interest in me, tried to cultivate my talents and encourage me as much as possible. He said to me one day: “You should conduct some stuff!” I said okay, so I started out conducting some choral pieces, and I was bitten by the bug back then, and then as I went away to music school, I started conducting lots of ensemble pieces that I put together myself. I never studied conducting. I went to school to study playing, but I conducted a lot, because I loved new music and I was trying to do as much as possible. There wasn’t always so much offered by the school, especially at Juilliard. We really had to make our own way, because there was not a lot of contemporary music at Juilliard at the time when I was there. It was post-Luciano Berio; when he was there, he had an ensemble and they did a lot more, but when he left, the whole contemporary music scene there went sour. It was a pretty conservative place. So I had a lot of opportunities to conduct there, just putting stuff together. I just segued into it because I liked contemporary music and I just wanted to do it. I had some desire, it’s hard to identify what those desires are when you’re young, but there was something in me… I just felt like waving my arms! And then people pointed out to me later, you know, you have a lot of the required skills for this sort of thing: I could hear well, I could move my arms well from being a percussionist, all of those tactile parts of it were not that hard for me. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of music, of harmony and counterpoint and pitch… I’m really fascinated by that stuff, and the organization of music. It’s a great way to be an organizer, being a conductor. I still love playing and I still play all the time, it’s kind of a split life. I would never turn my back on playing, I really love it, and I love being with other players, playing chamber music, playing in the orchestra, too, it’s all really great. 

Facsimile of Le marteau sans maître by Pierre Boulez, available for purchase at Schott Music (click to view)

What piece of new music has had the most impact on your life/outlook/career?

That’s a hard one. One would probably be the Boulez Le marteau sans maître; when I first heard that piece down at the record store, I think it was the old recording by Robert Craft. I was just blown away by that. That, and there was a Stockhausen score of Gruppen when I was in high school. I used to play in an orchestra at Williams College, in Williams, MA, right across the border from my home town — I grew up in Troy, New York — I used to drive across and play, and I had time off I’d go to the Williams College library, and they had all of these scores there, and I remember looking at Gruppen and thinking “Wow.” That blew my mind too. Those two pieces really did it. There was something about the European avant garde… it was weird, I discovered the post-war European avant garde, then the American movement, it was kind of backwards. And how that happened to me in a backwater town in New York State, that I would be drawn into post-World War II European music as my first real love for new music… don’t ask me, it’s crazy. I don’t know how that happened.

A touch of fate?

Perhaps. That’s my earliest consciousness of something changing how I thought about music, those two pieces. 

Peggy Pearson and John Harbison Pay Tribute to Lorraine Hunt Lieberson

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in the Cantata No. 170 | The Bach Hour | WCRB

We absolutely love this interview: it's a chance to hear John Harbison and Peggy Pearson in conversation, a masterclass on the hard work and intentional craft of singing, an insightful analysis of Cantata 170, and a beautiful and thoughtful tribute to Lorraine, both as a musician and a person. Many thanks to Brian McCreath, the Bach Hour, and 99.5 WCRB for hosting, producing, and sharing this with us! 

You can hear the full Bach Hour show, and the full performance of Cantata 170 on their website.

Don't miss this: Peggy and John Harbison on The Bach Hour

This Sunday, July 12, host Brian McCreath interviews oboist Peggy Pearson and composer John Harbison on WCRB’s The Bach Hour about Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and her performance of Cantata 170 on the recording we released last fall. 

For those of you not familiar with The Bach Hour, here’s a description from WCRB’s website : “The Bach Hour grows out of a tradition begun in the early 1970's by Robert J. Lurtsema of WGBH 89.7 FM.  As one of the earliest sets of the complete Bach cantatas on record (Leonhardt and Harnoncourt) was being released, they became a regular fixture on each Sunday's edition of Morning Pro Musica, Lurtsema's unique daily program.  Now, on The Bach Hour, those cantatas, with the rich and diverse range of performances now available, are heard on the calendar days for which they were written.  Combined with recent and classic recordings of Bach's instrumental masterpieces and occasional interviews with significant interpreters, each week's program offers a chance to connect more deeply with this bedrock composer.”

John, Peggy, and Brian discuss Lorraine’s talent, her start as an instrumentalist, her devotion to Bach, what an extremely hard worker she was, and the unique blend of focus and exuberance that so defined her performances. This is a rare chance to hear this cantata on the calendar day for which it was written (the sixth Sunday after Trinity), performed by an outstanding group of musicians, and with sensitive and expert commentary by John Harbison, a top Bach scholar and Peggy Pearson, who, according to Richard Dyer of the Boston Globe, "has probably played more Bach than any other oboist of her generation; this is music she plays in a state of eloquent grace.” 

Tune in to WCRB 99.5 FM Sunday morning at 6am or visit our website later that day for a link to the program. In the meantime, you can revisit Peggy’s blog post about her memories of Lorraine, or get your copy of the recording here - included on two “Best of Classical Music” lists for 2014. All proceeds from the sale of the recording go to Winsor Music’s education programs.

Save the Date!

Get your calendars, friends! Winsor Music is excited to share with you a sneak peak of our upcoming 2015-16 season calendar.

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Chamber Series I – Young Artist: Mitsuru Yonezaki, violin
October 4, 2015 at 7:00 pm
St. Paul’s Church, Brookline

This fall we will be featuring two amazing young artists in our concerts. Our first concert will feature Misturu Yonezaki. She is a member of Winsor Music's mentoring ensemble, Violobos and with her other quartet members, just returned from the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra's summer European tour.

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Chamber Series II – Young Artist: George Li, piano
November 29, 2015 at 7:00 pm
St. Paul’s Church, Brookline

The following month, George Li will join us for the second concert of the season. He played with us during last year's season and is a Winsor Music favorite. George also recently placed second in the prestigious Tchaikovsky Competition.

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The Bach Institute – Final Concert – 5th Year!
January 24, 2016 at 7:00 pm (Snow date, Jan. 25)
Emmanuel Church, Boston

In January, we will again be partnering with Emmanuel Music and Oberlin College to present the Bach Institute. This is the Bach Institute's fifth year, and we are excited to give more students the opportunity to explore and perform Bach arias.

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Chamber Series III – To be announced

At the moment, we can't share any details about Concert III, but we can guarantee that it will feature more of the musicians and music you love.

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Chamber Series IV – Apple Hill Quartet
April 24, 2016 at 7:00 pm
St. Paul’s Church, Brookline

Rounding out the season, the Apple Hill Quartet will join us again for Concert IV in April. For our out-of-town fans, there will also be concerts in Newburyport, MA and Peterborough, NH – more information on these dates soon!

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Keep a look out for more announcements! We'll have more details to share about Concert III, music selections, composers, and ticket information soon.

Don't forget to save the dates!

Welcome, Tricia and Sarah!

Happy summer, friends! We're delighted to welcome two new interns to Winsor Music this summer, both from Smith College in Northampton, MA. Meet Tricia Kopko and Sarah Netsky!

Soprano Patricia Kopko recently graduated from Smith College with degrees in Chemistry and Music. At Smith, she was a member of the Glee Club, the Chamber Singers, and the Handbell Choir. Last summer, she studied traditional Korean music at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea. Patricia is the 2015 winner of the Smith College Concerto Competition, and earlier this year she played Joy in Ronald Perera’s one-act opera The Araboolies of Liberty Street. Patricia is excited to join Winsor Music this summer as an intern and intends to pursue a career in arts administration and vocal performance.

Sarah Netsky is very excited to be interning at Winsor Music this summer. She was born and raised in Cambridge, MA, and throughout her life, she has had a consistent passion for music, both listening to it and performing it. She has studied piano with Catherine Lawlor at the New School of Music in Cambridge and with Liza Stepanova at Smith College. She has also played clarinet in the Smith College Wind Ensemble. She is currently pursuing an Italian Studies major and an Archives Concentration at Smith, and has just finished her sophomore year. She will spend her junior year studying in Florence, Italy, with the Smith program there. 

An Interview with the Apple Hill String Quartet

Since its founding in 2007, the Apple Hill String Quartet has earned praise around the world for its concerts presenting interpretive mastery of traditional repertoire – including Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Beethoven, and Ravel – as well as for world premieres and commissioned pieces. As resident musicians at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, the Quartet is featured in the summer concert series held every Tuesday night at the Center in Nelson, N.H. These concerts attract hundreds of visitors and have become a mainstay of the Monadnock area summer music offerings.

Winsor Music is delighted to welcome the musicians of the Quartet — Elise Kuder and Colleen Jennings, violin; Mike Kelley, viola; and Rupert Johnson, cello — to the Concert Series. They spoke with us before the first of three concerts with Peggy Pearson; the third concert will take place at St. Paul's Church in Brookline on Sunday, April 26th at 7:00pm. Tickets can be purchased in advance at a discount here.

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What brought you together as a group?

Mike Kelley: Apple Hill as an organization has been around since the early ‘70s. Elise and I were both students there in the ‘80s at the summer camp. As the previous generation retired, we got brought on to be part of the resident ensemble. Rupert was actually a last-minute replacement to be a coach in the summertime. We went to school with Colleen at Oberlin: the small music world!
 

How did you get connected with Peggy and Winsor?

Elise Kuder: Lenny! Lenny and Apple Hill.

MK: Peggy was a coach at Apple Hill.

EK: When we were kids. Lenny and Peggy were at Emmanuel.

MK: And we also played at Emmanuel.
 

Did any of you coach with Peggy as kids?

EK: I coached with Moby [Peggy’s brother].
 

How do you adjust as a group when you’re working with guests like Peggy, or non-string instruments?

Rupert Johnson: Apple Hill is a place where we embrace folks from many different walks of life. So the concert of even adjusting- that’s just what we do at Apple Hill. Playing chamber music is the perfect way to get to know someone, and that someone can be playing a string instrument or not. The music requires that we come together and come to consensus on how we present this music. We find that music has a unique way of teaching us life lessons. Bringing in someone from the outside — we’re just sitting down with an old friend.

MK: And combining oboe with strings… Peggy makes it pretty. Peggy’s awesome.

EK: It’s really nice to get new perspectives. When you’re a group that works together a lot, of course you’re always trying to think of new things, and each piece brings a new perspective, but it’s always really nice to work with people who you don’t always work with, to get a fresh take on things.
 

What piece or pieces in your repertoire do you feel really represents you as a group?

MK: Part of our philosophy of programming is to have a new piece: either a commission or something that hasn’t been heard before; a piece that was written a while ago but isn’t heard enough: sort of a hidden gem; and an acknowledged masterpiece. This program is a good example of that, where the Haydn symphony is well known, but this is an arrangement for string quartet and oboe that was done by a contemporary of Haydn's that isn’t heard much, and a brand new work by Primosch that was written for Winsor Music, and then the Brahms, which is the apex of this repertoire for us. So this is a nice example of what we strive for as a group.

Colleen Jennings: Part of what we try to do when we travel is to discover pieces that might be relevant to the area where we’re going. So this summer, we learned a piece by a Turkish composer, Saygun, which was a complete novelty to all of us, and yet it defines us, because we’re one of the few groups that plays it, and has spent time getting to know it.

MK: And through Apple Hill’s Playing for Peace project, we go to the Middle East a lot. It’s funny, because the piece was new to us and everybody that we played it to in this country, but over there, it was like the Brahms is to us here; everybody knew it and knew him. That was really fun.
 

Could each of you pick out something in the Brahms that you really want the audience to share with you?

CJ: Something that’s coming to mind is the different textures. There’s a place in the first movement where you have a melody between the two violins that then becomes a melody between viola and violin. There are lots of places like that throughout the piece, but that stands out to me as something that the listener can grab on to. Brahms is so fun to play because the melodies are constantly bouncing from one instrument to the next and this also accounts for the many layers of texture.

EK: With the Brahms, there’s so much of this internal struggle, in a way, and it comes out in the different movements — sometimes a little more disturbed, and then sometimes the struggle alleviates or releases something. In the second movement, there’s such a beautiful tune in major that doesn’t seem like so much of a struggle, and the last movement is a total fiery release of that...

CJ: Or even the end of the first movement there’s all of this struggle and then there’s this giant push to the end.

EK: Yes. So I think just observing where all the push and pull, where all of the struggle and release is, and how does that make the audience member feel at the end?

MK: And in the same way, being at a live concert, seeing us play it and watching as well as listening: this is a place where he’s really experimenting with the different roles of the individual players. Like Elise said, at the beginning, there’s a place where we’re all playing together, but each one of us is doing their own thing, so we’re both in the same world and fighting for our own independence. It’s neat to see how that concept plays out in that movement but also throughout the whole piece.

EK: And the fighting is also sometimes negotiation or conversation, working out where the downbeats are, and playing off of each other. That’s true of Brahms more than most classical composers.

RJ: You’re in for a journey of searching constantly, throughout the whole piece. That’s a part of the Primosch as well; it has this searching quality throughout, and then when you get to the fifth movement, you’re searching and then you suddenly find something really joyful.
 

With the dialogue that you mentioned before, do you feel that you are four independent people or four parts of an internal struggle?

MK: You answer that question in different ways at different points in the piece. I think that’s a really fun thing about being able to be in the same room as the musicians playing it. You see us as four individuals playing our individual parts, but hopefully there are also these moments where it transcends that and becomes this one being, or other being, coming out of the center of the group. It’s fun to be dynamically in that with us.
 

Going back to the Primosch, Rupert, you mentioned that you find a journey in it?

RJ: Like the Brahms, but on a smaller scale — he chooses smaller movements to take you through this world, constantly trying to figure out where you are. There are moments where you feel like you’re completely at home. I find personally that he captures a very typical way of writing what might be parts of the American voices — a lot of jazz at the end that is obvious and tangible to listen to, and throughout, he’s constantly weaving many different emotions. That’s what my segue with the Brahms was about. Primosch has done it on a smaller level of time within the movements, but he’s created a huge world within a smaller space. To have this particular ensemble: the oboe, violin, viola and cello, it’s quite… orchestral, in a way. There are a lot of different flavors hitting you.

MK: I think he’s incredibly creative. He does an incredibly good job of writing music that is both really new and fresh and experimental sounding, and also really accessible, but never pandering to the audience. There’s a lot of drama, there’s a lot of humor, and then I feel like his writing, in terms of the colors that he gets… like Rupert said, it feels orchestral, but then it also feels like that period of time when they were suddenly adding marimbas and saxophones; the melding of a lot of different American styles. I think it’s amazing, the kind of colors that he gets in this piece, and as Rupert said, in such a short amount of time.

EK: I think the fast stuff and jazzy stuff might be easy to latch onto, and his slower, beautiful, moody music really gets you into a mood. I hope the audience enjoys the harmonies he uses and the voicing he does.

Meet Composer James Primosch

When honoring him with its Goddard Lieberson Fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters noted that “A rare economy of means and a strain of religious mysticism distinguish the music of James Primosch… Through articulate, transparent textures, he creates a wide range of musical emotion.” Among the honors he has received are a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, three prizes from the American Academy-Institute of Arts and Letters, a Regional Artists Fellowship to the American Academy in Rome, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, the Stoeger Prize of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and a fellowship to the Tanglewood Music Center where he studied with John Harbison.

Mr. Primosch has written a lyrical, lively, and wonderfully expressive oboe quartet for Peggy Pearson and Winsor Music, which will be performed by Peggy and members of the Apple Hill String Quartet at Winsor Music's final concert of the 2014-15 season: Sunday, April 26 at 7pm, at St. Paul's Church in Brookline. Tickets can be obtained here. 

Read our interview to learn more about the new piece, how the composer arrived at his unique compositional voice and philosophy, and why he enjoys writing for Peggy and Winsor Music. 

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Where are you from, and where are you based now?

Originally I’m from Cleveland, Ohio. I presently live and work in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania. 

How would you describe your music to someone who has never heard it?

Really, the music is diverse; it depends on the piece. There are some pieces that are very lyrical and other pieces that are more abstract or angular. The piece that I've written for Peggy is more on the lyrical side, although it does have its edges as well.

If you had to pick one piece that you’ve written that would encapsulate who you are as a composer, what would you pick?

If I had to pick one sound file I would email to someone, it would probably be of a song called “Cinder” which is from a set of songs for voice and piano called Holy the Firm [Click the link and scroll down to the fourth title on the audio samples page to hear this track]. It’s on a text by Susan Stewart, who’s a wonderful poet. This song seems to strike a chord with people. A number of singers have taken it up. In a very short time, I think it reflects my concern to try and do something that sings, that really has an intense, tightly lyrical line, that also has something fresh about it in the harmonic treatment, and is also emotionally touching. I would say all of those elements come into play in that two-and-a-half or three-minute song. That’s probably something I would call to people’s attention if I had to send out an mp3.

You started to talk a little about the piece that you’ve written for Winsor. Could you elaborate a little more, please?

It’s just called Oboe Quartet, and it’s in five movements. I first got to know Peggy, and her oboe playing, through Emmanuel Church/Emmanuel Music, so I was hearing the Bach cantatas with all of those fabulous oboe obbligato parts that she plays so beautifully. So, while my piece doesn’t sound Baroque at all, I don’t think, there’s basically a lyrical.. a singing conception more than a dramatic one — not that the cantatas aren’t dramatic, but I think of this piece as a set of songs or arias rather than a sonata or symphony kind of take. It’s dramatic, but it springs from a long line of vocal conception. The last movement is more of a dance than song, but that also is part of the Baroque tradition where the stylized dance is part of a multi-movement piece. 
 

Photo by Emmanuel Church, Boston

Other than the elements you’ve just spoken of, what do you take into consideration when you’re writing for the oboe, or more specifically, for Peggy? Or for oboe quartet as opposed to a string quartet?

The oboe quartet as opposed to a string quartet: that was an interesting problem for me compositionally, because my first sketches — actually, some of my later sketches as well — it was kind of an oboe concertino. The tendency was to foreground the oboe rather than make it more of a chamber music quartet piece. I have a draft of the first movement where the oboe has the tune all the way through, which would have been lovely, but I revised some of that so the violin gets a portion of the tune at least once. So, yes, the obvious contrast of woodwind color and string color did lend itself to putting the oboe in the foreground, but I recognized that that was happening and I did try making more of a four-player game rather than having one hero in the spotlight. There are four relatively equal players now in what I’ve come up with. So, yes, oboe quartet was an interesting problem.

When it comes to Peggy’s playing: Peggy has greatly influenced what I’ve done with this piece, not only with her playing at Emmanuel, but also — this is the second piece I’ve written for her. Winsor Music did a collaboration with the Cantata Singers in commissioning this piece called Matins [Click the link to hear this track; it is the first piece listed on the page], and that featured the oboe; it had an introduction that is oboe and strings. Part of my reflection on the oboe was thinking about that piece and it required a little bit of effort to not rewrite that piece, because she did a really beautiful job with it, and there’s always the temptation to say, “Well, that worked! Do more of that!” But that’s a lazy thing to settle into too eagerly, although I think composers are kidding themselves if they think they’re getting a totally fresh conception all of the time. When you’re working on a piece, you think: “Oh yeah! I never thought of this before!” You think: “This is fresh, this is new,” and then you hear the piece, and you realize: “You know, I kind of re-wrote that older piece, didn’t I?” I certainly had that piece in the back of my mind.

Peggy has this gorgeous sound, such a beautiful tone, she just gets this amazingly beautiful sound on the oboe. She shapes phrases eloquently: so this means the variety of articulation and attack, how she’s able to connect musical gestures or set them off as the context requires, and then there’s also just virtuosity as far as her nimble fluidity and facility getting around the instrument. I really didn’t think about “Is this hard?” although Peggy might wish that I had! Of course I thought about whether it was practical or not, but it wasn’t a huge consideration, because I think she can do anything you could ask of an oboe, and do it beautifully.

Where do you see this piece in relation to your other work? It sounds, from what you’ve said and referenced already, as if this piece is thoroughly related to your other work. Do you have a body of quartets that this is being added to, or is this different in any way from the rest of your portfolio?

I have a couple of string quartets. I think those pieces are more narrowly focused in their expressive repertoire. The second quartet is a single-movement work, and it lives in the same expressive atmosphere for the entire movement. The third string quartet is also — well, there’s more variety there — but it’s more “of a piece.” This oboe quartet is a little more varied. If I had to relate it to pieces in my catalogue, it’s a little bit more on the eclectic side, a mixed grill, a little bit of this, a little bit of that; I think it still hangs together, I would hope. It all belongs in the same piece, and there is an expressive arc to it. The darkest movement is in the center, and in the first and the last movements, there is material that is recalled. I think it’s somewhat broad in its expressive range rather than so tightly focused.

You had made mention of this before; in that way, is it closer to some of your song cycles than to some of your quartets?

It is a little more like a song cycle, really in two ways. One is that there are a variety of expressive moods that are set, and also my cycles are definitely cycles, not just a set of songs, and there’s some sense of dramatic arc across these five movements. 

I gathered from your website that sacred music is a central theme in your work, which you presumably were led to by your experience as a church musician and various compositional influences. Of course, classical music as we know it was developed and evolved through the patronage of the church, and most composers up to a certain point in time wrote sacred music because it was a natural part, if not the bread-winning part, of being a composer. However, it seems to me that at some point after the Enlightenment, there was a gradual shift towards art for art's sake, a general societal shift away from organized religion, and therefore a shift away from every composer necessarily being a composer of sacred music. I've heard other composers express transcendent aspirations in or influences on their work, but I think that you are the first composer that I have spoken with that is so explicit about being a composer of sacred music as well as a composer of "contemporary" or "new" classical music. Given the current compositional culture, do you feel that you have a foot in two different worlds, or has it been a uniform experience for you?

I’d approach the question from a couple of different angles. On principle, I would hesitate to endorse a separation of the sacred and the secular. For me, there is no such thing as the secular realm. It’s all about the sacred. Everything that is, is holy. Which is not to say that we can’t have any fun… I don’t mean a pious turning away from the world. It’s an embrace of the world in all its beauty and wonder, in a state of gratitude for the world. The other angle I would approach the question from is this: I was raised Catholic. I’ve worked as a church musician really from high school on, and practically speaking, there was no explicit connection between my faith, my practice, my work as a church musician… between those things and my concert music. A friend — a soprano — in the early 1990’s asked if I would do an arrangement of folk songs for a recital that she was giving, and I wasn’t into folk songs, but I thought about using old sacred melodies. I made her a set of what I called Three Sacred Songs. They’re arrangements of two plainchant melodies and a medieval carol. They’re all tunes I had learned in my work as a church musician in New York, so that was definitely a connection being made, or a hand being stretched across the gap. Not long after that, the second string quartet was a piece — in conception, an abstract instrumental piece — yet it’s kind of a meditation on the hymn “Let all mortal flesh keep silent.” That tune, and the motives of material that make it up, permeate the quartet.

So there was a kind of — breakthrough is a strong word — but I made an explicit connection between the sacred and the abstract. I’ve since done a lot of pieces where there are old sacred melodies more or less explicit in the piece and the other way that sacred connects is in the text. The cycle Holy the Firm — they’re not conventional biblical texts, although I have set biblical texts — they’re not highly orthodox, traditional religious texts, but they’re definitely concerned with the spiritual. They’re not inconsistent with my own upbringing and my own practice as a Roman Catholic. There are now eight motets that I’ve written that have been done at Emmanuel Church/Emmanuel Music — thank you, John Harbison, for the invitation to do that! My most recent CD is called Sacred Songs and all of those pieces, from one point of view or another, some in a darker light than others, are engaging with the challenges I encounter with the sacred. It’s been a varied range of approaches. The motets for Emmanuel, I think of as liturgical music — I’d love to hear them done in a concert hall, but they were really written to be done at Eucharist. One has been done at a Catholic church in New York a couple of times. I’ve also written some things for congregational singing, more in a popular vein, for the person in the pew. It’s a wonderful privilege to be able to create concert music, where you’re free from practical constraints, but there is also something wonderful about meeting people where they’re at and being able to facilitate the process of their prayer. 

Is there a different approach or intention for you when you’re writing explicitly liturgical music as opposed to concert music, even that with a religious influence as in the second quartet?

I don’t think there is a big stylistic difference between the pieces that are liturgical or concert music-explicit sacred or concert music-non-explicit sacred. I think they’re all pretty much within a certain breadth and variety of expression. There isn’t really a different approach. I don’t think: “Oh, well, I can’t write those chords” because I’m writing for a certain situation. You try to serve the expressive impulse. If I’m setting a text, it’s really text-driven and about what the text needs. How can I serve the text? It’s not about me imposing a language upon it. I wouldn’t say that there is a different approach. It doesn’t matter if it’s an arrangement of a plainsong chant or a romantic song. Ultimately, it’s all about praise. It’s not explicit in some situations, or more explicit in others. In a sense, there is no non-sacred music in my catalogue. I hope that no one’s put off by that, or gets the idea that it’s all candles and incense. 

Announcing our final concert of 2014-15: The Apple Hill Quartet and Friends

The internationally beloved Apple Hill String Quartet joins oboist Peggy Pearson for Winsor Music’s final concert of the 2014-15 season at St. Paul’s Church in Brookline on Sunday, April 26th at 7pm. Celebrated composer James Primosch presents the Boston premiere of his new quartet for oboe and strings, and Winsor Music concludes a season-long exploration of Haydn's chamber works with the Symphony Quintetto, an exquisite chamber arrangement of his Symphony No. 97. The Apple Hill String Quartet performs Brahms’ lyrical and turbulent String Quartet in A minor, Op. 51, No. 2. Composer Eric Nathan adds to Winsor Music's collection of Songs for the Spirit with a hymn setting of Emily Dickinson's “Hope” is the thing with feathers. 

Since its founding in 2007, the Apple Hill String Quartet has earned praise around the world for its concerts presenting interpretive mastery of traditional repertoire – including Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Beethoven, and Ravel – as well as for world premieres and commissioned pieces. As resident musicians at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, the Quartet is featured in the summer concert series held every Tuesday night at the Center in Nelson, N.H. These concerts attract hundreds of visitors and have become a mainstay of the Monadnock area summer music offerings.

When honoring him with its Goddard Lieberson Fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters noted that “A rare economy of means and a strain of religious mysticism distinguish the music of James Primosch… Through articulate, transparent textures, he creates a wide range of musical emotion.” Among the honors he has received are a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, three prizes from the American Academy-Institute of Arts and Letters, a Regional Artists Fellowship to the American Academy in Rome, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, the Stoeger Prize of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and a fellowship to the Tanglewood Music Center where he studied with John Harbison.

Peggy Pearson is a winner of the Pope Foundation Award for Outstanding Accomplishment in Music. Lloyd Schwartz, who received the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, called her “my favorite living oboist.” Ms. Pearson is Artistic Director of, and oboist with Winsor Music, a founding member of the chamber group, La Fenice, with performances at Winsor Music, the Skaneateles Festival in New York, Maryland’s Eastern Shore Chamber Music Festival, and the Union College Series in Schenectady, New York. Ms. Pearson has toured internationally and recorded extensively with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and has appeared with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Emmanuel Music Chamber Orchestra as principal oboist, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Music from Marlboro. She has been on the faculties at Songfest, The Tanglewood Music Center (Bach Institute), the Conservatory of Music (University of Cincinnati), Wellesley College, the Composers Conference at Wellesley College and the Longy School of Music. She is currently on the faculties at Boston Conservatory and MIT (Emerson Scholars Program).

Lawrence Wolfe joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra bass section in 1970, becoming the orchestra's youngest member at that time; he was named assistant principal bass of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and principal bass of the Boston Pops Orchestra during the 1981‑82 season.  A graduate of New England Conservatory, Mr. Wolfe studied double bass with William Curtis, Leslie Martin, and Gary Karr.  As a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, he was awarded the Albert Spaulding Prize for the most promising and outstanding instrumentalist.  He is now a faculty member at Boston University, New England Conservatory, and the Boston Conservatory.  Represented on Titanic Records by his album, Lawrence Wolfe, Double Bass, Mr. Wolfe has appeared as soloist at Carnegie Recital Hall, NEC's Jordan Hall, Kilbourne Hall in Rochester, and Symphony Hall, where he has been a soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops Orchestra.

Eric Nathan, a 2013 Rome Prize Fellow and 2014 Guggenheim Fellow, has garnered acclaim internationally through performances at the New York Philharmonic’s 2014 Biennial, Carnegie Hall, Aldeburgh Music Festival, Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, Aspen Music Festival, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Ravinia Festival Steans Institute, Yellow Barn, 2012 and 2013 World Music Days, and Louvre Museum. His music has additionally been featured by the Berlin Philharmonic’s Scharoun Ensemble, Boston Symphony Chamber Players, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, American Composers Orchestra, Omaha Symphony Chamber Orchestra, A Far Cry and the JACK Quartet. 

Meet the Arneis Quartet!

The Arneis Quartet celebrates their fifth anniversary this season with appearances on the Alcyon, Emmanuel Music, and Winsor Music Chamber Series, where they will perform on the March 23 concert at the Visiting Nurse Assisted Living Community, one of the first concerts to combine a traditional concert series with a musical outreach program. Widely regarded as one of the finest emerging quartets of their generation, the Arneis was hand-picked by the St. Lawrence String Quartet for its inaugural John Lad Prize, received a fellowship at the Aspen Center for Advanced String Quartet Studies for the summer of 2012, and acted as the 2011 Young Artist Fellows for the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music. The musicians of the Arneis Quartet — named after the Arneis grape, a varietal that is difficult to grow, but which yields an exquisite white wine — are on the faculties of Boston University, Brookline Public Schools, the Chestnut Hill School, and act as coaches for the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras. 

Photo by Liz Linder

Heather Braun, violin (HB); Rose Drucker, violin (RD); Daniel Doña, viola (DD); Agnes Kim, cello (AK); very generously gave some rehearsal time to speak with us about the origins of the quartet, their favorite moments in the music for the March 23 concert, and why they love performing on outreach concerts. 

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What brought you guys together?

DD: The idea of the quartet started as my doctoral chamber recital. I had always loved playing quartets and I wanted to put a serious quartet program together so I asked Rose — we’d been playing together since grad school in 2003, so more than 10 years — and we got a quartet together, which was originally Rose, me and two others. That was the first iteration of the Arneis Quartet. We did well, we went to festivals, and then the other two moved or didn’t want to continue, so we found Heather and Agnes, and we’ve been together ever since! 

HB: Something that’s really nice is that we’re all BU [Boston University] alumni; Rose and I both studied with Peter Zazofsky, and we all studied chamber music with the Muir  Quartet, who are in residence at BU, and we all went to graduate school here as well. We’re all coming from the same ideas and influences, using our graduate studies, so it seemed like a really good fit. 
 

I saw on your website that you got your name from the Arneis grape, and I’m wondering if there was a story behind that selection.

RD: It’s a wine grape, and we like all things that have parallels between wine-growing and music-making, and this grape particularly was almost extinct, not being cultivated very much. It was saved and became a specialty kind of wine. It’s a white wine, from the Piedmont area of Italy. It’s a kind of funky, interesting wine, and you don’t see it around very often, but it’s delicious! We liked the idea  of cultivating something — we feel like chamber music is something you cultivate — and the growing of the grapes is a good metaphor, too… and also we just like to drink wine! Finding a name for a group is one of the harder things [about having a chamber group]… rehearsing is easy compared to coming up with a name! It resonated with us: the background of growing, cultivating, and enjoying special and unique, like with music!

DD: The name also translates as “little rascal,” so sort of mischievous...

RD: Right, it’s a difficult grape to grow, so the name is a slang word that sort of means rascally, or something difficult, and cheeky. We liked that playfulness.

DD: The four of us have our cheeky moments in rehearsal, which is after the fact, but it’s still a perfect fit.

RD: It worked out!
 

How did you get connected to Peggy and Winsor Music?

RD: Heather and I have been playing at Emmanuel Music for a long time, so we know Peggy from there, and also from freelancing in Boston, she’s wonderful, an oboist extraordinaire. So we’ve played with her in lots of different orchestras, and Heather and I have both played as individuals on Winsor Music chamber concerts. 

HB: Last summer, she needed somebody to play at the VNA for the June outreach concert. It was a very last-minute thing, and she said “Can you guys come and do this?” and I said, “Yeah, actually, we can!” So we just made it work, and it seemed to go really well. We really loved doing it, and we really like being there. We do a lot of outreach; we play at Newbridge on the Charles, and we do string quartet presentations for the Community Connections program at Emmanuel Music, playing at Boston Arts Academy and other schools. It just seemed like a good fit, and the first time was a success, and we have returned a few times. Peggy eventually asked us if we wanted to play this upcoming concert, which was really exciting! It’s the first concert of the series at the VNA, which is so great!
 

Photo by Eugenia Chung

Have you done anything like this before as a quartet, where you’ve combined an outreach event with a concert series, or a more widely advertised concert?

HB: When we play at Newbridge on the Charles, it’s not advertised the same way as Winsor is advertising this one, but it is the same idea. Families of the residents who live there come to the concerts. The last concert we had there in January was maybe the most well-attended concert we’ve done at that venue, there were a lot of people there. I feel like the more we play there, the more people hear about us and then come to the next concert. It’s a full concert program but we also talk a little about the music and then we play. It’s the same kind of idea as Winsor. Last year we did a lot of concerts at Windham Terrace, which is in Windham, New Hampshire, which is also an assisted living community. It’s something we’re really comfortable doing — we’ve done it in four different places at this point, including an assisted living home in Italy! — and we really enjoy it! 

DD: A few years ago, we played on the Stanford University Concert Series, and they set up a bunch of outreach programs at schools and assisted living facilities as well. We’ve been doing this for quite a few years, and we love it. Sometimes we find that our greatest musical moments happen at this kind of concert, because the audience is sometimes a lot more receptive, and we can take risks; it’s a pretty awesome experience. 

HB: They’re there just to listen, there’s no judgement happening, and we’re easier on ourselves, which makes it easier to play.

RD: A lot of times we’ll find things in those performances — especially if we’re doing an educational kids concert, when we’re trying to find out what’s going on in the music and we talk about a lot of the concepts, and we bring things together for the kids — then the next time we play that piece, we find we have a whole new fresh set of ideas and things can really come out in our concerts that we’ve discovered during these outreach concerts. We’ve done a lot of different events. We pretty much say yes to everything and then do it, so it’s given us a lot of great opportunities for different venues and different audiences. 
 

You’ve played several times at the VNA, and I’m wondering if there’s anything you in particular that you enjoy about it as a venue. I know from my personal experience that it’s a great room to perform in, and the audience is so responsive.

RD: All of those things! We like the sound of the room  and the audience is great. We’ve had repeat audience members who remember us, and we like to talk to them afterwards. Everyone seems to enjoy it. It’s a fun thing to do, for sure.

HB I like the atmosphere that Peggy creates for the concerts, too. She’s always there, and she will sometimes have a back and forth with us. We’ll talk about the piece, and then she’ll ask us a question, or ask us to explain more clearly. 

RD: There’s a personal touch.

HB: Right, which is nice, because since she knows us, she feels able to do that. I wish that would happen more often, that people would ask us questions in an open forum. We’re already breaking down the barrier of the audience and performers by having people talk so much more in concerts now than they used to, but I like that back and forth, question and answer stuff. That doesn’t really happen at our other concerts, if we talk to people it’s much more one-on-one. The nice thing about having Peggy there at the VNA with us is there’s this nice dialogue. It’s fun for us and I think the people who are there enjoy it too. The space there is also really nice, and I really like the cookies...
 

You’re playing Beethoven’s Op. 132 on March 23. It’s said to be reflective of his experiences as a convalescent, and I’m wondering if you find that narrative captures the quartet for you, or if you feel that there are other influences or stories happening throughout the piece.

RD: That’s definitely going on specifically in the third movement. It’s a prayerful song of thanksgiving interrupted by these bursts of feeling better. That storyline is definitely present in the third movement. The outer movements of the piece show where the late Beethoven quartets were going. You can see counterpoint getting really complicated but also really simple and these motives that play together; it’s very much the late Beethoven style all in one piece. The story of the convalescence… I don’t know how much that has to do with how much we like the piece… I think we just resonate with the piece because it’s amazing. It’s this picture into Beethoven’s mind as he was dealing with the end of his life. With the late quartets you can’t help but think that these were the last pieces he was writing after all of the other amazing work that he had done. He came back to some simpler forms but also got really out there, really creative. We think of Beethoven as being a firmly classical composer, but he did some wild things, especially in this piece.

DD: This is the first quartet he wrote that broke the mold of four movements. He was starting to say, “Ok, it’s been like this, Haydn set it this way, I’ve done it this way all my career,” and then here he decides to write something that’s in five movements, even though we debate that it’s actually four movements with a little intro, but… he labeled it as five. It’s a lot of really exciting work. For me, thinking that he had this illness and he was healed gives the third movement a special weight. He’s definitely being very spiritual in that movement, it’s hard not to be affected by that.

HB: I think all of the late Beethoven quartets have this sort of spiritual undertone. To me, every one of the late quartets has a movement where he is talking to God and taking stock of his life. This was his way of talking through things at the end of his life. The third movement in 132 is actually kind of random in terms of the piece as a whole: the first movement is so stormy, and the last movement is so stormy, and the second movement is very pastoral, it’s almost like something Mozart would have written if he had lived another thirty years.

DD: In a lot of ways, he’s looking backwards. In that movement, he’s looking back to Mozart’s simplicity. In the third movement, he writes it in the Lydian mode, which is looking back even further. He’s looking forward and back.

RD: There’s a tension there, looking at the history that has brought us to this point, and then launching us forward, too. 

HB: Every one of the late Beethoven quartets has a slow movement that sets the pace for the whole piece. They’re the centerpiece for everything.
 

In answering my last question, you gave us a lot to listen for, but I’m also wondering if each of you could pick out a particular moment in the piece that you want the audience to listen for and experience with you.

RD: The whole third movement, it’s definitely the centerpiece of the quartet, you can’t miss it. The whole tone shifts, and time stops. It’s my favorite part. It has this timeless quality. I do like the storminess and turbulence of the first and last movements — HB: It’s very Beethoven. — RD: Yes, the stormy seas feeling, I definitely like that, too. And there is a surprise opera moment where the first violin delivers an accompanied recitative before we go into the last movement. 

AK: Also, as a cellist, I want to point out that usually in a string quartet, the cello plays the bass line, but in this piece, he breaks that rule and I get to play a high melody with the violin while Dan plays the bass line. — DD: Yay! — AK: Throughout this piece, you can find that it’s not just one person playing the whole phrase, it’s combined, so we switch off. We try to rehearse and make that sound like one instrument, not four different instruments in the phrase.

HB: I would definitely say that people should listen for the end of the last movement, where the first violin and the cello are playing the melody together. For me, it’s high but it’s not that crazy, but for the cello, it’s really crazy high for her. It’s really unique, it’s unusual for that time. When the cello is up that high, it’s a very unsteady feeling… — RD: Almost desperation. — HB: A little bit! It’s definitely something to listen for. 

RD: I liked Agnes’ point about the fragmented melody lines, where one instrument might play a few notes, it gets passed around the whole quartet. That kind of fragmentation is fun for us to work on and I think interesting to listen to. 

DD: In general, especially with this quartet, and in a lot of Beethoven, being aware of what he’s setting you up for and what you expect to hear, then hearing the curveballs. Getting that can really add to your listening experience. You don’t have to know anything about theory, you just listen with open ears and think, “Ok, I expect this to happen,” and then Beethoven throws you these curveballs all over the place. Be open to being surprised.
 

Photo by Eugenia Chung

How did you choose the Wallace quartet pale reflections...? Have you played much of his music before? Do you have a relationship with him as a quartet?

RD: Yes to all of those.

HB: John Wallace is a composer here at Boston University, and about this time last year he approached us and said “I’d like to produce and release a CD of some of my chamber music, would you guys be interested?” He wanted to do this quartet, his piano quintet, and a piece for string trio, bassoon and flute. We started working on his music over the summer, and the recording project was scheduled for the end of September. As we started working on this quartet, we realized that this fits a great need in our repertoire: something contemporary and American by somebody we know, and we like it, and it’s about six minutes long. So often when we’re programming for library concerts or outreach concerts, we need something contrasting and short to go with the long and expansive pieces. We’ve been playing it a lot this season and we’ll continue to play it because we really like the piece, we find it very interesting. It’s really different, it’s maybe not the easiest thing for some audiences to hear for the first time; if they heard it a lot, they would be really into it. It’s going to be shocking for some people, but it’s great, because it’s shocking, and then it’s over. It’s so short! It’s a really great introduction to contemporary music for people who haven’t heard it before. It fits that niche perfectly. We know John Wallace, and we’ve been working with him for about a year on this music. The CD will come out soon.

DD: It’s in the final editing process.

HB: Peggy said, “Can you play something short, American, and contemporary?” and we said — everyone chimes in unanimously — All: YES! — HB: If people want to know what it’s like, it’s a lot like the quartet music of Berg, or Webern, where there are a lot of really short compact ideas that are kind of interspersed throughout every part randomly and unexpectedly.

RD: We like to talk a lot about gestures, instead of a melody or a tune, there’s a gesture, an idea that’s expressed through a shape or a kind of sound. There’s a lot of passing around of the gestures in smallish fragments. I think it’s pretty interesting to listen to, all knit together. And as Heather said, if you don’t like it, it’s over quickly!

HB: It’s a really good introduction for people who haven’t heard this music before. If you’ve been going to Winsor concerts for a while, it’s going to sound fresh and original, but it won’t be shocking.

AK: This piece doesn’t contain a nice conventional melody, but it’s very emotional, which is what I like about it. With a lot of contemporary music, it’s interesting and new, but it’s lacking emotionally. This is a very emotional piece, so I think people will like it.

RD: I think that’s a big part of why we like it, too. We don’t have a big affinity for purely intellectual music. I think all of us like to be expressive.

DD: Yes. And when we were working with him on the piece, we were learning the nuts and bolts of it, and trying to get it all together, but he was always stressing that it needed to be expressive. Having the freedom from the composer to do that really helped the piece to resonate with our aesthetic. 

Do you have any idea where the title of the piece came from?

RD: It’s nighttime music. There are moon shadows, and it all has to do with night. It goes from dusk until dawn. The first movement is night falling, the next one is the moon, and then sunrise, and dawn. It’s darkness and night music and scurrying. There are some scary things and nice things, in a dream sense. 

As with the Beethoven, if you could each pick out a thread that you would really want people to latch on to, what would you choose for this piece?

HB: There are a lot of extended techniques, by which we mean that we use our bow or our left hands in ways that are not normal or traditional. So instead of a regular pizzicato, where we pluck the string, he’ll use something called a Bartók pizz, which is where the string is rebounding off of the fingerboard, so we’re lifting the string instead of plucking the string, so it has a snap sound. It’s technically called a snap pizzicato, but it’s something that Bartók uses a lot, so that’s the common name for it.

RD: Yes, listen for the sound effects, different things we do with our bows: tremolos, slides, colors and effects that create an atmosphere, as opposed to just drawing our bows across the strings like we do in the Beethoven. There are lots of other ways that we can create sounds. It’s very organic, the way that he uses those effects to weave a texture. Definitely listen for those sound effects and special colors.

DD: Performing those sounds can be really tricky!

HB: And the silences, listen for the silences. Especially at the end of the last music, where it’s very suspended. Silence is a part of the piece as a whole. 

AK: Listen for the emotional moments. The emotional changes happen so quickly. There will be this blast of emotion and then silence. Also, listen for the quartet’s sound as a whole, on the score itself, it looks like the individual line does not have to do with the other parts, but all together, it creates such a great block of sounds and tones. 

Violobos: Did you know...?

For any of our blog readers who aren't on Facebook! 

Post by Winsor Music.

Introducing VIOLOBOS

We are pleased to introduce you to the members of Winsor Music's new quartet: Violobos!

From left to right: Mitsuru Yonezaki, violin; Njioma Grevious, viola; Peggy Pearson, oboe; Alma Bitran, cello.

Artistic Director Peggy Pearson formed Violobos after our most recent benefit concert, on which all three of these outstanding students performed; they demonstrated an admirable work ethic, a high degree of musicianship, and an easy, natural chemistry when performing together. Violobos will provide them with multiple opportunities for different kinds of performances (outreach, house concert, concert series) through and with the invaluable experience of an ongoing mentoring relationship with a working professional musician. 

At a recent rehearsal, Mitsuru, Njioma, and Alma took a fifteen-minute break to discuss their new group, their musical wish-lists, and their upcoming debut on March 23.

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Winsor Music: Please tell us your name, class year, how long you’ve played, and who you study with.

Alma Bitran, I play the cello, I’ve been studying for 9.5 years, and my teacher is Ron Lowry.

Mitsuru Yonezaki, I am a sophomore, and I’ve played the violin for about 12 years, and I study with Joanna Kurkowicz.

Njioma Grevious, I’m a sophomore, I’ve been studying violin for 10 years, viola for 2 years, and my current teacher is Irina Muresanu.

Mitsuru Yonezaki, violin

All three of you are in the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and now Violobos. How do you balance these prestigious musical groups with being full-time students and teenagers?

AB: I just try to do the best I can with everything. I try to not have too much on my plate at once. I have enough time to balance school and music. It can get tricky sometimes, but it’s manageable, usually.

MY: For me, being a teenager isn’t really like going out with school friends, it’s more like being in the music world, so that kind of makes it easier. — WM: Your social life is your musical life? — MY: Yes.

NG: I’d have to agree with Mitsuru. My musical life is my social life. It can sometimes be difficult to manage my time. More times than not, I have to figure out whether an English assignment due tomorrow should be completed before I practice or visa versa, but I work it out.

Do you think learning to do that balancing act has been good for you in the long run?

NG: Yes, definitely.

Have any of you played in chamber groups before, and if so, have you done anything like Violobos, where you play with a professional on a long-term basis?

AB: I’ve played in lots of chamber groups before, but never like Violobos. I’ve never done anything [long-term] with a professional.

MY: Same. Well, for me, I do [chamber music] in the summer. We do three in the summer and one in the winter, so that’s my experience. And we do get to sightread chamber music with some professionals, but never anything year-round.

NG:  At the moment, I have three running chamber music groups, but Peggy has really been the long-term professional with whom I have been working. Working with her has been an adventurous learning experience.  

What experiences so far would you say are unique to this group?

AB: Playing quartets with an oboe! I’ve never heard of that being done.

NG:  I feel a warmth and comfort playing with Violobos. I’d say it’s a combination of our deep love for music and the fact that we genuinely enjoy each other.

MY: It’s nice, because we don’t feel too stressed. Peggy’s our coach and also our first violin. It doesn’t feel too stressful. — WM: A good way to learn without the pressure? — MY: Yes.

Njioma Grevious, viola

Does the Haydn quartet tell a particular story to you, or set a particular mood or scene? What would you want people to listen for?

AB: The quartet really tells its own story, and if you’re listening, you’ll hear everything it has to say. The movements contrast, and definitely share their ideas in a very up-front way that any listener can pick up on.

MY: It’s up to the listener because each person wants to listen to different parts. We have a basic idea: this is the way that we want to present it, but it’s really more up to the listener to get what they want out of it.

NG:  I agree, although, one thing I think audience members should keep in mind is that Haydn was a court musician for most of his life. I think this theme is particularly evident at the beginning of the 1st movement.

Is there a particular moment or line that you really love and want the audience to hear?

MY: Overall, I love the third movement the most.

AB: I love that violin melody that Mitsuru has in the third movement.

MY: Yes, it’s really different from the rest of that movement.

NG:   I love the beginning of the Haydn; I answer to the melody, first played by Peggy.

Alma Bitran, cello

Do you have a wish-list of pieces that you’d like the quartet to work on after this piece?

AB: So many… I’ve never played any Beethoven late quartets, I would love to do that.

MY: Peggy said something about trying to play pieces that aren’t too common, so I’m not really sure what to expect! I feel like at this point I only know the well-known repertoire.

NG: I would love to play some Shostakovich ; it would sound so amazing with an oboe.   

AB: It might have a really nice quality! I can hear that.

Peggy transcribes a lot of quartets to include the oboe. Are there any particular pieces that your instrument was left out of that you would like to be included in?

AB: I wish I could play all the violin solos in all orchestral music. They’re always the most beautiful parts in every orchestral piece.

MY: I wish I had a concerto like the ones Dvorak or  Elgar wrote for the cello.

NG:   As a person who plays viola and violin, I think that I have a nice blend of both the melody and the supporting voice — I’m all set.  

We have a Wait List!

Dear Friends,

We hope that you all made it to the other side of this winter safely! We're looking forward to spring on March 20... and to our next Winsor Music Concert on March 23! This concert will feature Boston's own critically acclaimed Arneis Quartet and the outstanding young musicians of Violobos performing works of Haydn, John Wallace and Beethoven. We hope that you can join us to celebrate high quality performance, community outreach, and mentoring the next generation of musicians as well as the return of spring!

The Visiting Nurse Assisted Living Community is graciously hosting us for this concert in their Community Room, where Winsor Music regularly performs concerts for the residents of the VNA. Given the residential nature of the venue, we are asking that you, our guests, register your free seats in advance at winsormusic.org/tickets. Each guest must have their own ticket, which we will scan at the door. We will have ushers to help direct you to the Community Room when you arrive, and we hope that you will join us in greeting the musicians and residents of the VNA at a reception after the performance. 

We're excited to say that we've already sold out, but we hope you will make use of the wait list feature built in to our ticketing system. We anticipate that quite a few seats will open up in the weekend before the concert, and we will contact you promptly when these seats become available. Just register for a ticket as you normally would, and watch your inbox!

If you reserve a seat, but change your plans, please contact us to cancel your order so that we can open that seat up to someone on the waiting list. 

We are excited and honored to be hosting the first chamber series concert in collaboration with one of our favorite outreach communities, and look forward to seeing you there!

Thanks,

Peggy Pearson
and the staff of Winsor Music

The Bach Institute

As many of you know, this week, our Artistic Director Peggy Pearson is serving as a faculty member and the co-director of the Bach Institute, a collaboration between Emmanuel Music, Winsor Music, and Oberlin College and Conservatory. The Institute is a January-term intensive in which students immerse themselves in the vast repertoire of Bach cantatas that are performed every week by the musicians of Emmanuel Music, many of whom serve on the Institute faculty. Students receive private coachings and lessons on individual arias, perform in the Sunday cantata series at Emmanuel Church, and perform their arias, duets, and a full cantata in the final concert, which will be held on Monday, January 26th, 7:30pm at Emmanuel Church. Tickets are free, but seats are limited, so reserve your spot here.

Currently in their second week, the students are performing their arias in five outreach concerts hosted and facilitated by Winsor Music's outreach and education programs. Peggy spoke to us about why she and co-director Kendra Colton started the institute five years ago, why it matters, and what she loves about it.

What excites you about the Bach Institute?

The Bach Institute is a lifelong dream. The cantata repertoire is not generally studied by instrumentalists or vocalists at the conservatory level, but it's one of the most beautiful and massive repertoires there is.

Why is that?

It's extremely challenging on many levels. For vocalists, this is some of the most  difficult music in the repertoire, and for both instrumentalists and vocalists, it's a challenge to create long lines, and to figure out how to phrase such complicated music. Sometimes when we are working out phrasing, we might find that the whole opening ritornello is one big phrase (not twenty!), and part of the struggle is generating the energy to get through such long lines.

Another complication is that, often, the vocal or obbligato line might be doing one thing, and the continuo might be doing another; you have to be open to allowing that to happen, to letting it be complicated and contradictory. That can also be true of the way the music and text fit together; sometimes, it seems as if they are openly contradicting one another, but when you look closely at those contradictions, you might find entirely new layers of meaning to the piece.

How do you address that with the students?

This is difficult! A lot of the time, there is more than one viewpoint expressed by the faculty, and there's a reason for that: there's often more than one viewpoint expressed in the music. You should be able to do it in different ways.  The music is so rich and multi-layered, leaving opportunities for many different interpretations. These arias are technically and emotionally complicated and full; it's not easy to figure these pieces out on any level.

What do you think sets the Bach Institute apart from something a conservatory might offer?

The students do benefit from discussion, commentary and conversation with incredible Bach scholars like Robert Levin, John Harbison and Pamela Dellal, but there are a couple of  distinguishing factors. One is that they get a great deal of one-on-one time with the amazing teacher Kendra Colton! The other is that they get so much practical performance experience. Whenever possible, the students get to perform in the weekly cantatas at Emmanuel, with our wonderful music director, Ryan Turner, conducting. They see how we put together a cantata in a few hours, and get a feel for what the cantatas are like as a whole, instead of the collection of arias that they work on during the institute.  

I also always look forward to the outreach concerts, because it serves so many purposes and people at the same time. It’s a very appreciative and under-served audience, and the students really benefit from performing every aria at least twice before the final concert. We also do a children's concert at the Mather school in Dorchester, and the students write a children's cantata based on an easy, familiar tune that the kindergartners always love. This year it is Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star the Cantata, and the final chorus will be sung by five year-olds!

What are you most looking forward to about the final concert?

It's always astonishing how much progress the students make in two weeks, and of course that is very exciting for us. In addition, it always makes me happy to be in the position to introduce this repertoire to an audience; it’s a Bach Hit Parade, with one gem after another.

Some of us have been playing Bach at Emmanuel for so long that we tend to think of the cantatas by their numbers, and we'll get so excited when people start tossing numbers around, the way Beatles fans do when you start listing hits: "Oh man, I love 159!"... "Oh, that duet in 3 is the best!" This concert is like that, just one great aria after another; it's a Bach lover's heaven.

Interview with Rebecca Printz

Rebecca Printz is many things: a mezzo-soprano, a student in her fourth year at Oberlin Conservatory and College, a student of Kendra Colton's, an outstanding alumna of the Bach Institute (as well as its first-ever administrative intern), a Boston-area native, and the featured Young Artist for Winsor Music's annual Thanksgiving Concert, to name a few. She will be performing Bach's Cantata BWV 170, "Vergnüte Ruh', beliebte Seelenlust," with Peggy Pearson, oboe d'amore, Gabriela Diaz and Shaw Pong Liu, violins, Shira Majoni, viola, Rafael Popper-Keizer, cello, Tony D'Amico, bass, and Peter Sykes, organ.  

Rebecca took some time out of her preparations for the cantata (and her busy school schedule!) to speak with us about the upcoming concert, her path to conservatory, and what she's learned so far. 

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How old were you when you started singing?

I’ve been singing for all my life, but I started taking voice lessons when I was fourteen, at the New England Conservatory Preparatory School.

When you were younger, did you sing in any choruses?

I sang in the NEC children’s choir when I was young, and sort of made my way up the chorus hierarchy there. I did some choir in elementary school. I’ve always loved to sing.

When did you decide that you wanted to pursue music professionally, or that conservatory was the right choice for you?

It was when I was at the BU Tanglewood Institute the summer before my senior year of high school. I hadn’t really thought of conservatory as an option, but when I was there, most of the other kids attending that summer were planning on going on to conservatory, and I asked my voice teacher there: “How do you know if you’re good enough?” She said, “Well, I think that you’re good enough and you should go for it.” So when I came home from that summer, I told my parents that’s what I wanted to do. That program was organized as a kind of junior conservatory program to give you a sense of what it would be like, and I absolutely loved it, so I had a very good sense that conservatory was the right route for me. Also, Oberlin has this great double degree program where you can go to both the conservatory and the college, so that’s what I’m doing right now.

What’s your other degree?

My other degree is art history, which has ended up being very complimentary to my voice performance major at the conservatory. It gives you a bigger sense of what else was going on in the art world at any other given time.

Do you have a particular area of focus in art history?

I haven’t really so far. I’ve tried to take classes in every area. Because I’ve been planning to continue in music, I haven’t had to pick an area to focus on in art history so far.

Did you know Kendra Colton, your current voice teacher, before you went to Oberlin?

No, I didn’t know her, but my high school voice teacher knew of her and recommended that I take a lesson. Because she’s based in Boston, where I grew up, it was really easy for me to go and take a lesson with her, which I really enjoyed. Not a tough decision for me in terms of picking a teacher. It’s very convenient when I go home that she’s already so close to me.

You were the first intern at the Bach Institute, which is jointly run by Emmanuel Music, Winsor Music, and Oberlin Conservatory. Was that your first time working with Emmanuel Music?

Yeah, it was. It was great to be that close to the administrative side of a music organization; it wasn’t a side I knew anything about, or had been forced to think about before, so it was a really great experience.

What was it like to come back the following year as a student performer, to get both sides of that coin?

I definitely came back with an appreciation for things like how a program doesn’t appear from thin air, that someone puts time and work into creating those things. I was aware of this whole support system that I really hadn’t thought of before. It made me appreciate how much work it takes to put on a performance.

Rebecca Printz and members of the 2013 Bach Institute 

Had you done much Bach before you became involved with the institute?

No, I hadn’t, I’d done a good bit of Handel, in terms of early music, but not much Bach. It was very different from anything I’d done before or since. It’s really informed everything since I’ve done since taking part in that program, in terms of extreme attention to detail, and intention in every single note and phrase that I sing. It was so influential and such a great experience.

Have you been concentrating in a particular area of vocal music at conservatory?

It’s been a pretty broad survey, I haven’t gotten much into contemporary music, but I’ve done everything from Bach to post-romantic Mahler more recently. I’ve covered most of the bases so far.

What are you looking towards after graduation?

Because I’m double degree, I actually have one more year after this year, so I’ll have next year to finish up my college degree. After that, I’ll be applying to music graduate school to continue studying voice. Hopefully I’ll be in a two year vocal graduate program after I graduate from Oberlin.

What has your experience been like preparing the cantata (BWV 170)?

Without my time at the Bach Institute, this would be so, so daunting, and without my teacher, who is very much an expert in this type of music, I wouldn’t feel nearly as comfortable with this music as I do now. It’s such a beautiful piece, but probably the most challenging part in preparing it has been the recitatives, just because stylistically, they’re so different. But again, my teacher has been amazing in helping me figure out just how to sing those.

Have you played with Peggy at all since the Bach Institute?

No, unfortunately! I’m not home that much during the year. I’m really excited to be performing with her again.

When did you hear about the CD release?

Peggy emailed me a couple weeks ago and sent me a file of the first movement, which is gorgeous and kind of daunting… thinking about them going home and listening to Lorraine sing what they just heard me sing. She’s one of my favorites, so I’m just thrilled that the recording will be out there so we can all listen to the whole thing.

In terms of the content of the cantata, is there anything that speaks to you musically or textually? What’s been grabbing you as you’ve been working on it?

The melodies are absolutely beautiful, and that’s personally what I connect to, and I also just love singing in German. I immediately felt very connected to this piece, I think because how unusual the melodies can be. I’ve had a great time preparing it.

Peggy Pearson: Remembering Lorraine Hunt Lieberson

Artistic Director Peggy Pearson was a longtime friend and colleague of the late, great mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. In 1996, she invited Ms. Lieberson to perform Bach's Cantata BWV 170 ("Vergnügte Ruh', beliebte Seelenlust") with the Greenleaf Chamber Players. The performance was recorded, but that recording was never released to the public. Ms. Lieberson passed away in 2006 at the too-young age of 52, and this year, with permission from the Lieberson estate, Ms. Pearson decided to release the private recording from 1996. The estate and the Greenleaf musicians are graciously allowing us to donate all proceeds from sales of this recording to the Winsor Music education program. We will be releasing the recording at our Thanksgiving Concert on November 30th, when Young Artist Rebecca Printz will be performing the same Cantata BWV 170 with Peggy Pearson, Gabriela Diaz, Shaw Pong Liu, Shira Majoni, Rafael Popper-Keizer, Tony D'Amico, and Peter Sykes. The recording will also be available for digital download on our website.  

Peggy shared stories, memories and photographs of Lorraine and this project with us this past week, and it's our privilege to be able to share them with you today. 

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Tell me about the Greenleaf Chamber Players.

The Greenleaf Chamber Players was a group I started at SUNY Purchase back in the ‘80s. I had been playing in the Mozart operas that Peter Sellars directed at SUNY Purchase; I was the orchestra manager, and I hired musicians from both Boston and New York to play in the orchestra. I became friends with the assistant director of that festival, who later became the executive director at the Performing Arts Center at SUNY Purchase, and he asked me to form a chamber group. I ran it for about five years, and it was great! I got to hire a good mixture of New York and Boston players: Daniel Phillips and Anna Lim, violins, Lois Martin, viola, Fred Sherry, cello, Jordan Frazier, bass, and Ed Brewer, harpsichord.
 

Tell me about the circumstances that led to this recording.

It was part of the chamber series there at Purchase in 1997. This was one of two programs that I also performed at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. They were both built around Bach; the first was with Dawn Upshaw, and the second one was with Lorraine. This program had a piece by John Harbison, the Bach cantata BWV 170, a Bach trio sonata, and a piece by Mario Davidovsky. There are two versions of this cantata: the first features the organ, which is more commonly performed. The other, which you hear on our recording, features the oboe d’amore, which I chose because the 92nd Street Y program was an oboe recital.
 

How did Lorraine get involved with this concert?

I knew her from Emmanuel. She started there as a violist, sang there for a number of years, and she was in Don Giovanni during the festival at SUNY Purchase. I knew her from weekly cantatas at Emmanuel, and I had been on tour with her; we did a production that Craig Smith (Founding Artistic Director of Emmanuel Music) and Peter Sellars put together based on Bach arias and Little Mahagonny by Kurt Weill [The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny]. Lorraine was always incredibly well-prepared; it was exciting, intense, and always a joy working with her.

You said in your liner notes that you feel that this cantata was written for Lorraine’s voice and that she’s in her element here. Can you elaborate?

This cantata is about sin and our need to renounce sin in order to be at peace with the world. As Ryan Turner (current Artistic Director of Emmanuel Music) says: “The journey begins in a place of true concord, evolving through a statement renouncing the sins against the word of God, and eventually concluding with the believer’s desire to die and thus be free of all sin.” The cantata is full of repose, anxiety and exuberance — perfect for Lorraine!
 

Photo credit: Julian Bullitt

What other memories do you have of Lorraine?

There was another tour that we did of two Bach cantatas, 82 and 199 — there were actually two tours of that program. During the second one, she was very sick, and clearly in pain on stage and off. It was heartbreaking to watch. She had to cancel the last few performances because she was in so much pain. I remember going to her hotel and sitting in the lobby for hours, trying to figure out what to write in a note to her, just to tell her how much it meant to have had the opportunity to play with her.
 

I’m sure that many of Lorraine’s fans will be so grateful that you are sharing your memories of her with us as well as this incredible recording. You also shared this picture of you and Lorraine rafting with a group of friends. Could you tell us some of the story behind that photo?

This was from a day trip organized by a friend of Lorraine's, Roger Kaza. He was playing horn in the Boston Symphony at the time, so most of the people in that picture are horn players from the BSO. We could have wiped out the entire horn section on that trip, and we nearly did, too, we tipped over at one point! Roger was sitting in the front of the raft, and he had rigged up a waterproof camera and a wire with a clicker so he could take pictures as we went through the rapids. Of course he aimed for every big hole. When the water goes over a rock there’s a “hole” or hydraulic downstream of it — a good place to lose control! Roger was looking for an exciting ride, but it was a little too exciting for my taste: you can see that in all of our faces.

What do you want us to take away from hearing this recording? How do you want Lorraine to be remembered?

A lot of people have an image of Lorraine as being very intense — she worked incredibly hard, and I always had the feeling that she spent most of the day of a performance just getting in the zone and preparing herself, especially once she was sick — but I also remember her as fun loving and exuberant. She had a cackle of a laugh that you could hear four blocks away. I took her to our house at the end of Duxbury beach one September, and I have a lasting image of her body-surfing in the ocean after a storm — I like to remember her glee and laughter as we went crashing into the shore.

Interview with Lev Mamuya: Songs for the Spirit

Last April, we celebrated the premiere of Lev Mamuya's final composition for Winsor Music as a high school student, and this fall, we welcome him back as a freshman at Harvard and NEC (fortunately for us, he didn't go too far!). Lev is contributing to Winsor Music's collection of Songs for the Spirit, an ongoing project in which we invite composers to compose a hymn based on the text of their choice, asking only that the text should deal with themes of peace, tolerance, and unity. These pieces are performed on our Chamber Series concerts by both the audience and our professional musicians. To learn more about the project, and to see the full list of participating composers, click here.

Lev very graciously took a few minutes out of his hectic schedule to speak with us about his contribution to the Songs for the Spirit: "I Dream a World," a setting of the famous Langston Hughes poem. You can hear, learn, and sing this remarkable work during our annual Thanksgiving Concert on November 30th, at Follen Community Church in Lexington. More information and tickets can be found here.

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How has your first year of school been?

It’s been alright; it’s definitely been an adjustment getting used to scheduling and new independence and responsibilities, but it’s definitely been good, I like it here a lot. 

How does it feel to be joining a project that John Harbison, Peter Child, and John Heiss have all contributed to?

It was definitely intimidating, but it didn’t really hit me until I asked Peggy to send me some examples of songs from the past, and when I started getting Peter Child and John Harbison songs… It’s definitely intimidating, but a fun challenge. 

One of my favorite aspects of the SFS project is that the composer chooses the text. Tell us about your choice, Langston Hughes' "I Dream a World."

I have always been attracted to his poetry since we did a unit on Modern American poetry in my junior year of high school. It was one of the first things that I thought of when I was told that the text should have something to do with tolerance, peace, love. It just seemed like an obvious choice to fit that description. We learned about this particular poem in school and it has all sorts of historical ties to the civil rights movement. I guess it’s a little bit personal: something about the language reminds me a lot of an MLK speech. It’s very declaratory and optimistic.

Peggy describes these pieces as secular hymns, because they draw on the Christian choral tradition of communal, four-part singing. Did you grow up with any sort of hymn-singing tradition, sacred or secular?

In terms of hymn experience… I’m Jewish, so we used to go to temple or to synagogue, and there’s obviously a singing culture there, so that was a part of my life, especially earlier on. In terms of singing, outside of a hymn context, I’ve sung in chorus and at a variety of music festivals and especially at school, we’ve sung religious hymns and texts there. 

How did that experience (or lack thereof) inform your writing?

I think in writing this particular piece I tried to take a couple of things into consideration more than I normally would in terms of carrying melodies more easily and the types of harmony I wanted to use, what type of voicing and accompaniment was suited for a context like a hymn. I definitely think that knowing pieces like that affected how I went about writing this particular piece. 

Do you have a favorite hymn (or any choral work)?

This isn’t a hymn, but I have a special relationship with the Fauré Requiem which is a piece that I’ve sung at camp a couple of times. In terms of hymn-sounding works, at camp this past year we sight-read a short piece by Olivier Messaien based on bird songs, “O Sacrum Convivium." Something about the harmonies and the style of that really appealed to me as well.

Can you describe your setting of “I Dream A World”?

The poem is very optimistic and very hopeful, and I tried as best I could to echo that tone in the music and the writing and create something that was simultaneously very peaceful but also exuberant in an understated way. In creating it, I really was trying to echo Peggy’s vision of peace and unity and tolerance, being hopeful and happy. 

In all the writing you’ve done for Winsor before, you’ve always been writing for professional musicians, but this is writing for the audience. How did that affect your composition process?

I had a conversation with Peggy about this about how perhaps it would be a good idea for it to be more tuneful, and the parts to be easier to follow, and flushing out the accompaniment a little differently to saturate some of the harmonies. I thought it was a very special challenge, trying to keep it in a place where it would be quickly accessible for an audience to learn and to sing. 

Winsor Music and the Mayor's Holiday!

Mayor Martin J. Walsh of Boston

Winsor Music is pleased to announce that we are participating in the 2014 Mayor’s Holiday! A decade-plus tradition originally supported by the late Mayor Thomas M. Menino, the Mayor’s Holiday is an eight-week celebration of the area’s performing arts featuring thousands of half-priced tickets to over 130 holiday shows throughout Boston and beyond sponsored by ArtsBoston, in partnership with Mayor Martin J. Walsh, the City of Boston, and the Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau. Tickets for Mayor’s Holiday 2014 go on sale November 10, 2014, at MayorsHoliday.com and at both BosTix booth locations at Copley Square and Faneuil Hall Marketplace. This includes tickets to our annual Thanksgiving Concert at Follen Community Church in Lexington! Invite your friends and family to join us in sharing the gift of music this holiday season.