Following a Winsor Commission

We're happy to say that we kicked off the season with a full house and an explosive standing ovation for our first concert this past Sunday, featuring pianist George Li and the Boston premiere of Harold Meltzer's Air and Angels, a Winsor Music Commission. Many, many thanks to George, Harold, Gabby Diaz, Noriko Herndon, Rafi Popper-Keizer, and everyone who helped to make September 14th a night to remember. But we're only just getting started, and even between Winsor Music concerts, our Artistic Director Peggy Pearson is on the road again, following our Winsor commissions wherever they may lead her (did you know she played in Rome this summer?). 

Peggy and Eric Nathan at the American Academy in Rome

This week, Peggy is in NYC with composer Eric Nathan, violinist Samuel Rhodes, pianist Mei Rui, and the Momenta Quartet.  On Friday, they will be performing a concert of Eric Nathan's music at Tenri Cultural Institute, and on Saturday, they head to the studio to record Eric's debut Portrait CD, which will be released in the fall of 2015 by Albany Records. The CD will be produced by Grammy Award-winning engineer Judith Sherman, and will include a performance of the Winsor Music commission Quartet for Oboe and Strings featuring Peggy and the Momenta Quartet.

You can help make this exciting project a reality by considering a donation to the Hatchfund Campaign that Eric has launched to fund the recording. Although we're sure that you're familiar with other crowd-funding platforms like Kickstarter, Hatchfund is an exciting new innovation in the industry, and one that benefits artists and non-profits more directly than any of its competitors. In Eric's own words: 

Hatchfund is different from other crowd-funding organizations (such as Kickstarter) in that it is a non-profit focused entirely on the arts and every cent that you donate is tax deductible. Please note that if you donate to the campaign you must also contribute an additional percentage to Hatchfund – as little as 5% (be sure to select a percentage otherwise the default setting is 15%). Other crowd-funding companies take the same percentage or more out of your pledge, but with Hatchfund the artists receive your full pledge. The extra percentage goes to support services Hatchfund provides to help ensure its very high, 75% success rate of its campaigns. 

We'll keep you posted as the project continues, and you'll be the first to know when the recording is available!

Winsor fans in NYC, you won't want to miss this concert on Friday! It's free with a suggested donation of $20, and if you haven't heard Eric's Quartet for Oboe and Strings yet, this is your chance to see Peggy perform it in person. Full information about the concert can be found here.

Peggy's Notes on Our Season of Haydn

As an oboist,  I often think I am the luckiest person alive because I have the Bach cantata repertoire. Perhaps this should be enough to keep an oboist going!  However, as the artistic director of a chamber series (who enjoys performing), I struggle with the fact that the chamber music repertoire for oboe is limited. Coming up with programs involving the oboe is a challenge, but it's a good challenge to have.  That is why I have been commissioning new compositions and transcribing classical works for oboe since we started Winsor Music.

When I do a transcription, I try hard not to annoy my audience and musician friends by avoiding pieces that are well-known or performed often.  Early on, I started with rarely performed Bach and Brahms organ works; I moved on to Webern, Landini and Clara Schumann.  John Harbison was the one who suggested I take a look at Haydn. 

Professional string quartets are playing less and less Haydn: Hah! what are they thinking?  I love Haydn, and if they are not going to play Haydn, I am.  If I can make a string quartet work for oboe, I’m going to arrange it!

So when one of my board members suggested that I should program Haydn on every concert, I went for it.  The Haydn trio on Sunday’s concert was originally composed for flute, cello and piano.  I programmed this work because it is a concise and spirited piece, and because I love playing it-- but more importantly, I really wanted to play with George Li!

We would like to take this opportunity to announce that Peggy's transcription of Haydn's Quartet in D Minor, Op. 42, No. 1, is now available as a digital download!

Haydn: Quartet in D minor, Op. 42

$10.00

Franz Josef Haydn’s darkly evocative Quartet in D minor, composed in 1785, arranged to include oboe by Peggy Pearson, and here available as a PDF download.

Quartet in D minor, Op. 42, Hob. III:43

1. Andante ed innocentemente

2. Menuetto. Allegretto – Trio

3. Adagio e cantabile

4. Finale. Presto

Add to cart

Interview with George Li

Meet George Li, the distinguished Young Artist who will appear with Winsor Music on Sunday, Sept. 14th, 7:00pm, at St. Paul's Church in Brookline. George is a prizewinning pianist and sought-after concerto soloist who has played for President Obama, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, and members of Congress. He just completed his freshman year of the Harvard/NEC dual degree program last year. George is represented by Young Concert Artists, Inc., and in 2012 was the winner of the Gilmore Young Artist Award and recipient of the Tabor Foundation Piano Award at the Verbier Academy.

How old were you when you started playing, and how did you get started?
I started playing the piano when I was 4 and a half, and my first inspiration to start piano was my older sister, who now teaches math. When she was little, she used to study the piano, and since I was very young, I was exposed to her practicing, and I used to listen to the classical radio station when I was going to bed at night.

Was there any piece or composer that you particularly remember from listening to classical radio as a kid?
Yes, I remember this specific recording of Evgeny Kissin playing the Moonlight sonata, which was very inspiring to me, and I always wished that one day I would be able to play like that. When I finally conquered that piece, it was a very happy moment.

Was there a moment or a turning point when you started to feel like you could do this professionally?
Yes, definitely, I think it was when I was 11, and I played my second concert with orchestra; it was a Beethoven concerto. I felt really different that time — in concert, I felt like I entered a different world while I was playing. It was a very otherworldly experience for me. After the concert, people started coming to me, saying that my music had helped them with their lives, and changed their lives significantly. I guess from that moment, I realized that if I could do this as a career, it would be nice.

It seems like you have a thing for Beethoven!
I really like his music. In my freshman year at Harvard, during my second semester I took a class on Beethoven’s symphonies and learned to appreciate his music a lot.

Have you played much chamber music before?
Yeah, I started when I was nine years old at preparatory school at New England Conservatory, and I formed this group, a trio, with Momo Wong and Jonah Ellsworth, who are also great New England musicians in college. We had a lot of fun; we performed at From the Top, and we went to the Fischoff Chamber music competition, which was a great experience. I really love doing chamber music, it’s so fun. Also, over the summer, I went to Switzerland for a competition, and in the final round I got to play with the Jerusalem Quartet. That was probably the first time I played chamber music with professional musicians. The Winsor concert will only be my second time playing chamber music with professionals, so I’m really looking forward to it.  

What is different about your solo playing versus your chamber playing? Do you approach the music differently?
I guess when I’m playing solo, I’m more free in my sound and the range of colors and dynamics. I can play as loud as I want, but I also have to keep in mind the orchestral sounds that I want to try and imitate. I use my chamber music experience, and my orchestral experience, to try and imitate that range of sounds when I’m playing solo music. Also, in concerti, it’s a combination of chamber music and solo music; I have to be concentrating on maintaining a fluid balance between orchestra and piano, but I also try to lead the orchestra and inspire them to make music in the way that I want to sound. Chamber music is more intimate and more about balance. We inspire each other; the more we pay attention to balance and contrast and character changes, the more exciting the music becomes.

Have you played with an oboe before in a chamber setting?
No, I haven’t. That will definitely be a new experience. I haven’t played with woodwinds or anything besides strings in a chamber setting.

Do you have a favorite instrument or combination that you enjoy playing with?
I always said that if I didn’t play piano, I’d probably try to play the cello. I really like the tone of the instrument.

What are you most looking forward to about this concert/experience?
Being able to collaborate with such great musicians as Mr. Popper Keizer, Ms. Diaz, and Ms. Pearson. All of my experience so far is playing with colleagues my age, which is great because we’re all new at this and trying to get better and better, but I think being able to play with people who already have such great experience in their pockets will be great for me.

Do you find that you are specializing in a period or style so far in your career?
Yeah, my aim would be to able to play all periods of music. I think I’ve been playing a lot of classical and romantic, like Lizst or Chopin, but it would be really great to venture out and try new styles of music, like contemporary. I’ve never played much contemporary other than a little bit of Schoenberg, but nothing really that modern, so that would be a good thing to discover.

How does the repertoire for this concert fit into that picture? Have you played much of this before, or is it new territory?
Actually, I played the Mendelssohn when I was really young, but I haven’t played it since then — probably six or seven years — so it will be a nice piece to get into again, rediscovering new things, and experimenting with it. I’ve never played the Haydn, but I’ve heard it several times on recordings, so yes, I’m familiar with the styles.

What are you most looking forward to in your schedule this year?
A concert next May in Lincoln Center; that will be a very big moment for me. It will be a great experience to play with St. Luke’s Orchestra, and I’m very excited to play the Tchaikovsky Concerto. But I try to think of every concert as extremely important, I always try to do my best. I never think, oh, this is a little concert in a local town, so it’s not important. I always try to think of every concert as maybe the last concert of my life, so I hold myself to a high standard every time I play.

What is your dream gig?
I think my dream concert would be a performance with the Berlin Philharmonic in Germany. That would pretty much do it for me. Any conductor would be great, but I guess Gustavo Dudamel or Zubin Mehta… any great conductor would be amazing. I always dreamed when I was little of playing in all the major concert venues with the great orchestras, and just hearing them on recordings, having CDS of those halls and the performances in those halls was so inspiring to me. It would be a dream come true.

What would you want to do professionally if you weren't a pianist?
Most of my family are doctors, so if I wasn’t a musician, I would probably try medical school or study economics and go to Wall Street [laughs]. Being a doctor is very admirable; they save lives, and they take risks in doing so. It would be good to do that if I wasn’t a musician.

You seem to be motivated by having an impact on people.
Yeah. [laughs]

George Li appears with Winsor Music courtesy of Young Concert Artists, New York. To learn more about George, please visit his YCA page: http://www.yca.org/roster/george-li/. 

Interview with Harold Meltzer

Meet Harold Meltzer, Guggenheim fellow, Pulitzer Prize finalist, co-founder and Artistic Director of the ensemble SEQUITUR, and composer of Air and Angels, Winsor Music's newest commission!

Hometown and/or city where you're currently based:  
I live in New York City, in Manhattan, was born not far away in Brooklyn, and grew up not too much farther away in Long Island. 

How would you describe your music to someone who has never heard it?  
Fragmented and filled with sudden shifts that surprise and come to make sense through accumulation and contrast, concerned with how lyricism can still exist in such a fragmented landscape.

If you had to choose one piece you've written (or that someone else has written) to describe your style or sound, what would it be?  
My own sextet Brion (2008), for flute, oboe, mandolin, guitar, violin, and cello.  http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.559660

What can you tell us about the piece you're composing for Winsor?  
It's the first piece I've written in awhile that is abstract, not based directly on a text or inspired by an architectural site or an older piece of music.  The title, Air and Angels, is taken from a sequence of poems by Kenneth Rexroth; and Rexroth, in turn, took his title from a John Donne love poem of the same name.  But the music is only loosely inspired by the Rexroth sequence.

Where do you see this piece in relation to your other work? Does it fit into the "big picture", or is it something completely different?  
Hmm, I'd say it's a big picture piece, a little related to Brion and a little related to my 2011 string quartet, Aqua.

To learn more about Harold, visit his websites, http://www.sequitur.org/ and http://www.haroldmeltzer.com/. 

Catch Up with Winsor: Spring/Summer Newsletter 2014

We had a great 2013-14 season, and we're now in the middle of a busy summer, gearing up for 2014-15! Take a peek at our newsletter to catch up with what's been happening at the Mather School, the whirlwind life of a Winsor Consortium Commission, and more! (Did you know that you can access any of our newsletters from 2009-10 onwards by visiting our Newsletters Page?)

Click on the image to view the full, two-page newsletter, including very exciting news about Young Artist and composer Lev Mamuya!

George Li: Featured Young Artist, September 2014

Winsor Music is pleased to announce that George Li will perform as our featured Young Artist on the Opening Concert of our 2014 Chamber Series. 

Praised by the Washington Post for combining “staggering technical prowess, a sense of command and depth of expression,” pianist George Li possesses brilliant virtuosity and effortless grace far beyond his years.  In 2012 alone, Mr. Li won the Gilmore Young Artist Award and received the Tabor Foundation Piano Award at the Verbier Academy.  The 2014-2015 season includes his Alice Tully Hall debut, in which he performs the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s under Gerard Schwarz.

Mr. Li has performed recitals at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Tryon Concert Association, the Buffalo Chamber Music Society, the Candlelight Concert Society, University of Georgia, Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the Harriman-Jewell Series, the Miami International Piano Festival, the Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival, the Morgan Library and Museum, the Vancouver Recital Society, Shriver Hall, and Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, among others.  As a concerto soloist, he has appeared with the Richmond, Hilton Head, Edmonton, and Stamford Symphonies, the Boise and Spartanburg Philharmonics, the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra, the Pasadena Symphony and Pops, the Boston Philharmonic, and the Nordic Chamber Orchestra and the Norrkoping Orchestra in Sweden.  

In 2011, Mr. Li performed for President Obama at the White House in an evening honoring Chancellor Angela Merkel.  He was chosen to appear at the opening ceremony of Boston’s new Institute of Contemporary Art and the inauguration of President Tony Woodcock at the New England Conservatory, and has performed for members of US Congress at the Senate Office Building in Washington, DC.

First Prize Winner in the 2010 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, Mr. Li’s highly acclaimed New York debut at the age of 16 opened the 51st Young Concert Artists Series in the Peter Marino Concert at Merkin Concert Hall.  YCA also presented his debut in Washington, DC at the Kennedy Center, sponsored by the Alexander Kasza-Kasser Prize, both to rave reviews.  

As First Prize winner of the inaugural Cooper Competition at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, he appeared as soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra.  He has also performed as soloist with orchestras including the Xiamen Philharmonic in China, the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra in Venezuela, and with “I Solisti di Perugia” in Italy.  He played Beethoven’s Concerto No. 4 with the New England Conservatory Youth Philharmonic under Benjamin Zander on a European tour.

George Li gave his first public performance at Boston’s Steinway Hall at the age of ten.  He won First Prize in the Massachusetts Music Teachers Association Competition twice at the ages of six and seven.  While attending the Walnut Hill School for the Arts, he studied piano with Wha Kyung Byun at the New England Conservatory.  He is currently in the Harvard University/ New England Conservatory joint program, continuing his studies with Wha Kyung Byun.

George will appear courtesy of Young Concert Artists Inc.

Young Concert Artists, Inc.
250 West 57 Street
Suite 1222
New York, NY 10107

telephone: (212) 307-6655
fax: (212) 581-8894
email: yca@yca.org

www.yca.org

Photo: Christoph Michaelis

John Harbison's Thoughts on a Bach Chorale Prelude

Renowned Bach scholar (and friend of Winsor Music) John Harbison had a wonderful conversation with our artistic director Peggy Pearson the other day. They were talking about the chorale prelude "Vater unser im Himmelreich," which you'll hear on tomorrow night's concert, so Peggy took good notes! We're very grateful to John for allowing us to publish them here. 

Vater unser im Himmelreich comes from a series of chorale preludes in the third book of the Clavier-Übung. They are based on the Catechism Chorales which were given this name because they were either composed by Luther or collected by him, and were therefore extremely important to Lutherans.  Bach puts them in a sequence and presents each one in a unique way. Vater unser im Himmelreich is in the form of an elaborate trio sonata with diverse thematic ideas imposed upon the canonic treatment of the chorale tune.

Canons require exact continuation and they technically never end; they were believed to be links to the next world. 

Bach’s sons believed him to be old fashioned and theologically much too involved in  the past. Along with Frederick the Great, they did not care for canons--no doubt Bach was trying to annoy them with the Musical Offering.

We know that the Catechism Chorale Preludes were of great importance to Bach because they are among the few pieces he paid to publish. They are long and extremely difficult.  Bach knew that very few organists in the world could play a work like Vater unser im Himmelreich, and he included a short, simpler version of each chorale prelude that would serve as a hook for less accomplished players. 

Andrew Waggoner on the Many Meanings of Down and Up

Andrew Waggoner is a critically-acclaimed, prize-winning composer who has been praised by the New Yorker as “a gifted practitioner of a complex but dramatic and vividly colored style.” Born in New Orleans, Andrew is currently Professor of Music Composition, Theory, and History, at Syracuse University’s Setnor School of Music. His work has been commissioned and performed by the Academy of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Saint Louis, Denver, Syracuse, and Winnipeg Symphonies, the Cassatt, Corigliano, Miro, and Villiers Quartets, and the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, among many others. Winsor Music is honored to be premiering his latest composition, Down/Up for oboe quartet, on our Spring Concert next Saturday, April 12, 8:00 PM, at St. Paul’s Church in Brookline. For more information, including Mr. Waggoner’s full biography, discography, and much more, please visit his website, www.andrewwaggoner.com.

Mr. Waggoner took some time recently to speak with Katie about his style, his thought process, and the new piece for Winsor, in a thoroughly enjoyable conversation that spanned topics as diverse as pop/rock and thirteenth-century mystics.

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

I think the thing the thing I most want people to feel about my music is that it's strange-- something they haven't heard before-- but beautiful. I like the idea that someone who doesn't know anything about contemporary music can still come away from one of my pieces feeling like they've heard something beautiful, that moves them, but something that recognizably takes them out of their comfort zone, or their zone of familiarity.  

If you had to choose one piece you've written (or that someone else has written) to describe your style or sound, what would it be?

One of the best examples is a piece that's on my most recent CD, also on my website: Livre, and to get a complete picture (downloadable): Inventory of Terrors. Those two pieces, in the context of each other, I think give a pretty complete sense of who I am and what I'm about. Livre is mysterious, but also very sensual, and very joyful. It's very much love music. Inventory of Terrors is about as opposite from that as you can get. What I like about them is how similar they are in certain respects, even though one of them is quite pretty and the other is quite dark and at times violent. Although there are passages from Inventory of Terrors that I find quite beautiful, but maybe in a way that's unique to me, I don't know...   

What can you tell us about the piece you're composing for Winsor?

It's called Down/Up. I think if people actually do check out those other two pieces, then they'll have some sense of what this new piece is about- it's certainly about contrast, as you can guess from the title. A lot of registral contrasts, very low and very high. It's not so much happy/sad as it is down in the earth and up in a less bounded, less restricted sort of space. I think the title hit me from two different directions. There's a great quote from the wonderful 13th-century mystic and theologian Meister Eckhart: "one has to go down to go up." Specifically, he was talking about the imagery around baptism-- the whole idea of going down into water is that you're going down into hell, into the water to be cleansed, and then coming back up. But he wasn't really concerned with hell- he was interested in the totality of the experience. You couldn't really experience heaven unless you'd experienced the earth. You couldn't really experience your spiritual nature unless you'd experienced the physical; good, evil. That's kind of what's driving the piece; that's a lot to lay on a piece of music, but that's what's sparking it.  

And the other thing has more to do with contemporary music  — this is kind of unformed. If people listen to the other two pieces, I think it will be clear that I take this stuff seriously (and myself probably too seriously sometimes!). And I take musical transcendence really seriously; the art that I love the most is transcendent. At the same time much of the music that I love is pop, or folk, music that is thought of being vernacular. The old way of talking about it would be that these kinds of music were low, not high like Bach or Beethoven or Stravinsky. But it's had a big influence on my music in ways that I understand, but I think most people wouldn't get that from hearing my work. Frankly, I don't like most classical music that deliberately imitates pop music; for a lot of reasons, some of which are more easily substantiated than others. And so I was interested in exploring that ambivalence in this piece. To some extent, then, the piece involves a degree of stylistic juxtaposition (high-low). But the end result is less about stylistic crosscutting than tends to be the norm right now.  Something about the notion about having to go down into the earth before going up into the spirit, and figuring out how to wrestle with my own dislike of much so-called crossover music, stuff that really explicitly imitates pop music- I've tried to exorcise that demon for myself.

Where do you see this piece in relation to your other work? Does it fit into the "big picture", or is it something completely different?  

It definitely fits into a continuum, but it also represents something new for me. With each new work I generally set myself some very specific technical challenge, something that forces me to deal with something I haven't before. This spiritual underpinning is something I've drawn from a lot over the years. But with this piece, dealing with my own reservations about a style of music will push the spiritual dimension in a whole new direction. The string quartet that I wrote around 2000, called Legacy — it's directly inspired by both old rhythm and blues and also by Hendrix. When it was written, it was kind of, in its own humble way, on the edge of thinking about this whole new style of music. But it was also unapologetically concert music. At that point, I was exploring those kinds of connections a lot, but in ways that I found interesting. What's happened in the intervening years-- I think that people would hear that piece now and think that the way in which it deals with rock music is kind of quaint. It doesn't bend genres at all. So this piece for Winsor is really the first piece since then that tries to deal with that kind of issue. In the end, though, it's chamber music, which rock is too, at its best. Maybe that's the most important connection between these different genres: people get together, they listen to each other, they try to do their best.

Interview with a Young Composer

Meet Lev Mamuya, a seventeen-year-old composer and prize-winning cellist who will be performing in the premiere of Ingrain, his third composition for Winsor Music, on our April 12 concert at St. Paul's Church in Brookline. Winsor Music will introduce this new work in conversation with another world premiere by the critically acclaimed composer Andrew Waggoner, as well as classic works by Haydn, Bach, and Vivaldi. 

View fullsize

Our Artistic Director, Peggy Pearson, shared the following photo with us and writes: "This is what Lev looked like at his very first concert with Winsor Music, when he was only eleven years old! We're so proud of his growth as a cellist and composer. He's a very fine young man and a wonderful role model, and we wish him all the best as he moves on into the next stage of his life and career."

Lev is a senior at the Roxbury Latin School, and lives with his family in Newton, MA. In a recent interview, he spoke about his new piece, Ingrain, and his thoughts on music, composition, and the road ahead. For Lev's complete biography, please visit our Young Artists page.

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For audience members who are new to Winsor, and who may not be familiar with you, can you tell us something about your compositional background? How many pieces have you completed so far?

I’ve taken composition lessons for about ten years, and I’ve finished a number of pieces —perhaps more in the past three or four years. I was in a chamber group with a clarinetist, a pianist, and a violinist... we were all composers and we’d put together programs of our own music, so I wrote a lot during my time with that group.

Do you mostly compose chamber music? Is that your favorite medium?

I’d say so; I’ve written for chorus, and then some for solo instruments, but most of the music that I’ve composed has been for 3-6 voices.

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

It’s certainly not hyper-modern; there’s a lot of influence from Ravel and Debussy, but also from Bartók and Shostakovich... it has what people associate with an American feel, like Barber.

If you had to choose one piece you've written (or that someone else has written) to describe your style or sound, what would it be?

It’s tough, because there are a lot of people that you want to sound like — you also know you shouldn’t sound exactly like those people — but there’s a lot of Ravel and Debussy, like La Mer, or the Ravel Duo for Violin and Cello, which are really impressive, and you come away saying, “I want to sound like that.” I think one of the best things I’ve written is a piece I finished this summer for chorus and piano, called Solace… We read through it this past summer at camp where I sing in the chorus, and hopefully it’s going to get performed this summer.

What can you tell us about Ingrain?

It’s based on a nine bar phrase which is really the larger product of a three bar phrase. The whole piece is like a theme and variations---kind of a cross between that and a rondo, with some elements of a fugue, because everything is built on that nine bar phrase. The title came from the idea that that one little bit of material is used so heavily over and over again.

Did that core piece of material come from another piece of music, or any particular thought process? Where did you find that core?

Oftentimes I’ll just sit at the piano and make up sketches of melodies for cello and piano, or some other arrangement that I feel comfortable writing for. These melodies aren’t necessarily very good, but then when I sit down to write a larger scale piece I’ll go back over them; sometimes I’ll end up with new themes and new materials and I’ll pick out themes from old ideas that never got finished. Pulling everything together and turning it into an actual piece happens only when I have to write a piece.

Why do you like writing for this particular combination of voices? (Oboe, violin, viola, two cellos; same instrumentation as The Eagle)

Peggy suggested this combination of instruments for The Eagle. I like it because the oboe is pretty different from the stringed instruments but can still blend with them. This piece isn't as emotionally serious or extensive in breadth as The Eagle. It’s a lot more about seeing what you can do with one melodic idea and stretching it with compositional techniques, which isn't something I've done before.

Maybe playing with the same idea as Ravel does in the Bolero? Playing with your technical abilities to see what you can do with this one melodic core?

Right. To a certain extent it came from Bach: the idea of a fugue and being based on a subject and countersubject, and how complex he was able to make a piece with the addition of different voices. I wouldn’t say that there are many parts which are fugue-like in it, but it came from that kind of idea.

Going forward, are you looking towards a career in cello, composition, both, or neither?

I’m looking for colleges that offer a combination of cello and academic programs. Hopefully I can continue to take composition lessons.  It’s helpful to have some sort of guidance and outside ear to listen to your work and see how other people might perceive it and give suggestions on how things could be more effective. But composition is personal and easy to keep up by yourself as well.

How does it feel to hear other people play what you’ve tried to express in your writing?

It’s difficult and I think that’s one of the benefits of having a teacher — you can compose something that makes perfect sense to you but for other musicians, it might be hard to read, or written in a way that’s difficult to play.  So it doesn’t come across the way you want it to, and you’ve got to think of a different solution. [Composing] is definitely personal, and I know if I’ve written something that’s been performed and that I come back to three or four years later, I can say I wish I could have done this differently. It’s personal every time you look at your work, but the process is about honing a lot of material into a form that is accessible so that the audience can take something away from the performance. For a six minute piece I might end up writing twelve or fourteen minutes of music in some incarnation, but obviously it doesn’t all end up in the piece.

You’re auditioning for colleges now and graduating from high school this spring. How does it feel to be premiering your last composition for Winsor before you go to college?

I don’t know, it’s kind of odd. [laughs] It’ll take some getting used to, I guess.

Looking Back on the Bach Institute

It’s said that in the winter of 1705, a twenty-year old J.S. Bach traveled over 260 miles on foot to see the organist and composer Dietrich Buxtehude perform in Lübeck, on the Baltic Coast of Germany.

The students of the 2014 Bach Institute may not have come to us on foot, but they metaphorically followed in young Johann’s footsteps when they flew and drove through not one, but two polar vortices to immerse themselves in the music of Bach, guided by a seasoned and distinguished faculty in our own snowy coastal city of Boston.

An enthusiastic and dedicated audience braved the snow and wind to fill Lindsey Chapel for the final concert on Tuesday, January 21. Our students worked tirelessly on this challenging music for two intense weeks and we are so grateful that you rewarded them with your presence, attention, and appreciation. 

For those of you who might be wondering what we mean quantitatively by “intense,” here are some numbers from co-founder and co-director Kendra Colton’s speech at the final concert (you can view the full text here):

• Faculty of 9 professionals drawn from Emmanuel Music, Oberlin College, Winsor Music
  • They have collectively performed more than 230 years of cantatas at Emmanuel Church
• Approximately 100 hours of group or private coaching during the first week alone
• 3 insightful lectures into the weekly cantatas and 1 masterclass on Bach recitative by Pamela Dellal
• 1 presentation by John Harbison on Cantata 78 (performed for the final concert)
• 14 performances by the students in 17 days
  • 3 Emmanuel Music Sunday cantatas
  • 3 preludes before the Emmanuel Church services
  • 4 Winsor Music outreach concerts at retirement communities
  • 2 children’s concerts at the Mather School in Dorchester
  • 5 performance demonstrations with Pamela Dellal and John Harbison
• Students and faculty attended 3 extra-curricular concerts
  • Golijov’s La Pasión según San Marcos with Robert Spano and The Boston Symphony Orchestra
  • Chemistry performed by A Far Cry and Urbanity Dance on January 11
  • A Little Night Music performed by Emmanuel Music on January 19
• Hours upon hours of individual practice by the students and prep by the faculty...

You get the picture — they packed a lot into two weeks.

The three sponsors of the Institute — Emmanuel Music, Oberlin College and Conservatory, and Winsor Music — work jointly to provide a seamless experience for the students, but each sponsor also brings its own unique contributions to the table. Winsor Music’s established relationships with the Mather School and local retirement communities allow the students to share their gifts and passion for music with underserved communities. This year’s children’s concerts at the Mather School in Dorchester, always a favorite of the Institute participants, featured Frère Jacques, The Opera, a short and simple interactive “opera” based on an easy and familiar tune that the children already know. Like last year’s hit, Mary Had a Little Lamb, the “opera” and the other components of the concert were arranged during the second week of the institute by the students specifically for the children of the Mather School. If you’d like to know more about a typical children’s concert at the Mather School, please visit this page for more details. Thanks to the generosity of everyone who contributed to our Kickstarter campaign this fall, we’re planning to give two more concerts at the Mather School this season — we’ll let you know when we have more details!

As we wrap this post up, we can’t go without thanking the many people who made this one-of-a-kind experience possible, and since Kendra put it so well in her speech, we’ll let her do it:

In order for this program to flourish, a large community of supporters has been enlisted.  The program lists our contributors, but I want to add my personal thanks to Dr. Peter Libby and Dr. Beryl Benacerraf, the Klarman Foundation, and Oberlin College for your critical financial support.  

Housing our out-of-town students in Boston is a special challenge because the length of the program is much longer than most people would dream of having their own relatives visit.  What’s more, the hosts do not even know the people who will be under foot, and so they take a leap of faith that I will invite quality human beings. So to Anne and Sean Gavin, John and Gretchen Graef, Cynthia Livingston and Dick Shader, Eban and Sara Kunz, Carla Rothaus and Eric Printz, and new hosts Diana Post and Hal Churchill, and Susan and Frank Kelley, I offer my sincere gratitude on behalf of the Institute and the students.

Another vital community supporter of the Bach Institute is Emmanuel Church. I’d like to thank Pam Werntz and the church for generously offering this space for the duration of the program.

To Kate Kush and all members of the Emmanuel Music Board, Ryan Turner, artistic director, and Pat Krol, executive director, I say thank you for your continued support and enthusiasm for this program.

… To the faculty, thank you for your commitment, passion, time, opinions, and faith that we would all agree OR agree to disagree on how we wanted to help the students take ownership of this great music.  It is my privilege and honor to have such esteemed colleagues and friends as musical partners.

We would also like to extend our sincere thanks to the students for their hard work and commitment during their time with us, and to congratulate them on a beautiful concert and a job well done. We hope you can draw upon the lessons you learned from your teachers and the beauty you discovered in Bach’s music as you continue on your journey as musicians, whether it takes you to Lübeck, to Boston, or beyond. Wherever you’re going, we hope it’s warmer than Boston in January!

Bach Institute Under Way at Emmanuel Church

The Bach Institute has begun! Students from Oberlin, New England Conservatory and Boston University School of Music are participating in recitals, master classes, and discussions of the music of J. S. Bach, mentored by Emmanuel Music faculty. All activities take place at Emmanuel Church and are free and open to the public. The Bach Institute will culminate in a final concert performance on Tuesday, January 21 at 7:30 pm.

Schedule:

• Saturdays, January 4, 11, 18, 2014 at 9:20 am: Pamela Dellal, Institute Faculty, gives an in-depth lecture on the cantata to be performed the following day by the students, who also perform chamber music in the service prelude:
• Sunday, January 5, Cantata BWV 123
• Sunday, January 12, Cantata BWV 148
• Sunday, January 19, Cantata BWV 3
• Sunday, January 19 at 12:30 pm: Cantata BWV 78, a talk given by John Harbison, with Bach Institute students illustrating, in the Music Room
• Wednesday, January 15, 1:00–2:45 pm: Bach Aria Master Class with Pamela Dellal in the Music Room
• Tuesday, January 21 at 7:30 pm: Final Concert with Bach Arias and Bach cantata BWV 78 in Lindsey Chapel

Kickstarter Campaign a Huge Success!

Our 30-day Kickstarter campaign to fund concerts at the Mather School in Dorchester is now concluded, having raised over 168% of our goal! 86 generous backers have made possible a year of concerts at the school, and then some. Winsor Music is grateful to all of our backers, and your rewards (if you chose one) will be forthcoming. For now, we will be busy making plans for the concerts, and looking forward to having some musical fun with the kids at the Mather School. Thank you, all!

Kickstarter Campaign for Mather School Concerts

Winsor Music has launched a Kickstarter project.  Kickstarter is a website developed to raise money for special projects. Through Kickstarter, we will be funding a project at the Mather School in Dorchester. 

We’ve given eight successful concerts at the Mather School. To continue our collaboration, we need your help. We want to show these youngsters that music is fun, that it can bring joy into their lives. Music inspires creativity, action, commitment, and passion, and it can transform children’s lives. 

Please visit kickstarter.com to make a donation, and please spread the word.

Thank you!

Peggy Pearson

Crossroads at La Jolla Summerfest

Photo by Eiko Thielemann
Source: americasmusicfestivals.org

Peggy Pearson and others will premiere John Harbison’s new work, Crossroads, on a program of three world premieres by Harbison, Stucky, and Del Tredici. The performance will take place on Friday, Augutst 16th and it is not to be missed if you are anywhere near La Jolla! If you can’t make the CA performance, come hear the Boston Premiere by Winsor Music on November 30, 2013. 

In La Jolla, there will be a prelude performance at 6:30 and a “Meet the Composers” event at 7:00. For more information, including location, tickets, performers and more, please visit the Event Page for the La Jolla Music Society Summerfest.

Crossroads ahead...

We're thrilled to announce that we're arriving at the final (and most exciting stage) of a long and fruitful journey with John Harbison and our consortium partners. John's new work, Crossroads  (for soprano, oboe, and strings) will be given its world premiere at the La Jolla SummerFest on Friday, August 16. Our own Peggy Pearson will perform in the world premiere, and Winsor Music will give the Boston premiere on Saturday, November 30. After August 16, our consortium partners will begin giving premieres of the work in their own cities, among them Atlanta, Portland, and Philadelphia. Check back soon for updates and more information about our commissioning partners in the Consortium. 

Summertime...

This summer, Winsor Music has two interns from Smith College, Jess and Katie. Some of you may remember Katie, a repeat offender from last summer, but we’re especially excited to have Jess join the team for the first time. She brings a lot of enthusiasm, energy, and imagination, and you’ll get to see the fruits of her labor when we launch a Kickstarter campaign for the Mather School Concerts later this fall! 

Jess and Katie will also be working on finding sponsors for our fall concerts — if you have any ideas, send them our way! 

Jess Marlor, Smith College '16

Katie Hoyer, Smith College '13