JUNE 10 - 25 | 2022
How we find the river’s edge by Megan Heeres
Where Great Music Comes to Play
2022-2023 Signature Series
Introducing the
79th Season
September 10, 2022 Opening Night
Randall Goosby, violin
Dover Quartet
“An exquisite tone and sheer virtuosity.”
— THE NEW YORK TIMES
October 15, 2022
Montrose Trio Baker, Tower, Weinberg & Brahms
November 12, 2022
Israeli Chamber Project Montrose Trio
Joseph Conyers
7-member ensemble plays Ravel, Stravinsky & more
December 17, 2022
London Handel Players Holiday Baroque: Bach, Handel, Corelli & Traditional Carols
March 18, 2023
Yefim Bronfman, piano Israeli Chamber Project
Zuill Bailey
“A marvel of digital dexterity, warmly romantic sentiment, and jaw-dropping bravura” — CHICAGO TRIBUNE
April 1, 2023
Dover Quartet with Joseph Conyers, bass Haydn, Walker & Dvořák
April 29, 2023
Zuill Bailey, cello Victor Santiago Asunció, piano London Handel Players
Juilliard String Quartet
May 20, 2023
Juilliard String Quartet with Michelle Cann, piano Schumann: Piano Quintet
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Randall Goosby
Yefim Bronfman
313.335.3300 CMDETROIT.ORG Michelle Cann
WELCOME “…the rhythms of nature, large and small – the sounds of wind and water, the sounds of birds and insects – must inevitably find their analogues in music.” – George Crumb
TABLE OF CONTENTS Welcome............................................................................. 3 Festival Leadership............................................................. 4
Welcome to the 2022 Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival! I am excited to share with you a packed program featuring extraordinary artists and life-enhancing music. I chose to begin this welcome letter with the words of the visionary American composer George Crumb, who passed away in February, because they perfectly encapsulate the theme of this year’s festival: music inspired by the natural world.
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The thread of nature-inspired music runs through this year’s diverse repertoire. We have music from the Baroque period to the present day, reflecting a multitude of musical responses to the environment, living things and the human condition. As well as masterpieces by Vivaldi, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, I have chosen brilliant works by composers such as Clara Schumann, Samuel ColeridgeTaylor, Amy Beach, and a wonderful group of living composers including Matthew Barnson, Sally Beamish, Valerie Coleman, Gabriela Lena Frank, Jessie Montgomery, Augusta Read Thomas, Caroline Shaw and Huw Watkins. I am also delighted to welcome my colleague from Stony Brook University, Perry Goldstein, who will be this year’s Stone Composer-in-Residence. He has collaborated with his longtime friend, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Powers, on a song cycle, Birding by Ear, which will receive its world premiere at Temple Beth El.
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To perform this astonishing range of music, we welcome back familiar artists and friends, as well as some wonderful musicians who will be new to our audience. Our Shouse Institute, headed by Philip Setzer, is rich in string quartets this year: the Rolston, Viano and Pelia quartets are all outstanding ensembles and will be joined by the returning contemporary group, F-PLUS. Our Sphinx Fellow will be the violist Kevonna Shuford. The Festival will be a feast for the eyes as well as the ears, with contributions from our visual artist, Megan Heeres. I am also personally thrilled and honored to be collaborating with the legendary dancer Peter Sparling, in a video interpretation of Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise, featuring the captivating tenor, Nicholas Phan. I hope that our Festival program will, in the midst of so many global crises, offer a chance to reflect on the ever-present beauty of the world around us and refresh our spirits with great music. Warmly,
Friday June 10, 2022........................................................... 6 Saturday June 11, 2022..................................................... 8
Tuesday June 14, 2022..................................................... 11 Wednesday June 15, 2022......................................... 13-14 Thursday June 16, 2022.................................................... 15 Friday June 17, 2022.................................................... 18-21 Saturday June 18, 2022................................................... 22 Sunday June 19, 2022...................................................... 24 Tuesday June 21, 2022..................................................... 26 Wednesday June 22, 2022.............................................. 28 Thursday June 23, 2022.................................................... 31 Friday June 24, 2022......................................................... 32 Saturday June 25, 2022................................................... 34 Community Engagement | Artistic Encounters............37 Festival Artists ................................................................... 38 Shouse Ensembles............................................................ 47
Paul Watkins Artistic Director
Living Composers............................................................. 50 Covid-19 Safety Protocol | Ways to Give..................... 52 Ticket Sales | FAQ............................................................ 53 Endowment Funds........................................................... 56 Sponsors & Donors....................................................... 57-58 3
FESTIVAL LEADERSHIP ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Paul Watkins
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR EMERITUS James Tocco
SHOUSE INSTITUTE DIRECTOR Philip Setzer
CHAIRS
Virginia & Michael Geheb, Board Chairs Marguerite Munson Lentz Janelle McCammon & Raymond Rosenfeld
OPERATING BOARD
Kathleen Block Nikki Braddock Cathleen Corken Christine Goerke Michael Leib Judith Greenstone Miller Gail & Ira Mondry Bridget & Michael Morin Frederick Morsches & Kareem George Sandi & Claude Reitelman Randolph Schein Franziska Schoenfeld Lauren Smith Jill & Steven Stone Michael Turala Gwen & S. Evan Weiner Arthur White & Everton Swearing Benson Woo
EX-OFFICIO MEMBERS
Fr. Mark Brauer Cantor Rachel Gottlieb Kalmowitz Rabbi Mark Miller Maury Okun John Sittard Rev. Msgr. Anthony Tocco
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TRUSTEE ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Cecilia Benner Linda & Maurice Binkow Cindy & Harold Daitch Lillian Dean Afa Dworkin Adrienne & Herschel Fink Jackie Paige-Fischer & David Fischer Barbara & Paul Goodman Barbara Heller Fay B. Herman William Hulsker Rayna Kogan Nancy Olin Shannon Orme Martha Pleiss Marc Schwartz Josette Silver Isabel & Lawrence Smith Kimberley & Victor Talia James Tocco Beverly & Barry Williams
STAFF
Administration Maury Okun, President & CEO Jennifer Laredo Watkins, Director of Artistic Planning Community Engagement Jainelle Robinson, Community Engagement Officer Development BethAnne Kunert, Development Officer Sofia Carbonara, Institutional Giving Associate Kameron Sheffield, Development Associate Matthew Fox, Audience Development Intern Finance Triet Huynh, Controller Marketing Bridget Favre, Director of Marketing Priya Mohan, PR & Marketing Associate Kevin Starnes, Multi-Media Marketing Associate Audrey Rancourt, Arts Administration Intern Operations Chloe Tooson, Operations Manager Sabrina Rosneck, Arts Administration Associate Gramm Drennen, Patron Engagement Associate Maya Grossman, Operations Intern
FOUNDING MEMBERS
Wendy & Howard Allenberg Kathleen & Joseph Antonini Toni & Corrado Bartoli Margaret & William Beauregard Nancy & Lee Browning Nancy & Christopher Chaput Julie & Peter Cummings Aviva & Dean Friedman Patricia & Robert Galacz Rose & Joseph Genovesi Elizabeth & James Graham Susan & Graham Hartrick Linda & Arnold Jacob Rosemary Joliat Penni & Larry LaBute Emma & Michael Minasian Beverly & Thomas Moore Dolores & Michael Mutchler Nancy & James Olin Helen & Leo Peterson Marianne & Alan Schwartz Leslie Slatkin Sandra & William Slowey Wilda Tiffany Rev. Msgr. Anthony Tocco Debbie & John Tocco Georgia & Gerald Valente Thelma & Ganesh Vattyham Nancy & Robert Vlasic Gwen & Evan Weiner Barbara & Gary Welsh
SPECIAL THANKS TO
Lynne Dorando Hans, Graphic Design
2022 SPONSORS WEEK ONE
ABOUT THE COVER
THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS AND FUNDERS OF THE 2022 GREAT LAKES CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL
Megan Heeres’s art practice and professional endeavors have connected into a cooperative way of working with community both inside and outside of the studio. These collaborations engage with place, people, art and plants. She participates in projects locally in Detroit and nationally, most recently at the Broad Art Lab at Michigan State University and the Herron School of Art at Indiana University. For the 2022 Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival she created the piece How we find the river’s edge using artist-made cotton, lily and abaca paper, thread, found plants and woven strips of the musical score of Birding by Ear by Perry Goldstein. “With this work, I want the viewer to feel a sense of sound rooted within the quiet. Taking inspiration from the composers featured in the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, I created a piece that is about the different forms and spaces where music is encountered. As I collected plants for this work along the Detroit River in the stillness of winter, music was ever present in the water, plants, animals, machines and daily life of people.”
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How we find the river's edge by Megan Heeres Museum Quality Print on Fine Art Paper Limited quantity signed and numbered by artist $250 Order online at GreatLakesChamberMusic.org/art-sale
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WEEK ONE | JUNE 10 FRIDAY, JUNE 10 | 8 P.M.
MUSIC, NATURE, AND THE NATURE OF MUSIC Kerrytown Concert House
ANTON NEL, piano VIANO STRING QUARTET, Shouse ensemble
PROGRAM Robert Schumann (1810-56)
Waldszenen (Forest Scenes), Op. 82 Eintritt (Entry) Jäger auf der Lauer (Hunters on the Lookout) Einsame Blumen (Lonely Flowers) Verrufene Stelle (Haunted Place) Freundliche Landschaft (Friendly Landscape) Herberge (Wayside Inn) Vogel als Prophet (Bird as Prophet) Jagdlied (Hunting Song) Abschied (Farewell) Nel
Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942)
Music is often described as something ineffable, a reflection of the cosmic order, or of the human mind. Perhaps; but what is certain is that music—that marvelous cocreation of our sensory, neuro-muscular, and limbic systems—is deeply embedded in Nature’s flesh-and-blood. It seems to be an organizing force hard-wired into the Natural system. It represents the acoustic dimension of a society or culture; it can be private or communal, a personal language or a medium of communication. The idea of music also encompasses our response to acoustic events that we perceive as ordered, as “making sense”—in all the possible meanings of that phrase. I believe it should also encompass the ordered acoustic expressions of the entire natural world—animal-songs, forest soundscapes, etc. To deny that they are “real” music is the grossest kind of anthropocentrism, the same attitude that despoils Nature without remorse. Additionally, denying their connection to music is to deny human music’s connection to Nature—a connection that I am sure all who are gathered here still believe exists. Nature will be our focus this season. We will have music inspired by nature—in celebration, description, and at times, in humor. We have music that probes its own nature; music that, in John Cage’s words, “imitates nature in her manner of operation”; and music that explores our own human nature—perhaps the landscape which music most clearly reveals.
Viano String Quartet
Waldszenen was written in a week around New Year 1849 at the Schumann’s home in Dresden. It was inspired by Heinrich Laube’s Hunter’s Breviary. Laube (1806-84), a fascinating character, was a dramatist, theater director, member of parliament, poet, novelist, and, in the 1830’s and 40’s, a revolutionary polemicist (for which he served a year’s jail time). The “peoples’ revolutions” he championed exploded across the continent in 1848 and, four months after Waldszenen, would completely upend the Schumanns’ lives. (During the years they lived in Dresden, Thoreau was in residence at Walden. “Civil Disobedience” came out in 1849.)
Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 81 Allegro, ma non tanto Dumka. Andante con moto Scherzo (Furiant). Molto vivace – Poco tranquillo Finale. Allegro
These Forest Scenes are not mere “nature pieces.” Nature, here, is the symbolically pregnant backdrop for primal human activity—hunting, wandering, questioning, creating, seeking shelter. Flowers are anthropomorphized (“Lonely Flowers”), landscapes are “friendly”, places are “haunted.” (Verrufene can also mean “infamous”, as if the spot had been the site of a bloody crime.) Taken together, these strange, unsettling pieces seem to say, Look to Nature—and you will find yourself, staring back.
Five Pieces for String Quartet Alla Valse Viennese (allegro) Alla Serenata (allegretto con moto) Alla Czeca (molto allegro) Alla Tango milonga (andante) Alla Tarantella (prestissimo con fuoco)
INTERMISSION Antonín Dvor̆ák (1841-1904)
PROGRAM NOTES
Nel, Viano String Quartet
Schumann told his publisher he was particularly fond of Waldszenen (though Clara found a number of the movements too upsetting to play). Through subtle means— slightly unbalanced phrases, stark textures, clashing voices and unexpected juxtapositions—the music summons a strange sense of dislocation that might reorient one’s sense of music, nature, and our own psyche. Erwin Schulhoff, fueled by the anarchic and revolutionary energy of the Dada movement (ca.1915-25), aimed to blow up the whole artistic endeavor. Though based in Prague, Schulhoff associated with the Dada’s German/Swiss wing—artists such as Grosz, Arp, and Klee. In the Five Pieces for String Quartet from 1923, each
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WEEK ONE | JUNE 10 piece takes a conventional form or genre and, through distortion, dissonance, disjunction, and biting jokes, tries to explode it from within. The “Viennese Waltz”, for instance, is written in 4/4 time, creating a weird, lopsided sense of rhythm. The wildness and provocation intended by these little pieces has muted considerably with age, since the same techniques he used to provoke and dismantle became the very building blocks of the new, constructive modernism of Bartók, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, et al. Schulhoff was crazy about jazz and popular dancing, and wrote a number of what we would now call “crossover” pieces. In the 1930’s he became a committed Socialist. Sadly, as a Jew writing “degenerate music,” his political commitment compromised his personal safety and, inevitably, he was sent to prison, where he died of tuberculosis in August, 1942, at the age of 48. After Schumann’s dark forest journey and Schulhoff’s anxious provocations, coming upon Dvor̆ák’s Piano Quintet is like coming upon a large, welcoming house in a clearing. Its many rooms (movements) are decorated with cozy furniture, multiple fabrics, wallpaper, and colorful pictures (those glorious tunes). A fire is burning in the kitchen where the old ones tell stories, and there’s dancing in the backyard. One reason for Dvor̆ák’s perennial appeal is that his music occupies a kind of sweet spot: between East and West (the Slavic influence vs. the Western Classical tradition); between “folk” and “art” music; between the past and present (there are passages in the Quintet that could be straight out of Schubert, followed seamlessly by ones full of dramatic Brahmsian rhetoric, followed again by folk-inspired material that sounds both ancient and modern at the same time); and written at a time of relative peace on the European continent by a successful, middle-class family man, proud of his country and his culture, yet curious about what lay beyond it. © Paul Epstein 2022
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WEEK ONE | JUNE 11 SATURDAY, JUNE 11 | 6 P.M.
PROGRAM NOTES
FROM THE BIG BANG TO THE END OF TIME
Welcome to the Cosmic Cabaret Concert—from a Cubist “In The Beginning” Extravaganza—To the End of Time—and, in between, the Sweet Theater of our Earthly Life—
GLORIA CHIEN, piano ANTON NEL, piano SOOVIN KIM, violin TAI MURRAY, violin PHILIP SETZER, violin
La Création du monde was a production of the Ballets Suédois (Swedish Ballet), an avant-garde troupe which aimed to be a “synthesis of modern art.” Productions in the past had featured poets Claudel and Cocteau, artists de Chirico and Picabia, and composers Honegger, Poulenc, and Satie. “La Création” brought together poet Blaise Cendrars (story), artist Fernand Léger (costumes and sets), and Darius Milhaud (score). Cendrars cobbled together some African creation myths, Léger created extravagant cubist costumes making the most of Cubism’s connection to African art, and Milhaud, fresh from a trip to New York where he had been bowled over by the jazz that he had heard, wrote a raucous, jazz-inflected score. Paris loved exotica like this, though to us, now, it represents an absolute horror show of cultural appropriation. Thankfully, Cendrars’ contribution has been forgotten; Léger’s exists mostly as drawings (they proved too heavy to dance in). Milhaud’s has survived because of its musical invention and because it presents itself as an impression of jazz (with some Brazilian stuff thrown in), not anywhere close to the real thing. Milhaud certainly captures some of its energy and éclat. We will be presenting an arrangement Milhaud made for chamber ensemble, which considerably tones down the sound from the original 18-piece pit band and brings out some of the music’s more classical influences—for instance, the opening sections’ echo (or is it mimicry?) of a Baroque overture with concluding fugue [see: Handel oratorios].
Seligman Performing Arts Center Sponsored by Aviva & Dean Friedman
KEVONNA SHUFORD, viola PAUL WATKINS, cello DAVID SHIFRIN, clarinet PELIA STRING QUARTET, Shouse ensemble
PROGRAM Darius Milhaud (1892-1974)
La Création du monde suite de concert, Op. 81b Prélude Fugue Romance Scherzo Final Nel, Murray, Setzer, Shuford, Watkins
W.A. Mozart (1756-91)
Clarinet Quintet, K. 581 Allegro Larghetto Menuetto Allegretto con variazoni Shifrin, Pelia String Quartet
INTERMISSION Olivier Messiaen (1908-92)
Quartet for the End of Time Liturgie de cristal (Crystal liturgy) Vocalise, pour l’Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps (Vocalise, for the Angel who announces the end of time) Abîme des oiseaux (Abyss of birds) Intermède (Interlude) Louange à l'Éternité de Jésus (Praise to the eternity of Jesus) Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes (Dance of fury, for the seven trumpets) Fouillis d'arcs-en-ciel, pour l'Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps (Tangle of rainbows, for the Angel who announces the end of time) Louange à l'Immortalité de Jésus (Praise to the immortality of Jesus) Shifrin, Chien, Kim, Watkins
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With the gaudy clamor of Milhaud still ringing in our ears, the amiable exterior of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet might initially mask its depth and complexity. It sounds like many works in one, actually. The clarinet blends beautifully with the strings, creating a thick, almost symphonic sound. At times, the ensemble sounds like a little pit-band for a melodrama or vaudeville. Note how each successive paragraph of the first movement is paced just like the successive entrances of characters in a buffo finale. We are reminded that the roots of the Classical style lay in comic opera, the symphony growing out of the sinfonia (overture), the concerto from the aria. Mozart wrote the quintet for his friend, the clarinet virtuoso Anton Paul Stadler, who seems to have been an inspiring musician, known for the sweetness of his sound, a fun guy to drink and shoot skittles with, but not exactly reliable. He never paid back money he borrowed from Mozart (who could hardly afford it in the first place), and, to the eternal frustration of all scholars and clarinetists, managed to lose the original scores of the concerto and quintet that Mozart wrote for him. For many reasons, those two pieces have remained some of Mozart’s most beloved. They have many personality traits in common, and if, in some way, they resemble Stadler’s personality, then he must have been at least a bit of a sweetheart, as well as a jerk. We now tumble, as in life often happens, suddenly and precipitously, into danger and terror. In 1939, the 31-year-old Messiaen was drafted into the French Army, serving as a medical orderly, and was captured in May, 1940. Chance landed him in Stalag VIII-A, whose Komendant was a Belgian, music lover, and (secret) anti-Nazi. Impressed that he had a famous composer in his camp, he managed to secure manuscript paper, pens, a quiet place to work for his prisoner, and arranged for
WEEK ONE | JUNE 11 the work’s premiere, on a freezing January evening in 1941. (He ultimately forged papers that effected Messiaen’s release in May of ’41.) Messiaen scored the piece for himself (piano) and three other prisoners who happened to be professional musicians. Driven by an understandably intense desire to transcend his hellish situation, he produced the transcendent Quartet for the End of Time, a mystical, Fantasia-colorful, synaesthetic soundscape that matches Debussy’s definition of music as “colors and rhythmicized time.” (Interestingly, Fantasia is also from 1940.) Messiaen’s own notes in the score [excerpted here, my ellipses] are the best way to describe the experience: I. Crystal liturgy (full quartet) Between three and four in the morning, the awakening of birds ... surrounded by a shimmer of sound ... the harmonious silence of Heaven. II. Vocalise, for the Angel who announces the end of time (full quartet) The first and third parts (very short) evoke the power of this mighty angel ... who sets one foot on the sea and one foot on the earth ... In the middle section are the impalpable harmonies of heaven ... sweet cascades of blue-orange chords... III. Abyss of birds (solo clarinet) The abyss is Time with its sadness, its weariness. The birds are the opposite to Time; they are our desire for light, for stars, for rainbows, and for jubilant songs. IV. Interlude (violin, cello, and clarinet) Scherzo, of a more individual character than the other movements... V. Praise to the eternity of Jesus (cello and piano) A broad phrase, "infinitely slow", on the cello, magnifies with love and reverence the eternity of the Word, powerful and gentle, "whose time never runs out". VI. Dance of fury, for the seven trumpets (full quartet) ...The four instruments in unison imitate gongs and trumpets. ... Music of stone, formidable granite sound; irresistible movement of steel, huge blocks of purple rage, icy drunkenness. VII. Tangle of rainbows, for the Angel who announces the end of time (full quartet) ... In my dreams, I hear and see ordered chords and melodies, known colors and shapes ... a roundabout compenetration of superhuman sounds and colors ... VIII. Praise to the immortality of Jesus (violin and piano) ... It is all love. Its slow ascent to the acutely extreme is the ascent of man to his god, the child of God to his Father, the being made divine towards Paradise. © Paul Epstein 2022
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WEEK ONE | JUNE 12 SUNDAY, JUNE 12 | 2 P.M. A WINTER’S JOURNEY
Detroit Institute of Arts Sponsored by Linda & Maurice Binkow NICHOLAS PHAN, tenor PAUL WATKINS, piano PETER SPARLING, video artist
PROGRAM Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Winterreise Gute Nacht (Good Night) Die Wetterfahne (The Weathervane) Gefrorne Tränen (Frozen Tears) Erstarrung (Numbness) Der Lindenbaum (The Linden Tree) Wasserflut (Flood) Auf dem Flusse (On the River) Rückblick (Backward Glance) Irrlicht (Will o’the Wisp) Rast (Rest) Frühlingstraum (Spring Dream) Einsamkeit (Loneliness) Die Post (The Post) Der greise Kopf (The Grey Head) Die Krähe (The Crow) Letzte Hoffnung (Last Hope) Im Dorfe (In the Village) Der stürmische Morgen (The Stormy Morning) Täuschung (Illusion) Der Wegweiser (The Signpost) Das Wirtshaus (The Inn) Mut! (Courage!) Die Nebensonnen (The Mock Suns) Der Leiermann (The Hurdy-Gurdy Man) Phan, Watkins, Sparling
PROGRAM NOTES Schubert’s anti-hero in his song cycle, Winterreise, of 1828 — the desperate, heartbroken wanderer who searches for the last traces of sanity and human connection amidst a frozen landscape-- is a premonition of long succession of solitary male figures in music, art and literature who find themselves isolated and alone within yet hauntingly disconnected from nature. I think of the spindly sculptures of Giacometti, the absurd buffoon in Samuel Beckett’s barren landscapes reaching for a dangling carrot just out of hand’s grasp, or Buster Keaton’s sad face and tautly wound body on screen as he rampages against a world out of joint. Perhaps film/video is the ultimate medium for a 21st century interpretation of Schubert’s wanderer. With the flexibility of mobile cameras and editing software and effects, a solitary dancer is able to shift easily from scene to scene on screen, take on multiple identities, and actually “act out” Schubert’s 24 songs on location, in a manner that would be impossible on stage. And the idea of a motion picture projected onto a screen in a darkened hall with live musical accompaniment returns us to the very origins of cinema: the silent movie. As a solo dancer/choreographer, video artist, painter, and former musician, I have been drawn to great music as inspiration throughout my 50-year career. Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, as well as Copland, Boulez, Carter, and living composers who have also been friends: among them Paul Epstein, William Bolcom, Leslie Bassett, Frank Pahl and Thollem McDonas. I have listened closely to many different performances of the Winterreise over many years, and at age 67, I finally felt compelled to move to them (while I still could!) and make moving imagery for the screen. The result, I hope, is a dramatic and visceral video narrative for screening alongside live musical performance. Serving as both onscreen performer and editor, I have populated the screen with Schubertian figures who bridge different eras past and present, and who step in and out of the frame to embody surreal and fragmented portrait of a man broken by life and aging yet fighting for his last foothold in a frozen landscape. Sometimes that landscape blurs with memory, dream and a kind of hallucinatory fantasy. Humor alternates with tragic melancholy as the disoriented protagonist loses grasp of reality. Or does he finally find himself and confront the reality of his/our condition in the plaintive street vaudeville of the hurdy-gurdy man? As my dancer’s body ages, I feel more like an old, gnarled hurdy-gurdy man, dancing a hobbled jig while cranking out melodies as reminders of youth, unrequited loves, and loss. Schubert must have found a similar identification in these “terrifying songs,” the final cycle he was to compose during the last months of his short life. In the words of Schubert’s friend, Joseph von Spaun: “Come to Schober's today and I will play you a cycle of terrifying songs; they have affected me more than has ever been the case with any other songs.” He then, with a voice full of feeling, sang the entire Winterreise for us. We were altogether dumbfounded by the sombre mood of these songs, and Schober said that one song only, “Der Lindenbaum,” had pleased him. Thereupon Schubert leaped up and replied: “These songs please me more than all the rest, and in time they will please you as well.” © Peter Sparling 2022
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WEEK ONE | JUNE 14 TUESDAY, JUNE 14 | 7:30 P.M.
THE SPIRIT OF THE PLACE (“GENIUS LOCI”)
Temple Beth El Sponsored by Joy & Allan Nachman and Linda Goodman in memory of Dolores Curiel GLORIA CHIEN, piano GILLES VONSATTEL, piano SOOVIN KIM, violin TAI MURRAY, violin PHILIP SETZER, violin YURA LEE, viola CLIVE GREENSMITH, cello PAUL WATKINS, cello DAVID SHIFRIN, clarinet
PROGRAM NOTES Places have long memories. They soak up their history and store it in the soil like carbon, creating an historical terroir, so to speak, that informs new life and creation. It is instructive that “nature” and “nation” have the same root—“nat-”, referring to birth—“that which we are born with.” It is also true, as both science and history have shown, that the sturdiest entities are those with the broadest and most diverse roots. This dynamic balance between the local and the universal has driven the development of the arts, and life itself, since the Beginning. Folk musicians are, by definition, rooted deeply in their native cultural soil. Professionals may begin that way, but the exigencies of the professional life usually force them into a more cosmopolitan, if not to say rootless, existence. Such were the lives of the composers on this concert. All were products of Germany’s bourgeois/ Protestant/industrial heart. The Schumanns remained in the area (when Clara wasn’t on tour), living, at various times, in Frankfurt, Leipzig, Dresden, Düsseldorf, and Berlin.
PROGRAM Ludwig van Beethoven Piano Trio in G major, Op. 121a, (1770-1827) Ten Variations on Ich bin Schneider Kakadu Chien, Kim, Watkins Piano Trio in D major, Op. 70, No. 1, “Ghost” Allegro vivace e con brio Largo assai ed espressivo Presto Chien, Kim, Watkins
INTERMISSION Clara Schumann (1819-96)
Scherzo No. 2 in C minor, Op. 14 Vonsattel
Johannes Brahms (1833-97)
Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115 Allegro Adagio Andantino Con moto Shifrin, Setzer, Murray, Lee, Greensmith
Like every other musician in Europe, however, they thought at one time or another of moving to Vienna. The Austrian capital, center of the Hapsburg Empire, was also a cultural capital and musical melting pot. Because of its geo-historical position, this river city represented a musical crossroads, blending the styles of the Germanic Protestant North, Italianate Catholic South, and Slavic East—a fruitful commingling, one of whose results was the development, in the late 18th century, of what we now call the Classical Style. The city maintained its musical importance through the early 20th century. Beethoven moved to Vienna from his hometown of Bonn in his early 20’s, first to study with Mozart who, tragically, died before this dream pairing could happen, then for an off-again-on-again period of study with Haydn. Though he remained in Vienna and environs for the rest of his life, he maintained an almost clinical level of unsettledness and personal tumult, moving every 6 months or so (over 60 times in his 35 years there!). The stylistic disjunctions and zany contrasts of Piano Trio in G major, Op. 121a – Ten Variations on Ich bin Schneider Kakadu may be a direct result of that restlessness. Beethoven first sketched this set of variations on the tune “I Am Kakadu the Tailor,” from Wenzel Müller’s opera “The Sisters from Prague,” around 1803. He rewrote it in 1816, though it wasn’t published until 1824, when he was working on the Ninth Symphony, Missa Solemnis and the “Diabelli” Variations. Judging from its astonishing, and very funny, changes of style, he appears to have added to it with each revisitation. There is a long, complex and dramatic introduction that leads to an incongruously silly main theme (which bears a passing resemblance to Papageno’s comic songs from The Magic Flute as well as Monty Python’s “Lumberjack Song”). The increasingly complex variations feature explosive sonorities and thick counterpoint that strongly recall both the Ninth and the Diabelli. Beethoven liked to summer in the rural villages on the Danube, just north of the city. He began frequenting the town of Heilegenstadt, where his good friend and confidante, the Countess Marie von Erdödy, had an estate. They were obviously very close—Beethoven referred to her as his “father confessor”. The Countess, a patron of the progressive arts, had successfully lobbied members of the Austrian continued on page 12
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WEEK ONE | JUNE 14 continued from page 11
aristocracy to provide Beethoven with a yearly stipend. Some scholars claim she was the intended recipient of the composer’s famous, unsent “Immortal Beloved” letter. He resided at her estate for periods in 1808 and 1809, and dedicated the works he wrote there to her: the two piano trios, Op. 70 and the two cello sonatas, Op.102. All four are intense and complex. Op. 70, No.1, the “Ghost” Trio, is so called because of its extraordinary slow movement, whose strange rumblings and fractured lines foreshadow the haunted soundscapes of Schubert’s late sonatas and quartets. Beethoven was extremely productive during the times he spent “in the country.” They afforded ample opportunity for his beloved walks, and perhaps the quiet afforded more time for self-reflection—another letter, the “Heilegenstadt Testament,” addressed to his brothers but also unsent, was written there in 1802. In it, he expressed despair and fear at his deteriorating hearing, to the point of contemplating suicide, ultimately resolving to press on towards his creative goals. We are lucky to have the compositions that Clara Schumann managed to write, between constant touring, raising a family with eight children, and caring for a mentally ill husband. The extraordinary pieces she wrote as a teenager, among them her Piano Concerto (1835), show an already advanced compositional talent. Her Scherzo No. 2 was written around 1844/5, four years after her marriage, probably for an important concert tour of Russia. It has a glowing sound—she has an understanding of how to make the piano sing from within. The scherzo, modeled formally after Chopin’s scherzos but calmer in tone, is alternately passionate and placid, at times echoing Mendelssohn. (Chopin, Mendelssohn, Liszt, et al—these were people she knew, who were friends, whose music she played.) One wishes it went on further (but... isn’t that one of the kids crying...?). Her very conflicted attitude towards composing may be gathered from comparing these two quotes, separated by some years: “Composing gives me great pleasure. There is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound.” “I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to be a composer – there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?” Brahms moved to Vienna in his mid-30’s after failing to secure a job to his liking with a prestigious German orchestra or school. Whether he ever really “settled” is an open question since he continued to travel constantly, perform and conduct his music throughout Europe, spend holidays with friends abroad, and summer at resorts in the mountains. In the 1880’s he began visiting Bad Ischl, a spa town dating from Roman times, in the mountains east of Salzburg, staying there every summer after 1888. Almost all of his works after 1890 were written there. That summer, however, he experienced some kind of personal/creative crisis, deciding he was done composing, and upon his return to the city, as he wrote to his publisher Simrock, had “thrown a lot of torn-up manuscript paper into the river.” Thankfully, his creative spirit was revived some months later upon hearing Richard Mühlfeld’s clarinet playing. Brahms was bowled over. He listened for hours to Mühlfeld practicing, like a painter studying his subject, and the following summer he quickly wrote the Clarinet Trio, Op.114 and Clarinet Quintet, Op.115. © Paul Epstein 2022
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WEEK ONE | JUNE 15 WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15 | 9:30 A.M.
BEYOND THE NOTES: MUSIC MEETS MINDFULNESS Temple Beth El (under the tent)
Enjoy a 60-minute yoga class for every body with yoga maestra Gail Mondry, accompanied by a Shouse ensemble.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15 | 2 P.M.
BEYOND THE NOTES: IN CONVERSATION WITH RICHARD POWERS AND PERRY GOLDSTEIN Bloomfield Township Public Library
Composer Perry Goldstein and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Powers discuss their collaboration on Birding by Ear. They’ll be joined by an ensemble of musicians to demonstrate the intersection between their two artforms.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15 | 7 P.M. THE FESTIVAL IN RESIDENCE
Capitol Theatre, Windsor Sponsored by The Morris & Beverly Baker Foundation GILLES VONSATTEL, piano RACHEL GOTTLIEB KALMOWITZ, soprano ROLSTON STRING QUARTET, Shouse ensemble
PROGRAM Claude Debussy (1872-1958)
Ariettes oubliées C’est l’extase langoureuse (It is langorous rapture) Il pleure dans mon cœur (Tears fall in my heart) L’ombre des arbres (The shadow of trees) Chevaux de bois (Merry-go-round) Aquarelles I (Green) Aquarelles II (Spleen)
Honigman is proud to support the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival and the Viano String Quartet
Kalmowitz, Vonsattel Amy Beach (1867-1944)
Piano Quintet in F-sharp minor, Op. 67 Adagio – Allegro moderato Adagio espressivo Allegro agitato – Adagio come prima – Presto Vonsattel, Rolston String Quartet
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WEEK ONE | JUNE 15 WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15 | 7:30 P.M. TWO’S COMPANY, THREE’S A TRIO Temple Beth El Sponsored by Nancy Duffy GLORIA CHIEN, piano SOOVIN KIM, violin TAI MURRAY, violin PAUL WATKINS, cello NICHOLAS PHAN, tenor
PROGRAM Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Piano Trio in E-flat major, Op. 1, No.1 Allegro Adagio cantabile Scherzo. Allegro assai Finale. Presto Chien, Kim, Watkins
Ralph Vaughan Williams Along the Field (1872-1958) We’ll to the woods no more Along the field The half-moon westers low In the morning The sigh that heaves the grasses Good-bye Fancy’s knell With rue my heart is laden Phan, Murray
INTERMISSION Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Piano Trio in E-flat major, Op. 97, “Archduke” Allegro moderato Scherzo. Allegro Andante cantabile, ma però con moto. Poco più adagio Allegro moderato - Presto Chien, Kim, Watkins
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PROGRAM NOTES The chamber music of the Classical era (roughly Haydn to Brahms) is a medium of multiple voices joining to create a higher level unity—e pluribus unum. Because the conception of harmony at that time was based primarily on the sonority of four-voice chords, the string quartet—four melody instruments of equal weight that together span the sound-spectrum, high to low—became the ideal medium. Adding piano to strings can vary and amplify the sound immensely, but the piano’s starkly different tone color will always preclude a real blend, and at times it can give the impression of a little concerto rather than a colloquium of equals. In any case, the piano trio (violin, cello, piano) remained a popular combo throughout that era and through the 19th century, since it would not have been unusual, in that era of home-made music, to have a violinist, cellist, and pianist in a household or circle of friends. Popular orchestral works of the era were turned into piano trio arrangements for home entertainment. It is, in fact, quite an economical ensemble, creating maximum volume with minimum players: the strings project the melody and bass; the piano reinforces both and fills in the middle. For these reasons (and more) the 22-year-old Beethoven decided on that ensemble for his formal compositional debut, his Piano Trios, Opus 1: a set of three, substantial 4-movement works, dedicated to Prince Lichnowsky, one of his earliest supporters. (The Prince had been a supporter of Mozart as well, until he sued him for unpaid loans.) Beethoven makes the most of the medium. All three are broad, big-boned, eager to astound, and already demonstrating the composer’s coilspring energy. Familiar as we are with what his music would soon sound like, these early pieces sound a little strange, not entirely “Beethoven”, but rather a young composer working through his Mozart and Haydn, towards himself. In a string trio—three matched melody intruments—that 4th harmonic voice must be implied, and it takes great compositional skill to insure the texture doesn’t sound empty. The conventional duet—solo with keyboard accompaniment—is actually just an augmentation of the One, since the accompaniment is there to amplify and support the solo (e unibus plurum). A duet of equal melody instruments is an even greater challenge, and opens up all sorts of “relationship” questions, an aspect Vaughan Williams brilliantly exploits in Along the Field, his settings for voice and solo violin of Houseman’s bittersweet, folky-yet-sophisticated poems of life, death, and the evanescence of love. The poems actually represent a third player in the ensemble. The interplay of voice and violin mirrors the stories of lovers and their fates, and the music’s often complex phrasing is there to illuminate the rhythmic play of the poetry. The music from Beethoven’s Late Period was a mystery to most musicians of the era. It would be a few generations before composers began unpacking it. The Middle Period style, with its emphasis on simple melodic materials, leisurely progressions of clear, bright harmonies, and obsessive, propulsive rhythms, proved much more immediately influential. You can hear how a work like the Piano Trio in E-flat, Op. 97, known as the “Archduke” for its dedicatee, Archduke Rudolph of Austria, must have influenced Schubert’s work in particular. Though Beethoven often built his themes out of simple, catchy motives, here he begins with a full, expansive melody of a kind Schubert would soon further develop. Beethoven never really ties up the
WEEK ONE | JUNE 16 tune in the way Schubert might have; he interrupts it first with a dramatic pause and announcement, takes it up again, a little more broadly, then seems to veer into very weird and unexpected harmonies—that may have had the players and listeners at early performances looking at each other nervously—before brightening up again and plunging on. A play of light and dark runs through the whole piece—a quality that must have also entranced Schubert, who took such interplay to extreme lengths. The scherzo presents some strange, unsettling moments. The main section is in his bouncy/folky mode; the “trio” section is anything but: it keeps veering unexpectedly between dark, almost atonal passages—you won’t hear harmonies like this again until Chopin—and very bright, “Invitation to the Dance”-type passages. The main section returns, as one does in a scherzo, but rather than finishing there, he reprises the dark, foreboding music from the trio, then caps it with a silly “button”—an unsettling effect that looks toward the dark scherzos of Mahler. In the same way it keeps balancing dark and light, so too is the “Archduke” balanced on the cusp between Beethoven’s “middle” and “late” style. In fact it marks an important, if sad, event in his life. The work’s first performance was a disaster because of his deteriorating hearing, and it was the last time he played piano in public. A whole new, interior journey had begun. © Paul Epstein 2022
THURSDAY, JUNE 16 | 7:30 P.M. TRAVELS IN THE SOUNDSCAPE Temple Beth El Sponsored by Josette Silver ANTON NEL, piano GILLES VONSATTEL, piano YURA LEE, violin PHILIP SETZER, violin KEVONNA SHUFORD, viola CLIVE GREENSMITH, cello
PAUL WATKINS, cello DAVID SHIFRIN, clarinet RANDALL SCARLATA, baritone ROLSTON STRING QUARTET, Shouse ensemble VIANO STRING QUARTET, Shouse ensemble
PROGRAM Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
String Quartet in C major, Op. 33, No. 3, “The Bird” Allegro moderato Scherzo: Allegretto Adagio ma non troppo Finale: Rondo – Presto Rolston String Quartet
Valerie Coleman (b. 1970)
Shotgun Houses (2018) Shotgun Houses Grand Avenue Rome Shifrin, Viano String Quartet
INTERMISSION Perry Goldstein (b. 1952)
Birding by Ear: Six Songs on Texts by Richard Powers (WORLD PREMIERE) White-throated Sparrow Mockingbird Lyre Bird Famous Bird Sayings Barred Owl The Morning Chorus Vonsattel, Setzer, Watkins, Scarlata
W. A. Mozart (1756-91)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat major, K. 493 Allegro Larghetto Allegretto Nel, Lee, Shuford, Greensmith
Soovin Kim
Tai Murray
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WEEK ONE | JUNE 16 continued from page 15
PROGRAM NOTES The concept of the soundscape was first promoted in the 1960’s by a loose confederation of Canadian environmentalists, composers, and writers concerned with sound pollution and its effect on our collective psyche. The most visible member, composer R. Murray Schafer, got the term from Michael Southworth’s 1969 article “The Sonic Environment of Cities.” Their investigations and analyses of the acoustic environment have spawned the academic study of acoustic ecology and affected disciplines as diverse as wildlife study, urban planning, and computer science. The elements of a soundscape, as defined by the International Organization for Standardization in 2014 (ISO 12913-1:2014), may seem obvious, but contain important ideas: 2.1 sound sources sounds generated by nature or human activity 2.2 acoustic environment sound at the receiver [i.e. what we hear] from all sound sources as modified by the environment. (Note: acoustic environment can be actual or simulated, outdoor or indoor, live or recorded, as experienced or in memory.) 2.3 Soundscape acoustic environment as perceived or experienced and/or understood by a person, or people, in context These last two words, “in context,” make clear what is implicit throughout the definitions: the listener creates the context; creates, in a sense, the soundscape itself through the act of perceiving. (This is not unlike certain quantum phenomena that change depending whether they are observed or not.) We lack ear-lids, sadly, but the mind is a powerful lens; we decide what to focus on, and from what angle. We listen to a street corner, a forest, or a Haydn quartet in entirely different ways—though listening to one as if it were the other is an interesting exercise. To you, the receiver, sitting ten or fifty feet from the musicians, the whole thing might appear to be a reactive experience, but listening is, by its very nature, active. The middle two pieces on our concert conjure specific, physical soundscapes. The Haydn and Mozart pieces one might refer to as “metaphorical” soundscapes. However, their sound is sensuously physical, and once we frame those “sound sources” with our focus, they become multi-dimensional soundscapes, ecosystems for our emotions to experience. As many writers have pointed out, Haydn’s six Op.33 quartets represent the consolidation of his “mature style.” Haydn was 49 and they came after a 10-year hiatus in quartet writing. They were the first he entitled “Quartet”—earlier ones, even the stormy Op.20 group, he had called “Divertimenti.” The Op.33 quartets were held in the highest regard by Mozart and were immensely influential to the 25-year-old’s subsequent quartet writing. Significantly, like the Mozart Piano Quartet which ends this concert, they were not written on aristocratic demand but at the request of what were the “corporate” musical entities of the times, the publishers. Chamber music had become part of the cultural diet of the growing middle class, and big publishers
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like Artaria, Diabelli, and Hoffmeister were willing to pay well-known composers on spec for new and marketable home-use material. Haydn had previously published only once (a set of piano sonatas), but after this, the majority of his work was created for, and distributed by, publishers. This overall shift in the European musical economy mirrored a shift away from the bland artifice of much of the Rococo and earlyclassical music of the mid-18th-century to a more direct, intimate, and modern musical style, for “real people,” not aristos—as crystallized in the Op.33 quartets. Haydn, whose long career bridged this shift, seems to have been hedging his bets, though, and dedicated the Op.33 group to Prince Paul of Russia, even though the prestigious firm of Artaria had commissioned it. Haydn did not actually subtitle String Quartet Op.33, No.3 “The Bird,” but his ornithological intent cannot be denied. To me, the quartet sounds like a grand jam session of bird and human musicians. The first movement is something like a concerto for bird; the third movement’s dialogue between humans, awkward and earthbound, and our sparkling avian colleagues, is funny and a little devastating. In the last movement, we all make up and have a big party. The Viennese publisher Hoffmeister—also a respected composer, and friend to Haydn, Beethoven, and the many other composers he published—asked Mozart for a pair of piano quartets. When Mozart delivered the first quartet (No. 1 in G minor), Hoffmeister was so dismayed by what he saw as the piece’s technical (and, perhaps, emotional) difficulty that he released Mozart from the rest of the contract. Mozart, characteristically undeterred and unrealistic, submitted the other, anyway—the sunnier, if no less difficult, Piano Quartet No.2 in E-flat major. It is unclear whether Hoffmeister was placated, or Mozart paid. Compared to the rather wound-up first piano quartet, no.2 is much looser, takes its time, and features numerous passages of solo piano, making it sound, at times, like a little piano concerto. Its overall character is hard to grasp; wander into its soundscape and make your own determinations. © Paul Epstein 2022
COMPOSER’S NOTES Valerie Coleman, Shotgun Houses Shotgun Houses is a tribute to the life of Muhammad Ali, a man who carried the pride of West Louisville with him everywhere throughout his career. The first movement, “Shotgun Houses,” is a sketch of the neighborhoods of West Louisville from the 1950’s. Inspiration came from observing photos and tracing the path to get to Ali’s childhood home on Grand Avenue from my own childhood home, just blocks away. The beginning is a nod to Southern life, the vocal drawl, and the design of shotgun houses all lined up in a row. Soon after, the music becomes punctuated, and the clarinet’s upper register is prominently featured, symbolizing the bold personalities that all West Louisville children learn early on: to verbally boast and tease one another as a part of playing in the streets. The music gently ends with a dark reminiscence from the modern-day blight of the neighborhood. The second movement, “Rome 1960,” begins with a young Cassius Clay, Jr. training, as shown through the rapid repetitive rhythm between cello and viola. The clarinet begins to reflect Ali’s own prose during workout sessions when the news cameras
WEEK ONE | JUNE 16 come to visit. The movement is a chronological recounting of the Champ’s preparation, what he must have felt stepping into the ring for the gold medal round, and then the pomp and circumstance following his win. Ali’s home on Grand Avenue titles the third movement, which is a love ballad to his mother. In my research, every photo of Ali with his mother shows a kiss or an embrace. The clarinet is once again mostly within the upper register, but now with a passionate and sweet sound. Ali wanted to give his mother a better life than Grand Avenue could provide. By ending with “Louisville Lip,” the composer betrays the notion that a scherzo should be placed in the middle of a work. Starting with precision-like extended techniques from the strings, the memory of “Thriller(ah) in Manila” begins with bouncing in the practice ring while djembe drums play and spectators yell, “Ali! Bomaye!” Bold interactions that bounce between strings and clarinet recount some of Ali’s greatest jabs at his arch opponent, Joe Frazier. His most popular sayings, like “I am the Greatest!” and “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee!” can be heard through special motifs that step boldly into the foreground as both melody and rhythm.
the text’s poet, Richard Powers, and Emerson String Quartet violinist Philip Setzer, who gently nudged me to write the piece many years ago. I am grateful that Phil will participate in bringing to life the premiere performance, and grateful, too, that Paul Watkins not only programmed it on the Great Lakes Festival, but will perform in it as well. It is especially meaningful for me, as both have been colleagues at Stony Brook University as members of the Emerson String Quartet for two wonderful decades. And I’m pleased as well that Randall Scarlata, also a member of the Stony Brook faculty while I was chair of the department, joins as singer. I’m warmed to think of this performance as “all in the family!” © Perry Goldstein
I dedicate this to my neighborhood, Ali’s neighborhood of West Louisville. May his life remind us all of the greatness we are capable of achieving. © Valerie Coleman
Perry Goldstein, Birding by Ear: Six Songs on Texts by Richard Powers (2019) This is my fourth collaboration with novelist, poet, and friend Richard Powers, whom I met at the University of Illinois when I was a graduate student and he a freshman over 40 years ago. Even then, one might have had an inkling that he would become a major voice in American literature. Author of thirteen novels, including the 2006 National Book Award-winner The Echo Maker, and more recently winner of the Pulitzer Prize for one of the most profoundly moving books about contemporary ecological pressures, The Overstory, Rick has tackled the most challenging themes of 20th- and 21st-century life. On their surface, the six texts—titled “White-throated Sparrow,” “Mockingbird,” “Lyre Bird,” “Famous Bird Sayings,” “Barred Owl,” and “The Morning Chorus”—seem innocent enough. But they are only partly about birds, and in greater part about what humans impose on them, as, in our loneliness and need to connect with their world and our own, we hear their calls as sensible communications. “Who cooks for you?” asks the barred owl in song 5; “pleased to meetcha” calls the Olive-sided flycatcher in song 2; or at least those are the words we pretend to have them mean. Worse, we destroy their habitat and they sing “in thanks,” the lyre bird in song 3 perfectly imitating the chainsaw that is ridding the woods of their homes. As with all of our other collaborations, Rick supplied a cornucopia of rich images to spark musical imagination. It was easy to resist a literal representation of any of the almost 20 birds: vireos and sparrows, hermit thrushes and orioles…. Birds, with the great timbral variety, subtle microtonal inflections, and rhythmic “invention” of their trilling, singing, and calling, are impossible to emulate. There are places in the songs, however, when I (imperfectly) copy the contours of their calls (especially in “Mockingbird”). But my larger aim was to represent the totality of the multivalent images with as much charm, humor, drama, sadness, tenderness, and affection as I could muster. The work is dedicated, with greatest affection, to two dear friends and great artists:
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WEEK ONE | JUNE 17 FRIDAY, JUNE 17 | 11 A.M.
PROGRAM NOTES
Temple Beth El Sponsored by Beverly Baker & Dr. Edward Treisman
All my joys to this are folly, Naught so sweet as melancholy. The Anatomy of Melancholy, Burton (1621)
“NOUGHT SO SWEET AS MELANCHOLY”
GILLES VONSATTEL, piano PAUL WATKINS, piano PHILIP SETZER, violin DAVID SHIFRIN, clarinet MELANIE SPECTOR, soprano PELIA STRING QUARTET, Shouse ensemble
PROGRAM Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Quartettsatz in C minor, D. 703 Pelia String Quartet Violin Sonata No. 2 in A minor, D. 385 Allegro moderato Andante Menuetto. Allegro Allegro Setzer, Watkins Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (The Shepherd on the Rock), D. 965 Spector, Shifrin, Vonsattel Fantasia for piano, four hands in F minor, Op. 103, D. 940 Allegro molto moderato – Largo – Scherzo. Allegro vivace – Finale. Allegro molto moderato Vonsattel, Watkins
Our appetite—our need—for sad songs is endless. Witness the many traditional forms devoted solely to them: Portuguese fado, Irish lament, or, most importantly for the music of our times, Blues. The transmutation of sadness and anxiety into joy has been a function of music since the beginning of history, though the alchemy of this process has been constantly debated. It could be that the beauty and order that are inherent in music transmute the sadness it is expressing into a higher, transcendent state of feeling. Philosopher Jerrold Levinson lists eight different benefits that can arise from the feeling of sadness evoked by music: “Catharsis, the purging of negative emotions; apprehending expression, an improved understanding of the emotions expressed in a piece of art; savoring feeling, the satisfaction that arises from simply feeling any emotion in response to art; understanding feeling, the opportunity to learn about one’s feelings; emotional assurance, the confirmation in one’s ability to feel deeply; emotional resolution, the knowledge that an emotion state has been, and can be, regulated; expressive potency, the pleasure that arises from expressing one’s feelings; and emotional communion, a connection to the feelings of the composer or other listeners.” Schubert was known from the start as a conjuror of melancholy music, and each piece on our concert displays some aspect of the dynamics listed above, each with a slightly different mindset. The Quartettsatz (1820), his first quartet after four years, was a big leap ahead, the first he wrote not for the amateurs of his friends’ “Schubertiades” but for professional musicians, and the first in his darker, “late” style. It begins in a mood familiar to Schubert-lovers: a restless, minor-key notestream supporting an ominous, hook-y melodic phrase. It immediately sets a tone of yearning and impending drama. That kind of emotional immediacy grabbed listeners right from the spooky whirlwind of his Op. 1, the song “The Erl-King.” He learned to integrate that mood into the larger forms of his instrumental pieces, becoming a vital element in his mix of gorgeous tunes, shimmering, strange harmonies, and striking juxtapositions. It is a mood familiar from his “Unfinished” Symphony, to which this, his “Unfinished Quartet,” bears many similarities. He began a second movement, but abandoned it after 40 bars; it remained unknown until Brahms received the score and published it 47 years later. As many have noted, Schubert’s instrumental music took a while to jell in terms of tightness and mood. The three violin sonatas date from Schubert’s 19th year. They are fascinating and kind of all over the place. The Sonata No. 2 in A minor finds him in a deliberately experimental state of mind. He revels in long, strange harmonic wanderings, and plays with uneven phrase-lengths, in Haydn’s drily provocative manner. In the first movement, the themes cycle through more or less as expected in sonata-form, but they’re all in the “wrong” keys. Modern ears won’t register the effect as wrong (if, indeed, did the ears of the time), but the astute will hear themes coming back with darker, stranger sonorities than they might have normally expected. Eventually, he would progress from such surface, technical
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WEEK ONE | JUNE 17 experimentation to experimenting with new and complex states of mind and mood. Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (“The Shepherd on the Rock”) was composed in 1828 during the final months of his life, for the soprano Pauline Anna Milder-Hauptmann. It sets a poem (with some additions) by Wilhelm Müller, poet of the wanderers and outcasts in Schubert’s greatest song-cycles, Winterreise and Die Schöne Müllerin. It is in three sections: in the first, the shepherd wistfully contemplates his mountaintop vista. Schubert sprinkles the soundscape with echoes and Alpine songs, the clarinet’s lonely sound representing some far away other to the shepherd’s solitary voice. The second is much darker, expressing his loneliness and grief; the third, a (rather obligatorysounding) paean to Hope and Springtime. Each part is marked by its own distinctive and obsessive accompanying rhythm. Historically speaking, Schubert’s fantasies, in particular the Fantasy in F minor for four hands and the “Wanderer” Fantasy, had an immense influence on the transformation of the Classical sonata into the freer forms of the Romantics. For Liszt, they were essential in the development of his tone poems and B-minor Sonata. In these pieces, the traditional four-movement template breaks down—differences between the movements are obscured, music of the first movement keeps breaking in, and what at first seemed like four separate movements is ultimately revealed to be one unified structure. One more way this piece presages the future is in the kind of psychological presence that Schubert creates—a sense of strangeness, intensity, even terror, that looks forward to Mahler’s orchestral psycho-scapes. You can hear it in the strange, “alien” sounding ways that the mournful opening melody is obsessively brought back. There is something subtly unstable pervading much of Schubert’s music. No joy ever seems safe from a sudden turn towards darkness; melancholy itself can feel sensual; harmonies will wander down strange halls and themes appear in weird keys. It is a very “modern” state of mind that speaks to Schubert’s continued popularity and relevance. © Paul Epstein 2022
FRIDAY, JUNE 17 | 7:30 P.M.
AUDIO/VISUAL: SOUND, PAPER, AND PROCESS
Trinosophes Sponsored by the Maxine & Stuart Frankel Foundation VIRAGO MEGAN HEERES, visual artist VIANO STRING QUARTET, Shouse ensemble ALAN HANKERS, Stone Composer Fellow and piano The following pieces will be heard in excerpts, not in this order, connected through improvisations. Ludwig van Beethoven String Quartet No. 6 in B-flat major, Op. 18, No. 6 (1770-1827) II. Adagio ma non troppo Alberto Ginastera (1916-83)
String Quartet No. 1, Op. 20 II. Allegro violento ed agitato III. Calmo e poetico IV. Allegramente rustico
Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)
String Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 27 I. Un poco andante - Allegro molto ed agitato IV. Finale. Lento - Presto al saltarello
Alan Hankers (b. 1992)
Emerging Light On the Intensity of Color
Caroline Shaw (b. 1982)
Blueprint
Augusta Read Thomas (b. 1964)
Mansuetto Tribute, “double helix”
PROGRAM NOTES Detroit-based ensemble Virago presents an exploration of sound, nature, paper and process. This immersive performance features Festival artist-in-residence Megan Heeres, Shouse ensemble the Viano String Quartet, and composer/pianist Alan Hankers. Megan creates fantastical paper images and objects, handmade from recycled plant material. Papermaking is a sensory experience that envelopes the maker in the movement, sound, smell of the pulp and their own body’s part in shaping it. The resultant artwork is a beautiful recording of a labored and time-intensive process. In Sound, Paper and Process, Megan takes us through moments of papermaking live. Close-miking and video projection draw audiences and performers into this multisensory experience. Virago, the Viano String Quartet, and Hankers amplify, illustrate, complement, and contrast Megan utilizing improvisation and music by Hankers, Shaw, Ginastera, Grieg and more. We are awakened to our senses in sticky processes where the auditory, tactile, and visual intermingle.
Virago
Our host Trinosophes is an artist-run space, located inside a former spice processing warehouse in the heart of Detroit's historic Eastern Market district. © Virago Music, LLC
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WEEK ONE | JUNE 17 FRIDAY, JUNE 17 | 8 P.M.
TRANSFORMATION AND RENEWAL Kerrytown Concert House
PAUL WATKINS, piano TAI MURRAY, violin YURA LEE, viola CLIVE GREENSMITH, cello NICHOLAS PHAN, tenor ROLSTON STRING QUARTET, Shouse ensemble
PROGRAM Augusta Read Thomas (b. 1964)
Magic Gardens for String Quartet (2020) Scherzo Celebration Rolston String Quartet
Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)
Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), Op. 4 Rolston String Quartet, Lee, Greensmith
INTERMISSION Benjamin Britten (1913-76)
Winter Words, Op. 52 At Day-Close in November Midnight on the Great Western - The Journeying Boy Wagtail and Baby - A Satire The Little Old Table The Choirmaster’s Burial - The Tenor Man’s Story Proud Songsters (Thrushes, Finches, and Nightingales) At the Railway Station, Upway - The Convict and Boy with the Violin Before Life and After Phan, Watkins
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
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String Trio in B-flat major, D. 581 Allegro moderato Andante Menuetto: Allegretto - Trio Rondo: Allegretto Murray, Lee, Greensmith
PROGRAM NOTES Arnold Schoenberg, whose work—and the work of his pupils—transformed 20th century music was, for all intents and purposes, self-taught. A few older, more experienced musicians, such as his uncle Fritz Nachod and his friend and eventual brother-in-law Alexander von Zemlinsky, gave him valuable and necessary guidance. He was deeply talented, artistically ambitious, and one gets the impression that he was always in control of his education and his search for musical identity. His search for cultural and political identity was fraught, however: born in Vienna, the crossroads; Jewish; Hungarian father and Czech mother; his actual citizenship fluctuating with Europe’s uneasily shifting borders. Despite attempts at religious conversion and an ill-considered bout of Germanic chauvinism during World War I, he remained, practically and temperamentally, an outsider. He moved to Los Angeles in 1934 and became a US citizen in 1941. Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) was Schoenberg’s first major composition, written on the cusp of the 20th century and at the limits of the previous century’s musical language. It is one the first chamber music tone poems, based on Richard Dehmel’s poem of the same name. It describes a man and woman walking through a forest at night; the woman admits she is carrying another’s child; the man reflects upon this, and, in the end, expresses his love, acceptance, and forgiveness. The music follows the general shape of the action, and Schoenberg matches the poem’s hyper-emotional atmosphere with operatic melodies embedded in a very thick, nervously shifting harmonic fabric which moves fast, far afield, and rarely resolves. We’re left with a lush, breathless sense of suspension and tension. The implicit eroticism of this sensation was made explicit by poem’s frank dealing with sex, and Viennese audiences were predictably scandalized. Britten’s sound is luminous and distinctive. He had a way of refracting and remixing the primary colors of tonality, much the way Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) transformed the traditional forms of the ballad and song lyric into complex, multi-layered webs of words. In 1953, Britten gathered eight poems from the last two of Hardy’s many decades and created a song cycle he named after the poet’s last published collection, Winter Words. You feel some tension, at the beginning, between the innocent shimmer of Britten’s harmonies and the barely suppressed regret and sorrow behind Hardy’s complex rhymes and rhythms, but this may be on purpose, and the music soon darkens. The basic theme is innocence (of the child, of nature), confronting, and being corrupted by, the adult world—as seen from the vantage of an old man. The theme of innocence and corruption was recurrent in his work. During this period he was smarting from the very poor reception of his opera Gloriana, written for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, and for a few years his output dwindled. The only significant things he produced were the opera The Turn of the Screw, Henry James’ tale about the haunting of a child, and Canticle II, a setting of the Abraham and Isaac story. The last quatrain of Winter Words’ last song, “Before Life and After,” encapsulates the theme and the troubled tone of the whole cycle, and also demonstrates the unique music of Hardy’s style. In the first line, “feeling” refers to the very act of feeling itself and “germed” contains both the sense of “disease” and “germination.” The poem recalls a time, “Before the birth of consciousness,/When all went well,” and proposes that feeling itself is a disease that
WEEK ONE | JUNE 17 has polluted nature. But the disease of feeling germed, And primal rightness took the tinct of wrong; Ere nescience shall be reaffirmed How long, how long? For the 19-year-old Schubert, 1816 was a turning point. He was already composing at a staggering rate—that year saw the composition of over 100 songs, including “The Wanderer” and “The Erl-King”—even while teaching at his father’s school. He was beginning to become known among a coterie of young friends, artists, and intellectuals, who gathered regularly for Schubertiades devoted to his music. His songs, in particular, were making waves: their vivid tone-painting, emotional power, and radical harmonies and colors, were revolutionary. He was slower to integrate these qualities into his instrumental music. Perhaps it was the lack of a text (which determines both tone and form), or the overwhelmingly conservative influence of the aging Classical forms, or the crushing shadow of Beethoven. You might call Schubert’s music “Post-Classical” in that it represents a reaction to the Classical era, and a transition to the Romantic. Given his normally astonishing creative speed, the halting birth of the String Trio in B-flat major would indicate that he was, uncharacteristically, feeling his way. The string trio is a difficult medium; it requires skill to ensure that it doesn’t sound “empty.” Ultimately, it took him four tries to get it right. He started a trio in B-flat, but abandoned it after a few bars; completed one movement of another but abandoned it as well. The third try resulted in a complete four-movement work, but he re-wrote that before declaring it complete. It feels on a stylistic edge—one foot in the old Classical world, yet featuring many passages in which we “feel the air of other planets.” (From another Dehmel poem, which Schoenberg featured in his second String Quartet as a way of announcing his first venture into atonality.) © Paul Epstein 2022
COMPOSER’S NOTES Augusta Read Thomas, Magic Gardens Inspired by Isaiah Zagar, award-winning mosaic mural artist of Magic Gardens in Philadelphia, my thanks are given with this composition for the montage of humankind’s mutual celebration of life, creativity, human experiences of justice, love, joy, emotional health, knowledge and beauty; and for insights into the nature of expression and of being. Music’s eternal quality is its capacity for change, transformation and renewal. I am honored and thrilled to have received a Musical Fund Society McCollin Commission, and send my gratitude to the Fund and to the Rolston String Quartet for their commitments to music’s renewals. Movement #1 is in celebration of Naava and Sanford Grossman. Movement #2 is in celebration of Jeanne Guillemin. © Augusta Read Thomas
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WEEK ONE | JUNE 18 SATURDAY, JUNE 18 | 8 P.M. A GATHERING OF VOICES
Seligman Performing Arts Center Sponsored by JPMorgan Chase ANTON NEL, piano TAI MURRAY, violin PHILIP SETZER, violin YURA LEE, viola CLIVE GREENSMITH, cello RANDALL SCARLATA, baritone VIANO STRING QUARTET, Shouse ensemble
PROGRAM Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
String Quartet No. 6, Op. 18, No. 6 Allegro con brio Adagio ma non troppo Scherzo: Allegro La Malinconia: Adagio – Allegretto quasi Allegro Viano String Quartet
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Histoires Naturelles Le paon (The Peacock) Le grillon (The Cricket) Le cygne (The Swan) Le martin-pêcheur (The Kingfisher) La pintade (The Guinea-Fowl) Scarlata, Nel
INTERMISSION Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912)
Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 1 Allegro con moto Larghetto Scherzo Allegro molto – Vivace – Tempo I Nel, Setzer, Murray, Lee, Greensmith
PROGRAM NOTES A concert is a kind of séance—the lowered lights, the hushed, communal focus, that moment of charged silence right before the music starts. Then the summoning of voices, long dead, or far away, or speaking strange dialects, brought alive for this chosen moment; a gathering of voices across time and space. And contained within each piece/voice invoked by the performer/mediums is its own teeming theater of voices—those of individual instruments and of the multiple compositional voices created in the music’s unfolding. The Classical style is particularly suited to creating the sense of distinct, multiple voices, perhaps due to its roots in comic opera. One of its glories has always been the ability to express rapidly changing moods within a unified musical fabric. It can encompass change and upheaval, track the wild variability of the psyche within a single movement—within a single phrase. But the symmetry and beauty inherent in the music also offers the possibility of a resolution to all this emotional activity. It is no coincidence that the style’s greatest practitioners (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert), though all capable of raucous humor, were also more than acquainted with darkness and depression. One of their greatest gifts was the ability to transmute the unquiet mind into transcendent music. The final, astonishing quartet of Beethoven’s Op.18 embodies this process of transmutation beautifully. It is the set’s most forward-looking; one can hear preechoes of his Late-period style, even of Schubert. Though it features Beethoven’s characteristically energetic momentum, it keeps being drawn towards the darker, slower, and minor-tinged. In the first movement, this is most pronounced at the end of the development, which normally tees up the return of the opening theme. Instead, the music grinds to a total halt, as if the composer got lost or fell asleep. Then, with a start, it wakes up and gets on with it. This could be a moment of Haydn-esque humor (Papa’s ghost hangs heavy over the whole quartet), but it also has an uneasy, anxious quality. The slow movement displays another kind of dynamic bi-polarity: as a slow, folk-like tune unfolds (again, reminiscent of Haydn), it is layered with increasingly fast and complex elaborations. At times it sounds like a mind operating on two levels at once. The scherzo takes the idea of rhythmic tension to an extreme, and could well be the most syncopated piece written before Jelly Roll Morton. When we get to the fourth, and presumably, final, movement, there is surprise, and we see, at last, what the whole quartet has really been about. Instead of the expected up-tempo rondo, we have an adagio entitled “La Malinconia” (“Melancholy”). Furthermore, the score states, “This piece must be treated with the greatest delicacy.” This is not, strictly speaking, a “musical” indication; he could have said, “played with the greatest delicacy.” It seems to tell us, rather, how to think about the piece, and, in fact, the whole idea of melancholy: this is no joke. The joke, and a rather sardonic one, is when the rondo does finally start, it is a revved-up echo of the melancholy theme; and in its final iteration Beethoven speeds it up to the point of manic absurdity. The slam-bam ending says “we’re done,” but doesn’t entirely feel like it. In Histoires Naturelles (Natural Histories, or, more precisely, Natural Stories), Renard’s wryly funny poems and Ravel’s settings give quirky human voice to a collection of four birds and one insect. For Ravel, the songs marked a turn away from ethereal “impressionism” to a more “popular,” ironic style. As such, the set was not well received at first.
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WEEK ONE | JUNE 18 Additionally, Ravel requires the singer to use a more demotic kind of pronunciation than that usually employed for “art” music, which pushed them even further towards cabaret and seems to have ruffled some feathers. With their arch humor and cool attitude, the songs represent a move toward his “neo-classical” later style. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born into a family that would, at any time, have been quite extraordinary—the more so in Edwardian England. His mother, Alice Martin, was an English woman and his father, Daniel Taylor, was an African medical student, a Krio (Creole) from Sierra Leone. (The Sierra Leone Creoles are descendants of freed African American, Afro-Caribbean, and Liberated African slaves who settled in western Sierra Leone in the early 19th century.) Taylor returned to Africa without knowing that Alice was pregnant. She named the child after poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. They lived with her father, a farrier, who, also, had not been married to her mother and who now lived with another woman. He was an amateur violinist and began teaching his grandson the basics; when Samuel’s talent became obvious, he paid for lessons. The entire family chipped in to send him to the Royal College of Music when he turned 15. There, he switched from violin to composition, studying with Charles Villiers Stanford. Upon graduation, he was appointed professor at the Crystal Palace School of Music, and conducted the Croydon Conservatory orchestra. In 1898, Stanford presented Coleridge-Taylor’s oratorio, Hiawatha, based on the Longfellow poem, and it became instantly popular. The oratorio covers only the first part of the poem, so he followed up with two sequels, equally successful, which spawned yearly “Hiawatha” festivals, where the entire cycle was performed by a cast of thousands. These continued into the 1930’s. He never profited from his triumph, though, having sold the rights outright (for the modern equivalent of about $1800), a mistake he would not make again. However, he was unable to duplicate the oratorio’s success and struggled financially for the rest of his short life, and stress no doubt contributed to his death at 37 from pneumonia. At a certain point, he became curious about his African ancestry. He stated that he wanted to do with African music what Dvor̆ák had done with Czech and Brahms with Hungarian. In 1900, he attended the first Pan-African Conference in London (where he was also responsible for arranging the musical entertainments). Historian Claudia Sutherland refers to this important meeting as “one of the starting points for the Afrocentrism that constituted an important strand of the American Civil Rights Movement sixty years later”. At the conference Coleridge-Taylor befriended W.E.B. Du Bois and poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, with whom he collaborated on a song cycle. His Piano Quintet is his Op.1, written at 17, and very impressive. It is not really indicative of his mature style, but has a youthful love of grand gestures and heated statements. It wears its influences proudly—Dvor̆ák, Liszt, Brahms, Schubert—and promises great things to come... © 2022 Paul Epstein
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WEEK TWO | JUNE 19 SUNDAY, JUNE 19 | 3 P.M. DAUGHTERS OF ST. CECILIA
Christ Church Grosse Pointe Sponsored by Virginia & Michael Geheb NICHOLAS PHAN, tenor SCOTT HANOIAN, organ PELIA STRING QUARTET, Shouse ensemble
PROGRAM G. F. Handel (1685-1759)
Look Down, Harmonious Saint, HWV 124 Phan, Hanoian, Pelia String Quartet
Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979)
Daybreak Phan, Hanoian, Pelia String Quartet
Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979)
Cantique Phan, Hanoian
Julia Perry (1924-79)
How Beautiful are the Feet Phan, Hanoian
Lili Boulanger (1893-1918)
Pie Jesu Phan, Hanoian, Pelia String Quartet
Sally Beamish (b. 1956)
String Quartet No. 4, “Nine Fragments” (2018) Choral (chorale) Musette (bagpipe) Unruhig (unsettled) Liebeslied (love song) Ängstlich (frightened) Witz (joke) Klingeln (ringing) Kanon (canon) Spiegel (mirror) Pelia String Quartet
Handel
“But Oh! What Art Can Teach” from Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day, HWV 76 Phan, Hanoian, Pelia String Quartet
Caroline Shaw (b. 1982)
And So (2018) Phan, Pelia String Quartet
Rachel Laurin (b. 1961)
Petite Suite sur un Motet de Gerald Bales, Op. 41 Fantasie (Let the Earth Celebrate the Lord) Cantabile (Mountains and Hills) Toccatina (Praise Him) Hanoian
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PROGRAM NOTES Though she is the patron saint of music and is depicted in paintings (the finest of which are by Artemisia Gentilleschi, the rare female Baroque painter) playing organ, violin, harp, etc., St. Cecilia was, in fact, not a musician. Her story is stranger than that, and too convoluted to relate here, except to say that it involved questions of marriage, sex, religious purity, and, though capped by the inevitable martyrdom, her remarkable powers of persuasion. Her only specific musical connection is that, when besieged by intolerance and violence, she maintained her purity of soul and purpose by “singing to God in her heart.” Central to the story is the concept of “pious marriage” (i.e. devoid of sex), which sheds a revealing light on the connection between music and the soul, how it can be as intense a personal communion as that between spouses; and how the pursuit of musical perfection can be as allconsuming as the pursuit of God. Her feast day, November 22, began to be celebrated with musical festivities around 1570. It occasioned poems, famously by Dryden and Pope, and music by, among others, Purcell, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Handel, Gounod, and Benjamin Britten (to an ode by W.H. Auden), who was born on her feast day. Dryden’s odes were set by many composers, by Handel in his Ode to St. Cecilia and Alexander’s Feast, or The Power of Music (written for St. Cecilia’s Day). “Look Down, Harmonious Saint” is from this last. “But Oh! What Art Can Teach” is part of a sequence of sections traditionally found in Odes to St. Cecilia which celebrate the diverse instruments and their individual powers. Here, the object of praise is the pipe organ. The three living female composers on the program will themselves describe their music and experience. I trust their experiences will be more positive than that of the other composers—Clarke, Perry, and the Boulangers, all born between 1886 and 1924—whose biographies, too predictably, make depressing reading. Thank the saints that their music is there to lift us up again. Rebecca Clarke was born in England of a German mother and American father, and claimed dual British-American citizenship. Her unpublished memoir tells of an abusive family life which, she said, affected her perceptions of her proper place in the world. Her talent as a violinist was apparent early. She attended the Royal Academy of Music, until one of her teachers proposed to her and her father pulled her out. Thereafter, at the Royal College, she became one of Charles Villiers Stanford’s first female students. It was he who convinced her to switch from violin to viola, the instrument of choice for Mozart, Beethoven, and many other composers, because she would be “right in the middle of the sound, and can tell how it’s all done.” Two years later, she left school when, after quarreling with her father over his philandering, he cut her off financially. She supported herself after that as a freelance violist and soon became quite in demand, playing chamber music with many of the greatest artists of the time, including Schnabel, Casals, Heifetz, Thibaud, and Rubinstein. She stood nearly six feet tall and, as one witness put it, “strode on stage like a goddess.” She started composing in college, mostly music featuring viola, as well as songs, and continued during her freelance years, often performing her pieces with the many all-female ensembles she played in. She visited the US a few times, where her music gained some attention and the support of Catherine Sprague Coolidge. She was still subjected to the vicious sexism she had experienced in England, however. She was in America when World War II broke out, was unable to get a visa to return, and ended up staying for the rest of her long life. She married pianist and composer James
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Friskin, who supported her musical work, but, caught in a cycle of depression, she composed less and less and gradually stopped performing as well. Clarke admitted she felt unable to balance her personal life and the demands of composition: “I can't do it unless it's the first thing I think of every morning when I wake and the last thing I think of every night before I go to sleep.” As a Black woman, Julia Perry had two strikes against her in dealing with the white, male bastion of mid-century American classical music. She hailed from Akron, Ohio, where her father was a doctor. He was also an amateur pianist who had once accompanied tenor Roland Hayes. He and Julia’s mother, America Perry, encouraged their daughter’s musical education, and after high school she attended Westminster Choir College in Princeton; then Juilliard, and the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood in the summer. Her first major composition, the moving Stabat Mater, appeared in 1951. In 1954, her opera The Cask of the Amontillado was produced at Columbia University. In 1952 and ’54, she received Guggenheim grants to study with Luigi Dallapiccola in Florence. She stayed in Europe until 1959, studying with Nadia Boulanger, arranging concerts for the US Information Service, and writing some fabulous scores, including her Study for Orchestra, perhaps her most performed piece. She returned to the States to teach at Florida A&M, and later at Atlanta University. In 1960, she moved back to Akron, setting up in an apartment over her father’s medical office. It is difficult to find the motivation for this move, which feels like a retreat. Perhaps it was to be able to devote herself more completely to composition. Her music became more unusual and experimental, and though she was very prolific, her new scores failed to gain traction. In 1971 she suffered two serious strokes, was partially paralyzed, and had to teach herself to write with left hand, as she still continued to compose, laboriously. She was tended to by her mother, America, but died in 1979, at the age of 55. Friends had urged her to donate her manuscripts to a university, but for some reason she resisted. The upshot is that after her death, an untold number of manuscripts were lost, an absolute tragedy. How Beautiful Are the Feet was written in 1953, between her two Guggenheim stints. It is beautiful, but not indicative of her mature style. It was probably written for church use, with amateur performers in mind. Nadia and Lili Boulanger were the daughters of composer and teacher Ernest Boulanger, born in 1815—i.e. he was 77 when Lili was born. It was a very musical household. Lili’s musical awareness was first discovered at age two, when family friend Gabriel Fauré realized she could match pitches perfectly. She accompanied older sister Nadia to music lessons and before long she was studying at the highest level. A bout of early childhood pneumonia had compromised her health, and she had serious problems ever after; she was also deeply affected by the death of her father when she was seven. Despite all that, she advanced quickly. Her attempt to win the 1912 Prix de Rome (the top composition prize, much sought after by composers from Berlioz to Debussy, and which her father Ernest had won in 1835(!)) was derailed after she collapsed onstage during the performance. She won the following year, however—the first woman to do so—at the age of 19. Her music features ravishing harmonies (of a type, actually, quite similar to some advanced jazz harmonies 50 years later), luminous sonorities, and a hypnotic rhythmic sense. It is dark, slow, and written in the shadow of declining health. She dictated her last pieces, including the Pie Jesu, to Nadia from her bed, and died in 1918 at 24. I am not the first to suggest that had Lili Boulanger lived longer, the history of 20th century music would be quite different. Nadia, Lili’s de facto guardian after their father’s death, continued to do so after Lili’s
death, keeping her memory alive and promoting her music. She abandoned her own compositional efforts—Cantique dates from 1909—and concentrated on teaching. Through her students and advocacy of other composers, however, she exerted a major influence on modern music from the 1920’s to the 2000’s. © 2022 Paul Epstein
COMPOSER’S NOTES Sally Beamish, String Quartet No. 4, “Nine Fragments” (2018) This work is one of the Elias Quartet’s three commissions, each taking as its starting point one of the three Schumann Quartets. I was allocated the first, in A minor. Schumann arranged the first performance of these quartets for his wife Clara’s 23rd birthday, and having a 23 year-old daughter myself, I couldn’t help being moved by the thought of this young couple who had fought to be allowed to marry, and the great challenges they were to face in their married life. Clara’s distress at Robert’s mental illness, her struggle to support the family, and her grief throughout her womanhood, are elements that made their way into my own music. I was interested in the idea that Schumann finished the A minor Quartet (No. 1) last – after writing the other two, and also that later in life, he was troubled by a persistent high A ringing in his ears. My quartet consists of nine very short, fragmentary movements – each tilting a broken mirror towards a particular passage in Schumann’s work, and reflecting widely differing moods; from melancholy to elation. The first of these is a meditation on the strange and haunting chorale near the end of Schumann’s last movement. This is followed by a “musette” – commenting on the bagpipe-like passage that precedes the chorale. The fragments in turn reflect on the Schumann while working backwards through his quartet, arriving at “Kanon” which is the 8th fragment, and refers to the canonic opening of the Schumann. As a coda, the 9th fragment literally reflects the chorale, by playing it backwards, juxtaposed with a reference on the viola to the Liebeslied. My third string quartet, Redd Stanzas, was also written for the Elias Quartet, and it was a great pleasure to write for them again – having recently played my own 2-viola quintet, Epilogue, with them. Nine Fragments was commissioned by the Elias Quartet, with funding from Wigmore Hall, the Harvard Musical Association, and Het Concertgebouw. The World Premiere was on the 22nd February 2019 at Wigmore Hall, London, with US premiere on 19th March at Da Camera Chamber Music and Jazz, Houston, and Netherlands premiere at Concertgebouw on 22nd April 2020. © 2022 Sally Beamish
Rachel Laurin, Petite Suite sur un Motet de Gerald Bales, Op. 41 The Petite Suite sur un Motet de Gerald Bales, Op. 41, was composed in 2005, for the RCCO book in memory of Gerald Bales, Te Deum Laudamus, Volume 2. This suite is conceived as a tribute to Bales' own “Petite Suite” for organ. Based on the structure of Bales' composition, the three short movements are inspired by his motet “Let’s the Earth celebrate the Lord.” The Fantaisie, Cantabile and Toccatina are also inspired by the text of the motet itself. The work was premiered during the RCCO National Convention, at St. Peter’s Basilica, in London, Ontario, in July 2005, by the composer at the organ. © 2022 Rachel Laurin
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WEEK TWO | JUNE 21 TUESDAY, JUNE 21 | 7:30 P.M. BORNE UPON THE STREAM
St. Hugo of the Hills Sponsored by R.H. Bluestein & Co. RAN DANK, piano TESSA LARK, violin LUKE LENTINI, violin PHILIP SETZER, violin KEVONNA SHUFORD, viola PETER EOM, cello PAUL WATKINS, cello and piano KEVIN BROWN, double bass TIMOTHY MCALLISTER, saxophone PELIA STRING QUARTET, Shouse ensemble
PROGRAM Antonín Dvor̆ák (1841-1904)
Perry Goldstein (b. 1952)
Terzetto in C major, Op. 74, B. 148 Introduzione: Allegro ma non troppo Larghetto Scherzo: Vivace – Trio: Poco meno mosso Tema con Variazioni Setzer, Lentini, Shuford Quintet for Alto Saxophone and String Quartet (2006) Bright and exuberant, but unforced Heartfelt and singing Dancing, yet driving McAllister, Pelia String Quartet
INTERMISSION Huw Watkins (b. 1976)
Quintet for Piano and Strings, “Variations on a Schubert Song” (2009) Watkins, Lark, Shuford, Eom, Brown
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667, “The Trout” Allegro vivace Andante Scherzo. Presto Tema con variazioni. Andantino – Allegretto Finale. Allegro giusto Dank, Lark, Shuford, Watkins, Brown
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PROGRAM NOTES The river has always been a potent metaphor for music’s flow. Ever changing, yet always identifiably itself, music lives, and is experienced, in the river of time. It is, in actuality, a multiple flux: the public time (“real time”) in which we encounter the music; our individual, subjective stream of consciousness, which interacts with, and is impelled by, the soundstream; and our individual, and collective, memory, without which music could make no sense. The stream can also stand for the flow of inspiration. For some, it’s merely a dribble, a wadi; then there are those lucky few whose connection to the source is so deep and innate that it unleashes a torrent. Schubert, of course, is a prime example— his astonishing body of work of approximately 1500 pieces was composed in little more than 15 years. Other lucky ones, Dvor̆ák, for instance, seemed to possess an easy, unforced connection to the source. “He can pull melodies out of his sleeve,” quipped Simrock, Dvor̆ák’s publisher (and glad of it, too). Compare these composers’ speed to Brahms, who, when asked how the day went, replied, “In the morning I wrote an eighth-note, and in the afternoon I took it out.” When, near the end of his life, Brahms decided he was through with composing, he wrote to the selfsame Simrock, “[I have] thrown a lot of torn-up manuscript paper into the river,” as if he wanted to return all his unfinished work to the source. Some music seems particularly sensitive to, and expressive of, the river’s current; it creates a powerful momentum, even at slow tempos, and always seems connected to a primal pulse. Schubert’s music is particularly noted for its obsessive flow, and all the pieces on our concert share it in one way or another. Dvor̆ák wrote the Terzetto, Op. 74 in a few days in January, 1887 for his friend, the violinist Jan Pelikán, and a student of Pelikán’s who was renting a room in Dvor̆ák’s house. Dvor̆ák himself would play viola. There were very few examples of this instrumental grouping before Dvor̆ák—indeed, three treble instruments with no bottom to ground them is a strange sound. It takes the greatest mastery to write using only 3 lines, in any case, but these limitations seemed to spur his creativity. In fact, he was unable to restrain his compositional exuberance and the part proved too difficult for the student to handle. (He wrote him another, easier, piece.) It starts simply enough with a Dvor̆ák-y tune but thereafter breaks into very Haydnesque territory, and it becomes clear he’s pursuing a deliberately “Classical” style and texture. As the first movement doesn’t so much end as melt into the slow movement—a very “late Classical” move—it’s clear we’ve deepened into Beethoven country. The scherzo is firmly in the folk mode, as were many of Beethoven’s. The variations that follow continue in the Beethoven vein, and finally, near the end, he all but quotes the dramatic recitative passage from Beethoven’s Quartet op.132. In addition, the Terzetto’s formal strangeness mirrors that of opp.131 and 132; and, as Beethoven was a primary influence on Dvor̆ák, we can see how this little trio has become a serious invocation of the Master and his late quartets. There is no better evocation of the river in music than Schubert’s Piano Quintet in A Major, “The Trout”. Sylvester Paumgartner, a wealthy music patron and amateur cellist, who asked Schubert to write it, suggested he include a set of variations on his song, “The Trout.” This he did—the fourth movement—but he also imbued the other four movements with the spirit and musical elements of the song, especially
WEEK TWO | JUNE 21 its burbling, leaping, accompaniment figure, which the piano states right in the opening bar. It unfolds leisurely in five movements, a quiet stream on a long summer afternoon. It has a deep yet sparkling sonority, due to the addition of the double bass and the distinctive piano writing, which emphasizes the instrument’s upper range. The rhythm is also very deep, multi-level, and sparklingly active, as close to the feeling of “groove” as classical music gets. There is always a slow pulse underpinning multiple faster rhythmic layers. After an unhurried introduction that lays out the themes and the slow/fast contrast, there is hardly a bar of the first movement that doesn’t contain throbbing repetition and barreling momentum. Though nominally in 4, it feels like a slow 2 (1 2 3 4), over which he layers streams of faster notes—triplets in groups of 6, derived from the song’s accompanying figure, and a higher gear of 16’s—and leaping melodic figures. A string of gorgeous melodies unfolds over all of this. The same kind of textural approach, though in a slow tempo and a very easy triple-time, pervades the second movement. The scherzo is, by definition, brisk and bouncy; the variations play out the whole drama of the song’s expansion in miniature; and in the folk-tinged finale, the streams of triplets make a return, buoyantly carrying our souls to the shore. © 2022 Paul Epstein
and more agitated than the last. The next two variations are by contrast very slow and reflective. It is not until the final variation (Var. IX) that the theme itself is heard in its entirety. The work ends with a brief coda which uses music from the introduction. The music was commissioned by the Gstaad Festival for Daniel Hope’s piano quintet and was first performed there in 2001. © 2009 Huw Watkins
COMPOSER'S NOTES Perry Goldstein, Quintet for Alto Saxophone and String Quartet Quintet for Alto Saxophone and String Quartet features three movements of wildly different character, all influenced by quite different kinds of music. The first movement, “Bright and exuberant,” is simultaneously heroic and breezy. Undulating near-minimalist figures in the strings accompany overarching melodies played by the saxophone. The B section within this A-B-A’ form is more languid, while the outer A sections contain music that is buoyant and striving. I think of the tune at the center of movement 2 (“Heartfelt and singing”) as an urban spiritual. Though simple, it first finds itself in a bluesy if somewhat chromatically tortured chorale-like setting. Four variations follow. The first preserves the pace of the saxophone melody in a setting of pizzicato strings and short lamenting outbursts. The second variation poses quintuplet perpetual-motion arabesques against the melody while the cello plays with and against the quintuplets in rhythmic syncopation. The third variation spins an uptempo jazz waltz out of the material while the fourth sets the tune lamentingly in surprising harmonies in the strings’ upper registers. A cadenza for the saxophone brings the movement to a somber close.
Ran Dank
The third movement is something of a middle-eastern dance, made rhythmically jagged by the ever-changing meters. Marked “Dancing, yet driving,” this movement emulates the A-B-A’ shape of the first. However, the B section and the coda recapitulate the tune of the second movement, first in a melancholy mood and then in exuberant conclusion. One couldn’t have better interpreters for the piece than Timothy McAllister, one of the world’s leading saxophone virtuosi, and the Pelia String Quartet, ex-students from Stony Brook University, where I have taught for three decades. © 2022 Perry Goldstein
Huw Watkins, Quintet for Piano and Strings, “Variations on a Schubert Song” (2009) This is a set of variations on “Des Müllers Blumen” from Schubert’s song-cycle Die Schöne Müllerin. After an introduction there follow six variations, each slightly faster
Timothy McAllister
Tessa Lark 27
WEEK TWO | JUNE 22 WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22 | 11 A.M.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22 | 7:30 P.M.
St. Matthew’s & St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church Sponsored by Betty Blair
St. Hugo of the Hills Sponsored by Isabel & Lawrence Smith in Memory of Dr. Claire Smith Hornung
SPECIAL EDITION: ST. MATTHEW’S & ST. JOSEPH’S
F-PLUS, Shouse ensemble
PROGRAM
“AN ECSTASY TO MUSIC TURN’D…”
RAN DANK, piano TESSA LARK, violin PAUL WATKINS, cello and piano NICOLA CANZANO, harpsichord VIANO STRING QUARTET, Shouse ensemble
Jessie Montgomery (b. 1981)
Trio for Violin, Clarinet, and Percussion (2021) F-PLUS
Matthew Barnson (b. 1979)
Sempre Dolce (2019) F-PLUS
PROGRAM
Liza Sobel Crane (b. 1990)
Trio for Clarinet, Violin, and Percussion (2018) I. again, again, again II. quiver (attacca) III. Iron lung minuet IV. strut
J.S. Bach (1685-1750)
Two-Part Inventions No. 1 in C major, BWV 772 No. 2 in C minor, BWV 773 No. 4 in D minor, BWV 775 No. 6 in E major, BWV 777 No. 8 in F major, BWV 779 No. 10 in G major, BWV 781 No. 15 in B minor, BWV 786 Lark, Watkins
Heinrich Biber (1644-1704)
Sonata Representativa Allegro Die Nachtigall (The Nightingale) Der CuCu (The Cuckoo) Der Frosch (The Frog) Die Henne und der Hahn (The Hen and the Cockerel) Die Wachtel (The Quail) Die Katz (The Cat) Musquetier Mars (Musketeer’s March) Allemande Lark, Canzano
Ralph Vaughan Williams The Lark Ascending (1872-1958) Lark, Watkins
F-PLUS Andrew Rodriguez (b. 1989)
I’m sorry, I’m really sorry (2018) F-PLUS
INTERMISSION César Franck (1822-90)
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Piano Quintet in F minor Molto moderato quasi lento - Allegro Lento, con molto sentimento Allegro non troppo, ma con fuoco Dank, Viano String Quartet
WEEK TWO | JUNE 22 PROGRAM NOTES Music turns sound into emotions (though how this transformation is achieved has so far eluded science). Poetry, being the music of language, is also an instrument of emotions. Its sound and rhythm convey far more than what the words merely mean. The spectacular verbal music of George Meredith’s “A Lark Ascending” has ensured its popularity since it was first published in 1881. Its 122 lines of rhymed tetrameter are more than a description of a skylark’s song; they become the song, all but imitate the bird’s complex voice in lines like these, where he speaks of the lark’s song— Which seems the very jet of earth At sight of sun, her music’s mirth, As up he wings the spiral stair, A song of light, and pierces air With fountain ardor, fountain play, To reach the shining tops of day, And drink in everything discern’d An ecstasy to music turn’d… Vaughan Williams created his evocation of Meredith’s poem around 1913, though the facts of its creation are murky. It is not a setting, nor does it follow the poem’s shape. It paints a picture of the solitary bird (the violin) singing blithely against nature’s quiet rustle, but his take on the poem is a melancholy one. One is struck by how alone the violin/bird sounds against the impassive accompaniment. The piece is, in its very understated way, rather radical: it is almost entirely devoid of harmonic tension; the modal language avoids all hard edges and dramatic dissonance; and formally, it doesn’t so much progress as circle ‘round and ‘round. Vaughan Williams must have had some reservations about it, since he sat on the piece until 1921, when he finally got around to premiering and publishing it. Probably a surprise to him, The Lark Ascending became one of his most popular works, especially in the orchestrated version that he made a few years later. Bach composed an early version of the Two- and Three-Part Inventions for the education of his first-born, Wilhelm Friedemann. They were part of a “Little Keyboard Book” (Clavierbüchlein) that he put together for the 10-year-old in 1720. Two years later, when applying for the job at the St. Thomaskirche in Leipzig, he needed material to establish his pedagogical bona fides, and gathered together a number of things, including a revamped and re-ordered version of the Inventions (two-part) and Sinfonias (three-part) under the title Aufrichtige Anleitung (Forthright Instruction), their current form. They were intended to provide models of compositional techniques in all the normally used major and minor keys (in ascending order), to illustrate the art of inventing and developing musical ideas, and to provide a vehicle to learn to play in a “singing style.” In this type of ordered, synoptic work—which would also include the Well-Tempered Clavier and the Art of Fugue—Bach is laying out a diagram, a mandala, if you will, of his musical universe. There is no doubt that Bach believed that their order mirrored the order of God’s universe, and to contemplate one is to partake of the other.
soon made itself evident, and there have been musical depictions of nature and human events pretty much from the beginning. Heinrich Ignaz Biber’s Sonata Representativa is a typical example for its time—i.e. the early/middle Baroque, about two generations before Bach. Biber was a Bohemian-Austrian composer, one of the era’s most important violinists, whose playing and compositions greatly expanded his instrument’s technical possibilities. His music is full of religious and number symbolism, but this sonata is an entertainment, probably an encore or after-dinner shtick, presenting musical impressions of seven animals and marching musketeers, with a little intro and outro; a silliness to music turn’d... Franck’s Piano Quintet exudes a manic, surging energy—a frenzy in search of ecstasy. Composer Édouard Lalo, Franck’s contemporary, called it an “explosion.” Some of this might be explained by what biographers say was his infatuation with one of his students at the time of its writing (which would, in turn, explain Mdme. Franck’s publicly expressed disgust for the piece). In any case, it is keyed at the highest level of intensity throughout; dynamics are extreme (loads of ppp’s and fff’s), the texture is thick and roiling, harmonies are in a constant state of crisis and un-resolution, and keys shift faster than can be registered. (Franck’s oft-quoted advice to his students: “When in doubt, modulate.”) A larger-scale tension is generated by the conflict between the work’s conventional, three-movement, sonata-based form, by then over a century old, and Franck’s technique, learned from Liszt, of uniting movements through common motives and recurring themes. The effect is as if an emotional beast keeps consuming the old form from within. Not all musicians have been kind to the Quintet’s extremity. The manuscript’s dedication reads, “To my friend Camille Saint-Saëns.” The very proper dedicatee played the piano part for the premiere but was so distressed by the music that he walked right off stage at its completion, before the ovation could begin or Franck could present him with the manuscript. The published dedication reads, “To Camille Saint-Saëns.” © 2022 Paul Epstein
Viano String Quartet
There are some who conjecture that music began through early humans imitating the sounds of nature. My feeling is that the musical impulse came (and comes) from something deeper than our species’ talent for mimicry. However, that talent
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20 CHAMBER ARTS SERIES 6 SENSATIONAL CONCERTS IN ANN ARBOR’S RACKHAM AUDITORIUM
EMERSON STRING QUARTET Sat, Oct 1 // 8 pm Rackham Auditorium
Works by Mendelssohn, Brahms, Walker, and Dvořák.
DANISH STRING QUARTET Fri, Oct 28 // 8 pm Rackham Auditorium
Works by Schubert and Wennäkoski.
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FARIDA AND THE IRAQI MAQAM ENSEMBLE Sun, Mar 19 // 4 pm Rackham Auditorium
The brilliant Iraqi maqam singer Farida Mohammad Ali performs an evening of classical Arab music.
JULIUS EASTMAN’S FEMENINE WILD UP
Christopher Rountree, music director Sun, Apr 16 // 4 pm Rackham Auditorium The Los Angeles music collective Wild Up presents an exuberant performance of Julius Eastman’s minimalist masterpiece Femenine.
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WEEK TWO | JUNE 23 THURSDAY, JUNE 23 | 7:30 P.M. ORIGIN STORIES
St. Hugo of the Hills Sponsored by James Tocco in memory of Rose & Vincent Tocco RAN DANK, piano SOYEON KATE LEE, piano
PROGRAM Bach/Kurtág
Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit Sonata No.1 in E-flat major, BWV 525 O Lamm Gottes unschuldig Dank, Lee
Meredith Monk (b.1942)
Parlour Games Folkdance Dank, Lee
Johannes Brahms Variations on a theme by Haydn, Op. 56b (1833-97)
INTERMISSION Igor Stravinsky
Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) Part I: L'Adoration de la Terre (Adoration of the Earth) Introduction Les Augures printaniers (Augurs of Spring) Jeu du rapt (Ritual of Abduction) Rondes printanières (Spring Rounds) Jeux des cités rivales (Ritual of the Rival Tribes) Cortège du sage (Procession of the Sage) Embrasse de la terre (Kiss of the Earth) Danse de la terre (Dance of the Earth)
PROGRAM NOTES Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) began with a “fleeting vision” Stravinsky had in 1910. As he writes in his 1936 autobiography, “as I was finishing the last pages of The Firebird in Saint Petersburg [...] I saw in my imagination a solemn pagan rite: sage elders, seated in a circle, watching a young girl dance herself to death. They were sacrificing her to propitiate the god of Spring. Such was the theme of the Sacre du printemps." Stravinsky shared this idea with Nicholas Roerich—painter, writer, mystic, and authority on folk art and rituals, who had worked on Diaghilev’s production of Polovtsian Dances. Roerich was excited and drew up a scenario based on a series of ancient ritual actions, culminating in the final sacrificial dance. He also designed the historic premiere production. The two creators probably thought of Stravinsky’s theme/image mainly as a fabulous set-up for a ballet, but its implicit violence, made explicit in Stravinsky’s music, is worth considering. Thematically, it may echo the violence inherent in Nature; unconsciously, it may echo the violence we hold in our deeper selves. Musically, the violence is held in check by Stravinsky’s sonic and formal mastery and unerring sense of balance. The structure is tight enough to support an entirely different story-line—to wit, an amazing sequence in Disney’s Fantasia (1940), which is how I, and thousands of other musicians-to-be, first encountered The Rite. (The fact that it featured dinosaurs, another passion of mine at 7, only made it sweeter.) Stravinsky was appreciative of the pay-day, but later claimed to hate the adaptation (which involved significant cuts to the score as well the altered scenario). However, Paul Hindemith observed that “Igor appears to love it.” © 2022 Paul Epstein
Part II: Le Sacrifice (The Sacrifice) Introduction Cercles mystérieux des adolescentes (Mystic Circles of the Young Girls) Glorification de l'élue (Glorification of the Chosen One) Evocation des ancêtres (Evocation of the Ancestors) Action rituelle des ancêtres (Ritual Action of the Ancestors) Danse sacrale (L'Élue) (Sacrificial Dance) Dank, Lee
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WEEK TWO | JUNE 24 FRIDAY, JUNE 24 | 11 A.M.
MUSICAL CHAIRS WITH PHILIP SETZER Kirk in the Hills Sponsored by Isabel & Lawrence Smith
All 15 Shouse musicians mix and match as they take turns performing in a rotating ensemble under the direction of Shouse Institute Director Philip Setzer.
TICKETS: $15
FRIDAY, JUNE 24 | 7 P.M.
MORE TRAVELS IN THE SOUNDSCAPE Detroit Institute of Arts
F-PLUS, Shouse ensemble PELIA STRING QUARTET, Shouse ensemble ROLSTON STRING QUARTET, Shouse ensemble
PROGRAM Ludwig van Beethoven String Quartet No. 8 in E minor, Op. 59 No. 2 (1770-1827) (“Razumovsky”) Allegro Molto adagio Allegretto - Maggiore: Thème russe Finale. Presto Pelia String Quartet Perry Goldstein (b. 1952)
Jittery Engine (2020) F-PLUS
Jessie Montgomery (b. 1981)
Trio for Violin, Clarinet, and Percussion (2021) F-PLUS
Gabriela Lena Frank (b. 1972)
Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout (2001) Rolston String Quartet
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PROGRAM NOTES For an introduction to the Soundscape, see notes for our first “Travels” concert (6/16). I would only like to add that one might consider notes like these as field guides to your journey through our concerts’ soundscapes. There is a bewildering amount of data contained in every piece we hear, not all of part of our current, common store of knowledge. The more we know, the more we can take in and process. There is a difference between reacting to music and following it. To do both, of course, is the goal. Beethoven had a way of building his largest structures out of the smallest motives. The classic example is the four-note opening of the Fifth Symphony, from which the entire movement is built. He based the titanic trilogy of late quartets—opp.130, 131, and 132—on a single interval, the half-step, the smallest possible interval between two notes (in our Western 12-note system). The broad harmonic outline of the first movement of his String Quartet, Op. 59, No. 2 is also built from this simple but significant interval. There is an inherent tension in the interval itself. The two alternating notes of the famous Jaws “theme” (bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum...) are a halfstep apart. Played harmonically (i.e. together), it creates a powerful dissonance; played melodically, a slow, descending half-step has been a trope for sadness since the beginning of music. Another aspect of the half-step, particularly important for Beethoven, is that it represents the primary harmonic contrast that drives tonality itself. It is the half-step that melodically resolves dominant to tonic. Conversely, it can create tension: Beethoven will state a phrase, then repeat it a half-step higher, creating drama out of the higher-order harmonic tension. And that is what happens at the beginning of this quartet. After two sharp chords announce the start, we hear the opening motive. Beethoven immediately repeats the motive a half step higher; he highlights this move—you’re not supposed to miss it. The fact is, harmonies a half-step apart have no, or very few, common notes; they are as far apart as can be, and Beethoven takes the tension generated by this contrast and powers the whole movement with it. One half-step is also all that separates major from minor—our two emotional/ harmonic poles, as it were—which allows composers like Beethoven and Schubert to flicker quickly between contrasting states of mind. Minor keys have always been fertile ground for music about the unquiet mind. There is a harmonic instability in the minor mode that poses special problems for sonata form, whose whole point is the resolution of instability. Composers will often turn to the major at the end, for instance, to finally ground a minor-key piece. Or they will simply remain in minor and accept an essentially tragic end. Beethoven’s amazing solution for the beginning of the finale of op.59 no.2—imitated later by Schumann and Brahms—is to start in the brightest major, but in the wrong key. Although E minor has permeated the work up till then, we launch right into a jaunty theme in C major, which shares all its notes but one with E minor. Only at the end of the phrase does it finally cadence into E minor, to powerful emotional effect. He does this continually throughout the movement, though ultimately Beethoven does not evade the finality of E minor. The tempo speeds up at the very end, as if to counterbalance the minor vibe that will not quit, and the piece ends with a reverse of the two chords that began it, solid but disquieting. © 2022 Paul Epstein
WEEK TWO | JUNE 24 COMPOSER’S NOTES Perry Goldstein, Jittery Engine (2020) One might think that all felicitous combinations of classical instruments have been discovered by now, but it is apparently not the case if the novel instrumentation of violin, clarinet, and percussion that comprises F-PLUS is any indication. With only one “standard” piece with that combination of instruments originally at their disposal, F-PLUS is inspiring a repertoire and, if my pleasure in writing for the ensemble is shared by other composers excited to compose for this fine group, we may find this configuration taking its place with the string quartet, piano trios, and other conventional “standard” ensembles in a short time. The “jittery engine” of the title refers to the predominance of fast music and the varied manner in which the three instruments interact with each other. Often in octaves or rhythmic unison, the machine’s precision sometimes falters, with one or more instruments suddenly a hair off, leaving the thing off-kilter and wobbly. Though a state of the jitters predominates in the piece, tunes do emerge within that jittery conext, in the clarinet and in lyrical passages in the marimba. There are two sections of textural relief. The first features a repetitive, syncopated accompaniment in marimba and clarinet, somewhat hypnotic, against which the violin plays eerily in its highest register before breaking off into rhapsodic musings. After yet more manic music, another contrasting section, marked “luminous and tranquil,” unfolds in a leisurely, dreamlike fashion. But the final word is “jittery,” three minutes that feature a manic bass clarinet taking the lead, followed by a final minute of largely obsessively repetitious music. The machine is once again off and running, with only a few little wrenches in the gears. The piece is quirky and often funny, and the writing requires a group of great individual and ensemble performers, virtuosi, to pull off the requisite precision, so I’m grateful to the Great Lakes Festival for commissioning this piece for the fine musicians of F-PLUS—Joshua Graham, Luke Lentini, and Juan Gabriel Olivares—to whom the piece is affectionately dedicated. © Perry Goldstein
Chasqui depicts a legendary figure from the Inca period, the chasqui runner, who sprinted great distances to deliver messages between towns separated from one another by the Andean peaks. The chasqui needed to travel light. Hence, I take artistic license to imagine his choice of instruments to be the charango, a highpitched cousin of the guitar, and the lightweight bamboo quena flute, both of which are featured in this movement. Canto de Velorio portrays another well-known Andean personality, a professional crying woman known as the llorona. Hired to render funeral rituals even sadder, the llorona is accompanied here by a second llorona and an additional chorus of mourning women (coro de mujeres). The chant Dies Irae is quoted as a reflection of the comfortable mix of Quechua Indian religious rites with those from Catholicism. Coqueteos is a flirtatious love song sung by gallant men known as romanceros. As such, it is direct in its harmonic expression, bold, and festive. The romanceros sing in harmony with one another against a backdrop of guitars which I think of as a vendaval de guitarras (“storm of guitars”). © Gabriela Lena Frank
Congratulations to the 2022 Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival from Kirk in the Hills!
Gabriela Lena Frank, Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout draws inspiration from the idea of mestizaje as envisioned by Peruvian writer José María Arguedas, where cultures can coexist without the subjugation of one by the other. As such, this piece mixes elements from the western classical and Andean folk music traditions. Toyos depicts one of the most recognizable instruments of the Andes, the panpipe. One of the largest kinds is the breathy toyo which requires great stamina and lung power, and is often played in parallel fourths or fifths. Tarqueda is a forceful and fast number featuring the tarka, a heavy wooden duct flute that is blown harshly in order to split the tone. Tarka ensembles typically also play in fourths and fifths. Himno de Zampoñas features a particular type of panpipe ensemble that divides up melodies through a technique known as hocketing. The characteristic sound of the zampoña panpipe is that of a fundamental tone blown fatly so that overtones ring out on top, hence the unusual scoring of double stops in this movement.
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WEEK TWO | JUNE 25 SATURDAY, JUNE 25 | 8 P.M.
CLOSING NIGHT: THE SONG OF THE EARTH Seligman Performing Arts Center Sponsored by Plant Moran
LURI LEE, violin RAN DANK, piano DELPHINE SKENE, violin SOYEON KATE LEE, piano JEREMY CROSMER, cello NICOLA CANZANO, harpsichord HANNAH HAMMEL, flute HEEJEON AHN, violin DETROIT CHAMBER WINDS & STRINGS JASON ISSOKSON, violin With members of the Shouse Institute and Kevonna Shuford, Sphinx Apprentice Artist; Philip Setzer, concertmaster
PROGRAM Camille Saint-Saëns (1644-1704)
Le Carnaval des Animaux (The Carnival of the Animals) Introduction et marche royale du Lion (Introduction and royal march of the Lion) Poules et coqs (Hens and Cockerels) Hémiones (animaux véloces) (Wild Asses) Tortues (Tortoises) Kangourous (Kangaroos) Aquarium Personnages à longues oreilles (Personages with long ears) Le Coucou au fond des bois (The Cuckoo in the depths of the woods) Volière (Aviary) Pianistes (Pianists) Fossils (Fossils) Le cygne (The Swan) Finale Dank, Lee, DCWS George Crumb (1929-2022)
Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale) Vocalise (...for the beginning of time) Sea Theme Archeozoic Proterozoic Paleozoic Mesozoic Cenozoic Sea-Nocturne (...for the end of time) Dank, Hammel, Crosmer
INTERMISSION 34
Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)
The Four Seasons Concerto No. 1 in E major, Op. 8, RV 269, La Primavera (Spring) Allegro Largo e pianissimo sempre Allegro pastorale Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 8, RV 315, L’estate (Summer) Allegro non molto Adagio e piano – Presto e forte Presto Concerto No. 3 in F major, Op. 8, RV 293, L’autunno (Autumn) Allegro Adagio molto Allegro Concerto No. 4 in F minor, Op. 8, RV 297, L’inverno (Winter) Allegro non molto Largo Allegro Lee, Issokson, Skene, Ahn, Canzano, DCWS
PROGRAM NOTES We end our season, appropriately, with a wide-angle panorama of Life on Earth: a stylized carnival of animals and people, on land and in the deepest ocean, once around the sun; and from prehistory to right now. Nature granted Saint-Saëns with a prodigious musical aptitude, surpassing, perhaps, even Mozart’s. His technique—keyboard, score reading, counterpoint, conducting— was flawless by the time he reached puberty; he knew all of (Western) music and its history. Pupils such as Ravel and Fauré revered him as a genius and inspiration, but the consensus has been that his mastery was not accompanied by, for lack of a better word, inspiration. Perhaps he knew too much too soon. As Berlioz, whose fiery inspiration often stretched the limits of his own technique, remarked, “He knows everything, but lacks inexperience.” He had been a supporter of modern trends in his youth, when “modern” meant Wagner and Liszt, though his own music did not betray much of its overt influence. He lived long enough to hear Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Les Six (all of which he loathed), and write one the earliest film scores. But his deep and decorous sense of conservatism may be gathered by this quote from a letter: “Art is intended to create beauty and character. Feeling only comes afterwards and art can very well do without it. In fact, it is very much better off when it does.” It is not really surprising that the one time he abandoned his usual decorum, he produced his freshest, most popular piece. He dashed off The Carnival of the Animals for an entertainment at the school where he taught. It was one of those casual pieces (like Bolero or Für Elise) that achieve, to the composers’ perpetual irritation and embarrassment, the instant popularity they had wished for their more “serious” pieces. Except for an arrangement of “The Swan” (an instant hit), Saint-Saëns forbade its publication until after his death. © 2022 Paul Epstein
WEEK TWO | JUNE 25 Program music has no doubt been around since the beginning. Some say music itself may have originated from our ancestors’ attempts to imitate the sounds of nature. Numerous pieces from the Renaissance and Early Baroque era sought to tell stories (Kuhnau’s Bible-story sonatas), represent events (the many “Battle” pieces), imitate animals (Biber’s Sonata Representativa), etc. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, written between 1716-20 and published in Amsterdam in 1725 with a series of four sonnets laying out his program in great detail, was certainly the most elaborate, large scale, and sophisticated example of the genre up til then. Vivaldi’s work spawned numerous similar cycles, and became, I needn’t say, one the most popular pieces ever. It has been re-interpreted a thousand different ways, one of the more recent being For Seasons—a recomposition of Vivaldi's concertos using algorithms to portray climate change from 1725 to 2019. The sonnets Vivaldi provided are as good a composer’s note as Crumb’s. Below is a literal translation which follows the program that Vivaldi describes in music, down to the barking dog, snoring sleepers, and crackling ice. © 2022 Paul Epstein
COMPOSER’S NOTES George Crumb, Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale) Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale), composed in 1971 for the New York Camerata, is scored for flute, cello, and piano (all amplified in concert performance). The work was inspired by the singing of the humpback whale, a tape recording of which I had heard two or three years previously. Each of the three performers is required to wear a black half- mask (or visor-mask). The masks, by effacing the sense of human projection, are intended to represent, symbolically, the powerful impersonal forces of nature (i.e. nature dehumanized). I have also suggested that the work be performed under deep-blue stage lighting. The form of Voice of the Whale is a simple three-part design, consisting of a prologue, a set of variations named after the geological eras, and an epilogue. The opening Vocalise (marked in the score: “wildly fantastic, grotesque”) is a kind of cadenza for the flutist, who simultaneously plays his instrument and sings into it. This combination of instrumental and vocal sound produces an eerie, surreal timbre, not unlike the sounds of the humpback whale. The conclusion of the cadenza is announced by a parody of the opening measures of Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra. The Sea-Theme (“solemn, with calm majesty”) is presented by the cello (in harmonics), accompanied by dark, fateful chords of strummed piano strings. The following sequence of variations begins with the haunting sea-gull cries of the Archezoic (“timeless, inchoate”) and, gradually increasing in intensity, reaches a strident climax in the Cenozoic (“dramatic, with a feeling of destiny”). The emergence of man in the Cenozoic era is symbolized by a partial restatement of the Zarathustra reference. The concluding Sea-Nocturne (“serene, pure, transfigured”) is an elaboration of the Sea-Theme. The piece is couched in the “luminous” tonality of B major and there are shimmering sounds of antique cymbals (played alternately by the cellist and flutist). In composing the Sea-Nocturne I wanted to suggest “a larger rhythm of nature” and a sense of suspension in time. The concluding gesture of the work is a gradually dying series of repetitions of a 10-note figure. In concert performance, the last figure is to be played “in pantomime” (to suggest a diminuendo beyond the threshold of hearing!); for recorded performances, the figure is played as a “fade-out”. © George Crumb
La Primavera (Spring) I. Allegro-Festive Spring has arrived, The birds salute it with their happy song. And the brooks, caressed by little Zephyrs, Flow with a sweet murmur. The sky is covered with a black mantle, And thunder, and lightning, announce a storm. When they are silent, the birds Return to sing their lovely song. II. Largo e pianissimo sempre-And in the meadow, rich with flowers, To the sweet murmur of leaves and plants, The goatherd sleeps, with his faithful dog at his side. III. Danza pastorale. Allegro-To the festive sound of pastoral bagpipes, Dance nymphs and shepherds, At Spring's brilliant appearance. L'Estate (Summer) I. Allegro non molto-Under the heat of the burning summer sun, Languish man and flock; the pine is parched. The cuckoo finds its voice, and suddenly, The turtledove and goldfinch sing. A gentle breeze blows, But suddenly, the north wind appears. The shepherd weeps because, overhead, Lies the fierce storm, and his destiny. II. Adagio; Presto-His tired limbs are deprived of rest By his fear of lightning and fierce thunder, And by furious swarms of flies and hornets. III. Presto-Alas, how just are his fears, Thunder and lightening fill the Heavens, and the hail Slices the tops of the corn and other grain. L'Autunno (Autumn) I. Allegro-The peasants celebrate with dance and song, The joy of a rich harvest. And, full of Bacchus's liquor, They finish their celebration with sleep. II. Adagio molto-Each peasant ceases his dance and song. The mild air gives pleasure,
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And the season invites many To enjoy a sweet slumber. III. Allegro-The hunters, at the break of dawn, go to the hunt. With horns, guns, and dogs they are off, The beast flees, and they follow its trail. Already fearful and exhausted by the great noise, Of guns and dogs, and wounded, The exhausted beast tries to flee, but dies. L'Inverno (Winter) I. Allegro non molto-Frozen and trembling in the icy snow, In the severe blast of the horrible wind, As we run, we constantly stamp our feet, And our teeth chatter in the cold. II. Largo-To spend happy and quiet days near the fire, While, outside, the rain soaks hundreds. III. Allegro-We walk on the ice with slow steps, And tread carefully, for fear of falling. If we go quickly, we slip and fall to the ground. Again we run on the ice, Until it cracks and opens. We hear, from closed doors, Sirocco, Boreas, and all the winds in battle. This is winter, but it brings joy.
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COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT EVENTS The Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival remains dedicated to promoting the arts to its surrounding community through performances, workshops and collaboration.
ARTISTIC ENCOUNTERS
SATURDAY, JUNE 18 | 5 PM
Sponsored by Barbara & Paul Goodman
SERVICE AND DINNER AT FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN PONTIAC A special Saturday service including music performed by the Pelia String Quartet. The Festival will provide a casual dinner following.
MONDAY, JUNE 20 | 7 PM
PERFORMANCE AT ALL SEASONS BIRMINGHAM The Rolston String Quartet presents an exclusive performance for the residents at the All Seasons Birmingham.
KIRK IN THE HILLS
SCHEDULE “Artistic Encounters” are professional coaching sessions of Shouse Institute ensembles by Festival artists in a setting similar to a masterclass. When you purchase a subscription, you will receive free access to these events ($5 each for single ticket holders.) They will take place at Kirk in the Hills. The Shouse Institute is an educational program for emerging ensembles led by Philip Setzer.
This event is not open to the public.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22
SYMPOSIUM AT WSU MEDICAL SCHOOL
JUNE 14 AT 11 A.M. | YURA LEE JUNE 16 AT 11 A.M. | TAI MURRAY
Sponsored by the Gershenson Trust
JUNE 21 AT 11 A.M. | PHILIP SETZER
The Viano String Quartet will present a workshop to students in the Wayne State University School of Medicine. In partnership with WSU faculty, the musicians will perform and demonstrate how they communicate nonverbally. The goal is to create an opportunity for medical students to observe and learn lessons in non-verbal communication, an “art-form” in which chamber musicians must excel to survive.
JUNE 23 AT 11 A.M. | PAUL WATKINS Yura Lee
This event is not open to the public.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22 | 2 P.M. PIQUETTE SQUARE PERFORMANCE Sponsored by Betty Blair
In collaboration with the Shouse Institute, Festival artists will perform a free concert at Piquette Square, a 150-unit apartment project built by Southwest Solutions in Detroit to house and care for homeless veterans. In 2019, they performed for veterans and had the opportunity to speak and interact with the veterans afterward. This event is not open to the public.
THURSDAY, JUNE 23 | 2:30 PM
ACCENT PONTIAC PERFORMANCE AND WORKSHOP
ACCESS TO THE GREAT LAKES CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL. ANYTIME. ANYWHERE. Enjoy our innovative collection of virtual programming online by visiting us at: https://greatlakeschambermusic.org/watch-and-listen/ Content and community beyond the Festival’s live events This fall, we will showcase programming from the 2022 Festival! Interwoven with behind-the-scenes footage and interviews, we are taking viewers beyond what is typically accessible at live events. Enjoy the passion and artistry that moves us to collectively experience the fullest range and depth of emotion with every crescendo, turn of the page, and stroke of the bow. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram @GLCMF
Sponsored by Mr. & Mrs. B.N. Bahadur
A Shouse ensemble will host a workshop for Accent Pontiac students, helping them realize their own compositions and interpret each other’s works. Accent Pontiac focuses on strengthening Pontiac’s youth and community through equitable access to intensive and consistent music-making.
Where Great Music Comes to Play
This event is not open to the public. 37
FESTIVAL ARTISTS PAUL WATKINS
Artistic Director, cello and piano Sponsored by Gail & Ira Mondry Acclaimed for his inspirational performances and eloquent musicianship, Paul Watkins enjoys a remarkably varied and distinguished career as soloist, chamber musician and conductor. He is the Artistic Director of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival and in 2019, he was appointed Professor of Cello at the Yale School of Music. He regularly appears as concerto soloist with orchestras throughout the world. Recent highlights include performances at the BBC Proms, where he appeared with the BBC Symphony and Thomas Adès in Lutoslawski’s cello concerto, and with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in the world première of the cello concerto composed for him by his brother, Huw Watkins. A dedicated chamber musician, Paul was a member of the Nash Ensemble from 1997 until 2013, when he joined the Emerson String Quartet. With the Quartet he has travelled extensively, performing at major international festivals including Tanglewood, Aspen, Ravinia, Edinburgh, Berlin and Evian, and has collaborated with artists such as Emanuel Ax, Yefim Bronfman, Evgeny Kissin, Renée Fleming and Barbara Hannigan. He is a regular guest artist at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, where he recently performed the complete Beethoven cello sonatas with Alessio Bax. Winner of the 2002 Leeds Conducting Competition, he has conducted all the major British orchestras and a wide range of orchestras throughout the world. In recent seasons he made his conducting debuts with the Minnesota Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, Omaha Symphony and at the Lake Tahoe Music Festival. He was the first ever Music Director of the English Chamber Orchestra, and also served as Principal Guest Conductor of the Ulster Orchestra from 2009 to 2012. His extensive discography as a cellist includes over 70 recordings, including 18 solo albums for Chandos. Critically acclaimed releases include the Walton, Delius, Elgar and Lutoslawski concertos, as well as recitals of Mendelssohn, Martinu, and 20thcentury British and American music for cello and piano with his brother, Huw. His first recording as a conductor, of the Britten and Berg violin concertos with Daniel Hope, received a Grammy nomination. Paul plays on a cello made by Domenico Montagnana and Matteo Goffriller in Venice, c.1730.
PHILIP SETZER
Shouse Institute Director & violin Sponsored by Isabel & Lawrence Smith Violinist Philip Setzer, a founding member of the Emerson String Quartet, was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and began studying violin at the age of five with his parents, both former violinists in the Cleveland Orchestra. He continued his studies with 38
Josef Gingold and Rafael Druian, and later at the Juilliard School with Oscar Shumsky. In 1967, Setzer won second prize at the Marjorie Merriweather Post Competition in Washington, DC, and in 1976 received a Bronze Medal at the Queen Elisabeth International Competition in Brussels. He has since appeared with the National, Memphis, New Mexico, Puerto Rico, Omaha and Anchorage Symphonies, Aspen Chamber Symphony and on several occasions with the Cleveland Orchestra. He has also participated in the Marlboro Music Festival. Setzer has been a regular faculty member of the Isaac Stern Chamber Music Workshops at Carnegie Hall and the Jerusalem Music Center. His article about those workshops appeared in The New York Times on the occasion of Isaac Stern's 80th birthday celebration. He also teaches as Distinguished Professor of Violin and Chamber Music at SUNY Stony Brook, and has given master classes at schools around the world, including the Curtis Institute, London's Royal Academy of Music, the San Francisco Conservatory, UCLA, the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Mannes School. His in-depth appreciation of Shostakovich’s string quartets led to the Emerson Quartet’s fruitful theatrical collaborations with Simon McBurney for “The Noise of Time” and with James Glossman for “Shostakovich and the Black Monk: A Russian Fantasy.” He plays on a violin by Samuel Zygmuntowicz, New York, 2011.
KEVIN BROWN
double bass Sponsored by Cecilia Benner Minnesota native Kevin Brown began playing the bass at age 3. He has since gone on to perform with esteemed ensembles across the United States in a burgeoning career that has led him back to the Midwest as principal bass of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and Associate Professor of Double Bass at Michigan State University. Kevin completed his Bachelors and Masters degrees at Rice University as a student of Paul Ellison. While at Rice, Kevin performed extensively with the Houston Symphony, including tours to New York and Moscow. In 2009 he won the International Society of Bassists Orchestral Competition, earning a week as a guest in the Philadelphia Orchestra bass section. Before his appointment to the DSO in 2014, Kevin also appeared as guest principal bass of the Atlanta Symphony. Beyond orchestral performance, Kevin is an active soloist and chamber musician. He has collaborated with the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, regularly gives recitals, and gave his concerto debut with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 2015. Kevin is also a deeply committed educator, and joined the faculty of Michigan State University in 2017. Outside of Michigan, he has taught as a guest at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Northwestern University, the University of Southern California, Texas Christian University, the Colburn School, and Rice University.
FESTIVAL ARTISTS NICOLA CANZANO harpsichord
Nicola Canzano is a composer, harpsichordist and organist who has quickly become recognized as a leading expert in the composition and improvisation of baroque music. He is an enthusiastic proponent of the revival of certain aspects of historical music education, which he believes will allow music students of all persuasions to gain a more well-rounded mastery and appreciation of their art. To this end, Nicola has formed, along with his former classmates from Juilliard’s Historical Performance program, the ensemble Nuova Pratica, as a proof-of-concept. Despite its nascency, Nuova Pratica has given performances of their baroque-inspired compositions and lectures on their development of techniques to improvise partimenti as an ensemble at institutions like Cornell University and the University of Michigan. Outside of Nuova Pratica, Nicola maintains a teaching studio for students of harpsichord, baroque improvisation, and composition, and feels incredibly fortunate to be in demand as a composer of baroque music. His compositions in baroque style have earned him performances from William Christie’s gardens in Thiré to the stages graced by Juilliard415, and the classrooms of the University of Oregon, where some of his work is used as part of the theory curriculum under Dr. Timothy Pack. He has written most recently for Juilliard415 and the Stüttgartbased ensemble VERITÀ, besides continuously composing for Nuova Pratica. Most of all, Nicola delights in making music with others as a continuist, having played under the proverbial batons of Richard Egarr, Nic McGegan and Masaaki Suzuki, with Juilliard415, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and others. Nicola offers his services at the harpsichord and organ throughout his current base in New York City, playing organ on Sundays at St. John in the Village and Christ & St. Stephen’s Church.
JEREMY CROSMER cello
Jeremy Crosmer is a remarkable young artist—both as a cellist and a composer. He completed multiple graduate degrees from the University of Michigan in cello, composition and theory pedagogy, and received his D.M.A. in 2012 at age 24. From 2012 to 2017 he served as the Assistant Principal cellist in the Grand Rapids Symphony, and joined the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in May of 2017.
education of classical music by bringing crossovers and mashups of pop and classical music to schools throughout Michigan. ESME released its first CD in December of 2016. In April of 2013, Crosmer toured London with the Grand Valley State University Chamber Orchestra, performing the Boccherini G Major Concerto, No. 7. He performed the Vivaldi Double Concerto with Alicia Eppinga and the GRS in March of 2016. While still in school, Crosmer was awarded the prestigious Theodore Presser Graduate Music Award to publish, record and perform his Crosmer-Popper duets. He recorded the duets with Julie Albers, and both sheet music and CD recordings are available online.
GLORIA CHIEN
piano Sponsored by Andrea & Woodrow Leung in memory of Ruth Meckler Laredo Taiwanese-born pianist Gloria Chien has one of the most diverse musical lives as a noted performer, concert presenter, and educator. She made her orchestral debut at the age of sixteen with the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Thomas Dausgaard, and she performed again with the BSO with Keith Lockhart. She was subsequently selected by the The Boston Globe as one of its Superior Pianists of the year, “who appears to excel in everything.” In recent seasons, she has performed as a recitalist and chamber musician at Alice Tully Hall, the Library of Congress, the Phillips Collection, the Dresden Chamber Music Festival, and the National Concert Hall in Taiwan. She performs frequently with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In 2009, she launched String Theory, a chamber music series in Chattanooga, Tennessee that has become one of the region’s premier classical music presenters. The following year she was appointed Director of the Chamber Music Institute at Music@Menlo. In 2017, she joined her husband, violinist Soovin Kim, as Artistic Director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vermont. The duo became Artistic Directors of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, OR in 2020. Chien received her B.M., M.M., DMA degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music studying with Wha Kyung Byun and Russell Sherman. She is Artist-in-Residence at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, and she is a Steinway Artist.
Crosmer is the composer and arranger for the GRS Music for Health Initiative, which pairs symphonic musicians with music therapists to bring classical music to hospitals. In March of 2017, the Helen DeVos Children's Hospital launched a music channel that runs continuously, using four hours of meditative music composed by Jeremy and performed by musicians of the GRS. Crosmer is a founding member of the modern music ensemble Latitude 49. He is also a current member of the band ESME—a duo that aims to broaden the 39
FESTIVAL ARTISTS RAN DANK
piano Eugene Istomin Endowed Piano Chair Ran Dank’s recent performances have included recitals at the San Francisco Performances Series, Gilmore, Ravinia, Carnegie Hall’s Zankel and Weill Halls, Steinway Hall, Gardner Museum, Kennedy Center, Town Hall, Yale School of Music, Philips Collection, Morgan Library, Pro Musica in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, Portland Ovations, and have garnered critical acclaim from the New York Times and The Washington Post. Dank is an ardent advocate for contemporary music, and has performed in recent seasons Kevin Puts’ piano concerto “Night,” the Tobias Picker concerto, “Keys to the City,” Frederic Rzewski’s “The People United Will Never Be Defeated,” William Bolcom’s Pulitzer-winning set of “Twelve New Etudes,” and has given, alongside pianist and wife, Soyeon Kate Lee, the world premieres of Frederic Rzewski’s “Four Hands,” and Alexander Goehr’s “Seven Impromptus.” This season Dank and Soyeon Kate Lee will feature the world premiere of multiple Grammy-nominated pianist and composer’s Marc-André Hamelin’s “Tango” for piano four-hands. Dank and Lee have established a series of concerts, Music by the Glass, held in a New York SoHo art gallery, where the audience of young professionals listen, mix and mingle with performing artists who play solo pieces and chamber works accompanied by treats sweet and savory, paired with wines by the glass. Dank is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Naumburg Piano Competition and the Sydney International Piano Competition, and First Prize winner of the Hilton Head International Piano Competition.
PERRY GOLDSTEIN
Stone Composer-in-Residence Perry Goldstein studied at the University of Illinois, UCLA, and Columbia University, from which he received a doctorate in music composition in 1986. Goldstein composes primarily chamber and solo music. A fortuitous meeting in 1992 with the Aurelia Saxophone Quartet, a Dutch ensemble, influenced the trajectory of his compositional career. Almost one-third of his 60-piece oeuvre is for saxophone, including seven works for saxophone quartet, and many of his works have entered the standard repertoire for the instrument. This aspect of his work is represented in the Great Lakes Music Festival by his Quintet for Alto Saxophone and String Quartet. Goldstein has written four pieces for solo voice, all in collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Powers. These include a song cycle on the expedition to the South Pole by Robert Falcon Scott, composed in 2005 for the U.S. Military Band at West Point. The Great Lakes Festival will feature the premiere of their most recent collaboration entitled Birding By Ear, comprising six songs 40
on bird texts. The Festival will also present the premiere performance of Jittery Engine, composed for the trio F-PLUS. Goldstein’s music is represented on over 20 compact discs and he is author of Rudiments of Music, published by KendallHunt, and co-author of A New Approach to Sight Singing, published by W.W. Norton. A dedicated educator, Goldstein holds the title of SUNY Distinguished Service Professor and is a member of the State University of New York Distinguished Academy. He has been on the faculty of Stony Brook University since 1992 and recently stepped down as chair of the Music Department after serving in that capacity for nine years.
CLIVE GREENSMITH
cello Sponsored by Cindy & Harold Daitch From 1999 until its final season in 2013, Clive Greensmith was a member of the world-renowned Tokyo String Quartet, giving over one hundred performances each year in the most prestigious international venues, including New York’s Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House, London’s South Bank, Paris Chatelet, Berlin Philharmonie, Vienna Musikverein, and Suntory Hall in Tokyo. Greensmith has performed at the Aspen Music Festival, Marlboro Music Festival, Music@Menlo, La Jolla SummerFest, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Cleveland Chamber Fest, and the Ravinia Festival. Internationally he has appeared at the Salzburg Festival in Austria, Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, Pacific Music Festival in Japan and the Hong Kong Arts Festival. As a soloist, Clive Greensmith has performed with the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic, and the RAI Orchestra of Rome among others. During a career spanning over twenty-five years, Greensmith has built up a catalog of landmark recordings, most notably the complete Beethoven string quartets for Harmonia Mundi with the Tokyo String Quartet, Mozart’s “Prussian” quartets with the Tokyo String Quartet and Brahms Cello Sonatas with Boris Berman for Biddulph Recordings, and clarinet trios of Beethoven and Brahms with Jon Nakamatsu and Jon Manasse for Harmonia Mundi. In 2013, following the final concerts of the Tokyo String Quartet, Greensmith joined the faculty at the Colburn School, where he is currently a professor of cello and coaches chamber music for the Conservatory of Music and the Music Academy. In July 2019, he succeeded Günther Pichler as director of string chamber music at the Accademia Chigiana International Festival and Summer Academy in Siena, Italy. Also in 2019, Greensmith became the Artistic Director of the Nevada Chamber Music Festival. Greensmith is a founding member of the Montrose Trio, with pianist Jon Kimura Parker and violinist Martin Beaver. Clive Greensmith proudly uses Pirastro strings.
FESTIVAL ARTISTS HANNAH HAMMEL flute
Hannah Hammel is the recently appointed Principal Flute of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Before joining the DSO, she held the position of Principal Flute of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra from 2017-2019. As an orchestral musician, Hannah has performed with the New York Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony, Houston Grand Opera, Richmond Symphony, and New World Symphony. Hannah has spent summers performing at festivals including Tanglewood Music Center, Music Academy of the West, Pacific Music Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, and Round Top Music Festival. An active solo flutist, Hannah has won first place in the 2016 National Flute Association’s Young Artist Competition, 2016 Houston Flute Club Byron Hester Competition, the 2015 Atlanta Flute Association Young Artist Competition, the 2014 National Flute Association Orchestral Excerpt Competition, 2013 Central Ohio Flute Association Collegiate Division Competition and second place in the 2013 Mid-South Flute Society’s Young Artist Competition among others. A native of Richmond, VA, Hannah began studying the flute with her mother, Alice Hammel. She holds a BM in flute performance and a minor in music theory from the Oberlin Conservatory (2015) where she studied with Alexa Still. She graduated with her MM in flute performance in 2017 from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music as a student of Leone Buyse.
ALAN HANKERS
Stone Composer Fellow Described as "atmospheric and striking" by Outburn Magazine, the music of composer and pianist Alan Hankers can be heard in concert halls, on television, and on albums alongside worldrenowned musical artists. As a composer of symphonic and chamber works, Alan’s music has been performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia at venues such as Lincoln Center, New World Center, Koger Center for the Performing Arts, and Musikhusset Aarhus. He has worked with numerous ensembles including the Pacific Chamber Orchestra (Dream American Fellowship, 2021), Ensemble Edge (Composer-in-Residence, 2017-2019), South Carolina Philharmonic’s Repertory Orchestra, Calidore String Quartet, and others.
band, JIA, and has embarked on tours opening up for artists such as Intervals, Plini, Scar Symmetry, Monuments, and others. He is also a founding member of the contemporary classical trio, Pathos Trio, where he has appeared in performances at Lincoln Center, New World Center, and other prestigious venues. Pathos Trio is set to release their debut album through New Focus Records in March of 2022. Alan completed his Ph.D. in Music Composition at Stony Brook University, where he was awarded the Ackerman Prize for Excellence in Graduate Studies. He has taught at Montclair State University and Stony Brook University.
SCOTT HANOIAN organ
Scott Hanoian is the Music Director and Conductor of the University Musical Society Choral Union where he conducts and prepares the Grammy Award winning chorus in performances with the world’s finest orchestras and conductors. Choruses prepared by Hanoian have sung under the batons of Leonard Slatkin, Ivan Fischer, Stefan Sanderling, Kenneth Kiesler and Peter Oundjian. Hanoian is active as an organist, accompanist, continuo artist, conductor, choral adjudicator, and guest clinician. He is the Director of Music and Organist at Christ Church Grosse Pointe, where he directs the church’s four choirs and oversees the yearly concert series. Mr. Hanoian has served on the faculty of Wayne State University and Oakland University and was the Artistic Director and conductor of the Oakland Choral Society from 2013–2015. As an organist and conductor, Hanoian has performed concerts throughout the US and has led choirs on trips to Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, France, and Spain. In the summer of 2017, Hanoian led the Christ Church Schola during their weeklong residency at Westminster Abbey. Before moving to Grosse Pointe, Hanoian was the Assistant Organist and Assistant Director of Music at Washington National Cathedral where he played the organ for many services including the funerals for Presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford. Hanoian has recorded the complete organ works of Johannes Brahms for the JAV label.
With an ever-growing passion for film and collaboration, Alan has garnered dozens of film and TV credits as a composer and sound designer. Recent clients include Lincoln Automotive, Amazon, Nintendo, and others. His score for the short film 'Color Blind' was awarded the Roger Taylor Best Score Award at the Idyllwild International Film Festival. As a pianist/keyboardist, Alan has been praised by Metal Hammer (UK) and Prog Magazine. He currently plays with the American progressive metal 41
FESTIVAL ARTISTS MEGAN HEERES
visual artist Sponsored by Edw. C. Levy Co. Megan Heeres’s current practice is rooted in paper-making, where her passion for experimentation, fascination with entropy and chance, and her love of science all meet. She works with unwanted plant species and the trash found where these plants reside to create art objects, installations, collaborations, and experiential workshops. Heeres’s art and professional endeavors have connected into a cooperative way of working with the community, both inside and outside of the studio. These collaborations engage with place, people, art and plants. They have ranged from large scale green space projects (Lafayette Greens Urban Garden, Beacon Park) that involve a wide array of stakeholders, to more intimate connections through the Invasive Paper Project and site-specific artworks. Heeres participates in projects locally and nationally, most recently at the Broad Art Lab at Michigan State University and the Herron School of Art at Indiana University. Heeres has been an artist-in-residence at the Broad Art Lab at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences in Rabun Gap, Georgia, the Michele Schara Residency at the Brightmoor Makerspace in Detroit, the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, Illinois, and the Santa Fe Art Institute and Women’s International Study Center in New Mexico.
RACHEL GOTTLIEB KALMOWITZ soprano
Rachel Gottlieb Kalmowitz is honored to be the Cantor at Temple Beth El in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. She is pleased to be performing at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival again, having been a guest artist numerous times, most notably performing Harbison’s “Mirabai Songs” and Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” with former artistic director James Tocco. Prior to assuming her position at Beth El, she was a resident of New York City, where she had a rich variety of musical experiences in opera, musical theatre, and concert work. As soprano soloist, she has performed an extensive repertoire, including Mozart’s Mass in C Minor, Bach’s Magnificat, and Orff’s Carmina Burana. Favorite opera roles include Gretel in Hansel and Gretel, Despina in Così fan tutte, and Monica in Menotti’s The Medium. She had principal roles in Singing With My Demons and Moses, My Love, new plays premiered in New York City, and won a Grand Award for her work as Clara in Sondheim’s Passion. She was also a District Winner in The Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. Kalmowitz received her cantorial certification from Hebrew Union CollegeJewish Institute of Religion and a Master of Music in voice performance from 42
University of Michigan, as well as degrees from Eastman School of Music and Interlochen Arts Academy. She lives in Birmingham with her husband, Carey, and daughter, Ilana.
SOOVIN KIM
violin Sponsored by Adrienne Ruby-Fink & Herschel Fink Korean-American violinist Soovin Kim is an exciting player who has built on the early successes of his prize-winning years to emerge as a mature and communicative artist. After winning first prize at the Niccolò Paganini International Competition, Kim was recipient of the prestigious Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and the Henryk Szeryng Foundation Career Award. Today he enjoys a broad musical career, regularly performing repertoire such as Bach sonatas and Paganini caprices for solo violin, sonatas for violin and piano by Beethoven, Brahms, and Ives, string quartets, Mozart and Haydn concertos and symphonies as a conductor, and new world-premiere works almost every season. In recent seasons he has been acclaimed for his “superb…impassioned” (Berkshire Review) performance of Alban Berg’s Chamber Concerto at the Bard Festival with the American Symphony Orchestra and a “sassy, throaty” (Philadelphia Inquirer) rendition of Kurt Weill’s concerto with the Curtis Chamber Orchestra. Other unusual concerto collaborations included Mendelssohn’s Double Concerto with conductor Maestro Myung-Whun Chung and Beethoven’s Triple Concerto in Carnegie Hall. He has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Stuttgart Radio Symphony, Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra, and the Seoul Philharmonic and Accademia di Santa Cecilia Orchestra with Maestro Chung. He maintains a close relationship with the famed Marlboro Festival where he regularly spends his summers, and founded the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, VT, in 2009. In May 2015, he received an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Vermont in recognition of his contributions to the community. In Korea, he is well-known as a member of MIK, his ground-breaking piano quartet ensemble. He recently launched the Chien-Kim-Watkins Trio with his wife, pianist Gloria Chien, and cellist Paul Watkins.
TESSA LARK
violin Sponsored by Martha Pleiss Violinist Tessa Lark is one of the most captivating artistic voices of our time, consistently praised by critics and audiences for her astounding range of sounds, technical agility, and musical elegance. In 2020 she was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Classical Instrumental Solo category and received one of Lincoln Center’s prestigious Emerging Artist Awards: the special Hunt Family Award. Other recent honors include a 2018 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship and a 2016 Avery
FESTIVAL ARTISTS Fisher Career Grant, Silver Medalist in the 9th Quadrennial International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, and winner of the 2012 Naumburg International Violin Competition. She solos regularly with many of the major orchestras around the world, from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra to the Seattle Symphony, and has appeared in recital in such prestigious venues and series as Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and Carnegie Hall’s Distinctive Debuts series in Weill Hall (2017). She is also a highly acclaimed fiddler in the tradition of her native Kentucky, delighting audiences with programming that includes Appalachian and bluegrass music and inspiring composers to write for her - most notably SKY, a bluegrass-inspired violin concerto written for Tessa by Michael Torke, which earned both a Grammy nomination for Tessa and a Pulitzer finalist distinction for Torke. Lark is a graduate of New England Conservatory and completed her Artist Diploma at The Juilliard School. She plays a c.1600 G.P. Maggini violin, on loan from an anonymous donor through the Stradivari Society of Chicago.
YURA LEE
violin and viola Paul Katz Endowed Chair in memory of Morris D. Baker Yura Lee is a multi-faceted musician, as soloist and as a chamber musician, and one of the very few that is equally virtuosic in both violin and viola. She has performed with major orchestras including those of New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Cleveland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, to name a few. She has given recitals in London’s Wigmore Hall, Vienna’s Musikverein, Salzburg’s Mozarteum, Brussels’ Palais des Beaux-Arts, and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. At age 12, she became the youngest artist ever to receive the Debut Artist of the Year prize at the Performance Today awards given by National Public Radio. She is the recipient of the 2007 Avery Fisher Career Grant, and the first prize winner of the 2013 ARD Competition. She received numerous other international prizes, including top prizes in the Mozart, Indianapolis, Hannover, Kreisler, Bashmet, and Paganini competitions. Her CD ‘Mozart in Paris’ with Reinhard Goebel and the Bayerische Kammerphilharmonie, received the prestigious Diapason d’Or Award. As a chamber musician, she regularly takes part in the festivals of Marlboro, Salzburg, Verbier, La Jolla, Music@Menlo, Chamber Music Northwest, Seattle and Caramoor, among many others. Her main teachers included Dorothy DeLay, Hyo Kang, Miriam Fried, Paul Biss, Thomas Riebl, Ana Chumachenko, and Nobuko Imai.
sponsors. For viola, she plays an instrument made in 2002 by Douglas Cox.
SOYEON KATE LEE
piano Ruth Laredo Endowed Piano Chair First prize winner of the Naumburg International Piano Competition and the Concert Artist Guild International Competition, Korean-American pianist Soyeon Kate Lee has been lauded by The New York Times as a pianist with “a huge, richly varied sound, a lively imagination and a firm sense of style,” and by the Washington Post for her “stunning command of the keyboard.” Lee has been a guest soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, among others in the United States; the Daejeon Philharmonic, Ulsan Symphony Orchestra (South Korea), Orquesta de Valencia (Spain) and the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional (Dominican Republic). Solo recital appearances include programs at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall and Weill Recital Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Cleveland’s Severance Hall, Ravinia Festival’s “Rising Stars” series, Auditorio de Musica de Nacional in Madrid, and Finland’s Maanta Music Festival. She frequently collaborates in many chamber music festivals throughout the United States including the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and Music Mountain, and has been a member of the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society Two program, where her performance of the Mozart Piano Trio was broadcast on PBS Live from Lincoln Center. A graduate of the Juilliard School, Lee was awarded every prize given to a pianist at Juilliard including the William Petschek Piano Debut Award at Lincoln Center. Her discography spans two volumes of Scarlatti Sonatas, Liszt Opera Transcriptions, two volumes of Scriabin works, and Clementi Sonatas on the Naxos label and her eco-awareness album, Re!nvented, label garnered her a feature review in the Gramophone Magazine and the Classical Recording Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year Award. Lee is the co-founder and artistic director of Music by the Glass, a concert series dedicated to bringing together young professionals in New York City. Lee is an Associate Professor of Piano at the Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music.
Lee is a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and the Boston Chamber Music Society. She is an associate professor at the USC Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles. Lee plays a fine Giovanni Grancino violin kindly loaned to her through the Beares International Violin Society by generous 43
FESTIVAL ARTISTS TIMOTHY MCALLISTER saxophone Sponsored by Kathleen Block
Hailed by The New York Times as a “virtuoso…one of the foremost saxophonists of his generation”, “brilliant” (The Guardian, UK), and “a sterling saxophonist” (The Baltimore Sun), Timothy McAllister is one of today’s premier soloists, a member of the renowned PRISM Quartet, and a champion of contemporary music credited with dozens of recordings and over 150 premieres of new compositions by eminent and emerging composers worldwide. His rise to international fame came in 2009 with his celebrated work in John Adams’s “City Noir,” filmed as part of Gustavo Dudamel’s inaugural concert as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the world premiere of John Adams’s Saxophone Concerto in August 2013 with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the composer in the Sydney Opera House. Subsequent critically-acclaimed U.S. premieres with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and St. Louis Symphony followed, along with engagements with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Proms in London, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the New World Symphony, among others. McAllister has recently been soloist with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, Elgin Symphony, Albany Symphony Orchestra, Reno Philharmonic, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Royal Band of the Belgian Air Force, United States Navy Band, Hong Kong Wind Philharmonia, Tokyo Wind Symphony, Pacific Symphony and the Nashville Symphony, among others. An in-demand orchestral saxophonist, he has toured in the U.S. and abroad with both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony Orchestra, among many others. McAllister is the current Professor of Saxophone at the University of Michigan and is a Detroit Chamber Winds & Strings musician.
TAI MURRAY
violin Sponsored by Rayna Kogan in memory of Natalio Kogan. Sponsored by Lauren & Dwight Smith Appreciated for her elegance and effortless ability, Tai Murray creates a special bond with listeners through her personal phrasing and subtle sweetness. Her programming reveals musical intelligence. Her sound, sophisticated bowing and choice of vibrato, remind us of her musical background and influences, principally Yuval Yaron (a student of Gingold and Heifetz) and Franco Gulli. Winner of an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2004, Tai Murray was named a BBC New Generation Artist (2008 through 2010). As a chamber musician, she was a member of Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Society Two (2004-2006). She has performed as guest soloist on the main stages worldwide, performing with leading ensembles such as the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Royal 44
Liverpool Symphony Orchestra, and all of the BBC Symphony Orchestras. She is also a dedicated advocate of contemporary works written for the violin. Among others, she performed the world premiere of Malcolm Hayes’ violin concerto at the BBC Proms, in the Royal Albert Hall. Tai Murray’s critically acclaimed debut recording for Harmonia Mundi of Ysaÿe’s six sonatas for solo violin was released in February 2012. Her second recording, with works by American composers of the 20th century, was released by the Berlin-based label eaSonus and her third disc with the Bernstein Serenade on the French label Mirare. Tai Murray plays a violin made by Tomaso Balestrieri in Mantua, c.1765, on generous loan from a private collection.
ANTON NEL
piano Sponsored by Jill & Steven Stone Winner of the 1987 Naumburg International Piano Competition at Carnegie Hall, Anton Nel continues to tour internationally as recitalist, concerto soloist, chamber musician and teacher. Highlights in the U.S. include performances with the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, Seattle, and Detroit Symphonies as well as recitals coast to coast. Overseas he has appeared at the Wigmore Hall in London, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, and major venues in China, Korea, and South Africa. Much sought after as a chamber musician, he regularly appears with some of the world’s finest instrumentalists at festivals on four continents. He holds the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Endowed Chair at the University of Texas at Austin and also gives an annual series of masterclasses at the Manhattan School of Music and the Glenn Gould School in Toronto. During the summers he is on the artist faculties at the Aspen Music Festival and School, the Steans Institute at the Ravinia Festival, and the Orford Music Academy in Quebec. Nel also frequently performs as harpsichordist and fortepianist. His recordings include four solo CDs, chamber music recordings (including the complete Beethoven and Brahms cello/ piano works with Bion Tsang) , and works for piano and orchestra by Franck, Fauré, Saint-Saëns and Edward Burlingame Hill. The Johannesburg-born Nel is a graduate of the University of the Witwatersrand, where he studied with Adolph Hallis, and the University of Cincinnati, where he worked with Bela Siki and Frank Weinstock. His website is antonnel.com.
NICOLAS PHAN
tenor Sponsored by Linda & Maurice Binkow Described by the Boston Globe as “one of the world’s most remarkable singers,” American tenor Nicholas Phan is increasingly recognized as an artist of distinction. With an incredibly diverse repertoire that spans nearly 500 years of music, he performs regularly with the world’s leading orchestras and opera companies. Phan is also an avid recitalist and a passionate advocate for art song
FESTIVAL ARTISTS and vocal chamber music; in 2010, Phan co-founded Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago, an organization devoted to promoting this underserved repertoire. A celebrated recording artist, Phan’s most recent album, “Clairières,” a recording of songs by Lili and Nadia Boulanger, was nominated for the 2020 Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album. His album “Gods and Monsters” was nominated for the same award in 2017. He remains the first and only singer of Asian descent to be nominated in the history of the category, which has been awarded by the Recording Academy since 1959. Phan’s growing discography also includes a Grammy-nominated recording of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella with Pierre Boulez and the Chicago Symphony, as well as the world premiere recording of Elliott Carter’s A Sunbeam’s Architecture. Sought after as a curator and programmer, in addition to his work as artistic director of CAIC, Phan has also created programs for broadcast on WFMT and WQXR, and served as guest curator for projects with the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Merola Opera, and San Francisco Performances, where he served as the vocal artist-in-residence from 2014-2018. Phan’s programs often examine themes of identity, highlight unfairly underrepresented voices from history, and strive to underline the relevance of music from all periods to the currents of the present day.
RICHARD POWERS
author Sponsored by Martha Pleiss Richard Powers is the author of thirteen novels, including The Overstory and Orfeo, and the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Award. He lives in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.
RANDALL SCARLATA
baritone Sponsored by the Beaumont Health Foundation Baritone Randall Scarlata has been praised by The New York Times as “an intelligent and communicative singer” with a “compelling desire to bring texts to life.” He has also been acclaimed for his “extraordinary vocal range and colour palette” and “ability to traverse so many different singing styles” (MusicWeb International). The Daily Telegraph (London) adds, “Randall Scarlata sings with the assurance of one with nothing to prove.” Known for his versatility and consummate musicianship, Scarlata’s repertoire spans five centuries and 16 languages. A sought-after interpreter of new music, he has given world premieres of works by George Crumb, Paul Moravec, Richard Danielpour, Ned Rorem, Lori Laitman, Thea Musgrave, Samuel Adler, Hilda Paredes, Daron Hagen, Wolfram Wagner, and Christopher Theofanidis. He regularly performs the major German song cycles with pianists such as Cameron Stowe, Gilbert Kalish, Jeremy Denk, Jonathan Biss, Inon Barnatan,
Peter Frankl, and Laura Ward. He is a regular guest with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Lyric Fest, Chamber Music Northwest, the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, Kneisel Hall Festival, and the Skaneateles Chamber Music Festival, among many others. In addition, Scarlata’s extensive recording catalog appears on the Chandos, Naxos, CRI, Gasparo, Arabesque, Bridge, Albany, and Sono Luminus labels. His recording of Schubert’s Winterreise with pianist Gilbert Kalish was recently honored with a Grammy nomination for Best Classical Vocal Solo. Scarlata is co-artistic director of the Alpenkammermusik Chamber Music Festival in Carinthia, Austria, during the summer, and gives master classes throughout the United States and abroad. He joined the faculty of the Tanglewood Music Center in summer 2019. He previously served on the faculties of West Chester University and SUNY Stony Brook.
DAVID SHIFRIN
clarinet Sponsored by Marguerite Munson Lentz & David Lentz One of only two wind players to have been awarded the Avery Fisher Prize since the award’s inception in 1974, David Shifrin is in constant demand as an orchestral soloist, recitalist and chamber music collaborator. Shifrin has appeared with the Philadelphia and Minnesota Orchestras and the Dallas, Seattle, Houston, Milwaukee, Detroit and Denver Symphonies among many others in the US, and internationally with orchestras in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. In addition, he has served as principal clarinetist with the Cleveland Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra (under Stokowski), the Honolulu and Dallas Symphonies, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and New York Chamber Symphony. Shifrin has also received critical acclaim as a recitalist, appearing at such venues as Alice Tully Hall, Weill Recital Hall and Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall and the 92nd Street Y in New York City as well as the the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. An artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 1989, Shifrin served as its artistic director from 1992 to 2004. He has toured extensively throughout the US with CMSLC and appeared in several national television broadcasts on Live From Lincoln Center. He was also the artistic director of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon from 1981 to 2020. Shifrin joined the faculty at the Yale School of Music in 1987 and was appointed Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of Yale and Yale’s annual concert series at Carnegie Hall in September 2008. He has also served on the faculties of The Juilliard School, University of Southern California, University of Michigan, Cleveland Institute of Music and the University of Hawaii. In 2007 he was awarded an honorary professorship at China’s Central Conservatory in Beijing. Shifrin plays on MoBa cocobolo wood clarinets by Backun. 45
FESTIVAL ARTISTS PETER SPARLING
video artist Sponsored by Sandra & Claude Reitelman Peter Sparling is the U-M Rudolf Arnheim Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Dance. A native of Detroit and graduate of Interlochen Arts Academy and The Juilliard School, Sparling was a member of the José Limón Dance Company and principal dancer with Martha Graham Dance Company before returning to Michigan in 1984. He directed Peter Sparling Dance Company from 1993-2008 and was recognized with the 1998 Governor’s Michigan Artist Award. A writer, video artist and painter, his screendances have been featured at numerous international film festivals. His paintings have been exhibited in three solo exhibits and group shows throughout Michigan.
MELANIE SPECTOR soprano
Praised for her "beaming soprano" by Operawire, Melanie Spector is a coloratura soprano on the rise who was born and raised in New York City. She most recently “knocked it out of the park” in her professional debut, singing Königin der Nacht in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte at Eugene Opera in a new production conducted by Andrew Bisantz and directed by Valerie Rachelle. Melanie also recently took her Königin der Nacht across the pond to Germany, where she made her international debut with the Stuttgart Philharmonic under the direction of Dan Ettinger as part of the second annual Internationale Opernwerkstatt Waiblingen, a new, full scholarship program created and directed by renowned baritone Thomas Hampson and soprano Melanie Diener. In 2021 alone, Spector was a winner in several top competitions and received several awards for her vocal prowess, including an Incentive Award from the SAS Performing Arts Company 2021 Vocal Competition, the New York District of the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition and an Encouragement Award in the 2021 Gerda Lissner Lieder/Song Competition. Upcoming performances include singing Gretel in Hansel and Gretel, Königin der Nacht in Die Zauberflöte, and Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte with the Metropolitan Opera Guild as part of their brand new Access Opera In-School Performance Tour, and singing Dahlia in the world premiere of Great Moments in Human History by Gary Sunden with The Opera Next Door. In addition to singing, Melanie can be heard as a regular panelist on the Toll Brothers Metropolitan Opera Quiz during Saturday matinée broadcasts.
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GILLES VONSATTEL
piano Sponsored by Franziska Schoenfeld Swiss-born American pianist Gilles Vonsattel is the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award, and winner of the Naumburg and Geneva competitions. He has appeared with the Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Boston Symphony, and San Francisco Symphony. Recent performances include appearances with the Chicago Symphony, Gothenburg Symphony, Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, Vancouver Symphony, Florida Orchestra, as well as multiple appearances in New York and on tour with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. A deeply committed chamber musician, he appears regularly at festivals such as Santa Fe Chamber, Music@Menlo, Chamber Music Northwest, Spoleto USA, and has performed with the Emerson, Escher, Miró, Danish, Ebène, Calidore, Pacifica, St. Lawrence, Doric, and Borromeo Quartets. Vonsattel received his bachelor’s degree in political science and economics from Columbia University and his master’s degree from The Juilliard School. He serves on the faculties of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Bard College Conservatory.
CHIEN-KIM-WATKINS TRIO Sponsored by David Nathanson See individual bios.
DETROIT CHAMBER WINDS & STRINGS Since its founding in 1982, Detroit Chamber Winds & Strings (DCWS) has set the standard for chamber music in Detroit. By bringing together the top musicians from the metro area, most of whom are members of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Michigan Opera Theatre, DCWS immerses audiences in a chamber music experience that is innovative, entertaining and unsurpassed anywhere in the region. With chamber music as its foundation, the organization’s mission has evolved to address the ever-changing, ever-challenging Detroit arts landscape with grand achievements. Now in its 40th year, Detroit Chamber Winds & Strings presents three distinct concert series: the Nightnotes, Structurally Sound and Signature series. This season, the organization looked “40 and Forward,” celebrating its accomplishments over four decades, while looking ahead to the future of chamber music. Each concert welcomed a young performer, many who were students of our musicians, to perform. In addition, this season welcomed a new project in collaboration with the Carr Center called Resonate, uniting resources from seven of the midwest’s prominent music institutions to commission pieces inspired by the African Diaspora. The season also saw the first installment of The Musical Elements project, which utilizes hip-hop to introduce K-5 students to the ingredients that come together to make music. More information at detroitchamberwinds.org.
FESTIVAL ARTISTS VIRAGO Sofia Carbonara, percussion, Wesley Hornpetrie cello, BethAnne Kunert, saxophone, Meg Rohrer violin/viola. Virago is a new voice in classical music. Marked by intense chemistry and resistance to creative norms, Virago melds free improvisation and contemporary chamber music into a contagious headspace of out-of-the box expression. This unusually instrumented quartet improvises through collaborations with composers, audience members, visual artists, and musicians across genres, marking the path for the future of chamber music. Virago has performed at festivals, concert halls, local businesses and public spaces across Michigan. “Listening for Bells,” Virago’s “bright, exuberant” debut EP featuring the music of Harriet Steinke, was released in January 2022. In March, Virago presented their site-specific micro-cinema with A.W.E. Society, The Infinite Detail of this Place and Time, at the University Music Society. Their next studio recording, “From Darkness We Awaken” in collaboration with composer & pianist Michael Malis, will be released on the label Made Now Music on August 26. The release show and live premiere of Malis's work will take place at the Detroit Institute of Arts Friday Night Live series. Passionate about the impact of free improvisation on personal and creative growth, Virago facilitates free improvisation workshops for K-12 students. Students are encouraged to access their creative voice more fluently and frequently, fostering abstract and critical thinking, highly democratic group decisions based on mutual respect and listening, risk-taking, and catharsis through personal creative expression. This ongoing program was piloted at Beecher Schools in Flint, MI and at Girls Rock Detroit. Virago was founded at the University of Michigan in 2018, and is based in Detroit. Virago has been supported by the EXCEL Lab, ArtsEngine, Arts at Michigan, and the department of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance.
SHOUSE ENSEMBLES F-PLUS
Shouse ensemble Sponsored by Pearl Planning Praised for their “emotionally raw” performances (Chicago Tribune), F-PLUS is a violin, clarinet, and percussion trio committed to collaborating with today's most exciting composers to establish a diverse repertoire for their unique instrumentation. Formed in 2016 at the Bang on a Can Summer Festival, the ensemble has performed all over the country, including Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, the Ear Taxi Festival, the International Clarinet Association “ClarinetFest,” and the New Music Gathering. F-PLUS has premiered over 35 new works since its inception, including commissioned works by Chicago Symphony Mead Composer-in-Residence Jessie Montgomery, Grawemeyer-winner George Tsontakis, Emma O'Halloran, Matthew Ricketts, and Charles Peck, among many others. The ensemble has been the recipient of commissioning grants from Chamber Music America, the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Irish Arts Council and the New Zealand Arts Council. F-PLUS is committed to working with the next generation of composers and performers, and has held residencies at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Washington University (St. Louis), University of Texas-Austin, University of North Carolina-Greensboro, and Grand Valley State, Central Michigan, Stony Brook, Duke, and Illinois State Universities. Luke Lentini, violin; Juan Gabriel Olivares, clarinet; Josh Graham, percussion
PELIA STRING QUARTET
Shouse ensemble Sponsored by Kathleen O’Toole Schein & Randolph Schein The Pelia Quartet formed in 2019 at the Emerson String Quartet Institute of Stony Brook University. Recent highlights include their participation in the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition, where they were awarded the Jeunesses Musicales Deutschland Prize. This summer, the Pelia Quartet will be performing at La Jolla Summerfest and the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival where they will collaborate with artists including Philip Setzer, Paul Watkins, and David Shifrin. The quartet has also been invited to participate in the St. Lawrence String Quartet Seminar program as well as the Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. During the 2020-2021 season, they were selected as quartet in residence for the SUNY (State University of New York) Artist Residency, a year-long residency focused on mentoring young musicians. The Pelia Quartet is mentored by the Emerson String Quartet and David Finckel. Heejeon Ahn, violin; Delphine Skene, violin; Sung Jin Lee, viola; Nathan Cottrell, cello
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SHOUSE ENSEMBLES VIANO STRING QUARTET Shouse ensemble Sponsored by Honigman LLP
Praised for their “huge range of dynamics, massive sound and spontaneity” (American Record Guide), the Viano String Quartet captured international attention as the First Prize Winner of the 2019 Banff International String Quartet Competition and are now the current Nina von Maltzahn Graduate String Quartet-in-Residence at the Curtis Institute of Music. They have performed across the globe in venues such as Wigmore Hall, Konzerthaus Berlin, Izumi Hall, and Segerstrom Center for the Arts and have enjoyed collaborating with such esteemed artists as Emanuel Ax, Inon Barnatan, Noah Bendix-Balgley, Michelle Cann, Roberto Diaz, Marc-Andre Hamelin, Paul Neubauer, Orion Weiss, and vocalist Hila Plitmann. This summer, the Viano Quartet will perform at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, Rockport Festival, Ottawa Chamberfest, and the Bard Festival, and they will return to the 2022 Banff International String Quartet Competition as alumni. They remained active through the Covid pandemic, presenting over a hundred virtual and live socially distanced events for organizations and festivals around the world, including the Bravo! Vail Music Festival, Deutschlandfunk Radio, Women’s Musical Club of Toronto, Budapesti Öszi Fesztivál, and the Schneider Series in NYC. The name “Viano” was created to describe the four individual instruments in a string quartet interacting as one. Each of the four instruments begins with the letter “v”, and like a piano, all four string instruments together play both harmony and melody, creating a unified instrument called the “Viano.” Lucy Wang, violin; Hao Zhao, violin; Aiden Kane, viola; Tate Zawadiuk, cello
ROLSTON STRING QUARTET
Shouse ensemble Sponsored by Jaffe Raitt Heuer & Weiss, P.C. With their debut recording “Souvenirs” named Recording of the Year by BBC Music Magazine, Canada’s Rolston String Quartet continues to receive acclaim for their “delicate but intense four-way dialogue, rhythmically and melodically flawless,” and for their status as “one of the best in a very quartet-rich age” (Harald Eggebrecht, Süddeutsche Zeitung). The quartet was awarded First Prize at the 12th Banff International String Quartet Competition, and was the 2018 recipient of the Cleveland Quartet Award from Chamber Music America—the first international ensemble chosen for that prestigious honor. Other accolades include Grand Prize at the 31st Chamber Music Yellow Springs Competition and Astral’s National Auditions. The quartet performs regularly throughout North America and Europe, enjoying debut performances at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Kennedy Center, and Koerner Hall. This season’s engagements include the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, an upcoming return performance at Wigmore Hall, and 48
performances at the chamber music societies of Brussels, Calgary, Geneva, Munich, Philadelphia, Raleigh, San Diego, San Francisco, Vancouver, and others. Notable collaborators include Clive Greensmith, Gary Hoffman, Nobuko Imai, Yura Lee, Miguel da Silva, David Shifrin, and the Dover and St. Lawrence String Quartets. Formerly the Fellowship Quartet in Residence at Yale School of Music and the Graduate Quartet in Residence at Rice University, the quartet has taught at Glenn Gould School, University of Toronto, Yale School of Music, and the Bowdoin International Music Festival, among others. Luri Lee, violin; Jason Issokson, violin; Hezekiah Leung, viola; Peter Eom, cello
KEVONNA SHUFORD
Sphinx Fellow and viola Beverly Franzblau Baker Young Artist Chair Kevonna Shuford is a vibrant violist who has a passion for collaborative projects. Kevonna completed a bachelor's degree at the New England Conservatory under the tutelage of Martha Katz. She is currently a member of the Boston Philharmonic and also performs with numerous Boston-based ensembles. A native of Florida, she established a youth string program at Faith’s Place Center for Arts Education. With a continued love for teaching, she is a current resident musician with Musiconnects. Kevonna served as principal viola under the baton of Valery Gergiev and has had the pleasure of working with esteemed artists such as Janine Jansen, Denis Matsuev, Emanuel Ax, Jaime Laredo and Christoph Eschenbach. Additionally, she has had the opportunity to play in masterclasses for distinguished artists such as Kim Kashkashian, Paul Katz, Dimitri Murrath and Clive Greensmith. As a member of the National Youth Orchestra (2016), Kevonna greatly enjoyed traveling to new places through past performances at major concert halls across Europe and the US, such as the Concertgebouw and Carnegie Hall; now, she is an avid outdoor enthusiast and enjoys taking walks or rollerblading around Boston.
ABOUT THE SHOUSE INSTITUTE CELEBRATING 25 YEARS OF THE SHOUSE INSTITUTE The Catherine Filene Shouse Institute began in 1997 and has since become the Festival’s major educational program, helping young chamber ensembles bridge the gap between graduate school and their careers. Participating ensembles benefit from professional development activities like coachings, main stage concert appearances, performances with senior Festival artists and special audience engagement events. Led by Director Philip Setzer, the Shouse Institute’s guiding principle is anchored in offering unique and invaluable earning opportunities for young artists at an important transition in their lives. The program’s alumni ensembles include the Pacifica, Parker, Jasper, Jupiter, Escher, Calidore, Harlem, and Catalyst string quartets, the Claremont Trio, Eighth Blackbird, and a host of other fine ensembles. Many have gone on to international careers, winning prizes like Grammy, Naumberg, Fischoff, and the $100,000 M Prize. In 2014, the Festival began a partnership with the Sphinx Organization to host an alumni ensemble as part of Shouse and has since hosted five winds or strings groups and individual musicians. The Shouse Institute is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.
TOGETHER WE RISE.
Beaumont is proud to support the organizations that share our commitment to serving the strong, vibrant communities of Southeast Michigan. Today. Tomorrow. And every day after that.
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LIVING COMPOSERS MATTHEW BARNSON Matthew Barnson is the composer of numerous works for orchestras, choirs, string quartets, voices, chamber ensembles, dancers, and computers. An assistant professor of composition at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, he has received fellowships, commissions, and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Barlow Endowment, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has been performed at Carnegie Hall, the Museum of Modern Art, the Kennedy Center, the Aldeburgh Festival, the Royal Academy of Music, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, ISCM World Music Days, MATA, Wigmore Hall, Aspen and the San Francisco War Memorial.
SALLY BEAMISH Born in London in 1956, Sally Beamish initially trained as a viola player at the Royal Northern College of Music before moving to Scotland in 1990 to develop her career as a composer. Her music embraces many influences, particularly jazz and Scottish traditional music, in a catalog boasting over 200 compositions including solo, duo, chamber, orchestra, vocal, choral, ballet and opera works. Her music has been broadcast and performed extensively around the world with notable soloists including Håkan Hardenberger, John Harle, Branford Marsalis, Tabea Zimmermann, James Crabb, Dame Evelyn Glennie and Colin Currie amongst others.
VALERIE COLEMAN Valerie Coleman is regarded by many as an iconic artist who continues to pave her own unique path as a composer, GRAMMY-nominated flutist and entrepreneur. Highlighted as one of the “Top 35 Women Composers” by The Washington Post, she was named Performance Today’s 2020 Classical Woman of the Year. Coleman commenced her 2021/22 season with the World Premiere of Fanfare for Uncommon Times at the Caramoor Festival with Orchestra of St. Luke’s. In October 2021, Carnegie Hall presents her work Seven O’Clock Shout in their Opening Night Gala concert with The Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. As a performer, Coleman has appeared at Carnegie Hall and The Kennedy Center and with Boston University Tanglewood Institute, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and Bravo! Vail.
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LIZA SOBEL CRANE Liza Sobel’s compositions are often influenced by current social issues. Recent inspirations include anxiety and stress in today’s society, the negative impact of social media and its links to depression and suicide, sexual assault, neurodiversity, and other health issues, including the current Covid-19 pandemic. Liza’s music has been performed in numerous worldwide venues, including at Carnegie Hall, Le Poisson Rouge, Symphony Space, Bang on a Can, the Aspen Music Festival, Brevard Music Institute, and Bowdoin’s International Music Festival. Performers that have played her music include: the Orchestra of St. Luke's, the Minnesota Orchestra, Ensemble Dal Niente, Spektral String Quartet, Cygnus Ensemble, Third Coast Percussion, and Joseph Lin, first violinist of the Juilliard String Quartet.
GABRIELA LENA FRANK Currently serving as composer-in-residence with The Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Yannick NézetSéguin and included in the Washington Post’s list of the 35 most significant women composers in history (August 2017), composer/pianist Gabriela Lena Frank has always placed identity at the center of her music. Born in Berkeley, California, in September 1972 to a mother of mixed Peruvian/Chinese ancestry and a father of Lithuanian/Jewish descent, she explores her multicultural heritage through her compositions. Winner of a Latin Grammy Award and nominated for Grammys as both composer and pianist, Frank also holds a Guggenheim Fellowship and a USA Artist Fellowship, given each year to 50 of the country’s finest artists. She is a member of G. Schirmer’s prestigious roster of artists, exclusively managed and published.
RACHEL LAURIN Rachel Laurin leads a dual international career as a concert organist and a very prolific composer. She devotes herself to composition, recitals, master-classes and lectures. She has performed organ recitals in major cities in Canada, the United States and Europe, and has made more than twelve recordings, including two CDs devoted to her own compositions. She has composed hundreds of works for various solo instruments, voice, instrumental ensembles, choir, and orchestra. In 2020, the American Guild of Organists granted her the AGO “Distinguished Composer Award” in recognition of her important contribution to the organ repertoire, as a composer. Laurin is a member of the “Comité d’Honneur de la Fédération Francophone des Amis de l’Orgue” (FFAO) since 2016.
LIVING COMPOSERS MEREDITH MONK Meredith Monk is a composer, singer, director/choreographer and creator of new opera, music-theater works, films and installations. Recognized as one of the most unique and influential artists of our time, she is a pioneer in what is now called “extended vocal technique” and “interdisciplinary performance.” Monk creates works that thrive at the intersection of music and movement, image and object, light and sound, discovering and weaving together new modes of perception. Recently Monk received three of the highest honors bestowed to a living artist in the United States: induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2019), the 2017 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize and a 2015 National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama.
JESSIE MONTGOMERY Composer, violinist, and educator Jessie Montgomery is the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation. Performed frequently around the world, her works interweave classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, language, and social justice, placing her squarely as one of the most relevant interpreters of 21stcentury American sound and experience. Since 1999 she has been affiliated with the Sphinx Organization, which supports young African-American and Latinx string players. She currently serves as composer-in-residence for the Sphinx Virtuosi, the organization’s professional touring ensemble. A graduate of The Juilliard School and New York University, Jessie Montgomery is currently a graduate fellow in music composition at Princeton University.
ANDREW RODRIGUEZ Andrew Rodriguez’s interest in music began with stints as the guitarist for various metal/hardcore bands as a teenager. Having spent over three years touring the country, Andrew’s passion for the DIY scene continues to guide his creativity. The embedded experiences of performing intense and passionate music night after night have led to a musical language that is both raw and dramatically expressive. His music combines a personal history and love of indie rock with a traditional education in composition, and is often expanded upon with the use of live electronics. Andrew’s inspirations vary widely, ranging from jazz, hip hop, and rock to contemporary and traditional classical genres. This wide spectrum of influences pushes him to explore truly unique and engaging approaches to songwriting and production.
CAROLINE SHAW Caroline Shaw is the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in Music for Partita for 8 Voices (Roomful of Teeth). 2022 will see the release of work with Rosalía, the score to Josephine Decker’s film The Sky Is Everywhere (A24/Apple), the premiere of Justin Peck’s Partita with NY City Ballet, a premiere for NY Philharmonic and Roomful of Teeth, a second album with Attacca Quartet called The Evergreen (Nonesuch), the premiere of Helen Simoneau’s Delicate Power, tours of Graveyards & Gardens, and tours with So Percussion. Caroline has written over 100 works in the last decade, for Anne Sofie von Otter, Davóne Tines, Yo Yo Ma, Renée Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, LA Phil, Philharmonia Baroque, Seattle Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, and many others.
AUGUSTA READ THOMAS A composer featured on a Grammy-winning CD by Chanticleer, Augusta Read Thomas' impressive body of works embodies unbridled passion and fierce poetry. The New Yorker magazine called her "a true virtuoso composer." Championed by such luminaries as Barenboim, Rostropovich, Boulez, Eschenbach, Salonen, Maazel, Ozawa, and Knussen, she rose early to the top of her profession. Recent and upcoming commissions include those from the Boston Symphony, the Utah Symphony, Wigmore Hall in London, JACK quartet, Third Coast Percussion, Tanglewood, the Danish Chamber Players, Notre Dame University, and the Fromm Foundation. She won the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize among many other coveted awards. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
HUW WATKINS As a pianist, Huw Watkins is in great demand with orchestras and festivals and has performed globally at concert halls including the Barbican, the Wigmore Hall, the Library of Congress in Washington, and the Smithsonian Institute. As a composer, he has written works for the Nash Ensemble, Belcea Quartet, Elias Quartet, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, and Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra. His recordings include a disc of Mendelssohn’s cello and piano works with his brother Paul Watkins (Chandos), Alexander Goehr’s piano cycle Symmetry Disorders Reach (Wergo), and Thomas Adès's song cycle The Lover in Winter with countertenor Robin Blaze (EMI Classics). Most recently, NMC Records released a disc of his compositions entitled In My Craft or Sullen Art. He now teaches composition at the Royal Academy of Music.
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COVID-19 SAFETY PROTOCOL
WAYS TO GIVE
The Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival looks forward to the return of live and in-person performances! To ensure the safety of our patrons, artists and staff, the Festival requires:
As we look towards the future of the Festival, it is our strong base of supporters that allows us to take on bigger and more ambitious projects. Your support of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival touches all aspects of the Festival— from the quality of our artists and the inventiveness of our programming to the success of our Shouse Institute.
• Patrons must present proof of full* COVID-19 vaccination, with at least 14 days having passed between the final dose and the concert. Patrons may present negative results of a COVID-19 PCR test taken within 72 hours of the event start time or a 6-hour antigen test. Proof may be presented physically or digitally along with a photo ID. (*Full vaccination as defined by current CDC guidelines) • Masks must be worn at all times, regardless of vaccination status. • Staff, musicians and volunteers are required to be vaccinated. As we transition back to in-person concerts, we will continue to monitor changes to COVID-19 and update our protocols. Please visit greatlakeschambermusic.org/covid-19-protocols for the most up to date information.
There are many ways that you can support the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival: SPONSOR A CONCERT Whether you want to sponsor as an individual or as a business, you will receive a host of benefits, including tickets, concert signage, online recognition and private receptions with the artists. You can sponsor on your own or co-sponsor with another individual or entity. This is a wonderful way to invest more fully in our concert programming. SPONSOR AN ARTIST Show your support by sponsoring a Festival artist or Shouse Group. Our Artist Sponsors not only help support our organization’s longevity, but get to know their artist(s) at concerts and afterglows. BECOME A BENEFACTOR Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival Benefactors make a gift of $1,650 per year in support of the Festival. Benefactors receive 14 tickets to be used on Festival subscription concerts, private receptions with the artists, and tickets to the Festival’s annual dinner on Opening Night.
About the Program Notes Annotator: Paul Epstein has been composing, performing and writing about music since the 1960s. His compositions feature works commissioned by, among others, the Emerson Quartet, the Hartt School of Music, the National Symphony, the Library of Congress and Philip Setzer, for whom he composed a sonata and a much performed violin concerto, The Adventures of Matinée Concerto, as Broadcast Live from the Late Twentieth Century. He has also written music for off-Broadway and network TV (ABC, CNN, PBS). He studied composition at Juilliard with Elliott Carter and Luciano Berio, and has taught at SUNY Stony Brook and Pace Universities.
SUPPORT THE CADENZA CIRCLE The Cadenza Circle recognizes the vision and confidence of donors that make a gift to the Festival in their estate plans. These gifts include bequests, charitable gift annuities, life insurance beneficiary designations, charitable remainder trusts, and retirement plan beneficiary designations. If you have left the Festival a gift in your estate plan, please contact BethAnne Kunert, Development Officer, (kunert@art-ops.org) so that you can be listed as a Cadenza Circle member in our program book. INVEST IN THE TOCCO SOCIETY This is a lifetime giving program for the Festival’s most loyal and generous donors. The Tocco Society recognizes our founding Artistic Director, James Tocco, through his vision and leadership. Members of the Tocco Society join our current Artistic Director, Paul Watkins, in discussions about artistic programming in future seasons. MAKE A DONATION Our supporters are members of our larger Festival family, and your investment in us ensures outstanding chamber music as a staple in our community. Every amount counts! Thank You!
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TICKET SALES
FAQ
TO ORDER
HOW TO ORDER Order by phone at 248-559-2097 or visit greatlakeschambermusic.org.
Call 248-559-2097 Monday- Friday 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. OR visit greatlakeschambermusic.org
WHEN TO ARRIVE The Festival Box Office will open on-site 30 minutes prior to the start of the performance. For general admission tickets, we recommend you arrive early to select your seat. DIRECTIONS AND PARKING Directions can be found for each performance at greatlakeschambermusic.org/performances. Most of our venues have free on-site parking.
SEASON CALENDAR SUNDAY
MONDAY
TUESDAY
WEDNESDAY
THURSDAY
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
MUSIC, NATURE, AND THE NATURE OF MUSIC
OPENING NIGHT: FROM THE BIG BANG TO THE END OF TIME
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18
10
12
A WINTER'S JOURNEY
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14
THE SPIRIT OF THE PLACE (“GENIUS LOCI”)
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MUSIC MEETS MINDFULNESS
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TRAVELS IN THE “NOUGHT SO SWEET AS MELANCHOLY” SOUNDSCAPE
AUDIO/VISUAL
TWO’S COMPANY, THREE’S A TRIO
DAUGHTERS OF ST. CECILIA
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21
BORNE UPON THE STREAM
A GATHERING OF VOICES
IN CONVERSATION THE FESTIVAL IN RESIDENCE
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11
22
SPECIAL EDITION: ST. MATTHEW’S & ST. JOSEPH’S “AN ECSTASY TO MUSIC TURNED…”
SUBSCRIPTION-ELIGIBLE EVENT
TRANSFORMATION AND RENEWAL
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ORIGIN STORIES
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MUSICAL CHAIRS CLOSING NIGHT: WITH PHILIP SETZER THE SONG OF THE EARTH MORE TRAVELS IN THE SOUNDSCAPE
NON-SUBSCRIPTION EVENT
WHAT TO WEAR There is no dress code for concerts. Formal attire is not required. We recommend bringing a light jacket or sweater if you get chilly. We do not provide coat check at our venues, nor do we provide cough drops. Please come prepared with what you may need. TICKET INFORMATION This year, all tickets are digital and emailed to you. Please bring this to the event. If you are unable to find the email, a staff member will assist you. All ticket exchanges and ticket donations need to be arranged at least 24 hours prior to each concert. At the event, current tickets cannot be exchanged or donated. Additionally, tickets for past events cannot be exchanged or donated. Tickets cannot be exchanged for performances at the Capitol Theatre, Kerrytown Concert House or St. Matthew’s & St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church. Please visit greatlakeschambermusic.org/ performances to view eligible performances. TICKET DONATIONS/UNUSED TICKETS Patrons may request unused tickets to be used as a donation to the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival. Donation requests must be made at least 24 hours in advance of the performance. START TIME & LATE COMERS The Festival makes every effort to start performances at the published start time. Latecomers will be asked to wait in the lobby and will be seated by ushers at a predetermined time in the program. The late seating break is determined by artists and will generally occur during a suitable break in the program. ACCESSIBILITY All of our venues are able to accommodate patrons with limited mobility and wheelchairs. If you require special seating due to accessibility, please call the Festival office at 248-559-2097 so that our staff and ushers can be prepared. APPLAUSE Traditionally, applause is held until the end of the piece of music. Composers create a work as a whole, which is often made up of several movements. It is best to not disrupt the music by applauding between movements.
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Explore where nature and music meet. In its 29th season, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival explores the intersection between nature and music with compositions inspired by the natural world. Led by Artistic Director Paul Watkins, rising young stars and renowned musicians alike will take you on a journey as powerful as it is inspiring. Join us for this healing experience as we reflect on the ever-present beauty of the world around us.
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ENDOWMENT FUNDS FESTIVAL ENDOWMENT FUNDS—A HISTORY AND A FUTURE
The Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival Fund This fund was established in honor of James Tocco with a bequest from Carol Harford, a close friend and colleague of Catherine Filene Shouse (for whom the Shouse Institute is named).
The Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival is proud to be considered as one of the Top 20 chamber music festivals in the country. By supporting the Festival’s endowment fund, you support the future of the Festival and help to ensure that we continue to bring a world-class artistic experience to our patrons for many years to come.
The Stone Composer Endowment The endowment fund was established in memory of Eunice and Joshua (Jim) Stone by their three daughters, Gwen Weiner, Marcy Klein, and Carol DePaul. Its purpose is to support the Festival’s Composer-in-Residence program, and to foster young composers by presenting premieres of their original works. This year, the honorees are Composer-inResidence Perry Goldstein and Young Composer-in-Residence Alan Hankers.
Now in our 29th year, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival is embarking on a journey to grow our endowment fund exponentially. This will allow our Artistic Director to bring bigger musical experiences to you, our patrons. For more information about supporting the Festival’s endowment, contact BethAnne Kunert, Development Officer, at 248-559-2097 or at kunert@art-ops.org.
Paul Katz Endowed Chair in Memory of Morris D. Baker This fund was established in 2003 by Beverly Franzblau Baker in memory of Morris D. Baker. This year, the fund supports Yura Lee, violinist/violist.
The James Tocco Endowed Fund for Artistry & Innovation The fund was established in 2014 to commemorate the retirement of Founding Artistic Director James Tocco. This endowment allows future Festival artistic directors to pursue excellence and innovation as James did for more than two decades. The creative liberty will allow artistic directors to pursue the artists and programming necessary to advance the Festival’s prominence for years to come.
Eugene Istomin Endowed Piano Chair A chair established by James Tocco, this fund created an endowed position in the name of Eugene Istomin, one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century. This year, the fund supports Ran Dank, pianist.
continued on page 57
THANK YOU TO THE MANY SUPPORTERS OF THE GREAT LAKES CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL’S ENDOWMENT FUNDS: $75,000+ Beverly Baker* Carol Harford† Kathleen O’Toole Schein & Randolph Schein* Wilda C. Tiffany Charitable Trust/Rev. Msgr. Anthony Tocco* $25,000 - $74,999 Cecilia Benner* Kathleen Block* Aviva & Dean Friedman Franziska & Robert† Schoenfeld* James Tocco Evan & Gwen Weiner* $10,000 - $24,999 Rayna & Natalio† Kogan Marguerite Munson Lentz & David Lentz* Nate S. & Ruth B. Shapero Foundation $5,000 - $9,999 Newcomb-Hargraves Foundation
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Emilio Rusciano Dolores Silverstein $1,000 - $4,999 Alzheimer’s Association Rachel & Billy Ben Baumann Nancy & William† Duffy* Patricia & Robert† Galacz Jane Galantowicz Ann & Norman† Katz* Tina Topalian & Maury Okun Joshua J. and Eunice Stone Philanthropic Fund GIFTS UP TO $999 Mr. & Mrs.† E. Bryce Alpern Marian & Gerald Altman Elizabeth & Brian Bachynski Chuck Berman Henri S. Bernard Betty & Art† Blair Joyce & George Blum* Judith B. Blustein Dr. & Mrs. Sidney Bolkosky Denah S. Bookstein
Jerome Bookstein Dr. & Mrs. Martin Broder Marilyn & Leonard Brose Florence Brownfain† Dr. & Mrs. Morton† Cash Mr. & Mrs. Anthony P. Checchia Mr. & Mrs. Robert M. Citrin Louise Goldstein Cohen & Morris Cohen Dolores Curiel† Mary DeMassa Sylvia Rosenberg Diamond Karen V. DiChiera* Carole Edelsky Haleh Esfandiari* Mr. & Mrs. Joel I. Feldman Barry Finestone Joan Lessen-Firestone & Ira† Firestone* Carolyn & Dennis Flynn* Mr. & Mrs. Yehuda Fogel Susan Frankel Michael Franzblau Valerie & John Frederick Rachel Galazan Louise Gauthier
Marcia Gershenson & Ken Robinson* Mr. & Mrs. Robert Goldman Merwin Goldsmith Mr. & Mrs. Harvey A. Gordon Stephanie & David Greer Claire Grosberg Renee Gruskin Catherine† & John† Guinn Alice Berberian Haidostian† Mr. & Mrs. Mitchell Henderson Mr. & Mrs. Richard J. Hendin Doreen Hermelin William Hulsker* Rochelle Jackier Gail Katz Marilyn Katz* Naomi Katz Abigail Kellogg Frances & Jack† King Sharon & Jerry Knoppow Susan Knoppow & David Saperstein Leslie Lazzerin*
Lorraine & Leonard† Lerner Dr. & Mrs. Dan Levitsky Jean Levy Richard Lewis Laura Lewison William Liberson Seymour Lipkin† Patricia Loeffler Phyllis Loewenstein Rochelle & Aaron Lupovitch Mr. & Mrs. David Malakoff Janelle McCammon & Raymond Rosenfeld Rhoda Milgrim* Mr. & Mrs. Harold Milinsky Mr. & Mrs. Marvin Mintz Avodah & Sidney Offit Mr. & Mrs. Abe Pasternak Mr. & Mrs. Stephen Rayburn John Redfield* Mr. & Mrs. Kenneth E. Rochlen Harriet & Norman Rotter Helen Rowin† Joan Rubin Daphna & Sydney Ruby Godofredo Santiago
Diane & Joseph Savin Mr. & Mrs. Michael I. Schuman Merle Schwartz Phyllis & Sheldon Schwartz Marilyn Shapiro Arthur Shufro† Marilyn Sivak Melodie & Alan Solway Etta Solway† Nadele Spiro Kathleen Straus & Walter Shapero* Deborah & Kenneth Tucker* Mr. & Mrs. Martin Urban B.C. Vermeersch Ruth Widrich Mr. & Mrs. Taylor Williams Melba Winer Mr. & Mrs. Barry Yaker Mr. & Mrs. Gerald Zahler Ruth & Avigdor Zaromp* Ara Zerounian† Mr.† & Mrs. Raymond Zimmerman
*Denotes a supporter of the James Tocco Endowed Fund for Artistry & Innovation. † Deceased
SPONSORS & DONORS Endowment Funds continued
Ruth Laredo Endowed Piano Chair The chair was established in 2005 to honor the late pianist and Detroit native, Ruth Laredo. Returns on the investment are used to underwrite a pianist each year. This year, the fund supports Soyeon Kate Lee, pianist. Henry Meyer Endowed Violin Chair This chair has been established in memory of Henry Meyer, longtime violinist of the LaSalle Quartet and the beloved founding director of the Festival’s Shouse Institute. Once it has reached its goal, this fund will support a violinist at the Festival each year. This fund supports Luke Lentini, violinist of F-PLUS in 2022. Beverly Franzblau Baker Young Artist Chair This chair was established by a gift from Beverly Franzblau Baker in 2007. Each year, the proceeds from this fund are used to sponsor the appearance of a young professional artist at the Festival. The fund supports Kevonna Shuford, violist. Rev. Msgr. Anthony M. Tocco Endowed Composition Chair The chair was established in 2005 in honor of Rev. Msgr. Anthony Tocco through the estate of the late Festival supporter, Wilda C. Tiffany. This fund’s proceeds will bring new compositions to life. ARTIST SPONSORS Beverly Baker & Dr. Edward Treisman Beaumont Health Foundation Cecilia Benner Linda & Maurice Binkow Kathleen Block Cindy & Harold Daitch Kimberly & Francis Dudek Adrienne Ruby-Fink & Herschel Fink Honigman LLP Jaffe Raitt Heuer & Weiss, P.C. Rayna Kogan Andrea & Woodrow Leung Edw. C. Levy Co. Marguerite Munson Lentz & David Lentz Gail & Ira Mondry David Nathanson Pearl Planning, LLC Martha Pleiss Sandra & Claude Reitelman Kathleen O'Toole Schein & Randolph Schein
Franziska Schoenfeld Isabel & Lawrence Smith Lauren & Dwight Smith Jill & Steven Stone CONCERT SPONSORS Beverly Baker & Dr. Edward Treisman The Morris & Beverly Baker Foundation Linda & Maurice Binkow Betty Blair R.H Bluestein & Company Nancy Duffy Maxine & Stuart Frankel Foundation Aviva & Dean Friedman Virginia & Michael Geheb Linda Goodman Plante Moran JPMorgan Chase Joy & Allan Nachman Josette Silver Isabel & Lawrence Smith James Tocco VIGNETTE SPONSORS Carol & Howard Fine Gale Mondry & Bruce Cohen
Franziska Schoenfeld OTHER SPONSORS Mr. & Mrs. B.N Bahadur, Accent Pontiac Workshops Charles H. Gershenson Trust, WSU Medical School Workshop Barbara & Paul Goodman, Artistic Encounters David Nathanson, Beethoven Piano Trios The Wilda C. Tiffany Trust, Marketing Gwen & S. Evan Weiner, Dolce Armonia
CADENZA CIRCLE The Cadenza Circle recognizes those donors who have included the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in their Estate Plans. Nancy & William* Duffy Fay B. Herman Maury Okun Kathleen O'Toole Schein & Randolph Schein
TOCCO SOCIETY (CUMULATIVE $100,000+) Beverly Baker Cecilia Benner Aviva & Dean Friedman Carol Harford* Kathleen O'Toole Schein & Randolph Schein Wilda C. Tiffany* Rev. Msgr. Anthony Tocco James Tocco Gwen & S. Evan Weiner
Arlene & John Lewis Drs. Melissa McBrien & Raymond Landes Janelle McCammon & Raymond Rosenfeld Judith Greenstone Miller Gail & Ira Mondry Bridget & Michael Morin Frederick Morsches & Kareem George Nancy & Donald Pais Sandra & Claude Reitelman Kathleen O'Toole Schein & INDIVIDUAL DONORS Randolph Schein BENEFACTORS ($1,650 Franziska Schoenfeld AND ABOVE) Josette Silver Beverly Baker & Dolores Silverstein Dr. Edward Treisman Rachel & Billy Ben Baumann MaryAnn & Ted Simon Lauren & Dwight Smith Betty Blair Jill & Steven Stone Kathleen Block Tina Topalian & Maury Okun Joanne & John Carter Jennifer & Michael Turala Mariann Channell & Gwen & S. Evan Weiner Benson Woo Cathleen Corken Cindy & Harold Daitch Lillian & Walter Dean Rex Dotson & Max Lepler Linda Dresner & Edward C. Levy, Jr. Marjory Winkelman Epstein Aviva & Dean Friedman Virginia & Michael Geheb Thea Glicksman Christine Goerke Barbara & Paul Goodman Karen Hahn & Claudio Roveroni Barbara Heller Fay B. Herman Karen & Robert Heuer William Hulsker Deborah & Addison Igleheart Frances King Rayna Kogan Jill & Michael Leib Marguerite Munson Lentz & David Lentz
GRAND PATRONS ($850-$1,649) Catherine Compton Henry Grix & Howard Israel Jeanette Isenhour Ann Katz Lynne Metty Alan E. Schwartz PATRONS ($500-$849) Jerry Bookstein Anita DeMarco Goor Amy & Kent Jidov Kickham Hanley PLLC Valmy & Richard Kulbersh Lorraine Lerner Patrick McKeever Cyril Moscow Shoula Stefos & Mark Schumacher Marci & Marvin Shulman Margaret E. Winters & Geoffrey S. Nathan
FRIENDS ($250-$499) Marjorie DeCapite Nadia & Mark Juzych Robert Koenig Margo & Bob Lesser Susan & Michael Madison Laurie & Darryl Newman Ruthanne Okun Sharon Robinson & Jaime Laredo Miriam Sandweiss Danielle & David Susser CONTRIBUTORS ($100$249) Anonymous Judith & Joel Adelman Judy Balint Colleen & Charles Batcheller Debra Bernstein-Siegel Nancy Bechek Bluth & Larry Bluth Mary Lynn & Edward Callaghan Helen Parnagian Corrigan Joanne Danto & Arnold Weingarden Mary Graham Engelhardt Martin Friedman Anne Ginn Cleo & James Hamilton Jolyn Hillebrand Janis Kartal Renate Klass & Matthew Mason Nancy & Brian Kott Leslie Lazzerin Joan Lessen-Firestone Diana & Jerry Lieberman Laura & Channing Lipson Yuki Mack Mary Mazure Pauline McIlrath Beth & Josh Mondry Mary Paquette-Abt Joan Rubin & P.J. Ryan continued on page 58
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SPONSORS & DONORS continued from page 57
Daphna & Sydney Ruby Yvonne Schilla Kathleen Straus & Walter Shapero Marilyn Shapiro Barbara Solms Yuta Sugano Elaine Tell Sam & Peggy Tundo Roberta Viviano & Eric Scher Elaine L. Weingarden Gerald Weintraub Beverly & Barry Williams Sharon Zimmerman OTHER DONORS ($25-$99) Anonymous Hilene Topper-Bricker & Leslie Bricker Joan Emerick & Peter Saldana Laura Englander Annette Fisch Evelyn Fisher Edna Freier Jennie Lieberman & Robert Glassman Sally & Bob Goldman Omran Hammoud Tom Hitchman & Keith Hewitt Louise & Robert Horowitz Velda Kelly Ellen & James Labes Lucy Miller Murray & Martin L. Murray Aaron Mondry Sandra Nathanson Evelyn & Julian Prince Vikki & Henri Romain Diane & Joseph Savin Phyllis & Sheldon Schwartz Michael Shaw Margaret Shere Jürgen Skoppek Roberta Sonnino Sylvia & Henry Starkman
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Ann Throop Ross Vigran
Ruth Meckler Laredo Rose & Vincent Tocco
TRIBUTE GIFTS In Memory of Natalio Kogan: Beverly Baker & Dr. Edward Treisman Nenita, Marc, Lea & Aaron Baker Sandra & Nick Doninger Laura Englander Evelyn Fisher Valerie & John Frederick Martin Friedman Barbara & Paul Goodman Omran Hammoud Molly Harris Barbara Heller Janis Kartal Daniel King & Janice Park Don & Diane King Douglas & Laurie King Frances King Victoria King & Jim Kors Lorraine Lerner Phyllis Loewenstein Joan Rubin & P.J. Ryan Diane & Joseph Savin Kathleen O'Toole Schein & Randolph Schein Phyllis & Sheldon Schwartz Marilyn Shapiro Margaret Shere Jill & Steven Stone Armando Susmano Tina Topalian & Maury Okun Ross Vigran Julie Vicek-Burke Gwen & S. Evan Weiner
Gifts were made in honor of: Joel Adelman Liz Berman & Richard Fiedotin Kathleen Block Christine Goerke Nathan Mondry Jennifer & Paul Watkins
Gifts were made in memory of: Lorraine Bookstein William R. Brashear Dolores Curiel Dr. Claire Smith Hornung William S. Mcllrath Paul Morsches
ARTIST HOSTS Beverly Baker & Dr. Edward Treisman Anne Calomeni Susan Campbell Cindy & Harold Daitch Virginia & Michael Geheb Gail & Ira Mondry Bridget & Michael Morin Lawrence Nahigian Kathleen O’Toole Schein & Randolph Schein Franziska Schoenfeld Edward Sharples Marci & Marvin Shulman Josette Silver Jill & Steven Stone Kay White
Jeanette Isenhour Bob Koenig Mary Lafter Sandra Landau Frances Lewis Matthew McDaid Diane Okun Suzanne Share Lyudnilla Trutneva Larisa Tylevich Arnold Weiner FOUNDATION AND GOVERNMENT SUPPORT
There are many ways to support the Festival, all of which are critical to our success. Our supporters become involved in our programming through corporate sponsorships, business advertising, individual donations or volunteering. Your financial investment and/or gift of time allows us to continue bringing great music to our community. For more information, call 248-559-2097. All donor lists updated as of May 9, 2022. GLCMF regrets any errors or omissions made in this list of contributors. For corrections or if you would like to make a gift please call 248- 559-2097. † Deceased
RECEPTION HOSTS Kathleen Block Gail & Ira Mondry Kathleen O’Toole Schein & Randolph Schein Jill & Steven Stone VOLUNTEERS Beverly & Barry Williams, Usher Supervisors Claire Abrams Anette Fisch Jennifer Ginther Fay B. Herman Jolyn Hillebrand Andy Howell
Phillip & Elizabeth Filmer Memorial Charitable Trust Burton A. Zipser & Sandra D. Zipser Foundation
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Osvaldo Golijov, one of the most exciting composers working today.
DetroitOpera.org
Ainadamar
The State Ballet of Georgia
APR 8
APR 29
/ APR 14 / APR 16
/ APR 30
