All In The Family, Part 7 – To The Edge

This coming Saturday, I will say Kaddish for my father, to mark the seventh anniversary of his passing. As readers of this blog know, he and I often played and talked about music together, and a set of concerts I just played reminded me how much I miss that.

ProMusica Chamber Orchestra played Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony this past weekend. This has always been my favorite of Beethoven’s symphonies – lighter, shorter, and more upbeat than its odd-numbered neighbors, the mighty “Eroica” and the famous Fifth.  It is a workout to play – the last movement in particular goes like the wind (especially with David Danzmayr conducting!). However, it’s the slow movement that’s always been my favorite, and there’s one moment in particular that touches me more deeply than any in music. It took me until this weekend to realize why I love this passage so much – it is the most human, vulnerable music I know.  In turn, the principal bassoon, principal clarinet and horns are all asked to play very high and softly, while the cellos, basses, and timpani softly echo the movement’s main rhythm, a “heartbeat” figure, miles beneath them in the bass. Have a listen:

For these few moments, Beethoven takes us right to the edge of the abyss, but doesn’t linger too long – the flute solo which follows is the most beautiful, loving part of the piece. And that’s Beethoven in a nutshell, going from the depths to the heights in no time. These are the sorts of passages that I remember talking about with Dad – I hope he still gets to enjoy them as much as I do.

Bravos to my ProMusica colleagues – bassoonist Rachael Young, hornists Stephanie Blaha and Bruce Henniss, and especially clarinetist Ilya Shterenberg – your playing was absolutely wonderful. And a special thank you to my stand partner Joel Becktell, who had to listen to me talk about this passage every time we got to it in rehearsal – sorry, man!

Till next time,

Nat

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

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One of my recent posts was about Play Us Forward, an educational initiative of ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, a great example of community engagement for performing groups. Another model for an orchestra getting more involved in the community comes from Germany, where the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, looking for rehearsal space, moved into a school in a neighborhood known for high crime and poverty rates.

The partnership, viewed with unease at first by both the orchestra and the community, has been a great success. Kids and the musicians have lunch together, and the students come to rehearsals, sitting in between the musicians. There’s even been some collaboration:

 

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The BBC article about the Bremen experiment points out the most compelling reason to do things like this: “the school’s test results have improved, its drop-out rates have fallen to less than 1% and the atmosphere in the wider neighbourhood has been ‘transformed.’ ”

In other words, simply by being there, the Kammerphilharmonie has improved the school and its neighborhood. What if every orchestra did something like this?

Now, cramming the entire Chicago Symphony into a high school gym to rehearse might not be such a great idea, but what about smaller orchestras (like ProMusica, for example)? We sometimes rehearse away from our home hall – why not rehearse at KIPP Academy once in a while, or spend a whole week there?

Another example of an orchestra strengthening its connection to the community comes this week from the Houston Symphony, which has created four new full-time positions for string players who will play about 25 performances a year, but whose primary role will be “community engagement and music education in area schools, neighborhood centers and health-care facilities.”

The article goes on to say: “The symphony is seeking musicians with varied ethnic backgrounds and who are fluent in at least two languages.” Orchestras have long been trying to diversify both their memberships and their core audiences, with limited success – this seems like a good way to help.

This hybrid of playing and teaching is something I’d love to see expanded and replicated in every orchestra, with one important tweak – more members should do both.

Someday, I would love to see a “full-time” orchestra whose entire roster teaches as part of their job.  What if part of your work as a full-time orchestra musician was to teach one day a week in the same inner city school, week after week, year after year?

I can imagine there would be resistance to this idea from some orchestra musicians, who would view it as a major change to their job description. I can’t argue that point – it would be. However, many orchestra musicians teach on the side already, and I bet the teaching part of the job could be factored into the workload in a way that didn’t raise the service count, at least not much. Maybe the dual responsibility of performing and teaching could be phased in with new hires, or offered as an option with extra pay.

I also think this would help the bottom line. All orchestras, no matter how many tickets they sell, rely heavily on contributed income to survive, and were they to become known for civic engagement on this scale, I bet they’d attract support from individual donors, corporations and foundations who may not have given them much attention before.

Most importantly, it would help orchestras to be seen as essential parts of their communities, and not just something for the rich, which, sadly, is often the image they have.

I am working on starting something combining playing and teaching myself, on a smaller scale with a string quartet in Cincinnati, and to learn more about how to go about it, next month I will be attending the Institute for Musicianship and Public Service, hosted by one of the standard bearers of community arts engagement, Community MusicWorks, in Providence, RI. I’ll post more about that soon.

 

Till next time,

Nat

 

 

 

All In The Family

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Today would have been my father’s 77th birthday. He was a composer and played a big part in my musical development. We often played music together, and talked about music (along with baseball and politics), from when I was in elementary school until he passed away three-plus years ago. I miss him terribly.

My dad wrote works for various instrumentation from chamber works to pieces for full orchestra – my favorite, of course, is the one he wrote for me, which my wife and I recorded for his Albany Records CD, released in 2006. It’s a perfect example of his musical style, which I once described as both intense and subtle. Here’s an excerpt:

You can hear the entire piece here, and learn more about my dad and his music at his website.

Classical music has long been a family business, from the Bachs and Mozarts to more modern examples like Sergei Prokofiev and his grandson Gabriel. I wrote about one of Gabriel’s works in a previous post – sometimes the apple falls a little farther from the tree!

Recently, I was reminded of the extra power music has when it’s inspired by the closeness of family.

Dmitri Shostakovich was known for music that reflected his difficult life in Soviet Russia – nearly all of his works contain sarcasm and harsh writing. However, I recently was exposed to a different side of Shostakovich, in his 2nd Piano Concerto. The piece was written for his son, Maxim, for his 19th birthday, and Maxim performed the solo part at his graduation from the Moscow Conservatory.

Last month, I played this piece with ProMusica Chamber Orchestra. The excellent soloist was pianist/composer Huw Watkins, who has a family musical connection of his own – his brother Paul is the cellist in the Emerson String Quartet. They have recorded several cello-piano works including Huw’s own – you can learn more here.

Our music director, David Danzmayer, reminded us in rehearsal of the story behind the concerto as we rehearsed the slow movement, which sounds nothing like any Shostakovich I’d ever heard. The directness and love expressed in this piece can’t be missed, and it sounds in places like Rachmaninoff:

https://youtu.be/BCTEx3w2_jU&w=330&start=456&end=536

There are lots more examples of music inspired by the closeness of family, and I’ve put a few of them on a new Spotify playlist, including my dad’s cello-piano piece and a song cycle he dedicated to my mom. As usual, it’s open to additions from you – please add your favorite piece of music that has a family connection!

In closing, I’ll share one more, that was a particular favorite of my dad’s. He was a jazz musician early on, and passed on to me a love for Charlie Parker and Oscar Peterson. One of our favorite groups was the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Band. I remember going to see them at the Village Vanguard when I was about 12 – how he got me into a place like that at that age is beyond me, but it was incredible.

Here’s Thad Jones’s best-known tune, whose title says it all: “A Child Is Born.”

Happy Birthday, Dad – I miss you.

https://youtu.be/-M2ADUgffFE&w=550

Welcome To The Club

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 “Welcome to the club.”

With these words last night, one of the world’s great violinists, Vadim Gluzman, (near right with microphone, above) handed out instruments to children from four Columbus, Ohio charter schools, to launch a program called Play Us Forward, an initiative of ProMusica Chamber Orchestra to bring music education to these schools for the first time. The program will provide violins and instruction to students at these schools free of charge, thanks to the generosity of donors like The Hattie and Robert Lazarus Fund, Key Bank and the Loft Violin Shop.

Vadim had just given a magnificent performance of the Bruch G minor Violin Concerto with us in his role as Creative Partner. ProMusica is lucky to have him, once or twice a year, as our own “in-house” soloist and/or leader, conducting from the concertmaster’s chair. But last night, he played an even more important role, making the kids (and everyone else, myself included) feel both welcome and included in something special.

Before giving out the violins, Vadim spoke of his own childhood in the Soviet Union, and his own first instrument, (a 1/8th size, I believe) which took some doing to acquire in a country where, as he reminded us with a wry smile, even basics like toilet paper were often hard to come by. He also spoke of the doors that have opened for him and the wonderful people he has met playing the violin, and radiated gratitude for the life music has given him.

Our wonderful music director, David Danzmayr (far left, above) spoke of his own good fortune as a young musician – he was born into a musical family (in Mozart’s hometown, no less!) and had a piano waiting for him in his living room. As David pointed out, not everyone has that kind of luck, and that programs like Play Us Forward bring these opportunities to kids who would likely never have them otherwise.

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To help launch Play Us Forward, I gave presentations of Bach and Boombox at the four schools (including the KIPP Academy, pictured above). I was really struck by the level of sound in the hallways and classrooms – it was very quiet. At each school, there was great emphasis on self-control and respect for others, and that even extended to how the kids expressed themselves.

When I mentioned that I had worked at the White House, the KIPP kids all began snapping their fingers – I thought I had wandered into a production of “West Side Story” for a second, but their teacher explained that this meant they liked what they were hearing, and would do this in the classroom when someone gave an insightful answer, too.

All this tells me that these kids will make excellent music students (not to mention audience members!) – more on that in a minute.

The kids I met were invited to our concerts this past weekend free of charge, and I bet that for many, the performance was the first orchestra concert they’d been to. They got to see what’s possible on a violin (quite a bit, if you’re Vadim!) and now they will get violin lessons themselves.

With this program, ProMusica is saying, “Here’s what we do, and now you can do it too.” There are so many reasons why this is a great idea, I don’t know where to start, but here goes.

These charter schools tend to serve children with numerous challenges, academic and otherwise – this program will help equip the children with tools to meet these challenges in ways that only the arts can.

There is no shortage of data showing that studying music helps kids in reading and math, and I am sure we’ll see that with these students. Charter schools tend to place great emphasis on academic performance and metrics, and I guarantee that the kids taking violin lessons will exceed their peers in these areas.

So many schools cut their arts programs when they face budget cuts or focus on raising test scores – this will be a strong reminder that they are working against themselves when they do.

We’re also giving the kids a chance to learn something deeply satisfying, but very demanding, too. Anyone who’s studied an instrument knows that instant gratification is NOT what you get.

The experience of doing persistent, sometimes frustrating work in pursuit of incremental but meaningful improvement is a very powerful one, and with the schools’ emphasis on self-discipline and positive, respectful self-expression, these kids will be exceptionally well-prepared to reap the benefits.

Lastly, there’s a benefit (and a lesson) for professional ensembles here. There’s much talk these days about how orchestras need to rethink their place in society – often viewed as elitist and walled off from society as a whole, many performing groups are finding new ways to impact the communities they serve. More on that in my next post.

The Play Us Forward program is a great model for orchestras to follow, and by offering the gift of music to children who otherwise would not have it, it makes a more powerful and longer lasting impact than any concert ever could. It also reminds all of us, both inside the music world and out, that the doors of “the club” can and should be open to everyone.

Till next time,

Nat