KSYO Strings Camp... And Viola Righteousness

Hoo-wee!! I thought I was on vacation, but boy, nothing could be further from the truth. All of my students are continuing to study through the summer, my bands are evolving like never before, (check out Norwegian Wood, with oboist Ayca Yayman and I at the 9th annual Bob Dylan Birthday Bash on Market Square, Friday, June 7th at 5:30) and weddings and such are coming out of the woodwork. I will be attending a gypsy jazz workshop at Smith College (my wife Helen’s alma mater!) in a couple weeks, a “giant step” for me and my gypsy jazz colleagues here in town.

There is of course, the July 4th concert in about a month, but it’s a mistake to think that that is all there is going on at Symphony HQ. Coming up June 17-21 is the KYSO String Camp, held at Bearden High. The final concert for that will be on the 21st at 2:30. I have a few students who will be taking part in this fine program, and they are psyched! It is still not too late to sign up your young Casals, Heifetz, or Kashkashian, but it WILL be too late on Saturday. A link to all the necessary info is HERE.

Did you think I was being cheeky? No, notice I didn’t say “Kardashian.” Back in February, at the Grammys, violist Kim Kashkashian received a Grammy in the category of “Best Classical Instrumental Solo” for her recording of viola music by Hungarian composers  Kurtag and  Ligeti. You can imagine the confusion among Grammy fans who may have thought that Kim Kardashian had embarked on a second career. A force in the viola world for more than three decades, Ms Kashkashian’s name is THE first to come to mind of people in the know when considering the pinnacle of modern viola achievement, up there with Casals and Heifetz on their respective instruments. If you Google “Kashkashian Grammy,” you will find a bevy of articles with painful misspellings and ditziness, written by people who really just should not have gotten out of bed the day they wrote them. One brief article, posted by Boston’s NPR affiliate WBUR, includes a picture of Kim that shows the ubiquitous “chinrest hicky,” omg, definatly not something Kim Kardashian would countenance.

Reflections

Wow. A transforming weekend. (Last weekend) Without going into too many details, since the last entry I’ve been to New England, where our son Thomas received his B.A. in Art History from Middlebury College in Vermont. Moving him from his dorm happened in a driving rain, which started Thursday night and never stopped pouring even as we left on Sunday afternoon. The high temperature while there was 45. I also attended a graveside service in New Hampshire for my Aunt Nell, my dad’s brother’s widow; she was 94. It was 65 years ago Thursday that she and Uncle Earl stood up beside my parents, who are both still up and about and went out to dinner that night. It being Memorial Day, it was appropriate that my parents and Richard and I should visit our ancestor’s graves; my roots run deep in the Granite State.

While waiting FOUR HOURS for a late plane in Charlotte, I had time to flip backwards through my calendar, in hopes of collating a “top ten” list of great moments from this past season. I got to about 7 when our flight was cancelled, at which point there was nothing to do but freak out. But I’ve narrowed it up and so here it goes, in no particular order.

6. Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, the “deep end” of the January Chamber Classics concert, featuring principal horn Jeffrey Whaley and tenor Cody Boling. Deep, rich tonalities from England’s most fertile musical mind.

3. Verdi’s Requiem. Thrilling choral music by one of the masters of drama. “Surround-sound” brass and a cornucopia of wonderful tunes, all with a distinct Italian accent.

8. Dvorak’s Piano Quintet. I had never performed this work until January, at Remedy Coffee with concertmaster Gabe Lefkowicz. It was like a late Christmas present.

4.  Sweeney Todd. It’s hard to believe this was part of the ‘12-‘13 season because it started so long ago- the earliest start to a KSO season ever. Sondheim’s score still scares me.

1. The Rite of Spring. Not much needs to be said here, a tour de force for the orchestra. Although it was my fifth time performing the Rite, the individual performances were the best this time, adding up to a totality that was waaaaay more than the sum of its parts.

2. Principal quartet concert in April. I had only performed the Beethoven op. 95 quartet before; the Debussy, Borodin and Richman works were all new to me. The Debussy especially was a challenge, having heard so many good recordings of it and wondering just how we would put it together. At the end of the day, though, I was just as likely to be humming tunes from Lucas’ work as from the others. Written more than half of his lifetime ago, Movements for String Quartet left me hoping that more quartet music would be forthcoming from him.

9. La fanciulla del west. I enjoyed revisiting Puccini’s strangest opera, having done it almost 30 years ago at Spoleto. There were big giant déjàvus that left me feeling like Buddy Hackett running through the big “W” in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

7. Bernstein’s Candide. This was only a suite from the opera, but it came out of nowhere to win over players and audience members alike who were unfamiliar with it. The overture is just the tip of the iceberg here; Make Our Garden Grow (the closing chorus representing the other end of the iceberg), gets me every time, and Bernstein’s sense of humor carried the show all the way with fine singing by Boris van Druff, Jeff Austin and Karen Nickell.

10. Korngold’s Violin Concerto. Although we hear Korngold’s music (and that of his countless imitators) a lot, it is usually in movies. Here was a work that featured concertmaster Gabe as soloist, and he really knocked it out of the park. The concert finished with Brahms’ 4th, (maestro Richman’s audition piece from ten years ago), inviting reflection on ten great years.

5. The May Chamber Classics featured Within the Quota, music for a ballet by Cole Porter. A somewhat obscure but very charming period piece, some of Porter’s musical effects were just laugh-out-loud funny.

Class in the Brass

May concerts, more than those in any other month, can have an especially emotional tinge to them, as it is  the last time we see some of our colleagues for a while. If someone retires, it might be that we don’t see them ever again, in the orchestra at least. It is with that emotional tinge that we say goodbye to principal trumpet Cathy Leach. Her grace, class, and chops set the pace for the KSO’s brass family for more than 30 years. She will remain a faculty member at UT, and continue to perform with the Stiletto Brass Quintet.

One of my favorite memories of Cathy is of my first year here, 1986. I found out quickly that she was from Vermont, one of the states in the Red Sox Nation, from which I hail. That was the year, you may recall, when the Red Sox snatched defeat from the jaws of victory at the hands of the NY Mets. During the World Series we were rehearsing Verdi’s Rigoletto, with then-maestro Robert Lyall on the podium. During breaks, I made a beeline to the trumpet section, where Cathy was watching the games on the world’s smallest portable TV, about a 4" diagonal measure screen. This was way before the advent of Smartphones. I was just so tickled that here in Dixieland, there would be anyone who cared about the Red Sox enough to bring a Watchman to work.

After the Friday night Rite of Spring concert, there was a small reception backstage for Cathy. Here are a couple snapshots.

Here is Cathy and violinist Norris Dryer, no doubt giving her some sage advice.

The Rite of Spring trumpets, from left Tina Erickson, Sarah Chumney Fellenbaum, Sean White, Marc Simpson, Cathy, interloper Sam Chen (aka principal trombone, here playing bass trumpet).

Grand Finale

While the focus of our concerts this week have been Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, I am really enjoying getting to know Lucas Richman’s Three Pieces for Cello and Orchestra. For a body of work (concerti for cello generally) that seems to be becoming weirder and weirder, Lucas’ piece is a breath of fresh air. The musical language is somewhere between Tchaikovsky and Ernest Bloch, and there is a lot of soulful cello singing. The work closes with a vigorous klezmer-like passage, wherein clarinetist Gary Sperl bends notes like a drunken glassblower. Another KSO member has also suggested that one of the themes of the Freilach is derived from the chase scene at the end of Some Like It Hot.

Meanwhile, back in the Rite, I am really loving performing this monumental work, with its thickly colorful orchestration, mind-boggling meter changes and sheer power. At first a seemingly random barrage of orchestral sound, it is a barrage that performers, conductors and aficionados have come to own. These passages are the bedrock of polytonal, polyrhythmic and atonal composition that to this day inspires composers across the board. Whether it be new orchestra repertoire (Lucas Richman’s Three Pieces, performed tonight!) movie scores (Starwars), TV music (Star Trek), the inspiration is unmistakably audible. Every time you hear or perform it, you hear something new.

Here is something to look out for. The theme that starts the Rondes Printanières, (in part 1) in the E-flat clarinet and bass flute (I think) is widely known as the “Nyaah-nyaah-ni-nyaah-nyaah” motif, which is said to be a musical phrase that instinctively “hard-wired” into the human brain from birth. No, Stravinsky is not the originator of this motif, of course, but it is heard in so many genres of music. Here are some more well-known appearances of it:

We Are the Champions by Queen
Beethoven 6th Symphony, finale.
Everyday People by Sly and the Family Stone
There’s a bit in the Star Wars soundtrack that uses the motif

These are just a few I could think of off the top of my head.

Ending the Season the Rite Way

Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, any Mahler symphony, Orff’s Carmina Burana, and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring represent works that push the boundaries of the orchestra experience to new highs. Knoxville is fortunate to be on the verge of experiencing the Rite of Spring this Thursday and Friday at 7:30 at the Tennessee Theatre.

I love that we are performing the Rite almost a century to the day after that infamous evening in 1913, when Stravinsky turned staid Paris on its ear with a full ballet production choreographed by Nijinski. It is said that in one of the quieter moments, the audience was so vocal in their disapproval that the dancers could not hear the music. The police arrived and things calmed down a little, but the “damage” had been done. Just as Beethoven deep-sixed rigid compositional structures and templates a century earlier, (right around his opus 95), Stravinsky redefined the concept of tonal beauty by abandoning standard functional harmony and making rhythm an end in itself rather than just a means to an end. The audience reaction was not solely a result of the music, but the very “outside-the-box” choreography surely had a hand in it.

The Rite of Spring orchestra is huge; quintuples of woodwinds, 8 horns, 6 percussionists, 2 tubas, etc. etc. Wagner's Tannhauser Overture orchestra is not normally so large, but the most recent KSO performance of the work (May, 1993) involved 20-something trombones, a truly spine-tingling sound. When the Tennessee Theatre was being rebuilt in 2004, workers near the zenith of the house ceiling could still hear strains of the final E-Major chord. This week we will performing the work with a normal complement of trombones, which is, sadly, only 3. But it should be known that this is a work that trombonists live to play, so there will be a lot of inspiration.

Ode to a May Evening

People gathering on the Square;
the KSO is playing there!
Something’s cookin’ good, let’s eat!
Friends are here, meet and greet!

Live music to complete your day,
bring a lawn chair, that’s ok.
No, it’s not Sundown in the City,
ours is a more symphonious ditty.

Patriotic, operatic,
your pleasure will be automatic.
William Grant Still’s Can’t You Line ‘Em;
the concert goes on rain or shine-em.

Baritone sings “Figaro!”
outdoors with the KSO.
Stephen Foster, John Philip Sousa,
and something for your dancing shoes-a.

From Les Mis and Titanic,
old favorites played, don’t panic!
A Knoxville anthem (initials R. T.),
and don’t forget, admission’s free!

(I know, odes are probably way longer than this, but ode is such a cool word).
(7:30 TONIGHT, Market Square)

Mary(ville) Month of May!

The KSO travels to Maryville tonight, bringing music of Rossini, Gershwin, William Grant Still, Leroy Anderson, and Sousa for FREE at 7:30 to the Theatre in the Park, across from the Blount County Courthouse. Joining us will be baritone Daniel Webb singing Rossini’s Largo al factotum for a reminiscence of the Rossini Festival (only hopefully, without the rain)!

Mr. Webb’s talents will also be showcased on Sunday afternoon in the Chamber Classics finale, at 2:30 at Knoxville's Bijou Theatre. He will be joined by mezzo-soprano Lettie Andrade de la Torre for a wonderful theatre piece, Leonard Bernstein’s Arias and Barcarolles. Bernstein’s final opus, it draws from a lifetime of erudite sources to bring some of his– and his mother’s– poetry to light. Originally scored for mezzo, baritone and piano four-hands, our version will delegate the piano part to strings and percussion (mostly mallet), in an orchestration published in 1989 by a composition student of Bernstein’s, Bright Sheng.

Both tonight's and Sunday's concerts will feature Gershwin's Lullaby for strings, a favorite of quartet players. The work is opus posthumous which means, not that he wrote it after he died, but that it was discovered or recovered or reissued after his death. It is a beautiful piece of string writing, but as a lullaby, I'm afraid it would fail, as most babies would wake up with its rousing recapitulation that is difficult to play squelchedly. I've always thought Nocturne or Allegretto would be a more appropriate title, but who asked me?

This American Masters concert will also bring the music of Cole Porter, Sondheim and Gershwin to the stage, in a show focused on orchestral/instrumental works by composers who made their biggest impact on music for Broadway. I would have to say that it’s been a while since we’ve had such a large ensemble on the Bijou stage; the scoring for these works is very clever. A word of caution, though: one of the movements of the Bernstein will REALLY wake you up when it begins.