Excerpted from a recent article by Eric Jaffe posted on The Atlantic Cities.

Last week the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported that transit officials have started to play Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Strauss and Handel at the Lake Street light rail station… The "classical music strategy" began last summer after complaints that the station had become "a haven for rowdy teens and vagrants." The idea is that potential criminals find classical music so detestable that they won't hang around the station long enough to realize their criminal potential:

"If it encourages some people to wander away because it's not their favorite type of music, I guess that's okay," said Acting Transit Police Chief A.J. Olson.

In fact, a long line of cities have implemented the classical music strategy in more or less the same fashion. The Atlanta transit system, MARTA, pumped Handel through its speakers a few years back. Transport for London, which runs the Tube system, expanded its broadcast of Mozart, Vivaldi, Handel, and others to dozens of stations after a successful pilot run in 2003.

The list goes on. In the late 1990s Toronto played Chopin at its Kennedy subway station. And New York City introduced classical into the Port Authority earlier in the decade — prompting even one police officer to concede to the Times: "Sometimes, I want to shoot the speakers."

Photo by Eliezer Faria

Seems as if this "strategy" is in direct conflict with the aim of CMW's streetfront presence and amplified rehearsals. Maybe it is simply a question of repertoire. Sounds like Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Handel and Vivaldi are out. Maybe there needs to be more Bartok or local composers in the mix?

Dear readers, what should our playlist be if we want more teens–not fewer–to hang around our storefront? Feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments section.

-Heath Marlow, Managing Director

Click on the image to enlarge. Note that Brown University's music department is generously offering a limited number of premium seats that will benefit CMW (along with providing free seats for CMW students and families).

From a community center, to a chapel, to a barn, the Fellows String Quartet traveled through the streets of Providence and over hill and dale to perform the music of Bartok and Haydn last month. 
   
The tour began on February 2 with an interactive performance at the John Hope Settlement House in Providence. With their insightful prefatory remarks, Ealain and Ariana introduced the audience to the melodic beauty as well as the humor and playfulness of Haydn’s Quartet in G Minor and to the folk melodies set within a complex emotional tapestry in Bartok’s Quartet No. 2. The Quartet played excerpts of each work to demonstrate how the four instrumental voices use such techniques as plucking and muting to create interesting sound effects and how the voices meld and diverge to form rich harmonies, colors and textures.

On February 4, our troupe traveled to the United Methodist Church in Hope, RI. The unusual design of the chapel bathed our quartet with the intense light of the afternoon sun and with even brighter acoustics. The lively sound stage inspired us to turn our chairs inward to face one another, with the audience surrounding us and enveloping us with their presence. As a quartet, this arrangement allowed us to focus inward and to use visual clues to override the auditory tricks created by the bouncing sound.  This “performance in the round” allowed us to communicate equally within our foursome, and it created a more intimate atmosphere for both the musicians and the listeners.

2012-02-04 Haydn Quartet in G Minor Op. 20 No. 3 I. Allegro

In contrast, our February 5 concert was held in a venue where the acoustics were dry and our sound more focused. The Performing Arts Center at Roger Williams University in Bristol is housed in a beautifully renovated dairy barn, host to theatrical and dance productions as well as musical offerings. We performed on their black box stage, where the theatrical lighting made for a more “naked” performance experience. We shared the bill with Adrienne and pianist Aaron Jackson who performed the Prokofiev Cello Sonata in C Major.   

   
All three audiences received us with enthusiasm and curiosity. The reactions from our fans after listening to the Bartok ranged from “I think I felt just about every emotion you can feel during the performance” to “. . . the Haydn was beautiful, but the Bartok was a reach for me.” 
   

All in all, it was a fun weekend of new venues and diverse audiences that both stretched us as musicians and brought us closer as a Quartet. 

-EmmaLee Holmes-Hicks, Fellow

As Venezuela's El Sistema continues to grow and influence music education efforts worldwide, the development of a touring string quartet will surely be of interest to those who are inspired by CMW's chamber music based model.

Created from within the National System of Youth and Children Symphony Orchestras of Venezuela (the new name for El Sistema), the string quartet is made up of members of the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra. This group "arose from the need of its members to come into contact with chamber music and the wealth of resources it can offer, which benefit not only its musicians, but also the children and young people who make up" El Sistema.

A stated goal of the Simón Bolívar String Quartet is "the development of a network of string quartets in Venezuela and South America, with the purpose of propagating chamber music among children and young people in Latin America."

In the next set of concerts by the CMW Players, we have two special guest musicians joining us for three concerts of varying repertoire. Pianist Knut Erik Jensen, who comes from Norway, is in Providence for a two-week residency at CMW. He studied at the Music Conservatory in Trondheim and spent a number of years as a freelance musician in Norway engaged in musical project ranging from opera to klezmer before relocating to Palm Springs, CA. I met him at Banff during my sabbatical in 2010.

Knut Erik Jensen

Knut Erik joins us to play a program of two sonatas for strings and piano—the Schubert A Major Sonata for violin and piano (with Minna), and the Grieg A Minor Sonata for cello and piano (with Heath); and a program of chamber music for strings and piano featuring the one-movement Mahler piano quartet and Shostakovich's piano quintet. 

Also on this program are a string trio by William Stalnaker, the grandfather of CMW resident cellist Sara Stalnaker, and Bartok's Sonata for Solo Violin, played on the viola by Dimitri Murrath. Originally from Belgium, Dimitri is a rising star of the viola world, a first prize winner at the Primrose International Viola Competition, and winner of a special prize for performance of a contemporary work at the ARD Munich Competition. A former student of CMW adviser Kim Kashkashian, he serves on the faculty of the New England Conservatory and the Longy School of Music.

Dimitri Murrath

Several intersecting themes are represented on this concert. First of all, the four pieces represent various perspectives on the 20th century, the Mahler piano quartet being the only piece written just prior, early in the composer's life. Another is that across the world, musicians are celebrating the centennial of Mahler’s death, and this piece represents one of the few chamber music pieces he composed. The Bartok sonata performance is part of a year-long CMW exploration of music by Bartok, including performances of all 44 violin duos. And finally, the Stalnaker represents a connection to CMW’s history of featuring local composers’ music on its concerts. Although the composer actually lives in Portland, Oregon, we feel that his granddaughter’s long tenure at CMW make him an honorary Providencian!

Find the details for these three concerts here.

-Sebastian Ruth, Founder & Artistic Director