Our first Sonata Series event features CMW Resident Musicians Jesse Holstein and Lisa Sailer, with guest pianist Ivan Tan, performing works by J.S. Bach, Anthony R. Green, Dana Lyn, and Jessie Montgomery.

SONATA SERIES #1
YouTube Premiere
Thursday, October 22, 2020

THE PROGRAM:

Sonata No. 1 in G Major for viola da gamba and harpsichord, BWV 1027
Composed by J.S. Bach (1685-1750)
Adagio
Allegro ma non tanto
Andante
Allegro moderato

…on top of a frosted hill…
Composed by Anthony R. Green (1984-)

Performed by Lisa Sailer, viola, and Ivan Tan, piano

a current took her away…
Composed by Dana Lyn (1974-)

Rhapsody No. 1
Composed by Jessie Montgomery (1981-)

Performed by Jesse Holstein, violin

***

PERFORMER BIOS:

Guest pianist Ivan Tan is equally at home playing classical piano or rocking out on a keytar. Ivan has performed in venues ranging from the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music to the Rochester Fringe Festival. He is on faculty at Brown University, where he teaches courses on music theory, and is a Ph.D. candidate in music theory at the Eastman School of Music, where he is completing a dissertation on keyboard performance in 1970s progressive rock. Ivan also holds degrees from Brown and SUNY Purchase in music and applied mathematics.

Jesse Holstein, violinist and violist, has been a Resident Musician at CMW since 2001. He was a founding member of the Providence String Quartet. Prior to studying with Marilyn McDonald at Oberlin and James Buswell at New England Conservatory, he worked with Philipp Naegele in Northampton, MA. An active recitalist, orchestral and chamber musician, Jesse is currently concertmaster of the New Bedford Symphony. He has performed at the Bravo! Festival, the Montana Chamber Music Festival, the Bay Chamber Concerts, the Worcester Chamber Music Society, The South Coast Chamber Music Series, the Rhode Island Chamber Music Concerts, and the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, among others. In 2009 Jesse was a Violin Professeur at L’Ecole de Musique, Dessaix Baptiste in Haiti and is currently on faculty at Brown University. One of his interests is how Buddhist mindfulness practice and meditation intersects with teaching and performing music.

Lisa Sailer, violist, joined CMW in 2019. In addition to teaching individual lessons, she directs the newest and youngest ensembles in CMW’s Daily Orchestra Program. She also teaches at the Community Music Center of Boston, and was a Teaching Artist Fellow in the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s META (Music Teachers/Teaching Artists) Fellowship’s first cohort. A certified Alexander Technique teacher, Lisa incorporates body awareness and freedom of movement into her string teaching. She has been a guest Alexander Technique teacher and Teaching Assistant at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music in New Hampshire, and has run Alexander Technique workshops in Alaska, Florida, and in between. She earned a Bachelor of Music in violin performance from SUNY Purchase and a Master of Music in viola performance from The Boston Conservatory. When not playing or teaching music, Lisa can be found doting upon her two cats and her sourdough starter.

COMPOSER BIOS:

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750) was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. He is known for instrumental compositions such as the Brandenburg Concertos and the Goldberg Variations, and for vocal music such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Composers and musicians for generations have looked to Bach’s music for inspiration, including participants in Community MusicWorks’ annual Bach to the Future all-night Bach marathon, which showcases Bach’s posse of fanatical followers, ranging from classical string musicians to noise artists to electronic and experimental composers and musicians. This year, our annual Bach Marathon, curated by Sakiko Mori, takes to the airwaves in a glorious 12-hour electromagnetic tribute to J.S. Bach transmitted to your radio and laptop on WELH, 88.1 on Friday, November 13 at 7pm to Saturday, November 14 at 7am.

The creative output of Anthony R. Green (composer, performer, social justice artist) includes musical and visual creations, interpretations of original works or works in the repertoire, collaborations, educational outreach, and more. Behind all of his artistic endeavors are the ideals of equality and freedom, which manifest themselves in diverse ways in a composition, a performance, a collaboration, or social justice work. As a composer, his works have been presented in over 20 countries and he is currently a fellow at the Berlin University of the Arts. More at www.anthonyrgreen.com

Violinist-composer Dana Lyn has received commissions from Brooklyn Rider, the Apple Hill String Quartet, the Ireland’s National Arts Council and the Portland Chamber Music Society. Also an improviser and a well-versed traditional Irish fiddle player, her projects include a mixed sextet, “Mother Octopus“, a collaboration with actor Vincent D’Onofrio and a duo with guitarist Kyle Sanna. Dana is a recipient of the 2018 ACF’s “Create” Commission and the 2020 NYFA Women’s Fund Grant. More at www.danalynmusic.com

Jessie Montgomery is an acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator. She is the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, and her works are performed frequently around the world by leading musicians and ensembles. Her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, language, and social justice, placing her squarely as one of the most relevant interpreters of 21st-century American sound and experience. Her profoundly felt works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life” (The Washington Post). More at www.jessiemontgomery.com

PROGRAM NOTES:

Sonata No. 1 in G Major for viola da gamba and harpsichord, BWV 1027
Composed by J.S. Bach (1685-1750)
Notes by Ivan Tan

Having grown up in a copyright-dominated world that esteems the role of “originality” as part of the artistic process, modern-day listeners may be surprised by the frequency at which Baroque composers would rearrange their own pieces (or even pieces by other composers) for different instrumental combinations. The ever-busy Bach was no exception; several of his most beloved pieces actually originate in earlier works, or were mined for instrumental passages in his cantatas.

One example of Bach’s propensity for rearranging is the G major sonata for viola da gamba and harpsichord (BWV 1027), likely written around 1739, but adapted from an older trio sonata for two flutes and continuo Bach had written in the 1720s (the older sonata itself may stem from an earlier work for two violins and continuo). In creating this new arrangement, Bach assigned one of the flute parts to the keyboardist’s right hand and gave the other to the viola da gamba, lowering it by an octave to fit the instrument’s natural register. The keyboardist’s left hand, largely preserved from the older sonata, provides an active, independent line equally important as its two “melodic” partners. In this spirit, we perform the G major sonata on viola and piano, with the viola occasionally playing up an octave from the gamba part to suit its register.

Like most sonatas from this era, BWV 1027 consists of four movements in a slow-fast-slow-fast arrangement. In the first movement, the viola and piano trade off long lyrical phrases, eventually landing on a harmonic cliffhanger. The ensuing second movement presents a more contrapuntal texture, with all three voices (viola, piano right hand, and piano left hand) getting in on the fugal fun. The third movement provides a brief excursion into E minor, with arpeggiated chords decorating a simple, chromatically descending bassline, and ending on yet another cliffhanger. We pause briefly before launching into the fourth and final movement, which returns to the jolly mood and imitative texture of the second movement. The “short-short-long” rhythm that opens the movement and recurs throughout is reminiscent of the bourrée—a Baroque dance.

…on top of a frosted hill…
Originally written for cello and piano in 2011, …on top of a frosted hill… has also been arranged for cello and harp. The viola and piano arrangement performed in this concert was written for a Castle of our Skins concert in 2016, and is featured in the film Come on In.

Notes by composer Anthony R. Green:

After having overly successfully premiered Refraction Aberrance, a work for cello and variable ensemble of harp, guitar, and piano (thought to be impossible, but proved wrong), I knew I had to compose another piece for Mathieu D’Ordine – an amazing cellist who is musical and metaphysically sensitive. Sharing many musical interests, Mathieu suggested we perform an ambitious recital – including the Myaskovsky sonata and the Chopin sonata. I knew this would be a perfect time to also compose a piece for us to perform together, hence … on top of a frosted hill …The work began as a piano improvisation that screamed for another voice in my ear. That voice was found through the cello, and the relationship that developed between the parts formed organically. This work is consciously similar to a previous work of mine – Seeing Through Heaven for flute and piano. However, this work is much more concentrated in its environment. Yet, this piece quotes one of my favorite childhood church songs. The mountainous trajectory very much belongs to the Boulder environment, which has significantly influenced my composition for the past 3 years, and I’m sure it will for the years to come.

a current took her away…
Notes and illustration by composer Dana Lyn

Sonata Performance video by Atomic Clock, with audio by Jim Moses
Event edited by Liz Cox
Hosted by Minna Choi

UPCOMING CMW EVENTS:
Bach and Friends
Join us for a virtual afternoon performance set in the grand and newly renovated Providence Public Library with the MusicWorks Collective performing works by J.S. Bach, Elisabeth Jacques de la Guerre, and Missy Mazzoli.
Sunday, November 8 at 3pm
CMW YouTube Channel premiere

Bach to the Future/Bach to the Airwaves: the All-Night Bach Marathon
Our annual Bach Marathon takes to the airwaves in a glorious 12-hour electromagnetic tribute to J.S. Bach transmitted to your radio and laptop!
Friday, November 13 at 7pm to Saturday, November 14 at 7am
WELH 88.1 Rhode Island Public Radio

THANK YOU FOR JOINING US!

Read our Season 24 Program Book here:
https://communitymusicworks.org/29may_/calendar/season-24-program-book/

Learn more about CMW, sign up for our enews, and check our calendar at
www.communitymusicworks.org

Today, the spotlight is on a new class called “Jazz to Hip Hop Improv,” offered by the wonderful violinist Kevin Lowther, aka Big Lux.

The Lewis Prize for Music, which supports the work of Creative Youth Development, invited each of the 2020 “Accelerator Awardees” to compose essays on responsive and collaborative leadership. CMW’s Founder & Artistic Director Sebastian Ruth contributed this piece on our organization’s evolving equity-focused work.

I started Community MusicWorks informed by experiences I had growing up in an alternative public high school that based itself on the educational ideas of Paolo Freire, among others. Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed was published just a few years before the school’s founding in the mid-1970s, and many of his ideas were central in the school philosophy– young people guiding their own learning, a democratic school governance where students carried significant leadership roles, and a curriculum that followed events of the day. I also had had experiences at Kinhaven, a summer music school in Vermont that fostered an environment for high school aged students to form deep bonds in a loving community surrounding the study of music.

The project of Community MusicWorks was to establish a musician residency in an urban community and to create musical spaces that could be a home for professional and youth musicians alike to grow in a musical community animated by values of love, self-guided learning, and social justice.

We have often defined our work as existing at an intersection of social justice practice and musical practice.

Guided by Freire and other philosophers, we have sought to combine the seemingly unlike fields of liberatory education and string music education. Despite this commitment from our founding, we have come to understand over the past several years that we need a deeper understanding about what social justice and specifically anti-racist praxis truly means across our organization—what is the evolving, dynamic understanding of justice in the organization that will inform and be informed by our actions?

A discussion two years ago focused on the most effective way forward: would it be most effective to focus first on setting policies and measurable goals, or to focus on learning at the individual and spiritual levels?

We decided the latter was the most effective way forward. Until every member of our organization is fully invested in their own learning of the histories of racism and its ramifications, of the oppressive truths of our present reality, of our own biases; and the unlearning of habitual patterns, assumptions, and adherence to the status quo, policies and new procedures won’t get us far enough. We have felt that as each person goes deeper into her/his own learning, decisions we make as an organization will be informed by an increasingly clear vision of what active anti-racist praxis can be—a constant interplay of learning and action where each informs the other.

This choice is one my colleague Ashley Frith, Director of Racial Equity and Belonging, advocated for. It is also consistent with Freire, who cautions against actions that attempt to undo oppressive conditions and only serve to re-inscribe the very patterns we’re looking to break because they don’t get at the root of the oppressions in ourselves.

The forces of structural racism are so deeply entwined with our country’s history, and white dominant culture so pervasive that it can sometimes feel that there’s no hope of making positive change as individuals, as a small organization, or even as a committed community of like-minded organizers across the country. That said, activist Grace Lee Boggs and others remind us that the patterns we set in our very local communities may be the most potent and promising actions we can take.

CMW’S EQUITY-FOCUSED WORK TODAY

Leadership and equity work at CMW has meant committing to a process of learning, with humility, on an ongoing basis.

The systems in which we work are all part of the problem, and there is no stepping outside these systems to solve problems. I think of it as swimming in polluted water: while you’re swimming you may be too close to the water to recognize how unhealthy it is to be there. Therefore we need to evaluate, analyze, reflect on an ongoing basis, and be willing to make significant changes. It’s about how we move through the world, it’s about how we examine decisions, relationships, repertoire choices, pedagogy. And from a place of increasing awareness, conversations become proactive and productive, instead of defensive and stuck.

We are now deepening our understanding of equity, diversity, and belonging through: 1) a social justice/equity task force; 2) a monthly seminar to support ongoing learning among our staff; 3) a new staff role (mentioned above), the Director of Racial Equity and Belonging, which will facilitate learning across the organization and across the MusicWorks Network of organizations; 4) a weekly reading for staff, board, and the Network focused on the societal oppressions that affect so much of our work; and 5) a weekly discussion hour, sometimes in racial affinity groups, to support our continued learning and dialogue.

Overall, we have come to understand that equity work is ongoing work. Just as Freire describes an educational practice that needs to adapt and change as the world changes, so organizational practice needs to be constantly attuned to a growing understanding of the systemic oppressions affecting people’s lives.

EVOLVING OUR YOUTH PROGRAMS

As we think about students who move through CMW’s programs, we have been focused on how students gradually add skills of artistic citizenship at age-appropriate levels along the way. The hope is that young people increasingly see their musicianship as a pathway to greater agency and participation in their communities through music.

For a six-year-old entering the programs, this may mean that in their lesson they are doing technique-building exercises alongside short interviews with their teacher in which they are considering what fairness means to them related to current events. When they’re ten or eleven, artistic citizenship may mean participation in a group discussion with their ensemble peers about a current event, and what they are learning about it from school, home, or from peers. And at age sixteen, students may be working with peers in the Phase II program to consider how they can use their voices as young artists to make a significant contribution to discourse in the city.

A growing thread in our work involves reimagining the ways students engage with the music they learn, including with pieces we all play together around social justice themes. A few years ago, the whole student body learned and wrote new lyrics to the protest anthem We Shall Overcome. Studying the history of the song, we learned that people in different struggles have contributed lyrics specific to their times. Inviting CMW students to dig in and reflect on the question of overcoming in their communities animated the experience of learning that song in new ways. That sparked an annual tradition of choosing a song for us all to engage in, and also sparked a new class theme of students writing their own music as part of the experience of learning violin, viola, or cello.

Every spring when teens in our Phase II program create and host the annual “Youth Salon” I am filled with a sense of hope and excitement for a youth-led future in our programs and our city. Seeing young people tackle complex contemporary challenges and creatively weave their musical voices into an event of dialogue, performance, and interaction affirms the belief that a liberated future starts with the wisdom of young people.

More broadly, I think a liberated future grows out of the proliferation of youth arts spaces like CMW, which nurture in young people a sense of belonging, and where young people grow to expect their voice and leadership to effect change in both their local communities and in civic spaces across our society.

The path to social justice practice, anti-racist practice, and equity in our organization is an ongoing project without a singular destination. We know that considering young people’s lives, our work cannot proceed on their behalf without a deep commitment from all adults in the organization to be learners, and to be understanding of the implications and roots of our work. No project of equitable practice situates that work only in young people and their outcomes. The whole project takes on its significance when everyone is on a journey of awareness and change.

— Sebastian Ruth
Founder & Artistic Director

Learn more about the Lewis Prize for Music and read essays by Accelerator Awardees Ian Mouser and Brandon Steppe here: www.thelewisprize.org

Illustration by Cesali Morales