As many of you may already be aware this year's Youth Salon is fast approaching. For Phase II that means it's crunch time and we'll all be brainstorming as much as possible to bring a thought-provoking experience to our audience. For everyone else that means the chance to participate in a night of music and discussion that should be a glimpse into the process of idea generating and dinner time camaraderie that is a staple of Phase II. This year we are hoping to bring as immersive an experience as possible. Our audience will be as much a part of presenting our thoughts on the theme as we will be. At least that's the idea.

Speaking of the theme, this year's youth salon title is Reflections on Connections in a High Speed World. If our discussions have been any indication, this promises to be a topic approachable from many different directions. We've been focusing our recent work on developing questions and discussion guiding techniques that should yield the most juicy conversation. With a diverse audience, many of whom, unlike ourselves, grew up before the age of the internet there will be a much broader range of opinions. The idea of digital communication is a fascinating new dimension of modern life that carries with it a great spectrum of ideas. If you enjoy music, discussion, spoken word poetry, avant-garde theater or good food this will be the event for you.

-Liam, Phase II

Phase II Youth Salon:

An Evening of Dinner, Discussion and Music

Reflections on Connection in a High Speed World

Friday, May 2 at 7 pm

Bell Street Chapel

A few Fridays ago I sat down for a short interview with one of the violinists of the Daily Orchestra Program. James is nine years old, in the third grade, and attending Young & Woods Elementary School. He is a friendly, active, energetic young man, and I’m so thrilled that our blog readers will have this small chance to get to know him a little bit better. I hope you enjoy meeting James here. We hope to see you soon in person at our next concert!

~Lisa Barksdale

LB: So, James, you were one of our very first students in the Daily Orchestra Program, and now you’re in our second-year “Beethoven Orchestra.” What do you like about being in orchestra?

JJ: I choose to play music because it’s fun and other people are playing. It’s not like you’re the only person that plays the violin. It’s an orchestra. It’s fun meeting other people who play nice instruments that we don’t really see. (I believe he’s talking about some of our guest artists who have brought unusual or unfamiliar instruments to share with the group). It’s nice seeing people who play the violin for a lot of people, and it’s nice because other people are in the program. And because other people help me and help me. . . and sometimes I can be a little naughty and stuff (here James has a somewhat bashful look), BUT they still help me and make sure I do the songs, and if I need help on the songs they can help me.

LB: That’s so good to hear!

JJ: It’s very expire. . .expiretive?. . .expired? Wait, no not expired. . .

LB: Inspired?

JJ: Inspired! – for me because it’s fun playing all types of different music. Even though we have to work on the new music, when everyone in the orchestra and I play with other people it feels fun, and knowing that I can play all types of places when I get bigger and I can play for a lot of people – for the president! – and all kinds of places!

LB: Wow. James, I think you’ve actually answered a lot of my questions in one big sentence. Thank you! Now I want to ask what is your favorite piece of music that we’re working on right now?

JJ: Does it just have to be one?

LB: Doesn’t have to just be one I guess! I kinda want to know your most favorite.

JJ: It would probably be “The Blues” and then the second one “Goblin Cobbler.”

LB: Ah! Cool.

JJ: And I’m still learning how to play “William Tell.”

LB: And what do you like most about the violin?

JJ: I like. . . hmm. . . the sound of it. And when I play with my violin and when other people have their violin it sounds like one big violin orchestra.

LB: Okay, and this next one might be a hard question – What is your least favorite thing about the violin?

JJ: Huh. . . uh. . .putting on the sponge!

LB: Ha! Ya know, I don’t really like that part either! Wouldn’t it be easier if we didn’t have to do that sort of thing? Okay, so today is Friday. What does a usual Friday look like for you?

JJ: We make up stuff. On Fridays the whole orchestra with the “Brittens” (nickname for our first-year orchestra) come together and we can make up anything. On Mondays everyone has to be in the violin section, viola section, or cello section, but on Fridays everybody is next to other people who play violin, cello, or viola, and then when you play something and we repeat what you play it sounds very different because you’re not next to someone who plays the same instrument.

(On Fridays we branch out from our regular orchestra formation and instead form a large circle for improvisation games. We try to mix it up so that people can stand or sit next to people/instruments they normally wouldn’t sit next to.)

LB: Hmmmm. I like that about Fridays too. I think people might be interested to know what other kinds of things you like to do in your spare time?

JJ: In my spare time I probably would play Blues and then if I’m in the mood I probably would play William Tell.

LB: In your spare time you’d like to practice the violin??

JJ: Yeah.

LB: Wow! I wish all my students were like you! But what about if you can’t practice your violin or you’re not in music. What do you like to be doing?

JJ: Sports. Playing outside with my friends. I have a game but I don’t really like sitting down games. I like to get active and get outside and play!

LB: I like that too! I also hear that you’re quite a basketball fan.

JJ: Yes.

LB: I’m not a basketball player, but I have a question I’ve always wanted to ask – I’ve always wondered how the basketball players are able to get the ball in the basket no matter where they are on the court? I’ve never been able to do that. How do you think they learn how to do that?

JJ: A lot of practice! And. . . when I get bigger and I’m in college I want to play the violin and basketball!

LB: Okay! And our very last question – if you could describe yourself using one word what word would that be?

JJ: Happy!

Pianist Jonathan Biss performs a benefit concert for Community MusicWorks on Friday, April 18 at 8 pm at the RISD Museum Metcalf Auditorium. Tickets for this event are available online here.

Guest writer Jill Pearlman recently spoke to Jonathan about the event and his connection to CMW:

It's not enough to be only a concert pianist these days, says concert pianist Jonathan Biss. It is not enough to be hailed as one of the best of your generation, as he is. It's narrow stuff, having your tails dusted off before stepping onto stage at Carnegie Hall. It's a new world, and Biss, who will be performing for CMW on April 18, has his sleeves rolled up, ready for it.

"The concert performer as a cloistered phenomenon is rapidly becoming extinct and that's a good thing," Biss says with characteristic brio. 

Biss' perspective is remarkably wide and all-encompassing. For him, an artist of the world means not only traveling internationally but being online, working in communities, plunging into new zones for the love of his art. If his goal is to communicate with the utmost of passion, he needs a passionate audience to relate to. And that's his mission.

Biss is 33. One feels that his prodigy and personality found itself when he was young, and while it has deepened, has not really changed. He is brilliant and hyper-articulate, warm and driven to share the expanse of his world. 

One of Biss' current obsessions is Beethoven – he has embarked on a path of recording the composer's 32 piano sonatas, one CD a year over nine years. Biss' appetite for a new, freer role for the musician/composer has a model in the master. In an online course that Biss teaches, he speaks of Beethoven's breaking loose from the old role of court composer and musical servant, and living by his wits as a freelancer without steady support. The freedom was bracing, and led to legendary and radical creativity.

The classical world is in hard times now. Audiences are getting smaller and smaller. The music runs after larger audiences by offering crowdpleasers that aren't terribly challenging. Crisis has brought urgency, and as deep and rapid as it is, it has the possibility for radical change.

"The old models aren't working as they did before," Jonathan says. "We are all ripe for a conversation. I'm not rejoicing in anyone's struggle but I do think it's good to be forced to question ourselves. What's working, what's not. To be forced to evaluate everything.

"We are being asked to be ambassadors for our art. Have a different role in culture and society. Asked to think about the role of music on the people who are listening. People with passionate interests can find one another. You find your way to your audience. To what you can communicate with passion."

Biss has Rodin-like hands, long creating fingers that have a romantic warmth. Online, on the free Coursera class via Curtis School of Music he plays and speaks to people who "suspect they could love classical music but don't understand the language. Unless you speak it, you don't love it." In the course, he exposes people to a performer's relationship to the music with all its layers and complexities, allowing us to hear music in a way that we hadn't previously.

Community MusicWorks is close to Biss’s heart, for the way it engages people from the ground up, art as life and life as art. Biss met former CMW Managing Director Heath Marlow when he was 14 at summer camp. "I instantly thought CMW was a fantastic idea," he says. "I was attracted to the idea of thinking about the role of the musician in the community. The model that they've established is so right-headed and inspired. The best thing I could hope for would be if it were replicated in every community across the U.S." 

"CMW musicians play on such a high caliber. They have impact on the communities which they've chosen. What they do is different than outreach, a word I hate. They have chosen a life's work through music."

To celebrate that, Biss plays a benefit concert for CMW following the release of each year's Beethoven CD. Scheduling prevented him from appearing last year, so momentum is now building for the April 18 concert when Biss will salute CMW and the release of Beethoven Sonatas, Vol. 3. He will play two sonatas as well as selections from Janacek and Chopin.

Of Sonata Opus 10, no. 2, Biss says, "It doesn't get played for some reason as often as it should.  It is distinguished by fantastic wit, almost Haydnesque.  It is marked by the relish to surprise, a sense of wit and sense of play." The other will be the famous Waldstein sonata, which he performs on the latest CD. "The Waldstein is so ubiquitous it was hard for me to hear it with open ears. But I have rediscovered it. It is an extraordinary masterpiece. There is so much mystery and wonder. Of looking out at infinity, stumbling towards an infinity in space. It is heroic as fits the middle period, but it has a searching quality.

"The sonatas are monumental and mysterious enough to be able to accommodate infinite points of view," says Biss. "They are, indeed, endlessly interesting. The player never comes to a point where you think, now I know it.  They always reveal some other aspect." He pauses in wonder, then laughs. "By the time I finish the ninth CD, it will probably be time to start over again."

-Jill Pearlman

Providence-based writer Jill Pearlman worked in music journalism in New York for over a decade. She's currently tapping some of her experiences for her novel, Clio's Mobile Home.

Photo of Jonathan Biss by Benjamin Ealovega.

Jonathan Biss, piano
A benefit for Community MusicWorks

Friday, April 18 at 8 pm

On Tuesday March 11, Bow Master Jesse offered all CMW violins and violas a bow class during the studio class portion of All Play Day!

Students worked in partners on their "Bow-lympics" exercises, practicing their spider crawls, crunchtastic voyage (making a good heavy crunchy sound near the bridge), and pinky push-ups and Captain Hook (first finger) pushups.

One of the most challenging exercises was learning how to shift the weight of the hand towards the first finger (at the tip) and then towards the pinky (at the frog). This keeps the bow hand relaxed, and helps develop smooth bow changes. Which would make anyone smile!

Thanks to Jesse for sharing his wisdom and offering a fun and helpful class!

Don't miss this year's J.S. Bach marathon!

The Bachfest is an all-night-no-intermission celebration of community and music presented by Community MusicWorks. The event features more than 50 performers, including the CMW Players, Phase II students, and local experimental musicians, who will keep the music going throughout the evening. The marathon is a mix of traditional and experimental performances and interpretations of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and will be held once again in the magical space of Brown University’s Manning Chapel.

View photos of last year's marathon here.

You are encouraged to bring your pillow & blanket.
Get comfortable and enjoy the music of Bach!

Sakiko Mori

Curator, Bach To The Future

Friday, April 4 – Saturday April 5
Bach Marathon

The overnight Bach Marathon returns!
7 pm to 7 am Bach performances.

Manning Chapel, Brown University, Providence

One of the great (and sometimes terrifying and intense) things about the Daily Orchestra Program is that we see and work with the same students every day of the week! This means that student transformations can sometimes happen over a surprisingly short period of time. Often I am so engrossed in each moment that I forget to see this big picture. Just like when I’m at home staring into the mirror and seeing all my flaws, in my teaching I am easily caught up in the details I want to improve – the lessons that don’t go according to plan, the student who still has trouble keeping his viola’s scroll up, the orchestra’s responsiveness to instructions, and of course my own teaching’s effectiveness and flow.

Every now and then moments occur that do make me step back and remember the whole. Some of those moments are the obvious ones, like the performance party back in January, but more often than not they are private, witnessed by only a few (well, maybe thirty max).

Today I had one of those moments when I was faced with the task of calming a student down who had become so angry he had run away right before orchestra and disappeared for several minutes. When he resurfaced (as if by magic after my frantic and unsuccessful search) he seemed on the verge of breaking something. I learned later that another student had kicked him by accident. I listened to his story and said I could understand why he was feeling angry. But then I asked him calmly whether in that moment it was more important to sit there and feel angry or whether participating in music was more important. He answered softly and immediately: “music.” Something changed. He became a calmer, more collected and purposeful student than the one who ran away from me only moments ago. By realizing he wanted to play music that day he was able to if not forget his anger, at least put it aside for the duration of orchestra.

One of the most difficult tasks we face as human beings is having to deal with our emotions. I notice children struggle with this, especially when those feelings are scary, like sadness or anger (heck, I still struggle with those!). Adrienne and I both share the vision that in our Daily Orchestra Program we are not just teaching students to play string instruments, we are teaching them to be kind, compassionate, healthy, and happy human beings. Helping our students to handle their emotions is part of that vision, and even though my moment alone with an angry young boy didn’t involve teaching him to play music (there wasn’t even an instrument in the room), it somehow felt like a small success.

Whether in the future he’ll be able to draw anything from that one moment in time I don’t know. My hope is that he will, but if he doesn’t. . . well, we’ll be seeing him again tomorrow. Each day presents opportunities to guide our students through that harrowing and beautiful landscape of human emotion. Luckily for us, all of music could be seen as humanity’s way of dealing with its feelings, so we’ve chosen our vehicle well.

-Lisa Barksdale, Associate Resident Musician, the Daily Orchestra Program

Resident musician Chase Spruill writes about the North American premiere of the Michael Nyman's Quartet No. 5:

In the early 1980s, Michael Nyman attended a performance by Arditti Quartet whose program housed a performance of the mighty Opus 133 Grand Fugue by Ludwig van Beethoven. Their performance and interpretation of the music left quite an impression on the composer who would later go on to remark that it was the most theatrical performance of the Fugue he’d ever seen or heard, leaving him with the impression that Beethoven was attempting to burst out of the music and compositionally transcend the confines and limitations of the sound world for a string quartet in order to create something orchestral. When Arditti Quartet commissioned Michael Nyman to write his first string quartet in 1985, it was their performance of Beethoven which helped inspire his idea to “exorcise the impressive and oppressive history of the string quartet” through a series of quotations by composers like John Bull, Arnold Schoenberg and Alex North. The end result was a pulse-pounding, relentless, hyper-rhythmic, uplifting and continuous world of sound that never allowed a listener’s ear to wander. Nyman wrote three more string quartets between 1988 and 1994 which touched on and explored inspirations from Scottish Folk Music to traditional South Indian rhythmic cycles. The 20 years after that were devoted to the continuous writing of film scores for acclaimed movies like Jane Campion’s The Piano and large-scale concert works for the Michael Nyman Band and world-class orchestras like the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, but with no sign of whether he’d ever write for the combination of a string quartet ever again.
 
I had the fortune to begin a long-distance correspondence with the composer a couple of years back while premiering his newest chamber music arranged for the combination of piano, flute, clarinet, violin and cello. The plan was to premiere and to record these works over a period of a few years, and ultimately, to release these recordings the year of his 70th birthday, which would be part of a larger celebration of his career thus far. This plan led to a quiet dinner meeting I had with his manager who happened to be in New York City on business, and during this dinner, I got the answer I’d been hoping to hear:  “He’s got this intense notion of writing ten symphonies in one year and releasing recordings of them with The World Orchestra. Also, there’s a new string quartet!”  The piece was to be premiered in the UK by the Smith Quartet—champions of contemporary string quartet literature—but without being able to hear a recording of the new work, I asked her if she would kindly describe the piece for me. She went on to say it was a wild, six-movement exploration of song and dance which included ballads, tangos, and dances that would be dangerous to dance to.  I only had one question for her at that point:  When was the U.S. Premiere so I could hear this piece?  My entire drive back to Providence, I kept replaying her answer to my question in my head, which was something like,” “Oh, we haven’t planned a U.S. premiere of this piece yet. Do you have any friends that you think would like to play it?”  I was new to Community MusicWorks at the time, but as it happened, yeah, I had a couple of people I thought might be interested. Sebastian had been talking about the next season here at CMW and the possibility of a quartet program in 2014. He was enthusiastic about the idea of premiering a new work by Michael Nyman knowing it was the first string quartet to be written by the composer in almost 20 years.  It seemed like the kind of news that should go along with fireworks and balloons. When he asked if I’d like to be part of that program, I think it’s quite possibly the fastest I’ve ever said yes to anything.  He asked what the piece was like and I told him what I knew. One year later, we’re a few weeks away from the North American Premiere.

-Chase Spruill

Join us for the weekend-long celebration of Nyman's Quartet No. 5:

Our resident cellist Laura Cetilia curates the Ars Subtilior series and gives us a preview of this Sunday's concert:

The second edition of Ars Subtilior this Sunday, March 9 at 4:30 pm at Machines with Magnets in Pawtucket will feature works for piano and cello by composer Alvin Lucier. I am extremely excited to be presenting this program, as I consider Lucier truly one of today's greatest living composers. My initial intention of starting the Ars Subtilior series was due in part to the influence of Lucier's ideas on my own musical life and aesthetic.

Much of Lucier's work is influenced by science and explores the physical properties of sound itself: resonance of spaces, phase interference between closely tuned pitches, and the transmission of sound through physical media. What results from such deep exploration of sound is something that I find completely mesmerizing and beautiful. Listeners sometimes forget that sound is having a physical effect on them, especially sounds other than those that are loud or abrasive. What happens in Lucier's music is so subtle it can easily be lost if one doesn't know what to listen for.

On Sunday's concert Sakiko Mori, myself, and the adventurous and generous engineers and producers from the Machines with Magnets recording studio will be presenting three of his works. In Music For Piano With Slow Sweep Pure Wave Oscillators, two pure electronic soundwaves start on the same note, and then diverge and converge over 16 minutes. Meanwhile, sparse droplets of piano notes follow their movement, but never quite hitting the same pitch, leaving ripples of disturbance in the pure waves' wake. This gentle "beating" also occurs in Twonings for cello and piano, but on a much subtler scale. The cello plays only (high and difficult to reach) harmonics throughout. The pianist attempts to play in unison with the cello, but due to the different tuning systems of the instruments (equal temperament of the piano, compared with just intonation of the cello), slight audible beating occurs. 

Finally, in Music for Cello and One or More Amplified Vases, you will hear the sounds of the cello magically resonate through a variety of amplified glass vessels. Each one of these vases have been hand-made specifically for this event by RISD Glass faculty member Jocelyne Price. You can see samples of the vases that will be used at the concert below.

I invite you to experience this stunning and unusual music in person on Sunday, and don't forget to change your clocks before heading over.

Ars Subtilior No. 2

a concert series on subtlety in experimental music

featuring Sakiko Mori, piano and Laura Cetilia, cello

Sunday, March 9 at 4:30 pm

at Machines with Magnets

400 Main Street, Pawtucket

$5-15 suggested donation

Here’s a snap portrait of the Haven String Quartet and Community MusicWorks Players concert this past Sunday at the RISD Grand Gallery, filled with many rapt (live and painted) figures!

Enjoy these moments captured at the recent CMW student Performance Party by photographer Jori Ketten. More student and staff photos can be found here.