 photo by Erin X. Smithers
The recent co-commission by Community MusicWorks and FirstWorks created a spectacular concert event that inspired this review by New Music Box writer Matthew Guerrieri, excerpted here:
"The end of Kronos Quartet’s concert in Providence on November 8 was almost designedly apt. At the close of Kareem Roustom’s A Voice Exclaimed (a world premiere), Kronos—surrounded onstage by faculty and students from Providential superheroes Community MusicWorks—began sending snatches of Middle-Eastern-tinted melody out into the Rhode Island School of Design Auditorium. These melodies were promptly echoed back by a sudden ingress of even more MusicWorks students, processing in from the back and sides of the hall. Kronos, the pied pipers of contemporary string quartet music, had enticed another crowd into their circle.
A Voice Exclaimed provided a showcase for Kronos, the exceptional work MusicWorks is doing, and the sense of community involvement and pride that MusicWorks has fostered. That theatrical ending tied together the whole package—the piece, the players, the production, the process."
Read the full review here.
The Yale Daily News recently featured an update on Sebastian's "Music and Service" course, as he continues the semester as visiting lecturer at the Yale School of Music this fall:
Ever since musician Sebastian Ruth joined the School of Music as a visiting lecturer this fall, his broad portfolio of work in community outreach through music has proven a strong asset to the Music School’s community.
Ruth has been nationally recognized for his work as founder and director of Community MusicWorks — a public service group that allows musicians to help urban communities in Providence, R.I. through outreach to the city’s children and their families. In 2010, Ruth and Community MusicWorks were awarded the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award by first lady Michelle Obama and Ruth received the esteemed MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.
“What impresses me so much about [Ruth] is he asks why we should do this… That, to me, is a really important question,” Yale School of Music Dean Michael Yaffe said.
Read the full piece, here.
We are invited into a conversation in the dark. Velvet curtains are rich, rippling in midnight blue light. We're sitting together in the hall, nearly six hundred of us. It's not a dream, although parts of the concert will unfold with the unexpectedness of a dream, will provoke emotion and longing. There is a half moon of musicians behind the four members of Kronos Quartet – The CMW Players, Fellows and students filling out the semi-circle, waiting to perform Kareem Roustom's "A Voice Exclaiming," a commission by Community MusicWorks and FirstWorks, three years in the making.
From David Harrington's first bow stroke, we know that Roustom will get the Kronos treatment: Urgency. Urgency of necessary response, of risk, of questioning the world. And these questions will reverberate to the audience in the way that great art makes us question ourselves and our basic preconceptions.
From the beginning of the first movement, I wonder: What am I hearing? The familiar opening of a Western concert piece? But I'm also hearing Arabic rhythms that recall traditional classic orchestras, simple songs. Arabic basics that might be heard in a taxi or cafe in Egypt, in Tunisia, in Syria.
As in other Kronos pieces, I grasp onto a rhythm. But then, the rhythm is broken off. It is repeated when I don't expect it. The cells of the song keep bouncing around. Where is home? Do we know? The classical Arabic phrase that was started and interrupted reappears on the other side of the stage, played by CMW students suddenly under a spotlight. The spotlight had been on them, only we weren't looking at them. Suddenly we're looking at the kids. A cellist, a violinist, these young students are adding their voices to the music along with these seasoned and charismatic professionals.
We smile. We are taken in. There is a drama. Where will it surface next, in what form? Shapeshifting is a way of not being fixed on one immovable idea.
The melody played by Hank Dutt's viola in the second movement is unbearably moving. It is from the Easter ceremony of the Eastern Orthodox Church. It is langourous, reminding us that the human voice with its slurs and scales is the most powerful voice of all. But it reminds me of a lament I heard half an hour before, in the cello of Sunny Yang playing "Sim Sholom." It was a Jewish lament sung on the most solemn day of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur. Christian Orthodox, Jews. Cries from the heart sound remarkably similar!
Following the spotlight, I look at David Harrington. Judging from his body language, he's crossed borders too. At the beginning of the concert, he was a tight ball of rock-star anxiety ("Aheym"). He was pure energy that left his bow in tatters ("…hold me, neighbor, in this storm…"). He is now sensual, making figure eights with his neck, his eyes closed. His violin's voicing is ethereal, just a whisper.
Elegy, the tone of the piece has been set. We have entered deep into the shadows of sorrow for the deaths of victims in Syria, in war and abuse. Or it has entered us. As the orchestra moves into the celebration of the final movement, Dabkè, (Line Dance), elegy is not forgotten but the pace picks up. The dance is delicate, and the voice of student players is heard.
Suddenly, Harrington raises his hand in invitation – cellists trot out to the front of the stage and begin to play! They are eye-level with us, playing a piece of a composer sitting in the audience. Harrington makes another gesture: Let there be more! Kids are hovering at the top of the stairs like cherubim, a heavenly choir. As if descending from clouds, they slowly go from darkness into light. The drama, the surprise of the young generation stirs a range of competing emotions. From delight to sorrow in the presence of beauty to hope, I asked myself: Where am I? Church? Art space? Western concert hall? That was such a wonderful moment of disorientation. It was full of questioning. But even more important than the questioning was the mysterious dissolving of questioning. The questions all folded together, contradictions melted, fusing into the moment. The moment lingered, the moment was IT.
-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 by Jay Blakesberg
In today's Providence Journal, Arts Writer Channing Gray writes:
"It has taken three years for the pieces to fall into place. But
Friday, a bold partnership will come to fruition on the stage of the
RISD Auditorium.
Three generations of musicians will team up to
perform the premiere of a new work for three string quartets by Kareem
Roustom, a 42-year-old Syrian-American composer who lives in Sharon,
Mass. The Grammy-winning Kronos Quartet will be on hand, along with the
resident quartet from Providence’s Community MusicWorks and a group of
its students.
Roustom’s piece, called “A Voice Exclaiming,” grew
out of talks between Kronos founder David Harrington and Community
MusicWorks’ Sebastian Ruth. Ruth, who has known Roustom for years, had
been on a trip to Israel and came home with the flavors of Middle
Eastern music in his ears.
At the same time, Harrington had just
seen a documentary about residents in the West Bank protesting the
erection of an Israeli barrier in their village. The film is called
“Budrus,” and Roustom wrote the music for it.
So when Ruth and
Harrington started talking about a joint commission, Roustom came to
mind. And when the two approached the sponsoring FirstWorks arts series,
things came together, said Roustom…."
Read the full piece here.
The Kronos Quartet performs Friday at 8 p.m. at the Rhode Island
School of Design Auditorium, 17 Canal Walk, Providence. Tickets are
$28-$65 and available online at first-works.org or by calling (401) 421-4281.
A Voice Exclaiming is a piece commissioned for the Kronos Quartet and Community MusicWorks Players by Community MusicWorks and FirstWorks and will be performed Friday, November 8 at 8:00pm at the RISD Auditorium, 17 Canal Walk, Providence.
Kareem Roustom, the Emmy-nominated composer of A Voice Exclaiming, has written music for film, television, the concert hall and album projects. Steeped in the musical traditions of the Near East and trained in Western concert music and jazz, Syrian-born Roustom is a musically bilingual composer who has collaborated with a wide variety of artists ranging from the Kronos Quartet, to Shakira, and to the Philadelphia Orchestra. For more information visit www.kr-music.com.
About A Voice Exclaiming, Roustom says:
"A Voice Exclaiming takes its title from the opening lines of ‘The Quatrains’ of Omar Al-Khayaam, a celebrated 12th century Persian poet. I knew Al-Khayaam’s text best in the form of a song from the late 1940s by Egyptian composer Riyad Al-Sunbati that he composed for the great Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum. This song, titled Rybaiyaat Al-Khayaam, begins with the following lines:
I heard a voice exclaiming out in the darkest hours of the night,
calling
from the unknown, to those in the deepest sleep.
“Arise!
And fill the cup of hope,
before
the hand of fate fills the cup of life."
Al-Khayaam’s deeply contemplative poem opens with language that urges the reader to wake up and actively seize the moment before life passes by. The voice in the text can perhaps be associated with the divine, but it could also be a calling to seek in life something greater than the mundane, deep sleep being a metaphor for blind acceptance or willful ignorance of greater things. However one chooses to interpret the text, it says to me that this is an urgent call and one that must be heeded. This is the inspiration that I sought to bring to this work – the rejection of ignorance and the mundane, and the passionate seeking out of deeper meaning.
 CMW Players rehearsing the piece this week
I. Divisions – This movement resulted from a challenge that I posed to myself to combine two languages, Near Eastern Arabic music and Western concert music, into a cohesive and balanced musical work that avoids clichés. In my work I try to avoid shallow combinations of disparate musical elements. To put it in culinary terms, rather than sprinkling a little ‘exotic’ spice after the meal has been cooked, I prefer to have these ingredients in the original marinade. In other words, it is the very structure of the piece with which I seek to fuse Arabic and Western elements. To that end, I decided to work with a loose sonata form for this movement. Though this framework is not new, it allows a familiar form to become a vehicle for an unfamiliar melodic and harmonic language.
The title of the movement refers to a common, almost ubiquitous, rhythm in Arabic music called maqsoum (divided). The maqsoum rhythm, which is used popular, folk and classical musics of the Near East, has many varieties but it is essentially a four-beat rhythm divided as such: ‘short – long – short – long – long.’ Given the daunting task of composing a work for three string quartets with a wide range of abilities, I chose this simple rhythm because it could inspire many intricate and ornate variations.
 Phase III students rehearsing on a recent student retreat
II. Consolation – The second movement is based on an Eastern Orthodox Christian hymn titled ana al-‘umm al-hazina (I am the grieving mother), which is typically sung during the Easter season, specifically on Good Friday. The imagery is that of Mary mourning the loss of her son. The hymn is typically sung in a call-and-response style, with a chorus responding to a soloist. I chose to include some of the text in the score in order to inspire the interpretation of the performance (the soloists’ lines are in quotes below):
“I am the grieving mother and there is no one who can console her.”
May the death of your son give life to those who seek it.
“Thus the daughter of Zion cried, causing all those who looked
upon her to cry.”
May the death of your son give life to those who seek it.
“I fear for the nation that has killed its shepherd.”
May the death of your son give life to those who seek it.
Since the spring of 2011, which marked the beginning of peaceful protests in Syria and then devolved into a brutal crackdown by the government, every piece of music that I have composed, with the exception of film music, has reflected on the destruction of my homeland and the subsequent suffering of millions of civilians. This powerful and moving hymn has been a source of solace to me and I was particularly inspired by the rendition that was recorded by Syrian mezzo-soprano Ghada Shbeir. If you are in any way moved by this performance, I urge you to give to organizations working with Syrian refugees in and around Syria. Doctors Without Borders, Mercy Corps and A Heart For Syria are a few that are providing badly needed aid.
III. Dabké – Dabké is a folk dance and a type of Near Eastern line dance that is typically performed at joyous occasions. The leader of the dance line, called a hawaash, directs the movements of the dancers behind him. There are many variants of this dance that involve men and women and I felt that this ideal of a communal, inclusive dance best supports the inspiration behind this project with the ideals of Community Music Works and the Kronos Quartet. This movement is based on a six beat dabké rhythm called sudaasi."
Tickets are $28-65 and are available online at first-works.org or 401-421-4281
“Woah,
there’s some math in here!” exclaimed Diego, a second-year cellist in the Daily
Orchestra Program, during a simple music game involving subtraction. I realized
he had just given us evidence of what the New York Times and cutting-edge
scientific studies tell us every so often – that music and math are connected
and therefore music education can help students develop their math skills. Now
that the Daily Orchestra Program has been back in session for almost a month I
have been witnessing the daily proof that music education encompasses so much
more than just music, including but certainly not limited to math.
Four
weeks ago Adrienne and I hauled our equipment into Federal Hill House and
welcomed a brand new class of second-graders to the Daily Orchestra Program.
Each member of our new class of 20 was eager to begin the process of learning a
musical instrument. Until November this process will include things like
getting to know each other, playing games, singing songs, clapping and drumming
rhythms, listening to music and stories, and becoming familiar with all the
instruments of the orchestra, especially those of the string family. Our young
musicians are enthusiastic learners, and even on the second day I could hear
them joyfully singing the songs we learned the day before while they lined up
for music time outside our room.
Last
year’s orchestra has also reunited, with some members now graduated to larger
instruments than before. After a little bit of time spent re-familiarizing them
with their instruments and with each other following the long summer hiatus,
Adrienne and I realized they were so eager to play music that we couldn’t keep
them from learning new pieces for very long. Now, each afternoon they’ve been
working hard to polish Hot Cross Buns and Boil ‘em Cabbage Down.
Last
Friday one of our favorite regular guests and CMW board member, Mark Hinkley, visited and took us on
an imaginary journey back to a time in history when human beings did not yet
have language. Our students brainstormed about ways in which people might have
communicated and wondered if one of those ways was music. Perhaps string
instruments were not an ancient means of music-making, but I’ve often wondered
if music was the original language. At the very least it is an ancient one, and
perhaps that is why it has such all-encompassing relevance. Through music we
can communicate ideas and emotions with each other without having to say a
word. It’s no wonder then that the skills involved in learning a musical
instrument would have sweeping benefits for an individual’s life, not just in
terms of critical thinking and mind/body coordination but also in terms of
identifying with and communicating with others.
As
the Daily Orchestra Program enters our second year I am so excited to see our
students continue to grow and develop all these skills, as Diego and his
friends learn to communicate in deep and delightful ways through the powerful
language of music.
-Lisa Barksdale
VanNashlee performs a song from Chile, one from England and one from the US
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr9EmERr6y0
Hey, Phase 2! As for our possible YS topic of religion and politics, I think it’s important for us to find a message that we can all come together on. This is a broad topic that could be many things… I posted this article thinking of August’s interest in looking into how this issue relates to the founding of our state.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/God-Government-and-Roger-Williams-Big-Idea.html
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