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.
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.
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.
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!
The string players of CMW and the fiddlers of the RI Fiddle Project came together on Friday, February 3 to join hands and kick up their heels in a traditional American barn dance. Outside the D’Abate School cafeteria, the imaginary snow was swirling and drifting and, underneath the virtual barn loft, the cattle were lowing and the horses were chomping down their nightly rations. But in the make-believe lantern light of the hayloft, spirits were high and the music of the Hickorynuts String Band was lively.
CMW students discovered that old-time dances were an important event in rural America. These get-togethers, with their circle mixers, reels and other “hoedowns,” helped form a bond between neighbors that was essential for survival in the old days.
Laughter rang as all ages came together in that traditional blend of music and dance. As Oriana commented afterwards, “We were getting lots of exercise, but it just felt like we were having fun.”
Two of CMW's Fiddle Lab students, Roma and Frankie of the now famous Red Wigglers String Band, joined us to play a set of three lively tunes. They discovered that the fiddler’s bow dances across the strings as fast as the dancers whirl and twirl.
I want to thank my parents, caller Jim Hicks and backup chorder Peggy Holmes, for joining me in bringing an old-time barn dance to CMW. I also tip my hat to Alan Bradbury for setting up his sound system and for joining in with his doghouse bass. It was fun to have Alan’s wife, fiddler Michelle Kaminsky, join me in the marathon final eight-tune set. My special praise extends to the CMW students who added the most important ingredient—their enthusiastic participation. Hee Haw! -EmmaLee Holmes-Hicks, Fellow
The February edition of Tricia Tunstall and Eric Booth's monthly publication about the growing El Sistema-inspired movement in the United States can be downloaded here.
I just returned from ten days in Cuba. The official purpose of the trip, according to my general license from the U.S. Treasury Department, was to research music education for children and roles for community musicians in Cuba.
It was easy to find music in Cuba. In clubs, restaurants, hotels, and on the plazas and street corners of Old Havana a visitor hears the intoxicating rhythms of Afro-Cuban jazz. Percussion—an amazing variety of drums, bells, sticks, and instruments I couldn’t name—drive the music
and dancing like the erotic and energetic rhumba often accompanies the music.
We visited an afterschool program for students in elementary and what the Cubans call secondary (equivalent to our junior high) schools and every boy there told us he wanted to be a musician. The older boys sang for us, what they called fusion music, which to my ear was Cuban Hip-Hop.
Younger boys played percussion with a teacher who sang.
We found an Institute of Music but did not find any classical music performances.
The Borowsky family from Baltimore, who bill themselves as The American Virtuosi, were traveling with us, carrying a cello and violin and searching out pianos and keyboards.
They arranged to play Beethoven, Chopin, de Falla, and Gershwin in the Havana cathedral, at a senior citizens center, at a home for young children from troubled families, and other venues, and found enthusiastic Cuban audiences. At clubs, Emanuel Borowsky had only to take his violin out of its case and the local musicians would invite him to improvise with them.
Still, I was eager to learn about music education for children and careers for community musicians, and I visited the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) the Cuban conservatory for advanced students in music, dance, theater, visual and media arts. Fidel Castro had such high priorities for the institution that he personally selected the campus, a luxurious former country club on the outskirts of Havana. The onetime golf course is now grassy knolls where students and visitors can relax, and famed architects were commissioned to build the facilities for each of the schools. ISA trains the dancers who go on to the famed Ballet National de Cuba, the players for the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Cuba, and the actors for the Teatro National de Cuba. The schools were not in session so we did not hear a student performance, but we had an audience with the director of ISA and were able to ask questions.
Venezuela is Cuba’s largest trading partner—supplying crucial oil and gas in return for doctors, literacy experts, and biotech—so after hearing an introduction to the ISA, I asked whether El Sistema, the Venezuelan program of music education, had also been imported from Venezuela. The director was familiar with El Sistema, and answered that no, Cuba did not follow the Venezuelan model, but instead had its own El Sistema. She explained that all education in Cuba is free, from elementary and secondary schools which are compulsory through high schools, universities, and graduate programs. Alongside the regular schools, Cuba also has a second parallel school system that is exclusively for the arts. These schools are available not only in Havana and the provincial cities, but in the countryside. Admission at every level is by audition, and is highly competitive. The enrollment, she explained, is a pyramid, with many students admitted at the elementary level, and fewer at each succeeding level. The system culminates with ISA, which provides conservatory-level training to the very best students in each of the arts. No other area of education or achievement, not even athletics or sciences, are recognized with special schools like the system of arts schools. The music students in these schools, and at ISA, study only classical music, though some may later end up in careers in jazz or other genres.
I asked about music for students who were not at the level to attend the special schools, and she explained that the regular schools include some music at the elementary level. She did not elaborate, and I did not pursue the question. Cuba is a highly productive society with some remarkable achievements: free education and health care, the highest literacy (99.8%) in the western hemisphere, life expectancy and health statistics that dwarf those of the U.S., and remarkable achievements in biotech, agriculture, and other fields. But it remains a poor country, hampered by the long-standing American embargo and the bureaucratic restraints of a centrally planned economy, dependent on outside suppliers for essentials like fuel, and with a narrowly-based economy that is vulnerable to external events like the collapse of the Soviet Union. The limited resources of Cuba cannot afford universal education in the arts, and they have chosen to concentrate their arts education efforts on elites—dancers, actors, musicians, film-makers, and artists who will perform with the national companies and teach at the highest level.
There are few young children playing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star on violins, but the streets and schools in Cuba are still full of music, and a lucky visitor can be treated, as my wife Heather was, to a serenade by one of the original members of the Buena Vista Social Club.
