Jill Pearlman talks to the acclaimed composer and clarinetist in anticipation of his multi-day residency at Community MusicWorks. Event information can be found here.

Kinan Azmeh is an existential wanderer and a supreme musician who finds homes around the world. He was riding the New York subway, just back from a musical tour in China, when he described the genesis of a piece he’ll perform, along with the MusicWorks Collective, during his upcoming residency at Community MusicWorks.   

Azmeh’s composition The Fence, The Rooftop, and the Distant Sea began with a moment. Years ago, Azmeh was sitting on a rooftop in Beirut, Lebanon. He was staring out past a fence at the distant sea. As his mind skimmed the waves, he entertained a series of images from Damascus, the hometown he’d been separated from. How far was home, or how close? He used a mental map to reconstruct ways of getting from his parents’ house to the opera house, where the traffic lights would be, which corners were where. Later, he composed music for the four-sectioned piece in which two characters turn over the complex notions of what is home, when you have it, when you lose it, how you recreate or reconstitute it.

“In the beginning of the piece, the search for home is complicated and fraught,” he says. “As the music continues, one realizes the best are simplest memories; the music ends almost in the form of a lullaby.”

It’s an extraordinary and consoling resolution that he shares in concerts for audiences widely and happily varied – at refugee camps for Syrian and other displaced people, at schools, at prestigious spots like Carnegie Hall.  Azmeh’s musical meditations on home/not home have been the product of discontinuity, years of reflection, radical turns of life both by choice and by fate. 

Born in 1976, Azmeh began studying clarinet at age six in Damascus. After studies in high school, he left Syria to study at Juilliard School in New York. His musical reach was always inclusive. He was at home with classical greats: “Bach, Mozart and Brahms weren’t staples on the Syrian radio. But as a child I drank it in.  Mozart is equally mine. It didn’t matter if he was Austrian or German, he was Syrian too.” In New York, he won prizes for virtuoso playing, performed with the Syrian National orchestra, Daniel Baremboim’s West-Eastern Divan orchestra, Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road. He plays with City Band, a consortium of creative musicians who cross borders and integrate different musical genres. 

“Bach, Mozart and Brahms weren’t staples on the Syrian radio. But as a child I drank it in. Mozart is equally mine. It didn’t matter if he was Austrian or German, he was Syrian too.”

When the Syrian uprising began, it caused Azmeh tremendous suffering and an inability to return home. The pressure crushed his creative juices: he couldn’t pick up the clarinet for a year. “What was going on was way deeper than the music I was trying to make. The need for the arts was too complicated for me to address, no less reflect on.”  

Azmeh eventually came back to his own tool for self-expression — his playing and composing.  “I decided to use it as loudly as possible. Even though I realize it’s a soft form and I realize the limitations of it.”

The haunting refrain, “What is home?” came up again in 2017. Azmeh found himself unable to return to his adopted country, United States, when President Trump issued a travel ban on Syrians, and he was on tour. He felt the outrage, double sting, and fear of being exiled again. This was an irony for someone like Azmeh, who believes so staunchly in the openness of cultures, the shared vocabularies of music. “I don’t see barriers or much difference between musical genres.  Of course there are different musical vocabularies, but at heart, it’s all the same.”  

Essentially, Kinan Azmeh feels most at home when he’s playing music, and the powerful emotion he conveys through the heart of his instrument. The clarinet is close in sound to the human voice, and Azmeh’s playing is informed by familiar folk musics, for instance, klezmer, Greek, Turkish, big band jazz.  He can blow off the roof or go silky and soulful. Listen to the meditative care with which he describes playing a wind instrument: “When I play one note, I feel the reed vibrate. There is sound coming out of silence. Every time I play I’m giving birth to something. I’m fighting silence when I start breathing, then when the breath stops, the sound stops.”  

Ultimately, Azmeh’s immersion in music and experience of exploring identity has led to wisdom in liberating oneself from strictures. He tells a story of escaping labels: “First I was called a young clarinetist from Damascus. Then when I wasn’t young, I was a clarinetist. Then a musician from Damascus, then a Syrian musician. The next step would be a musician. Yo-Yo Ma said to me, ‘there’s just one additional step to take: you become a human.'”

Interview by Jill Pearlman

Jill Pearlman is a Providence-based poet and arts journalist and a CMW board member. She writes a blog about art, politics, and aesthetics at jillpearlman.com

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The Events:

Panel Discussion: Music in Times of Conflict 
with Kinan Azmeh and guests
This community conversation, presented in partnership with the Providence Public Library, links the concert to the ongoing Syrian crisis. The panel features composers Azmeh and Kareem Roustom along with representatives from Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island, which provides ongoing support to Syrian refugees in Rhode Island. PPL’s Programs & Exhibitions Director Christina Bevilacqua will moderate.

Thursday, February 28 at 5 pm
Brown University, Grant Recital Hall
105 Benevolent Street, Providence
This event is free. Register here:
https://voices-from-syria-panel-discussion.eventbrite.com

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Community Concert: A Celebration of Middle Eastern Culture
with the MusicWorks Collective, Kinan Azmeh, and guests
This event is co-sponsored by Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island and brings together the music and food of the Middle East in celebration. Join us before the concert for a community dinner!

Friday, March 1
Dinner at 6pm, Concert at 7pm
¡CityArts!
891 Broad Street, Providence
This event is free. No reservations are necessary.

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*
Voices from Syria: MusicWorks Collective with Kinan Azmeh
This culminating concert features performances of works for strings and clarinet by Kinan Azmeh, including the piece The Fence, The Rooftop, and the Distant Sea, along with works by composers Kareem Roustom and Wang Lu.

*THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT*
Call 401-861-5650 if you would like to be put on a waiting list for tickets.

Saturday, March 2 at 7:30pm
Granoff Center, Martinos Auditorium
Brown University
154 Angell Street, Providence

In the spring of 1803, the Afro-European violinist George Bridgetower arrived in Vienna and took the city by storm with his daring and brilliant virtuosity, oversized personality, and zest for the city’s famous aristocratic evening parties.

Prince Karl Lichnowsky, the passionate and loyal patron of Ludwig van Beethoven, introduced the visiting celebrity to the composer and the two became fast friends. Many a bottle of wine and pint of Viennese grog were shared between Bridgetower and Beethoven, along with a tremendous amount of respect for each other’s art.

Beethoven had been sketching a new violin sonata and was eager to perform with Bridgetower, so a concert was arranged: May 22^nd would see the premiere of his Violin Sonata, Op. 47. In the end, the concert was delayed for two days as Beethoven hastily finished the expansive first movements. To further expedite the sonata’s completion, the composer used a discarded finale from an earlier violin sonata as the final movement.

As the legend goes, the ink had not yet dried on the piece and Bridgetower was forced to sight-read over Beethoven’s shoulder for the early morning performance.

What was created in great haste was a work that was unprecedented in its virtuosity, length, and dramatic impact. While many musicologists point to the third symphony of Beethoven’s, the so-called Eroica symphony, as the ushering in of the Romantic Period in western music, the Violin Sonata, Op. 47 ushered in the language and scope of the Eroica symphony.

While the sonata should be rightly be titled “Bridgetower,” the violinist and composer had a falling out shortly after the premiere. As the story goes, the pair were out drinking and Bridgetower made a disparaging remark about a woman that Beethoven admired and the dedication to Bridgetower was angrily retracted. Beethoven then hastily and randomly dedicated the sonata to the French violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer, whom he had met in Vienna in 1798. Kreutzer wanted nothing to do with the sonata as he was thoroughly baffled by the work and declined to learn it or perform it.

But the name stuck.

–Jesse Holstein, Violinist
Associate Director/Senior Resident Musician

Join us this Thursday, February 21 to hear violinist Jesse Holstein perform the Kreutzer Sonata with guest pianist Jeff Louie. Also, violinist Tessa Sacramone performs Brahms’ touching Regenlied Sonata.

Johannes Brahms: Sonata No. 1, Op. 78 G Major
Ludwig van Beethoven: Violin Sonata No. 9 (“Kreutzer” Sonata)

Thursday, February 21 at 7pm
RISD Museum, Grand Gallery
20 N. Main Street, Providence
Admission to the museum and concert is free

“Ms. Lisa! I’m writing a story, and you’re in it!” 

Amid the hubbub of our routine Daily Orchestra Program dismissal, I heard this voice emerge somewhere near me. I looked to see one of our young cellists, Mariam, smiling and enthusiastic as usual, awaiting my response to her announcement.

Admittedly, the first question that crossed my mind was whether I was a good guy or a bad guy in this story, but I think in the moment I responded to her with something like “Oh really?! That sounds so interesting. I’d love to read it sometime.” Thanks to the convenience of modern technology I was able to write down my email address for Mariam, and sure enough a few days later, a story about a fox appeared in my inbox. 

Mariam’s story, shared below, is not only entertaining, it also offers a small glimpse inside the Daily Orchestra Program, as seen from the perspective of one of its students, with a little imagination thrown in for good measure. And thankfully the teachers are not the villains. The Daily Orchestra Program makes its appearance in the Middle section of the story, but I share the entire story here because it’s well worth a full read-through.

–Lisa Barksdale, CMW Resident Musician

Exotic Pet
by Mariam

“Ahhhh…” I thought as I slept through the morning.

“WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP!” My little brother (Raphael) yelled in my ear. He just had to wake me up.

“TODAY’S A SPECIAL ONE!!!”
 
“What makes this day special?” I asked as I walked to the bathroom.

“Mommy bought us a fox!”

“Ha ha,” I chuckled sarcastically. But when i ate my breakfast, and was leaving, a big, orange, fox named Stella, jumped right on me. “AWW!!!” I admired. “Look at that cutie!”

But then Stella took right off towards school. “Hey!” I shouted. I chased her all the way to school, were I got there right on time.

“MARIAM…” I knew that voice; it was Ms.Strattner.

“S s sorry m m Ms.Strattner.”

“WHY IS THERE A MUTT IN HERE?” Ms.Strattner shouted.

“I was just chasing her when..”

“NO excuses!”

But Stella had other plans. She wrote: “Ms. Strattner is sooooo sassy ooooo ”, on the whiteboard. Everyone laughed.

“Oh no!” I thought.

And then Ms.Strattner already saw it. “I think you will be losing your dojo party, for the whole week, miss.”

“Back to class, everyone!” Shouted Ms.Williams. But math wasn’t so bad. Ms. Johnson was starting a new unit on negative numbers. “So class, what is 22-33?”

A few people raised their hands but Stella shot right to the whiteboard and instead, wrote the square root of 16.0000000. Everyone’s jaw dropped down like a falling meteor.

“Who’s fox is this?” Ms. Johnson asked. I raised my hand and she immediately said: “This fox is brilliant! She is my new helper for the rest of the day.” I was so relieved to get her out of the classroom I almost fainted!  

After school, the chase was still on. I chased Stella all the way to music. “Grr!!” I shouted. But there was a bunch of fragile instruments. So I carefully stepped into the room; tip toe tip toe.

But then Ms. Tessa came right in front of me. “Mariam, I’m gonna need you to go in line,” she said calmly. “But uhhh…”

I was trying to make an excuse to go in there because she will never believe me that a fox is in her rental room for orchestra. So I said; “Ms. Lisa said that I could help her set up the room.”

“Oh, I’m sorry Mariam, go in.” My orchestra teachers always say things calmly because they are very nice.

As I entered the room, Ms. Lisa said,”Why are you in the room?”

Now I had to tell them the truth. “There’s a crazy fox in here!”

“Mariam, you can tell us your funny jokes after music, ok?” Ms. Tessa whispered. 

But Stella Just did parkour on the instruments.

“Woah!” Amelia and Ariella shouted together (they’re twins).

“What did you do Mariam?” shouted Shalom with that funny accent she always uses.

“Oh my goodness!” shrieked Serena. “My ‘ship has evolved! Well maybe evolved. Mariam, can your fox be apart of our ‘ship?”

“Maybe…” I replied.

“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, protect the instruments!!!” Said Ms. Tessa. “That animal maybe has been in the forest! It might get us a disease!”

“Or the animal might just need to get back to its habitat,” said Ms. Lisa.

“Wait,” I said. I’ll keep a hold of Stella.”

“With what?”

“With…” I was stumped. But then I looked and found… “This cage!” “Ok!” “That will do!” So I put Stella in the cage.

“Everyone, enter music quietly,” whispered Ms.Tessa.

So we found the pulse of the music then went on to playing a piece of music but while we were doing that, Stella broke out of the cage, went to CMW (Community Music Works (the program that I do to play the cello)) office and took one of the very small paper cellos they made and ran back. As she interrupted the class, she played a very beautiful song.

“Mariam, is this your fox?” Ms. Lisa asked curiously. “If it is,” she continued.

“It is.” I responded.

“Then…. she is brilliant!” she shouted. “She will help me and Ms. Tessa teach!”

“Whatever you say, Ms. Lisa..” I was very nervous then but, Stella did great! A little pushy but, great! After music, I ran off to my friend (Sophia)’s house. “I hope you get that red panda off your arm!” I hollered. Then I went to my other friend (Michael)’s house. “I hope you can solve your talking tiger problem!”

After that, I was exhausted. I went straight to bed but Stella was in my face. “Seriously?” But then Stella ran off and almost knocked down and my mom was on the phone under the tree. “Watch out!” I shrieked and caught the tree.

“We have to get that fox out of here!” My mom yelled.

“But, even though she gets in trouble, I still like her.” I whispered. Suddenly I got an idea. “We can build a transporter!” (A transporter is something I made up that it is a very long tube and a little door at the end and a lot of space at the beginning.) So we made the transporter and it successfully worked! So now a days, I can visit her and she can go to the forest (where she lived), whenever she wants with no problem. So, me, Stella, and my family lived a normal life until we found the wolf!

But that story is for another time.

THE END.

Mariam, the author of “Exotic Pet,” will perform with the Daily Orchestra Program on Saturday for the CMW Student Performance Party.

Stella the Fox has not yet been confirmed as a performer.

Student Performance Party
Saturday, January 19 at 2pm
Calvary Baptist Church
747 Broad Street, Providence
Map and directions here
Admission is free; Bring a dish to share for the potluck!

The Sonata for Violin and Piano by César Franck was originally written in 1886 for the violinist Eugène Ysaÿe, and presented to him on the day of his wedding (which,  after a quick rehearsal with a pianist friend, he performed for all of his wedding guests!). Ysaÿe was a champion of this piece for 40 years afterwards and, not only has it long outlived the violinist’s career, it is a piece that has become a revered and central piece of the violin repertoire.

This piece holds a special place in my heart, as it was a piece that I learned and studied with my late teacher, Eric Rosenblith.  I learned many things from Rosenblith, but one of the larger takeaways that has stayed with me was the utter commitment to exploring and understanding the composer’s intention and attempting to bring that to life in the performance of a piece. Rosenblith lived and breathed every piece he played and always tried to understand a piece to its very core. I had the chance to hear him perform the Franck Sonata several times while I was a student and I strongly associate this piece with him, even as my own interpretation of it has continued to evolve over the years.

Why is it so great? There are exquisitely beautiful and heart-wrenching melodies in both violin and piano lines throughout the piece; also the way the two lines interweave and play off each other is frankly, brilliant. My friend and collaborator Eliko and I have been talking about how different this piece feels from pieces of the more Germanic Romantic era composers like Brahms, Rachmaninov or Chopin because of the special way Franck writes and uses harmony.  The piece is in cyclic structure, which simply is a compositional technique where movements are tied together by common thematic material. Themes return in successive movements throughout the piece, though often slightly varied.  The way that Franck brings back themes whether in direct quotes or in shades of the original is ingenious, and ties the whole piece together.

While there are very clear emotional climaxes in the piece and a strong form and structure, there is also a layering that is nuanced and subtle and it calls to mind the qualities of French Impressionism: blurred, soft edges and colors in so many hues that you almost don’t notice or realize how the colors have changed as you look at an image.

Franck is able to capture an awesome range of emotional states–from the most innocent and ruminative to the brightest joy and passion to the dejection and hopelessness of our darkest moments.

In that way the sonata captures something so familiar to the human experience–where you can encounter the most carefree optimism, joy, and innocence and then in an instant be struck down or caught by the unexpected storms that are inevitably thrown our way. 

A special quality of musical study is understanding the lineages that are passed along by our teachers. For a time, Rosenblith studied with the great Polish violinist Bronislaw Huberman, who himself was a contemporary of Ysaye’s. Huberman was known to have called the Franck Sonata “a metaphysical piece,” which captures another dimension—that while the music has a great human and emotional range, perhaps its meaning also lies in its simple wholeness.

–Minna Choi

Join us Thursday as Minna and Eliko perform this piece as part of our popular Sonata Series Event. Also on the program: Violist Chloë Kline and Eliko Akahori perform Marcelle Soulage’s Viola Sonata Op. 25.

Thursday, January 17 at 7pm
RISD Museum, Grand Gallery
Admission to the museum and concert is free

 

According to a recent survey, almost half of our population feels socially disconnected.

Can this disconnection be remedied? And can a music program be a catalyst for connection in one’s own neighborhood?

Every day the staff at Community MusicWorks asks these questions.

As we begin our third decade, we see our work in music and social justice making transformation in big and small ways. At our opening concert and picnic, students, families and community members listened together as the MusicWorks Collective performed a rediscovered work by African-American composer Florence Price.

A woman passing by with bags of groceries joined the gathering. She turned to me as the audience applauded. “I was overcome by this music,” she said. “I needed this today.”

Small moments of connection like this can be powerful. In a larger sense, we’re seeing how our organization’s work in the West End of Providence has made profound and lasting change:

in our students, making accomplishments as musicians and developing their voices as thoughtful citizens of the world;

in our Resident Musicians, as the MusicWorks Collective draws larger audiences and programs repertoire that represents all voices;

in CMW’s MusicWorks Network, as a national cohort of CMW-inspired and like-minded programs work together to align arts education with anti-oppression practices;

and in our audience members, who engage deeply with the music and the performers to create heartfelt experiences in real time, together.

How does music transform lives? Every day Community MusicWorks asks – and answers – this question in lessons, community discussions, and performances.

Music transforms by creating meaning in moments of connection, and by bringing us together in community.

And isn’t that something we all need today?

We’re looking for you to join this collective effort. Your gift to Community MusicWorks is the catalyst. Together, we can bring the power of music to students, families, and audiences.

Together, we can make the connection.

Sincerely,

 

Kelly Reed
Managing Director

 

 

Where did the idea for Saturday’s Fellows Quartet concert come from? Practically speaking, it grew from a decision made earlier this year: my colleague Luke & I decided to organize two “fellows” programs this season, with CMW’s blessing. I’d design a small, intimate show in the winter, and he’d plan a quartet recital for the spring, in a larger, more traditional concert space. That’s how we ended up with a December 1st date in Jori Ketten’s beautiful gallery space at 159 Sutton St (7pm! Don’t miss it!).

How did we arrive at this odd mix of notes? Scandinavian folk tunes. Sacred music by a 12th-century mystic. A short, secular tune by a Medieval songster. An aphorism by a severe Hungarian modernist (“by” is a stretch – stay tuned). Four minutes of Mozart. Two minutes of Bach. What a mess! Why a mess?

I can’t say for sure, but my working hypothesis is that this mess came from two unrelated ideas. Two ideas that Ms. Young – my high school history teacher – would have called “Visits to the Planet Non-Sequitur.”

***

First – it came from Schubert, even though there won’t be any Schubert on our program (the atmosphere’s nice on Non-Sequitur, eh?). There’s a moment toward the end of Schubert’s Der Lindenbaum** that I can’t get out of my head. It’s not particularly unusual or profound, really. Just a little expansion of an E Major arpeggio, slipped in between the singer’s final statements (“du fändest Ruhe dort / you’d find peace there”). It shouldn’t be much, but it breaks my heart – a world of regret, in three notes. An arpeggio can be a throwaway gesture – one extra, sugary flower on a wedding cake. Or it can make you cry.

***

Second – it came from a winter day in 2011, when I was thinking about quitting the violin. At the moment, I was preparing a Brahms sonata for a recital – the first one, the Regenlied, it’s a good one, take a listen – and conducting weekly Vibrato Wars, in which my teacher and I would argue about how many notes one should wiggle, and whether the wiggling should continue from note to note uninterrupted, and on and on and on. Did beauty come from the wiggling? What about meaning – did that come from the wiggling, too? I was pretty burnt out from the Vibrato Wars. I didn’t know how I wanted a violin to sound, but I knew it wasn’t the way I was being asked to play. My teacher was and is a brilliant musician, and I am full of admiration for her – but I just couldn’t realize the sounds she wanted from me, because I didn’t believe in them.

And then, entirely by chance, I pressed “play” on a short little iTunes preview, a 30-second clip from a recording by German violinist Isabelle Faust & Russian pianist Alexander Melnikov, and everything changed. They played the opening notes of the Regenlied on an old-fashioned, 19th-century piano, and on simple strings made of gut. Here was a sound that had texture as well as color – it was flawed, and vulnerable, and pure. There was some vibrato – some wiggling – but not much. It was like someone telling a simple story, and telling it beautifully. The words were plain, but the delivery – the grain of the speaker’s voice… a pause here, a sigh there – couldn’t have been more subtle or powerful. That little clip gave me lots of hope, and I listened to it again and again and again, and I decided to keep playing the violin.

***

The pieces we’re going to share with you will be full of moments like that little gasp in Der Lindenbaum. They will lend themselves to that unvarnished sound – sweet and raw – that I first heard seven years ago.

You’ll hear most of Wood Works, a collection of traditional Scandinavian folk tunes, beautifully arranged by the Danish String Quartet. These are storied pieces that sound simultaneously plain and complex, ancient and contemporary, in the way that folk music often does. My favorite is the unassuming, slow Waltz after Lasse in Lyby – you can hear a clip of that on CMW’s Instagram, if you want a taste…

Throughout the night, we’ll drift in and out of the world of Wood Works, visiting disparate yet related voices from a millennia of musical history. You’ll hear a gorgeous transcription of O virtus Sapiente (“O power of Wisdom”), by the 12th-century visionary, Hildegard von Bingen. You’ll hear a lovely, lilting tune – Rose, Liz, Printemps, Verdure – by everyone’s favorite 14th-century celebrity, Guillaume de Machaut. And you’ll hear three of my favorite things…

One, an achingly sweet little melody from Bach’s keyboard Capriccio, BWV 992. If you’ve seen Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name, you’ll recognize this – it’s Elio’s serenade to Oliver on a lazy, summer day.

Two, a magical Andante from one of Mozart’s Divertimenti for string instruments. This is the perfect example of Mozart’s magic, in my eyes. We start with a graceful, predictable dance, and it seems you know how it’ll play out. All it takes is a single chromatic inflection, though, to send us to the world of opera in miniature – as beautiful an arioso as you’ll ever hear… but don’t blink, or you’ll miss it.

Third, the conclusion of György Kurtág’s Officium breve in memoriam Andreœ Szervánsky. I worship Kurtág’s music – check out his orchestral masterpiece Stele/ΣΤΉΛΗ, if you’re new to his art – but the irony here is that the Officium breve’s concluding page isn’t even by Kurtág. Rather, it’s a quotation from a string orchestra piece by Szervánsky, the Hungarian composer memorialized herein. The Kurtág/Szervánsky wasn’t included on the Voyager Golden Record (it hadn’t been written yet…), but I like to imagine that it was. I picture that tiny minute of music hurtling through space, a kind of “Interstellar Call.” It has all of the magic of Beethoven’s Cavatina, in twelve measures.

So, join us on Saturday night for a visit to the Planet Non-Sequitur. There’ll be some good tunes waiting to greet you.

–David Rubin, violinist, Fellows Quartet

Fellows Quartet
Saturday, December 1 at 7pm
159 Sutton Street, Providence
Get directions here

** About 17:45 into a Winterreise recording by Mark Padmore & Paul Lewis, if you’re curious – https://youtu.be/soDkFNsQMFA.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sebastian Ruth reports on his recent trip to the Southwest for the Culture/Shift conference:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ashley Frith, CMW’s MusicWorks Network Fellow, and I traveled to Albuquerque to attend Culture/Shift and shared CMW’s deep history of prioritizing education for liberation in a presentation titled  Freedom, Equity, and Music: Music Learning as Emancipatory Pedagogy. 

We began by giving an overview of the ways we bring Brazilian educator Paolo Freire’s philosophies into our practice in order to have students feel a stronger sense of agency over their own learning and a voice in what they learn, highlighting this quote from Freire:

“The unfinished character of human beings and the transformational character of reality necessitate that education be an ongoing activity.”

Ashley and I discussed ways that music education can promote freedom and equity through clear intention, thinking about repertoire and methods, and ensuring that students bring themselves fully into the experience for maximum reciprocity. Ashley presented on the project she’ll be sharing as she travels to the MusicWorks Network cohort organizations this year, centered on developing antiracist practice through self-love exercises.

It was a rich, exciting convening:  full of hope, deep reflection, action, and purpose. As Adam Horowitz, Chief Instigator (all USDAC people get to invent their own titles, and mine on the national cabinet is the Secretary of Music and Society!) called out at the final ceremony: “The USDAC is not about a government agency coming in, it is about our agency coming out!”

–Sebastian Ruth

Want to get involved? Join an outpost, become a citizen artist, and download the many awesome resources at USDAC.us

 

It gives me comfort to know that even a masterful composer like Chopin was sometimes uncertain about the quality of his work. I’ve been engrossed in his letters from later in life, where he mentions his struggles in a letter to his family: “Sometimes I am satisfied with my violoncello sonata, sometimes not. I throw it into the corner, then take it up again…When one does a thing, it appears good, otherwise one would not write it. Only later comes reflection, and one discards or accepts the thing. Time is the best censor, and patience a most excellent teacher.” It seems that in the end Chopin accepted his Sonata for Piano and Cello, since the following year he submitted it to Breitkopf and Härtel for publication.

Frédéric Chopin is known mostly for his many great compositions for piano; in fact, he only wrote a handful of pieces in his life that include another instrument, three of which were for cello and piano. This might mean that the composer had an affinity for the sound of the cello or felt somehow that it was a fitting voice for what he had to say. In this case it was what he had to say at the end of his life – the piece was one of the last he composed, and it was premiered in Paris in his last public performance before his death at age 39.  He performed the piece with his dear friend, cellist August Franchomme, whose friendship may also have been Chopin’s inspiration for the sonata.

It could be that Chopin had so little experience writing for other instruments that he struggled so much to complete the piece. There are pages upon pages of sketches for the sonata. This was a piece he really wanted to get right, and as much as he worked and rewrote and revised it, he still never seemed to be quite certain about the outcome. In fact, in the premiere, he and Franchomme performed only the last three of the four movements, reportedly because friends had criticized the first movement in a preview performance in a local home. Friends! Sometimes friends can be wrong – of all the movements I find the first to be exceptionally personal, reflective, tragic, and brilliantly written.

I have to say Chopin’s struggles with the sonata paid off – he worked diligently to mold every detail, and as a result each movement is beautifully written, rich, with soaring and tender melodies, and at other times searching or tempestuous.  Chopin’s character is reflected in letters to his friends, family and colleagues, where he shows a fascination for science and all things new and interesting in the world, an appreciation for beauty, a tenderness for loved ones and a wistfulness for better days.

–Adrienne Taylor, cellist

Join us on Thursday, October 18 at 7pm as cellist Adrienne Taylor performs Chopin with pianist Andrei Baumann in our Sonata Series at the RISD Museum Grand Gallery.

More information on our calendar.

 

 

Artistry, education, community, dialogue: the DNA of Community MusicWorks. In our 22nd season we continue to braid these themes together in new and thoughtful ways in
our ongoing work to make musicianship a vital part of public life.

Over the past 22 years, CMW has engaged in investigating how musical practice and a commitment to social justice align. This has included an examination of our teaching practices and the ways in which we support young people to have agency in their own learning and in developing authentic voice. It also means recognizing that the choice of music we play is meaningful: it matters who created the music, what cultures, styles, and experiences we represent, it matters that our students are encouraged to develop their own voices as composers, improvisers, and arrangers of music, and it matters how, as an organization, we continue to ask questions at all levels — from our student programs to our concert season — about which voices are heard.

It matters that we  —  performers and audience  —  create meaningful musical experiences in real time, together.

Last year, we programmed nearly half the concert season with works by women composers. In our 22nd season, I am thrilled with the range and variety of voices we will present over  the course of the season  —  from Osvaldo Golijov to Gabriella Lena Frank, to a performance of music by Florence Price, whose works are finally receiving the attention they deserve, to a special residency collaboration with Syrian composer and clarinetist Kinan Azmeh in partnership with Brown University and the Dorcas International Institute, to a new work by composer Kareem Roustom, to a program centered around Bartók that includes several informal opportunities for music and discussion in pubs ( Bartók = bar talk), to a season finale featuring the return of music by our friend and former colleague Jessie Montgomery. Throughout this year, your spirited presence as audience members will be essential for bringing these voices to life.

Our students finished the last season with an extraordinary finale of El Pueblo Unido by Sergio Ortega, complete with original verses they had written around the theme of what the world can look like if we come together around common cause. In Season 22, we continue to develop projects that bring our students’ hearts, minds and voices to the stage as we explore artistry in their communities through complex musical projects.

Our commitment to extraordinary artistry, excellence in education, and engaged community define Community MusicWorks’ mission in the city of Providence. In this 22nd season, we bring all these elements together in celebration of the joy of music-making and community building, and it wouldn’t be complete without you.

We’re excited to have you with us!

— Sebastian Ruth, Founder & Artistic Director