In an era when newspapers are laying off critics, many classical music organizations are proving to be more innovative and resilient than ever. The critic's traditional role, on the other hand - to experience a performance and report on that experience - has not changed much since the 19th century.What should the purpose of a contemporary music critic be? Should he provide a context for the reader, placing the repertoire into a historical framework? Should she report on her own opinion of new work, and if so, what should her background be? What kind of expertise should we expect? And what is the overall purpose of a music review: to report on culture in the community, to drive audiences to (or away from) certain performances, to provide an outlet for the critic's erudition?
Camerata Pacifica wants your thoughts and input! Over the next 6 weeks, we'll be hosting a discussion here in the Listener Forum. On April 14, we'll be hosting a Martini Club event at Roy in Santa Barbara. The topic of the evening will be the same - what is the music critic's role in the 21st century? Moderated by board member David Robertson, panelists will include NancyBell Coe from Music Academy of the West, Andrea Moore from Camerata Pacifica, oboist Nicholas Daniel and Charles Donelan from the Santa Barbara Independent. We hope to see you there, and to hear from you in the meantime.
[ 1 comment ] ( 76 views ) | permalink
Well, we're back on terra americana, and I'm happy to say the tour was a huge success.
We had great audiences who knew how to listen (starting with that fantastic LA horde on April 22); great musicians who, for the most part, took the vagaries of touring with a small group with grace and good humor; and responsive, engaged press.
While staff members took a few days off after our return (I slept quite a bit, having never really gotten over jetlag while on tour) some of the musicians went straight into rehearsal for other things the night they arrived in the US. By now I think we're all back to normal, whatever that is.
Now we're looking ahead a few days to the last concerts of the season! Hard to believe. These will be lovely shows, featuring the principal piano quartet in works by Schumann, Grieg and Mozart.
I will continue to post pictures from the tour from time to time; until then, it's been a pleasure bringing you the news and I hope to see you at a concert in the next week or so.
-Andrea
Brass on tour
The happy Mr. Spence!
[ add comment ] ( 17 views ) | permalink
Time has gone by really quickly on this tour! We've played Dublin and London and have only Belfast to go.
Dublin, the city felt really familiar when we got back there on Wednesday, having wandered through its center on Sunday and Monday. The concert at the National Concert Hall Wednesday night was well-attended, and once again the audience was incredibly receptive. Ian Wilson has been at many of these concerts and the audiences seem especially happy to have a composer in their midst. I don't know what programming is like in Ireland and the UK, and I read about a lot of new music over here, but I don't think it's as prevalent as it is in the US, and I definitely don't think it's as integrated into mainstream chamber music programming.
The Dublin concert also yielded a pretty amazing review, which you can read above.
On Thursday, most of us piled into cabs and went to Áras an Uachtaráin, the official residence of the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese. (After a week in Ireland, I can almost pronounce the name of the place, but only by ear - not at all by looking at it on paper. Phonics, anyone??) Each of us shook hands with her and had our picture taken (those will post soon), followed by tea and coffee. It was a pretty unusual opportunity - meeting a head of state, through chamber music no less - and she was welcoming and gracious. As a total outsider to Irish culture (not a drop of Irish blood as far as I know), I've been amazed at the pride people here feel in the country and what it stands to produce and accomplish in the 21st century. It's a very nice thing to witness, actually, and I've found the idea of that pride infectious - where this country has been in comparison to where it is and where it's going, is something we can all take pride in.
So, tonight the ensemble played at Wigmore Hall. I've heard about this place for years, but now I understand why it really is one of the best chamber music halls in the world. I've been listening to this program for 10 days, and I felt tonight as though I was hearing something entirely new. When Warren came in for the first time in the Harbison, the sound was enormous - it reminded me of those old Memorex print ads, with the guy in the chair being blown backwards by the sound. You can hear absolutely everything in the hall. This was a pretty sophisticated audience, too, and they were very quiet (except for the guy with the endless rustling, who would not be deterred by fierce looks, even from Jordan Christoff), letting the musicians occupy the sonic space. The Harbison seemed especially energetic tonight, and I'd be surprised if many in the house had heard it before - fairly recent American music probably doesn't get a lot of play here. The audience seemed completely entranced by the Brahms as well. Warren took a lot of time at the end of the piece, letting the sound fade away, but also letting the feeling of the piece dissolve organically in time, rather than bolting from the bench (Warren never bolts from the bench, but some pianists do).
But it was the Wilson that really sounded new to me tonight. For the first time, I felt I was hearing how the piece goes together, hearing the different colors pop out of the brass and woodwinds, feeling the intensity of the strings, and also getting to feel the piece structurally. And the emotional impact, which the piece has been having on audiences throughout the tour, was especially great in a place where the musical impact could be entirely felt.
So that's it! We're off to Belfast in the early morning for our final concert, tomorrow night. Don't know that I'll check in here following that concert - we leave the next morning at 4:30 AM and I may just spend those last few Irish hours in the pub.
AM
[ add comment ] ( 17 views ) | permalink
From the Irish Times:
Catherine Leonard, Camerata Pacifica
NCH, Dublin
Induce a dozen and more high-ranking soloists to take time out of their busy global schedules to give chamber-music concerts in California, and you have the miracle of modern artistic organisation that is Camerata Pacifica.
Three of its members happen to be Irish: clarinettist Carol McGonnell, principal violinist Catherine Leonard, and principal flautist and founding artistic director Adrian Spence. So too is the ensemble's associate composer, Ian Wilson. Though Camerata Pacifica is now in its 19th season, this is its first international tour, taking in the wider US, Ireland and England.
Wednesday's appearance at the National Concert Hall had also been billed as a Composer's Choice concert for Wilson. Yet, owing not least to the forcible idealism of Spence's programme notes and spoken introductions, it took on wider proportions.
It was a celebration of 10 years since the Good Friday Agreement, it was the fulfilment of lofty mission statements, and it was a powerful assertion of the relevance of contemporary composition.
Above all, it was music-making of the highest quality.
The programme, which totals barely an hour's listening, is calculated less to appeal than to challenge. John Harbison's relentlessly objective Piano Quintet (1981) creates an emotional hunger that's more than satisfied by Wilson's richly subjective Messenger (1999/2006).
Originally scored for full orchestra, this four-movement violin concerto was given its first performance by Leonard in 2001. Now condensed for 13 instruments, the latest version reduces the forces, but not their intense effectiveness.
It's a memorable piece for many reasons, but especially for strongly idiomatic solo writing that places the traditional virtuosities - gliding position changes, cantilenas, trills, double stops and dazzling passages - in newly poignant surroundings.
Wilson can be optimistic that it will be more widely taken up. How many violinists will bring the solo part nearer to perfection than Leonard does is harder to predict.
ANDREW JOHNSTONE
[ add comment ] ( 14 views ) | permalink
Yesterday, after being in Ireland for a couple of days, I finally arrived. The first days, in Dublin, were lovely, with good walks some great conversation with friends who live there. Ireland seems so easy and comfortable for an English-speaking visitor that the place doesn’t feel all that foreign.
After shaking off the worst of jet lag in Dublin, we boarded a bus for Derry. We passed by the sorts of rolling green hills you’d expect to see in Ireland, with happy sheep and cows and picturesque little towns. (At one intersection we saw four absolutely identical old houses on the corners; the bus driver explained that these were gifts from a fairness-obsessed father to his four daughters.)
In Derry our hotel was a short block away from the church-like Guildhall where we would play our first concert in Ireland. Next to the Guildhall is the old walled city of Derry, the last walled city built in Europe and one of the few places where city walls survive intact. Our bus arrived at the hotel at dusk, and even though it was rainy and darkening, Agnes Gottschewski and I were eager to see the old city, so we quickly stashed our luggage in our rooms, grabbed our umbrellas, and raced over to walk along the walls.
Stairs led us up to the top of the wall, and we walked along the top for a while, until a closed gate forced us to turn back. From the top we could see the narrow streets of the old town inside the walls, and outside the walls city lights twinkled prettily. We got back to the hotel, our cuffs and shoes a bit soggy, just in time for me to join a dinner expedition. Jordan Christoff’s research had turned up a nearby Chinese restaurant. The food was decent, and it was the first time I’ve been in a Chinese restaurant without seeing a single Chinese person. (Our waiter sounded Indian or Pakistani.)
The next morning, before rehearsal, I went back to walk the full circumference of the city walls. The rain had stopped. Even though I paused often to take pictures, it took only about half an hour. The wall is about 1.5 kilometers in diameter; these medieval towns were tiny. In places the wall is wide enough for a truck to drive along the top. Cannons bristle from various points, and trees are line some sections. At one corner of the old town is a gorgeous church, the first cathedral built in these parts after the Reformation; the sea captain who wrote “Amazing Grace” worshipped here.
It’s a lovely walk. Along the way plaques describe important features and events, and I got the impression that Derry is still celebrating victories and licking wounds that go back to the 1600s. (Maybe it’s a little like those places in the American south where people are still grumpy about the Civil War.) The city walls were never breached, though a famous siege took place here. During the Troubles, which started in Derry, a city gate might become a checkpoint that could delay and harass people on their way to work.
Derry has two names that reflect historic divisions in Northern Ireland. I think the town’s first name was Derry, but when the English settled here they renamed it Londonderry to affirm their ties to England. Which name to use? Lately, in an attempt to please, people have called it “Derry-stroke-Londonderry.” More recently a radio announcer shortened that to “Stroke City.”
Our morning rehearsal in the Guildhall was also surrounded by history. Warren Jones had been reading the beautiful stained glass windows, which include panels donated by the various craft guilds (including a panel donated by the musicians of Derry!), commemorations of the founding of the city, memorials to soldiers who fought in World War II, and a recent addition memorializing innocent victims of the Troubles.
After rehearsal six of us took a cab to the Giant’s Causeway, one of Ireland’s most famous natural sites, about an hour away on the sea. On the way we stopped to see an old ruined castle perched on a crag above the ocean. Apparently the kitchen of this castle abruptly fell into the sea one night, during a huge dinner party back in the 1700s.
At the Giant’s Causeway I was glad to breathe ocean air and walk in the sunshine between the cliffs and the water. The first part of the path reminded me of northern California, with craggy outcrops and fallen boulders. But then we came to the place that makes this site so famous. It’s easy to believe that this landscape was built by some giant: hexagonal pillars of rock rise from the ground in tightly-bound clusters, making bizarre hillocks for climbing, flagstones for walking, organ-pipe-like groupings for admiring. It’s the sort of landscape my son might build out of legos. A wide path of these hexagons reaches out into the sea, like a huge ramp. As at every other tourist site on this trip, I saw visitors lifting their digital cameras, as though making a ritual gesture to preserve the memory. Our little group did our share of documenting the Giant’s Causeway, too.
With this brief but intense experience of a uniquely beautiful and strange landscape, I finally began to feel like I was someplace.
Back in Derry in time for a short nap before the evening’s concert, I strolled to the Guildhall and had a brief chat with Kevin Murphy, who runs the concert series. I had met him years before at Apple Hill, the New Hampshire music camp that brings together musicians from conflict areas, including Northern Ireland, to make music together. Kevin has hosted the Apple Hill Chamber Players for “Playing for Peace” workshops in Derry; he is a fine example of a musician using music to help the cause of peace and understanding.
The concert at Derry, like all the performances so far, made a good connection with the audience, and this audience seemed extra friendly. I talked with audience members who were moved and impressed. Ian Wilson’s Messenger Concerto, despite its modern-sounding thorniness and its density, seems to touch people’s hearts quite consistently.
After the concert Kevin led us to a local pub where traditional Irish music is often played. The atmosphere was friendly, the crowd seemed happy. Three musicians were playing fiddle, guitar, and banjo by the front window. After a little while Adrian Spence ran to the hotel to fetch his flute so that Suzanne Duffy could sit in with the band. Suzanne plays regularly for contradances in California, and she knew most of the tunes that the Irish band was playing. She started playing slong, and it seemed to me that the energy in the pub lifted. A larger crowd gathered around the musicians, and two people started to dance.
The pub seemed to have people of all ages. One man with white hair and beard tried to tell me something, and it took me a long time to figure out that he was saying “Newport Beach.” His brother lives there, I think. Mostly I talked with our Camerata bunch, but we were surrounded by a lively welcome that, I’m told, is typical of pubs here. The music was too loud, but it didn’t matter, because the overriding atmosphere was so happy. I didn’t notice anybody attempting to be cool or concerned about appearances; this was more like a crowded family gathering than a bar scene.
The pub was festooned with artifacts: wild boar and other animal heads, unidentifiable meats hanging from the rafters along with a pig’s head wearing sunglasses, a very nice-looking bass drum and a head from another bass drum with the name of a flute band, sashes and tools and fish and plaques and memorabilia. This is the kind of place interior designers must be imitating when they try to make a bar or restaurant look homey and Irish, but somehow I think that no interior decorator was involved here. A calendar of Republican martyrs was for sale, along with “Free Derry” patches. Stickers encouraged supporting Palestine and boycotting Israel.
At one point, amid the noise of conversation and loud Irish music, I shouted to Adrian Spence, “Now we’re in Ireland!” He looked happy, holding a properly poured pint of Guinness, surrounded by colleagues who are also his friends.
--John Steinmetz
4/30/08
on the bus from Derry to Dublin
[ 2 comments ] ( 59 views ) | permalink
Calendar
