Sequenza21/

  It is easy enough to identify striking talent, even at a young age. For musically-talented performers, this often seems to set a process in motion that can lead to an unstoppable, out of control ride. Parental support and teachers’ ambitions frequently play into rising expectations and young performers are often left to fight for themselves, dealing with the stress of having to perform well at all times. Intensive training must conform to some of the highest and most competitive standards, but these are not often in sync with a teenage state of mind and can easily leave the budding artist feeling overwhelmed by an inescapable, spiraling wheel of critique and approval. 

I wonder if this is how it sometimes appeared to the young, French-Canadian born Marika Bournaki, whom I met with her boyfriend, David Aladashvili, in November of 2008, at New York’s Juilliard School cafeteria. Marika generously shared with me her thoughts on the different stages and experiences of becoming the serious artist she set out to be. This has grown into a tender friendship over the past three years, where I have followed Marika, with a distinct appreciation of the interesting young woman and maturing artist she is becoming.

Marika’s promising pianistic talent had always created a lot of attention around her, making her what she describes as “the Golden child” of her piano teacher in Montreal. This renown gave her confidence and pride in her ability to perform, as well as lots of opportunities to do just that. Laughingly she described this as turning her into a bit of a “drama queen.” 

Because she had experienced pain at the instrument, she sought out, even at 12, the help of Israeli born pianist and professor for music at the Juilliard School, Yoheved Kaplinsky. Veda, as she is affectionately called by her students, studied with Ilona Vincze-Kraus at the Israel Academy of Music and then under Irwin Freundlich at Juilliard, earning her Bachelor, Master and Doctoral degrees.  She had also studied with Brooklyn-based pianist and teacher Dorothy Taubman, whose claim to fame lay in discovering an analytical approach that facilitates the physically complex elements  in a natural piano technique; thus  helping many pianists to overcome painful injuries or limitations and gain greater freedom and precise articulation within their playing. Since 1997 Kaplinsky had been appointed head of the Juilliard Piano College Division and Artistic Director of its Pre-College Division. 

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 “Guess who this trunk used to belong to?” asks Glenn Dicterow, concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, as he leads me through the backstage rooms and hallways of Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall; his home away from home, only a New York block away.

“…..long history with the New York Phil…” he coaxes me into guessing the celebrity, whose travel companion the trunk had been before it was given to Dicterow, to hold the concertmaster’s possessions on his trips with the orchestra.

“Yes, you guessed right.” He turns back to me, “It’s finished with a red velvet interior and belonged to no other than – Leonard Bernstein.”

Since he joined the New York Philharmonic as concertmaster in 1980, Dicterow has played first fiddle under the preeminent Maestros who have served as the New York Philharmonic music directors’ guest conductors from around the world, and leading soloists.

Zubin Mehta, Kurt Masur, Lorin Maazel and now Alan Gilbert…. Here is a true collective of all singular personalities, with different temperaments and musical expectations. It can’t be an easy task to appease all of these charismatic leaders and keep one’s own integrity, leave alone one’s own sanity.

 Yet, thanks to his remarkably generous spirit, it seems that Dicterow has managed to do just that, highly successfully.

On the faculty of the Juilliard School and as acting chairman of the innovative Manhattan School of Music ‘Orchestral Performance Program’, Dicterow also follows his other vocation: Music Education.

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Being in a state of ecstasy, according to the American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, means being joyful or also enraptured.This accurately describes the vibrant atmosphere at Merkin Concert Hall’s “Ecstatic Music Festival” that opened on Martin Luther King’s Day, Marathon on January 17^th.

Many of the participating artists of the festival who will give individual concert performances at Merkin Hall throughout March 28^th were mixing with the audience during the 7-8 hours continuum of performances. And integration was a keyword, igniting sparks of enthusiasm and instilling excitement. The crowds spilled over into the lobby and out into the street, in front of the Kaufmann Center’s Upper Westside performance hub.  

As announced by the New Yorker, the festival “…provides a window into {the} movement in music {established during} the past decade, where a critical mass of young New York based composer/performers {has} been blurring the boundaries between classical and popular styles.”

But being there actually felt much more emotionally charged than the above description even comes close to.

The festival’s curator, Judd Greenstein, created a very personal feel, by choosing from what seems like a conglomerate collaboration of his own entourage.

As managing director of the (also included at the festival) NOW Ensemble, a chamber music quintet with unique instrumentation (flute, clarinet, electric guitar, double bass, and piano) and as a composer in his own right, Greenstein has also successfully figured out new music marketing possibilities and, in the process, created a revelation.

He also co-directs New Amsterdam Records, a record label and artist’s service organization based in New York City.  According to his own mission statement, he is committed to making: “music without filters, made by musicians who bring the breadth of their listening experience and the love they have for many different kinds of music into their own playing, writing and producing. It is music without walls, without an agenda, and without a central organizing principle…opening doors for artists to enter, creating new spaces for them to fill, and touching new outer edges where musics meet.”

At the festival, pianist/composer Timo Andres performed his “Everything is an Onion” from his 2010 composition: “It takes a long time to become a good composer”, as well as Charles Ive’s “The Alcotts” from Piano Sonata No.2, at the Marathon.

He is one of several performers who studied composition at Yale University. Like many of the festival participants, he is active in a broad spectrum of activities which make for a lifestyle of music. He, like many of his colleagues, likes to share his thoughts, articulated on his blog, as well as in person. We shared a coffee and a conversation in between performances.

“Like for any musician, my musical impulse is a result of many different influences. I attribute it as much to the open-mindedness of some of my mentors who guided me, as to things I discovered on my own. I grew up with my paternal grandfather listening to – then – cutting edge music of Bartok and Shostakovich and I never have to worry about the mechanics of the piano, thanks to my wonderful teacher Eleanor Hancock, who taught me during eleven years the principals of a natural piano technique, based on the research of Dorothy Taubman.“ He later also studied with Frederic Chiu and has performed avidly, specializing in contemporary music series, such as the wordless Music Series that was initiated by (le)Poisson Rouge music director Ronen Givony, as well as giving solo recitals with the momentum-gaining Metropolis Ensemble, which prompted Boston Globe critic Richard Dyer to assert:  ”New music cannot be intimidating when played with this degree of skill and zest.”

Andres’ debut album, “Shy and Mighty” released in May 2010 by Nonesuch, features ten interrelated pieces performed by Andres and co-pianist David Kaplan, another Yale graduate, who also attended the ‘Ecstatic’ marathon performance. Alex Ross in the New Yorker described the composition: Shy and Mighty “…achieves an unhurried grandeur that has rarely been felt in American music since John Adams came on the scene…more mighty than shy, {Andres} sounds like himself”. Sections of Shy and Mighty will also be performed by Andres with pianist Bred Mehldau at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall in March.

Andres is fully aware that his generation has re-enacted a long history of composers who were also performers from Mozart onwards. These artists were not only creative as musicians but also creative in managing their own careers and bringing their music to new audiences.

When he tells me he is “self-published”, he points out his knowledge of typographical work and how it helps to design a readable score. His engagement with Bookbinding and page layout has made his individual score production process, an A-Z reality. His composing and performing are two sides of the same coin.

“I could not ever give up one for the other – they inform each other; it’s a continuum”, he says. And for influential impact on his compositions he explains, “A lot of music I listen to is all electronic or integrates electronics. My music is very influenced by these musical techniques, with structures and forms looking back to Minimalism and based on repetition. Looping patterns to build musical structure always fascinated me, from the first day I heard Steve Reich’s music.”

Describing the festival and his relation to Greenberg as its curator he says: “The festival represents some of the best trends in the experimental music tradition. In a sense it is a laboratory for trying out new things in a collaborative environment, where people are open to be surprised and the only boundaries are one’s own taste. The festival represents Judd’s taste, whose compositions and general intelligence I already admired as a freshman, when he was a graduate-student. All my friends have records on his label today which certainly brought some definition to the New York musical scene.”

What the festival seems to offer in particular is a home based scene for its involved artists, creating somewhat of a new music milieu.

There is a remarkable overlap of festival- participating artists who, at the same time, are some of today’s most passionate and significant entrepreneurs of current music-business ventures.

Vicky Chow, is the classically trained pianist for the New York based eclectic contemporary sextet Bang on a Can All –Stars. In 1987 three young composers, fresh out of Yale, made their first concert into an inspiring 12 hour -marathon of new music, testing the market for their programs. In 2000 they founded the “people’s commissioning fund” that encouraged audience members to participate in the commissioning for new works. Chow also produces and curates a new music series at the Gershwin Hotel in New York City, and Bang on a Can runs a summer ‘educational’ festival for young composers, located in the Berkshires.

“Neurotic and Lonely,” a title from composer/performer Gabriel Kahane’s acclaimed “Craigslist Lieder” album recorded in 2006, brilliantly plays on this generation’s neuroses. Cynically insightful, the modern day bard presents his charming and diverse artistry, time and again putting classical Schumann or Schubert -Lieder presentations in direct rapport with contemporary ones, to great effect. In Kahane’s compositions, traditional music rings new – promoting a timeless feel for both –the old and new genres. Son of acclaimed pianist Jeffrey Kahane, the “piano chops” may fall naturally not far from the tree, as David Kaplan points out to me.

That he is a child of his own time, Gabriel shows with his curatorial creativity, promoting a particular sensitive strand of music making DNA. For a commission, as part of the MATA festival held in November of 2010 at Brooklyn’s “Issue Project Room”, Kahane curated and presented contemporary compositions, including his own, as well as Schubert’s “Dichterliebe”, in German Diction at the piano.

“I am certain that we can all agree that the phrases “genre-bending” and “genre-defying” are not long for this world….The plan is very simple: create a static frame – in this case the pianist who sings – and then offer a varied repertoire..” says this protagonist of music who simply seeks musical inclusiveness, showing what new and old have in common. “I defy you not to hear Pop music in {Schumann’s} “Ich grolle nicht”, says Kahane.

And perhaps our focus should indeed not be on differentiations within the performance culture and stylistic distinction but should instead embrace the festival’s “constructive narrative” as Greenstein, Andres and Kahane – amongst others- are ecstatically pitching for.

Kahane concludes: “ …the listener will come to the conclusion that distinctions of genre can be done away with, leaving us with Duke Ellington’s oft –quoted nugget: “There are only two kind of music: good music, and the other kind”.

Kahane, himself a Brown graduate, had commissioned a piece by Andres for the MATA project.  He and the young Yale-trained composer do share a lot of common interests, says Andres. They will perform together at the Merkin festival’s March 5^thconcert, exploring the composer Charles Ives and dissecting various musical influences on Ives’ music and their own compositions.

This concert will include a wide trip throughout music history, starting with Bach- arrangements by Kurtag as well as some songs of Ives, performed by Kahane.

“I am arranging “Conneticut gospels” – for piano and Hammond organ with the influence of Ives in mind, so to speak from one Connecticut composer to another”, says Andres acknowledging, not without a certain kind of pride, that Ives, like him, went to Yale and was recognized as the first genuine “American” composer.

For a complete schedule and more on all the other participants of the ecstatic music festival go to: ecstaticmusicfestival.com

A recent facebook message sent to a well known live composer by a fan, a young musician to thank him for accepting his “friend request”,got me thinking how great it is, that our generation of fans and instrumentalists have the opportunity to connect not only with their peers but with the great and admired performers and contemporary composers.

The masters are available via email and even are sharing some facts of their lives, making them human yes, but not less venerable for their work.

I wonder how it would play out, if it became possible to connect to our old revered masters the same way. What would Chopin have answered to a friendship request? He was probably too private to even register on facebook.
Schumann however, would have been posting lots of: ‘Robert is….’ ’status comments’and blogs too, i assume. Lots of them.

It certainly would have meant a lot to Clara Schumann to be able to record from home.Maybe she would have used Skype and Youtube to promote Robert’s music.Her own compositions may have come out with a little help from fan groups and I-tunes would have most certainly posted her recordings on I-like.

I wonder if Beethoven would be opposed to perform at a nightclub,like the (le)Poisson Rouge, the popular Downtown Manhattan Bar that integrates Classical Programs alternatively to its Rock and New World Music Scene-i suspect he would not be at all.

Looking at the speed of communication and promotional tools out there, one has to wonder how these greats made it into our lives at all,considering that mail, music and performers as well as social relationships, were based on visits by horse and wagon, instead of blackberries and the varying electronic devices of our day.

Maybe it took a while longer to reach everyone, but their stardom lasted from generation to generation, their music has been taught with passion by teachers and performers for centuries.Maybethat was the case, because their message was powerful enough to overcome space and time.Maybe it was partly due the fact, that the way they collected their ‘friends’ over decades, happened by building a relationship through effort and understanding, not by clicking “accept”a thousand times.
Posted by ilona http://getclassical.org

Avner Dorman’s Compositions: Percussive Fairytales

On an unusually warm day in September, I am sitting down with Israel-born composer, Avner Dorman, at New York’s Bryant Park “Pain Quotidien” café. Before long, I am privy to a sneak preview of his freshly finished score for his latest composition, “Azerbaijani Dance”.

Based on a piano piece of the same name, Dorman’s latest composition will have its world premiere this October, with the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra under Zubin Mehta in Tel Aviv. This event will also ignite a season celebrating the legendary Maestro’s upcoming 50^thAnniversary of his conducting debut.

Dorman tells me about his father, Zeev, a long-time bassoonist with the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra.

”At first, my father was concerned about me wanting to follow in his path as a professional musician. And then later, it also became somewhat of a peculiar situation that my father had a post with the Philharmonic Orchestra, and I was a composer. I had to prove my independence. Thankfully, it was only after the time I graduated from the music academy, that my father went on to become the head of the school. If this would have happened during my student years, it would have been really awkward”.

Avner’s father had also been conducting the Israeli Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, a talent forge for future IPO musicians which had been merged in 2005 with the Academy, establishing the new Buchmann-Mehta School of Music at the Tel Aviv University.

He also tells me about his grandmother, who had left Berlin/Germany on the last youth train, saving her from deportation to a concentration camp. His grandfather had left his native Leipzig, in the early days of the Zionist movement.

Growing up with his parents in Ramat HaSharon just outside of Tel Aviv, young Avner was influenced by the many different cultures around him.

“There is also some Ukrainian and Jewish Sephardic cultural heritage in my family’s background”, he says. “I think, I did get some of my darker looks from that”. And then we both marvel about the widely dispersed Jewish people and their ability to absorb all different kinds of cultures.

One of the most exciting aspects of this ability to blend into different cultural environments is the creative manifestation of this process. In Dorman’s case, the diversity he grew up with reaches right into his musical oeuvre where influences from different composers and genres – from Bach to Bartok and from jazz to Middle Eastern works – reverberate. The 2006 three-piano sonatas recording by Naxos, featuring pianist Eliran Avni, already entail the wide stylistic range, yet his highly original and individual concept. Read the rest of this entry »

I can imagine going paperless, even internet-less, but going music-less? Impossible! Thanks to people as energetic and creative as Juilliard-trained violinist, Mark Peskanov, this is unlikely to happen.

Peskanov is the man behind Brooklyn’s ‘Bargemusic’, a series attracting music mavens and sporadic music lovers alike. At least four times a week, the ancient 100-foot barge at Fulton Ferry Landing sways gently to the rhythm of Peskanov’s diverse program offerings featuring emerging, as well as sought-after, performers from the world of classical music and jazz.

This summer, the floating concert hall’s 176 seats were filled daily, sometimes even twice a day. “We present 52 weeks of continuous programming, all year around”, Peskanov explains. “It is, in a real sense, music in motion.”

Bargemusic is very much part of its Brooklyn neighborhood. “A grocery store is open every day of the week, as well”, says Peskanov. “People are used to just showing up, and there is something going on. Some artists – not all of them very well known to the public – perform many times during a season; the choice of programming informs the choices of artists, and vice versa”.

Above all, the series strives to be inclusive. Kids come free, and at $35 a ticket per adult, some families bring many, and come often. “We remain a venue with a friendly, family-style character. When you arrive late for a performance, because the weather is bad, you are not going to stay outside in the rain.”

For a long time, Bargemusic was not even set up to accept credit cards, let alone online booking. All reservations were handled the old-fashioned way – by phone. “We are in the process of adapting, technology-wise”, Peskanov promises.

Word about Bargemusic is spreading, even without a lot of advertising. “Our artists are of a certain level, and we do want to make them happy. It is the personal approach that is really special. I work closely with the artists, and often perform together with them. Many are good friends and acquaintances of mine, and I share my own experiences as a musician. Everything I do is informed by that. I played in many different concert halls, and with many illustrious artists … music is a gift to express.”
When talking about his responsibility towards younger performers, Peskanov is taking a page out of the book of Isaac Stern, whom he performed with himself and not only admires as a great artist, but also as a great educator. “The best way to learn is to be on stage. Anything can happen”.

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