A stone throw from Lincoln Center’s main venues, the Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church on 152 West 66^th Street provides a modest but intimate setting for the chamber music series, commemorating the powerful legacy of the founder and conductor of the Jupiter Symphony Orchestra, Jens Nygaard, who had performed for audiences at Alice Tully Hall, as well as the homeless and victims of natural disasters alike.

His passion for music not only glorified already celebrated works, but he sought out lesser known and neglected works or composers whose names had been forgotten, which he presented with great appeal. This charismatic personality in teaching and music-making touched many lives before he passed away in 2001. The Emmy Award winning documentary “Life on Jupiter,” has accounts of Nygaard’s highly spirited and relevant impact, told by his friends and colleagues.

Run by private funding, the enthusiastic efforts of the Chamber Players’ manager and Nygaard’s widow, Mei Ying, as well as former first bassoonist and now music advisor, Michael Volpert,  the series is dedicated to continuing Mr. Nygaard’s artistic quest for beautiful music and interesting performance. It also keeps on providing performance opportunities for some of the former orchestral musicians as well as talented guest artists.

A small but loyal and informed audience follows this quest on a very low budget. Tickets are not expensive. The performances are held on twenty Monday afternoons (2pm) and evening (7.30pm) programs.

Besides playing some of the standard gamut, the performers who come from a roster of first rate, internationally performing artists, notably explore a handpicked, highly selective repertoire.

This means of course intense rehearsal times for the musicians who often have to learn little known music and put it together, within the same weekend. Those rehearsals typically take place at some of the actively engaged volunteers’ homes.

Providing support on a regular basis are Leslie and Harmar Brereton, MD. As one of the loyal benefactors the Jupiter musicians can count on, Leslie, an amateur pianist herself, enjoys sharing her fine Steinway Grand piano and music room with the hard working musicians, who will never have to leave her house hungry. Her generous hospitality extends to her offering her home across from Lincoln Center to some of the Jupiter musicians who travel  from out of town to perform.

This particular Saturday three of the regular Jupiter players, cellist Inbal Segev, former Jupiter principal clarinetist Vadim Lando and former Jupiter principal horn player Karl Kramer, were joined by guest artists, pianist Roman Rabinovich and violinist Dimitri Berlinsky, to prepare a challenging program. The musicians form an international crowd; the mood is friendly – and the music is stirringly beautiful.

Sometimes the Russian violinist Rabinovich is on the same page with the Israeli cellist Segev, when Kramer from Norway, argues tempi. Later Kramer mitigates between the Russian Lado and Rabinovich, the other Russian at the piano. The impression is that the music can only be so alive, because of people like these devoted musicians who choose to spend the bigger part of their weekend, arguing over its nuances in a never ending quest for perfect beauty and harmony. There is yet another rehearsal necessary which will take place at the cellist’s home on Sunday. And then of course the performance itself on Monday will bring out new perceptions, inspired by the different acoustics and the presence of the audience in the church.

“The critics will come in the afternoon,” proclaimed Mei Ying, who remained busy sorting piles of index cards, containing notes on the repertory of the Jupiter Symphony Orchestra, during the entire rehearsal. Her tiny physical stature does not give away her sheer endless energy, when it comes to taking care of her agenda: keeping the music going.

The program of Monday, March 28^th, offers a truly varied selection that the clarinet virtuoso Vadim Lando charmingly introduces: “As if we did not have enough music to play, we were asked to still include this piece by Weber, The Variations on a theme from “Silvana” Op.33 (1811).”

Robert Kahn’s Serenade in F Minor for piano, clarinet & horn Op. 73 (1923) is one of those fantastic pieces that is hardly ever heard performed elsewhere. It does exist in a variety of arrangements for different combinations of instruments. Kahn was born in Mannheim (1865) and, as Michael Volpert, who now turned pages for pianist Rabinovich explained, Brahms offered to take Kahn on as a pupil when he heard his music. But Kahn, who was in awe of Brahms, as is quite audible in his composition, was too modest to accept the offer. He did however become president of the Prussian Academy of the Arts in 1914 and the amazing pianist that he was had two famous pupils: Arthur Rubinstein and Wilhelm Kempff. He escaped Germany in 1938 and emigrated to England.

The talented pianist Roman Rabinovich, winner of the 2008 Rubinstein competition and the superbly softly voiced violinist Dmitri Berlinsky, lead in Mozart’s Piano Trio K.548, which anticipates his “Jupiter” Symphony.

After the intermission where cookies are served, Karl Kramer gets the opportunity to shine in 4 octaves of horn playing mostly to himself in a Haydn Divertimento a tr’e for horn, violin and cello.

But the absolute highlight of the program is the last one performed: Schoenberg’s “Verklaerte Nacht” (Transfigured night) Op. 4 (1899) transcription by Eduard Steuermann in 1932 for piano trio. The transcription of the original String Sextet was permitted by Schoenberg, even though he never got to hear the finished piece of his talented student, Steuermann. He would have loved it, is my guess. Cellist Segev convinces with assured, yet soulful lines, her beautiful deep tones  intertwined with Berlinksy’s heartfelt dialogue, who takes the unfolding drama to its melodic heights. Pianist Rabinovich unites the most sensitive moments with his utmost pianissimo and seemingly expands time until he creates virtuosic turmoil with all the power of his well balanced hands, over the keyboard. Based on a romantic poem by Richard Dehmel, the piece was performed, together with original works by Schoenberg, by Steuermann at a private music society founded by Schoenberg and frequented by the circles who surrounded Berg, Webern and himself at that time. According to Michael Volpert, critics were not allowed. Alfred Brendel has been a pupil of Steuermann.

Michael Volpert, the raconteur, loves to involve the audience and his highly informed and low key way of explaining interesting details, makes me wish to hear more of the background of every piece performed. Volpert had worked with Nygaard in the Jupiter Orchestra and had grown close to the man he describes as,”an extraordinary figure, whose charisma just drew people in.”

He continues to share how he became involved in programming for the Jupiter series:”I loved the fact that Jens performed unusual works, we shared that passion. At this point we probably try even more to keep that balance.”

So how does one pick the program, and which piece for which artist?

It seems to be a process that has no definitive rule, but gets there as circumstances evolve:”First we make a roster of dates, establishing who is available when. Once we have the musicians, we choose the style accordingly. Every artist has a personally different approach, different preferences and different things to offer. One may have the more stellar technique, while the other may offer a better tone. One is great in romantic repertoire, others prefer modern or classical. Usually I choose one larger piece, and build the program around it. Sometimes I look more for variation within a program; sometimes the pieces are historically related or the program becomes thematic.

“But most importantly, we do what we do because we love the music and being with the musicians. Some are here every other week; some twice a year and we are all fans. The musicians must enjoy making music with each other. In that sense we are a community, by now a lot of friendships have developed.”

But while the musicians must be on their highest level, the music has to be interesting, but not every piece has to be a masterpiece. In fact, that would be undesirable, according to Volpert:”You can’t just have caviar! Every good meal must be balanced; you want to have some potatoes as well.”

To read more about the Jupiter Chamber Music Players go to their website: http://www.jupitersymphony.com/

The next “out of this world” program on April 11^th, 2011, will host guest artists: CMS pianist Alessio Bax; Cynthia Phelps, principal violist of the New York Philharmonic and violinist Stephan Jackiw, winner of the 2002 Avery Fisher Grant.

Then there is that genre unto itself, the Holocaust piece. An Israeli colleague of mine once solemnly claimed that if an Israeli wrote a piece about the Jewish Holocaust, they would get a performance by an Israeli orchestra. No joke–he had composed such a work and had a tape of said performance.

There is a curious paucity of works from the actual time of World War II which deal with the subject. Artists always claim to be mirrors of their own time, yet where are all the great reflections of the most turbulent era of the last century? One of the few contemporary composers who called out the Nazis and created a lasting work of art at the same time was Michael Tippett in his A Child of Our Time.  Dallapiccola’s Canti di Prigionia is another powerful piece written during the war, although performances are fewer than Tippett’s oratorio. Britten, the self-proclaimed pacifist, during the war years produced–Paul Bunyan? A violin concerto? Peter Grimes?

There has been plenty of music resurrected by composers who perished in Nazi death camps–most of it, to my taste, not worth the effort of programming. The greatest work composed in a Nazi concentration camp was written by a French prisoner of war at Stalag VIII-A, the Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps by Messiaen, which is less about the war then an expression of the composer’s faith.

For works about the camps, of course there is Schoenberg’s A Survivor From Warsaw, a good piece, yes, but I find the 1920′s/30′s neo-Expressionist language of Schoenberg a little over the top. It’s as if F.W. Murnau did a silent horror film about Auschwitz–effective but at the same time curiously dated and overstated.

For years I found Nono’s Il Canto Sospeso to be the most intense, emotionally powerful work inspired by WWII, with its texts drawn from letters of imprisoned Resistance fighters terrifyingly matched to the searing drama of Nono’s music. But for the past 2 decades, I have been fascinated, captivated, and horrified by Steve Reich’s Different Trains. I heard a good performance of this recently, and you can read my thoughts at the link below.

http://www.sandiego.com/arts/connections-chamber-music-series

If you’re coming from a previous clue, you know just what’s up; if you’re clueless, heading here might make things a bit more clear. Either way, good luck! Now my friend, question the third:

Handel’s famous aria “Ombra mai fù” from his opera Serse was written for which of Porpora’s famous students?

And so on to four, just past this door…

The overall structure of each day during the festival seems to be a lecture by one of the guest faculty, followed by workshops between the faculty and the participants, then an afternoon concert by one of the guest ensembles performing works by the participants, and ending with an evening concert by another guest ensemble which includes works by one or more of the guest faculty.

Yesterday’s afternoon concert had the New York New Music Ensemble putting six participant works through their paces and the result was a straightforward demonstration of avant-garde techniques and concepts. Prepared piano, bass clarinet multiphonics, percussionists dancing wildly from one instrument to the next, overblown alto flutes…you want ‘em, they got ‘em…yet, curiously, the two instruments who didn’t get much showcasing were the violin and cello.

All six pieces were well-crafted, from Mark Fromm‘s Aqua Regia and Eric Lindsay‘s the one best system to John Bacon‘s Haiku and Diana Soh‘s Flashed and Forgot: The practice of my absentmindedness and ending with Helena Michelson‘s Romance and Todd Tarantino‘s Haziri. Fromm’s work stood out structurally – its shape felt the most natural of the bunch – and as did Bacon’s, whose short yet effective vignettes proved that brevity can be a wonderful thing.

The evening concert was a curious beast, but not in a negative way. While the Meridian Arts Ensemble were headlining the event, the concert’s first half consisted of the inimitable Lisa Moore in a fantastic solo piano performance of Martin Bresnck’s For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise. If you haven’t experienced this work, complete with video animation and spoken and sung performances by the pianist, please do so (it’s included as a DVD on his 2006 release The Essential Martin Bresnick)…part concert piece, part theatrical incidental music, part film score, For the Sexes is a fine example of a multimedia work that doesn’t scream “Hey, look what I can do!”

The Meridian Arts Ensemble came out swinging in the second half with Alvin Etler‘s Quintet (an early staple of modern brass quintet rep) and the world premiere of Bruce Pennycook‘s The Redwood Quintet (nicely featuring Benjamin Herrington on a “I’m gonna stand way over here” trombone solo). I was almost beat into atonal submission by Edward Jacobs‘ Passed Time and Milton Babbitt‘s Counterparts, but Ira Taxin‘s Brass Quintet smacked me upside the head and brought me out of my dodecaphonic daze (did I just write that?). The Meridian brought all their chops for this concert and demonstrated that they could run the gamut from subtly tender to in yo’ face brash.

All in all, an enjoyable experience and one that you should check out if you’re remotely close to Buffalo this week – the afternoon 4:30 concerts are free and the evening 8:00 concerts are $12 and they’re all on the University of Buffalo’s North Campus. Here’s a brief rundown of the week:

Tuesday
4:30 Meridian Arts Ensemble performs works by Moshe Sulman, Elizabeth LIm, Jason Thompson & Travis Alford (Baird Recital Hall)
8:00 New York New Music Ensemble performs Sollberger, Bresnick, Rosenblum, and Foss (Lippes Concert Hall)

Wednesday
4:30 Chamber works of participants (Jennifer Bellor, Karen Park, Eleanor Aversa, Joseph Lake, Alexander Weiser and Andrew Ly) in Baird
8:00 Philippe Manoury and Christophe Desjardins perform Grisey, Béranger and Manoury (Center for the Arts Black Box Theatre)

Thursday
4:30 Mikko Luoma performing works for accordion by Sciarrino, Lindberg, Tiensuu, Kärkkäinen and Hosokawa (Baird)
8:00 Verge Ensemble with works by Sollberger, Felder, Bresnick, Rands, Rosenblum and Antosca (Center for the Arts Drama Theater)

Friday
4:30 Stefano Scodanibbio performs solo bass works by Berio, Scelsi, Sciarrino and Scodanibbio (Baird)
8:00 Brad Lubman conducts the Slee Sinfonietta featuring works by Felder, Rands and Rosenblum (Lippes)

Saturday
4:30 Verge Ensemble performs works by Sarah Carvalho, Christopher Rogerson, Chun Ting Pang, Christian Gentry, Janet Jieru Chen, Brian Griffeath-Loeb and Matthew Schreibeis (Lippes)

Sunday
2:30 Robert Franz conducts the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in performances of works by Rands, Felder, Erb and Foss

Rzewski’s 1976 solo piano piece The People United Will Never Be Defeated (El Pueblo Unido Jamas Sera Vencido) is certainly a work in which he confronted the musical possibilities of all kinds of things that had been appearing in his output until then.  He was 38 at the time he wrote it and his discoveries here power lots of his subsequent work. I t’s as much as a watershed piece for him as Glass’ massive ensemble work Music In 12 Parts (1971-74) was for him.  It’s also a kind of compendium of rhythmic, harmonic and coloristic approaches to Chilean composer Sergio Ortega’s song for Salvador Allende on which it’s based. There are 6 variation sets of 6 each plus a coda, and Rzewski seems to use every possible pianistic device in it.

He’s easily one of the greatest pianists around, and having been a pupil of Charles Mackey who was himself a pupil of the great Russian virtuoso Josef Lhevinne, Rzewski knows that tradition from the inside out, and you get all kinds of takes on it here. The shadow of Beethoven weighs in, of course, as does a lot of the standard classical tradition, as well as whiffs of blues and Native American modes. It was amazing to watch Rzewski draw on all these musics with such concentrated vigor and technical ease and make them his own.  He used every imaginable kind of touch, both conventional and unconventional, and tactic. He played legato and with rubato — one of the most beautiful stretches, Var. 23 (as fast as possible), in a kind of minimalist groove, with what sounded like alternations from major to minor, in a steady tempo, with terraced dynamics — and produced loud sharply opposed sonorities.  Walls of sound would sometimes collapse into extreme quietude without the slightest warning, and then go back to a kind of cataclysm reined in by Rzewski’s superb technique.  Though describing his sound world is probably a fool’s errand, Rzewski does seem to fall into the New England Transcendental tradition of Ives, Ruggles, and Earle Brown at his most granitic, with lots of European echoes thrown in.  His performance, which clocked in at 62 nonstop minutes, was a lot different from that of  Ursula Oppens,  for whom he wrote it ( I reviewed her Berkeley performance several years ago for www.sfcv.org as  The King Regrets ), but equally powerful and musically convincing..

Rzewski’s nanosonatas, from which he played Books V and VI (200 ) showed what  he’s been up to lately, and while 32 years separated them from The People United, both pieces were obviously the work of an artist with an abiding interest in drama and timbral variety.  The nanosonatas also share Rzewski’s predilection for moving between consonance and dissonance, delicacy and violence, the clangorous and the calm.  There was also a wide range of color and density in these elliptical pieces — even the portraits of the composer’s children in Book VI sounded private — which are to short to be  etudes, and not properly sonatas, but something in between. They’re also mercurial, like Rzewski, who delivered himself of many lively opinions and convictions in a post performance chat with Mondavi Center’s executive director Don Roth.  The nanosonatas may be slighter in musical content and complexity than The People United.  Still their composer gave this 38 minute set the same care and attention he gave to that bigger and obviously imposing piece.  Rzewski didn’t phone anything in, which is aways the sign of a true and very serious artist, who’s really in the moment, or in his case, element, or elements, given the physical and intellectual nature of his work. And his audience in the Mondavi Center’s smallish and welcoming Studio Theatre clearly listened hard and asked him penetrating questions in the subsequent Q & A.

The Ditmas Park Concert Series is up and running for its second season. Curated by Jody Redhage, there will be five concerts in the series.

Friday, May 1 / 9:00 pm Erica von Kleist Trio, 10:30 pm John Ellis Trio / Sycamore Bar & Flower Shop, 1118 Cortelyou Rd. at Westminster Rd., Brooklyn, NY (Q to Cortelyou Rd) $10

Sunday, May 10 / 4:00 pm Janus / Temple Beth Emeth, 83 Marlborough Rd. at Church Ave., Brooklyn, NY (B/Q to Church Ave) $10

Saturday, May 23 / 9:00 pm Dan Pratt Organ Quartet / Sycamore Bar & Flower Shop, 1118 Cortelyou Rd. at Westminster Rd., Brooklyn, NY (Q to Cortelyou) $10

Saturday, May 30 / 3:00 Botanica String Quartet / PS 217 Auditorium, 1100 Newkirk Ave. at Coney Island Ave., Brooklyn, NY (B/Q to Newkirk Ave.) Free Family Concert

Friday, June 12 / 8:00 pm Gabriel Kahane and Friends / PS 139 Auditorium, 330 Rugby Rd. at Cortelyou Rd., Brooklyn, NY (Q to Cortelyou Rd.) $10

Sponsored by the Brooklyn Arts Council and numerous local businesses, the Ditmas Park Concert Series connects the world class musicians living in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn with the students and residents of the community. Featuring band leaders who live walking distance from the venues, the DPCS strengthens the community through live creative performance.

English imprint NMC is celebrating its twentieth anniversary with a special 4-disc CD boxed set. NMC Songbook features vocal music by a number of the UK’s finest and most prominent contemporary composers: Birtwistle, Davies, Weir, Goehr, Finnissy, Bryars, Harvey, Turnage, and many, many more. These are interspersed with galliards by British Renaissance composer Thomas Morley, arranged for modern forces by Colin Matthews.

For those who’d like to perform some of this repertoire, it’s available for download at  Sheet Music Direct. Featuring both composers associated with vocal music and those for whom song is a comparatively rare venture, the songbook is a treasure trove for musical Anglophiles!  

Since I work in the social media aspects of business software marketing, it’s been a fascinating experience to see my husband, Bill Williams,  in his role as the Music Coordinator for the YouTube project, examine many of the nuances and applications of social media’s power.

The global YouTube community, and Michael Tilson Thomas, Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony, selected from the finalists more than 90 musicians playing 26 different instruments from 30 different countries including: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bermuda, Brazil, Canada, China, Columbia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and the United States.  Many of the winners have played professionally but a number of them have not.

The musicians will travel to Carnegie Hall in April for a summit and for a concert under the direction of Tilson Thomas. Selected submissions will be compiled into a mashup video, which will premiere at the Carnegie Hall concert on April 15. The concert will uniquely cover the 1200 year span of classical music and many surprises are in store for the concert-goer. Tickets are on sale now.

Since the launch of this initiative in December 2008, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra’s channel has received more than 13 million views worldwide. To further demonstrate the commitment of YouTube to this genre, new features to improve the site quality and functionality are present on the Youtube.com/symphony channel. According to the press release, The YouTube Symphony Orchestra marks the first program on YouTube to welcome submissions from nearly every country in the world, and the channel continues to be available in 16 different languages.  YouTube has partnered with more than 40 major classical music organizations and institutions to bring this initiative to musicians around the world.

Nothing this ambitious has ever been undertaken in the world of classical music in such a short period of time.    One  perspective is that the discovery of hidden talent can mean the difference between just another orchestra assembled by conventional means and a orchestra chosen in part by us, by subject matter experts, and by the crowd, providing a point of reference for the way we participate in the arts in the future.

In addition to marketing software, Margot also plays a mean jazz piano and is the only person I know who has Giant Steps as a ringtone. JB

While well-known for his writings about music, including books about Elliott Carter and George Gershwin, David Schiff is also a prolific and active composer. A professor at Reed College, he’s visiting New York this week to hear the American Composer’s Orchestra premiere a revamped version of Stomp, a piece that celebrates the music of James Brown. The concert, part of the Orchestra Underground series, also includes premieres by Margaret Brouwer and Kasumi, Rand Steiger, Fang Man, and Kati Agócs.

 Carey: Stomp was written in 1990 for Marin Alsop. How did you decide to write in homage to James Brown?

Schiff: I was asked for a concert opener and somewhere in the process I realized that one of my rhythmic motives was from James Brown’s “I Feel Good” (as recorded Live at the Apollo). I then re-conceived the piece as a tribute.

Carey: Have other rock or jazz legends figured in your music?

Schiff: There’s a big Motown section in my Scenes from Adolescence (1987) and my Slow Dance for orchestra (1989), written for the Oregon Symphony, has a lot of Charles Mingus in it, but I have also had the great honor of working with two living legends in jazz, Regina Carter and Marty Ehrlich.

Carey: What’s “re-lit” about this new version for the ACO?

Schiff: ACO asked me to reduce the size of the orchestra slightly to fit in Zankel Hall. This gave me the opportunity to re-score the entire piece. The wind section now is much better suited to the style of the piece: flute, E flat clarinet, two saxes, trumpet horn, trombone and tuba. But there are also a lot of musical changes everywhere. I think that in the years since I first wrote Stomp I have become more experienced with the style. The new version is much hotter than the original–even though the orchestra is smaller.

Carey: You’re currently at work on a book about Duke Ellington. Is that research infiltrating your composing at all?

Schiff: Ellington’s music influences everything I do. I go to school with his music every day and I find his melodies, rhythms, harmonies and instrumentation endlessly inspiring.