We had a nice, smooth flight over to San Francisco yesterday. I can only speak for myself, but having leather seats and the ability to watch Top Chef continuously on a personal TV really speed up a coast-to-coast flight. Plus, the flight attendants were great. I knew Loewi was up to something when he went up to speak with them midway through our flight. It was still a surprise, though, when at the end of the standard "prepare to land" speach the head stewardess added, "and flying with us today is A Far Cry, Boston's proudly unconducted string orchestra..." She went on to mention our Globe quote and plug our two concerts in California! So, thank you Unidentified JetBlue Flight Attendant, for making our day!
Bon Voyage
I'm standing at the center of Logan Airport Terminal C, waiting for the rest of the Criers to arrive. Jason and I considered the T, but broke down and called a taxi - 4 heavy suitcases filled with posters, music, postcards, and (oh yeah) clothes, plus two instruments and a backpack, were just a bit too much for us. So a relatively serene can ride to the airport (empty bottle of beer rolling around the floor notwithstanding) led to my current post at the serene center of Logan. It is almost eerily calm as we wait for the others - I have a feeling this may be one of the last moments of calm I'll have for a while. Nothing about the assemblage known as "A Far Cry" is serene! Soon we will be taking Logan Airport, our flight, and the West Coast by storm!
Tour Kick-off in Boston
A Far Cry's tour kickoff will be on May 12, at 8 PM in Room 320 of the Saint Botolph building of the New England Conservatory. 241 St. Botolph St. It will be a very informal run-through of our program, and a chance to celebrate the beginning of our trip with our friends. Stop by for all or part of the evening! (no charge)
A Far Cry packs for West Coast Tour!
Dear Friends,
On Tuesday, May 13th, the Criers fly to San Francisco to begin their 3-week trek up the West Coast to Seattle, with stops along the way in Santa Rosa, Roseburg, and Portland. From outreach programs to concert hall performances, chamber music shenanigans, and a working retreat, A Far Cry is prepping for a very busy tour!
Do you know someone who enjoys music? Please bring them with you! Do you know someone in the cities we're visiting? Please tell them about our concert and invite them to attend! Here's the line up:
San Francisco - Thursday May 15th 2008 @ 8pm - Koret Auditorium at the de Young Museum
Santa Rosa - Sunday May 18th 2008 @ 3pm - Glaser Center at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation
Roseburg - Wednesday May 21st 2008 @ 7pm - Melrose Community Church [by donation]
Portland - Friday May 23rd 2008 @ 7:30pm - First Unitarian Church
Seattle - Monday May 26th 2008 @ 7pm - Great Hall at Town Hall
Tickets to these concerts can be purchased in advanced through Brown Paper Tickets, a Seattle-based fair trade ticketing service (www.brownpapertickets.com or toll-free 1-800-838-3006). Get your tickets ahead of time!
There are three very important and easy ways you can partner with A Far Cry in our commitment to bring you world-class, passionate performances:
1. Come to our concerts and bring your friends along!
2. Tell all of your friends about our performances, invite them to come, and also encourage them to visit our website to learn more about us!
3. Make a fully tax-deductible contribution to A Far Cry (we are a 501(c)3 non-profit incorporation). This is as easy as clicking the link on our main page and donating by credit card or mailing a check to the address listed under "Get Involved". This, our first Tour, is made possible entirely from your generous support.
As always, please contact us with any questions you have at info@afarcry.org / 617.297.2796.
We look forward to seeing all of our West Coast fans at the concerts!
There is no invisible wall between us
I would like to share with you a thought I've been very busy with lately. A thought about the significance of the audience in a performance. I have always believed in a phenomenon I call 'The Concert Miracle'. Maybe not always, but I think I remember it from sometime around when I was in High school. I remember my school orchestra conductor mentioning something about it, and I have never forgotten it. As the years go by I believe in it more and more- I believe in 'The Concert Miracle' so strongly, you could almost say that I count on it, that I trust it to happen every concert...
And what is this miracle? It is the miracle of the performer meeting their audience, and the way these two interact and affect each other.
It is easy to see how the performer affects their audience: the audience receives what the performer performs on the stage, they can see it, hear it, and hopefully feel it and think about what is happening on the stage, and how it affects them personally. We as performers put hours and hours of time in to finding the best ways to transform whatever it is that we want to share with our audience into the media that we are working with. I'd like to think that every performance, regardless of what kind of performance it is, is all about sending out a message to whoever is receiving it in the audience. Sometimes this message is one and strong, and sometimes it is soft and personal, but it is the goal of the performer to make the audience go through a process, and come out of the it just a bit different from how they walked in. Transfigured, you might say...
What is often not as easy to see is how the audience affects the performers. In my experience from being on stage I want to share how much the audience affects the performance, which is in my opinion no less but as much as the performers affect the audience. It is important to me to share this with you, since without all of you there is no performance!
While being on stage I can sense an energy coming from the mass of people sitting across from me, an energy that is unique and special to each performance. It is a combination of the different people which comply of the audience, the mood and set of mind each one of them are in at the specific moment of the performance, the weather, time and place, and of course of the performance as well. When we pour from the stage out to the seats, an energy comes shooting back which feeds us, and vice versa; when we get on the stage and this energy is in the air, that affects how the performance will start. I can not explain how I sense it, and why it happens- it is a miracle.
And this Miracle is a once-in-a-life-time experience, which will not live again outside of the memories of the ones who've shared it. It can not be captured in a recording, and it can not be duplicated. It is tragic in a way, how this special thing which was there and everyone could sense it is gone and lost forever. It is also wonderful in the sense that you have experienced a very special thing, which you have shared with the people around you.
'The Concert Miracle' is also the reason why 'A Far Cry' in concert is a totally different organism than the 'Rehearsal- A Far Cry'. Things suddenly come together. Suddenly there is only love between us, which can not be interrupted. Suddenly we are one unit which breaths and feels together, and we are free to do anything we want. When we go through the rough rehearsing period I hang on to my belief and know that in the concert, once we meet our audience, everything will be fine. Fine? no, everything will be... I don't have the right word to express this feeling that we share through the language of music. Something positive and wonderful, with a lot of love and honesty.
I am writing all of this in honor of our audience this past weekend, and of all the audiences around the world of the different arts whatever they may be. We need you, we feel you, and we want to thank you for being yourselves, because we do all of this only for you.
Much love,
Sharon
Aftershocks
Well, "Words and the Night" is behind us. Without a doubt, it has been our most challenging, most risky, and ultimately most successful concert cycle yet. There were many new faces at our performances this week, from curious Globe readers to members of HUMANWINE.
If you saw a performance, please tell us and the world about it by clicking the "Audience Comments" button below.
Holberg Suite on Youtube
Enjoy!
Welcome, Globe Readers!
If you read about A Far Cry in Friday's Boston Globe, thanks for stopping by to check us out! Take a look around our website - there's much to discover. If you haven't seen the online-only slideshow (complete with narration from Margaret and Jae), check it out here. The incredible photography is by Yoon Byun - see more of his work at yooners.com. Most of all, don't be a stranger! You can leave a comment right here on the blog by clicking "audience comments" below. You can sign up to receive an occasional concert notice email by clicking "Contact Us" above and joining our mailing list. Or (I saved the best for last) you can come see A Far Cry live in concert next weekend. Tickets are available through the "Concerts" link above.
Criers welcome Roger Tapping on viola!
A Far Cry has collaborated with a handful of fabulous flute and piano soloists, but until this point, never have we worked with a string soloist from outside the band. It is such an incredible honor for me to have my mentor and teacher, Roger Tapping, joining us as viola soloist for Britten’s Lachrymae on this cycle.
Roger is one of those musicians, one of those artists, that everyone admires. Not only is he an incomparable violist, but he is also a graceful diplomat, and a true gentleman. We were reluctant to have him join us for our very first reading of the Britten on Friday afternoon, because the first rehearsal is traditionally a time when the orchestra has the opportunity to fix and expose basic issues of ensemble, dynamics, character, and transitions. We were worried about embarrassing ourselves in front of a fellow musician who we look up to so much! But, his gentle leadership from the viola carried us through the rehearsal. He demonstrated his sound world, the palate of colors he wanted to use, the tempi he preferred, discussed dynamics with us, and the whole rehearsal felt like such incredible chamber music making. I can’t wait to continue to rehearse this piece with Roger and the Criers over the next week, and especially can’t wait for the performances!
Join us for one of the performances with Roger Tapping, either Thursday April 17th at Eastern Nazarene College (North Quincy, MA), or Saturday April 19th at Pickman Hall/Longy School of Music (Cambridge, MA). He’s going to knock your socks off!
Words and the Night
Dear reader, Words and the Night is going to be absolutely amazing. Mozart opens the evening with the perfect aperitif: Divertimento #3. Beautiful operatic melodies, perfect structure and balance, and a great sense of humor provide the ideal backdrop for an elegant evening soiree. Suddenly, the mood shifts...a cloud passes in front of the moon with two songs from 16th-century master John Dowland lamenting loneliness and elusive love. These are the same songs that inspired Benjamin Britten in the early 20th century to compose Lachrymae, a haunting, gorgeous conversation with Dowland, featuring the incomparable Roger Tapping on viola. The cloud passes, though, and the party resumes with two motets from the 16th-century Italian Palestrina, who (although separated by centuries) speaks the same language as Mozart.
The second half of the concert leaves the festive gathering and explores the night in isolation. Gesualdo, the 16th-century nobleman, musician and murderer, wrote some of the most tortured, chromatic and wildly emotional music one could imagine--truly the nighttime of the soul. The concert concludes with a kindred spirit, Arnold Schoenberg, exploring from his vantage point 300 years in the future the same issues of guilt, betrayal and loneliness, but also transformation and redemption. Verklarte Nacht (Transfigured Night) tells the story of two lovers wandering in the moonlight. She makes a shocking confession, and he grants a transcending forgiveness, in one of the most beautiful works ever written for string orchestra. Don't miss these concerts - they are going to be our best yet!
