A Chat with Stefan Jackiw

The official version of this post is on the blog of the Office for the Arts at Harvard and can be read here. Complete text follows. Enjoy! 

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The self-conducted orchestra A Far Cry is playing a program that looks like a mini Harvard reunion of artists on Friday, Jan. 13 at New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall. Featuring a major new work by composer Lembit Beecher ‘02, the concert was curated by Alex Fortes ‘07 and features soloist Stefan Jackiw ‘06 with Alexi Kenney in a pair of double concertos: the Bach Concerto for Two Violins (aka the “Bach Double”) and by Estonian composer Tabula Rasa by Arvo Pärt. Sarah Darling ‘02, another member of A Far Cry, talked with Jackiw about his training and the concert. An edited and condensed version of their conversation follows.

You'll be playing Bach and Pärt on this program. A heady pairing. 
The Bach is of course one of the most well-known pieces in the repertoire. And it's actually my first time playing the piece.

So you didn't play it when you were 3? 
No, I didn't play it when I was 3, and thankfully so. Even though I didn't study it as a kid, I still felt like I had to "unlearn" all these years of interpretations and varnish lacquered on to the piece, and really strip it away and go back to what Bach wrote. And there's so much there, such a pairing of song and dance. The second movement is one of the most songful, soaring, vocal pieces ever, and the outer movements are filled with visceral energy that I feel is connected to dance and the human body. So that's really fun to really dive into for the first time at age 31.

When you started physically playing the piece were there any "aha" moments? 
More in the dance realm, because there's this sort of innate physicality about dance, and the piece - the first movement - features a ton of string crossing that requires you to move your elbow back and forth to support the bow. And that kind of written-in physicality brings out a sense of down and up buoyancy and tension and release, which I think enhances the performance of it. So that was an interesting thing to experience, that the physicality of it actually enhances the content of the music. The Arvo Pärt is actually a piece that I've never heard before being asked to join AFC for these concerts. I find Pärt's music really soulful and touching and moving in a kind of Zen way. But it's not just peaceful Zen; there's also a kind of forlorn tragedy, something kind of sorrowful about it.

How do you see Pärt creating that sense in the music? 
There's a huge sense of space, both in terms of the temporal unfolding of the piece, but also in the range of pitches, often pairing a low note against some very high notes in the upper voices. And those two boundaries draw attention to the chasm in between. You know, this piece reminds me a little bit of some crazy NASA footage. Or like that movieGravity, where your attention is drawn to the fact hat you're just a speck in the cosmos, and the vastness — in that case, the visual universe, and in this case, the tonal/aural universe. I think this piece captures the same thing using different means.

You're originally from Boston. How does it feel to be playing here? 
I lived in Boston for the first 22 years of my life, growing up here and doing my undergrad at Harvard. And it's good to be back. I like performing in Boston because I grew up going to concerts in Jordan Hall, Symphony Hall, Sanders Theatre. There's a lot of personal history for me there, both as an audience member and as a performer. And also, there’s just something about coming home, bringing music that I have learned home. It feels nice. It feels warm. It's also fun to come back to Boston the city and experience it as an adult. When I was at Harvard, I was always on campus, and literally the day after my graduation I moved to New York. So I never explored the city as an adult. I mostly stayed where my family was, and where my school was. So it's great fun getting to know the city now with a different set of experiences.

The Conference of the Birds notes

Program notes for this Friday's concert, The Conference of the Birds, written by Kathryn Bacasmot.

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SELECTIONS FROM THE CODEX CALIXTINUS

It is thanks to a handful of codices that have miraculously survived wear and tear, weather, war, fire, or any of a laundry list of types of loss, that we have a concrete connection to the thoughts and music of the past. The Codex Calixtinus, which deals mostly with accounts of the life and work of Saint James, is attributed to Pope Callixtus II and originates from the 12th century for pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago, or “Way of St. James,” pathways that lead to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, where the remains of the saint are said to be at rest.

The manuscript is divided into several books and appendixes, three of which include music. Valued as early examples of polyphony (or music with multiple lines occurring simultaneously, in contrast to the single-line chant that was typical of earlier centuries), the codex includes what some scholars believe is the first (documented) example of music for three voices.
 

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750)
CONCERTO FOR TWO VIOLINS IN D MINOR, BWV 1043

Often referred to by the simple nickname “Bach Double,” Bach’s concerto for two violins remains one of his most popular works. The exact date of composition is unknown, though it begins to appear on lists of Bach’s compositions around 1730.

A likely period for the double concerto’s inception might have been during Bach’s years working for the Prince of Anhalt-Köthen in the early 1720s. Whereas most of Bach’s employment posts revolved around composing music for the church, here his services were directed toward composing secular court music. These years produced the orchestral suites, solo partitas, and the great solo cello suites, among other works.

It is known that Bach’s introduction to the Italian concerto style began during his second tenure in Weimar, where he was employed from 1708-1717. Given his cornerstone status in the world of music today, it can be easy to forget that in his lifetime Bach barely traveled more than a few hundred miles from his hometown, and spent most of his career nurturing and developing his enormous creative capacity in environments that did not always appreciate the scope of his ambitions —ambitions not for fame, but for excellence in every aspect of music making. In an era when the only way to hear music of different composers was through live performance, and copies of music were few, Bach was fortunate enough to have found then opportunity in the court in Weimar to study the scores of the Italians, Antonio Vivaldi (making transcriptions of several of his works) and Arcangelo Corelli (who was a superstar violinist and composer known throughout all of Europe). This proved to be deeply impactful on him, as multiple works in the concerto style would be written (and re-written as Bach tended to repurpose his compositions--the “Double” eventually became the concerto for two harpsichords in C minor, for example) over the rest of his lifetime.

LEMBIT BEECHER (B. 1980)
THE CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS

“The Conference of the Birds” is a 12th-century Sufi epic poem by the Persian poet Farid ud-Din Attar. It tells a story about the birds of the world who gather together in a time of strife. Led by the hoopoe bird, they decide to set out on a long journey to find their king. Many birds desert or die along the journey, but after passing through valley after valley, the remaining 30 arrive at a lake at the top of a mountain. Looking in the lake at their own reflection, they finally see their king. I first came across it through an adaptation by the brilliant Czech-American illustrator and author Peter Sís. This was one of the most beautiful books I had ever seen: an adult picture book with an unusual graphic sensibility, a concise and beautifully ambiguous text, and full-page illustrations of mysterious landscapes that carried surprising emotional weight. Numerous adaptations of the original poem, including plays, children’s books and pieces of music, emphasized the story’s simple yet colorful narrative and moral didacticism, but what drew me to Sís’s version, aside from the expressive, textural drawings which so suggested music, was the deep sense of loss in the pages. So many birds are left by the wayside during this journey towards truth and enlightenment. Does progress or attempted progress always come at a cost?

I initially thought about trying to turn the story into an opera - but I realized I was less interested in the narrative scope of the story than in the emotions and visceral energy of specific moments. I also knew I wanted to write music as Sís created his drawings, with strong gestures and lots of small figures combining to form large shapes. A string orchestra seemed perfect for creating solo lines that gathered into clouds of sounds. When I began talking to A Far Cry about writing a piece, I realized this would be a perfect project for the group. Having gotten to know the group, I wanted to write music for individual personalities: each member of the ensemble has his/her own part. These parts join each other in different combinations, but just as quickly split up again. The leadership of the music, and the relationship of individuals to the group is always changing. As I wrote I thought about the power of crowds, and the value of individuality versus unity, but I also thought about the players of A Far Cry, and how much I admire the way they function as an ensemble, share leadership, and make music together. “The Conference of the Birds” is about 20 minutes long and is in three movements. The final two are played without a pause.

—LB
 

ARVO PÄRT (B. 1935)
TABULA RASA

In the earlier years of his career, the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt composed his music in a modernist style, sometimes experimenting with serialism, and atonality. Soviet government officials frowned upon this, but Pärt would soon find an entirely new sound based on ancient tones. After taking time to reevaluate his compositional methods in the late 1970s, along with studying Bach, Gregorian chant, and Russian Orthodox sacred music, Pärt arrived at a new compositional philosophy that he called “tintinnabulation” (“bells”). Explaining the technique, the composer has noted: “Tintinnabulation is like this. Here, I am alone in silence. I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played...I build with the most primitive materials – with the triad, with one specific tonality. The three notes of a triad are like bells. And that is why I call it tintinnabulation.”

Tintinnabuli, the ringing/sound of bells, alludes to the mathematical division of a note’s sound wave into the overtone series, the basis of Western music theory and its harmonic progressions, which is heard in the chaotic timbre of a ringing bell. Essentially, if you strike a single note, you are not just hearing that note but an entire sequence working together (the “fundamental” and its “partials,” to use the lingo). Thus, when you hear A-natural you also sympathetically hear other tones from the A scale in a sequence of 5ths, 4ths, 3rds, and so on: A, E, A, C-sharp, E, etc.—a musical universe orbiting a single note.

For a decade Pärt was effectively silent as he studied, contemplated, and crafted. In 1977 he reemerged with three pieces using tintinnabulation as their compositional syntax: Fratres, Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten, and Tabula Rasa. He has been writing in this style ever since. Tabula Rasa, meaning “blank slate” in Latin, is divided into two sections: Ludus (“games”), and Silentium (“silence”), and was dedicated to the violinist Gidon Kremer, who premiered the piece along with violinist Tatjana Gridenko, and includes a “prepared” piano, where objects are lodged in the instrument’s string to manipulate the emission of a metallic, almost chime-like sound.

After an arresting opening where the two violins play the same pitch (A) in distant octaves the games commence. Silence and sound alternate, and everything revolves around the A pitch with one voice weaving a melody while the other outlines the triad of A minor (A-C-E). Variations on patterns occur throughout the duration, as lines are expanded, contracted, and reversed. In Silentium the lines move in pairs at varying speeds, punctuated by the prepared piano every time the solo violins, whose parts have been slowing adding notes, reach the central note of this movement: D. In the tintinnabular style, there are very few pitches employed, but their distribution in time, and their relationship to the silence that surrounds their existence, builds out the haunting beauty of the sound.

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Program Notes by Kathryn J Allwine Bacasmot. Kathryn is a pianist/harpsichordist, musicologist, music & cultural critic, and freelance writer. She is a graduate of New England Conservatory, and writes program annotations for ensembles nationwide.

Zoom In: The Classical Mashup

Kate Nottage, one of our NEC Fellows, wrote this fabulous post on A Far Cry's "Zoom In" program and what it meant to her. Enjoy! 

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This month, I spent a week rehearsing and performing with A Far Cry on their Zoom In program. I found myself immediately transfixed by the choice of repertoire, admiring its variety. It’s so common as a classical musician to attend and partake in concerts that are monothematic and flat in musical style. We often go to concerts that feature multiple works from one composer or one classical era. I loved the Zoom In repertoire for its musical diversity. As the works by Dutilleux, Webern, Muffat, and O’Connor were played one by one, their differences were illuminated. One of the most magnificent characteristics of classical music is its arc through time – how it’s changed through hundreds of years and especially how it continues to do so right now. It’s incredible when this is illustrated through repertoire choice.

My love for musical age and diversity extends beyond the classical realm. As someone who believes it takes every genre to create a well-balanced musical world, I take great pride in my mental investment in popular music. I’m sometimes guilty of having a short attention span for music, and for this reason I think every so often pop is more suited for my taste than something like an hour-long Bruckner symphony. Sometimes, listening to a three-minute long song that I can sing, dance, tap my foot, and bang my head to is just what I need. My favorite type of non-classical music remains always the same: mash-up. For those of you who aren’t familiar with mash-up, it is basically an electronic layering and synchronization of vocal and instrumental tracks of different popular songs. Though made of recycled music, the product is careful and innovative and its creator, an artist. Mash-up is incessantly captivating. There’s something about the tune of a catchy folk song being set to an R&B beat with guitar riffs from a 2015 billboard hit that is so artistically fresh and undeniably enjoyable. It’s sophisticated, it’s fast-paced, it’s smart. The dichotomy is rich.  

During my week with A Far Cry, I didn’t immediately understand the depth of my fascination with the program. It consisted of, in order, works by Henri Dutilleux, Anton Webern, Georg Muffat, and Mark O’Connor. It was obvious to me even before hearing the music that, because of these composers’ artistic reputations, it would greatly vary in musical style. The Dutilleux was spacious, weightless, and full of flight. Webern was heavy, longing, and thickly pleading. Muffat was joyous, careful, and precious. O’Connor was fun, groovy, and freeing.

I soon realized that to combine these pieces into one cohesive program was only one thing: mash-up. Whether intentional or not, it’s genius. For the hyper-in-thought, eager-for-the-next-thing listener like I sometimes am, this combination of pieces was absolutely perfect.

The order and pacing of the music was incredibly captivating. We started with Dutilleux. Hypnotically translucent, Ainsi la Nuit was a mash-up in and of itself. The piece consists of seven movements, each unmistakably distinct in character. Since there were more movements than the typical string quartet, each was considerably brief, and characters seemed to exit as quickly as they entered. I couldn’t help but notice the brisk developments within the piece and how they mirrored the mellifluous passing of melodies in my favorite work of mash-up.

Next up was Langsamer Satz by Anton Webern. This piece, though monothematic, served its purpose in the classical mash-up by insisting its distinct personality. Mahlerian and dramatic, the short piece explored the depths and heights of emotion – the pains and joys of love.

Moving quickly along, the Muffat was next. The inclusion of baroque music at this point in the program was a cheerful change. The Ciacona was pleasant and with constant motion; a tasteful turnaround from the comparably static Webern.

Following this was the Mark O’Connor Quartet No. 3. It was the most perfect piece to play the role of the last piece. Although technically challenging for the musicians, for the listener this music is care-free. It exhibits a well-balanced combination between the freedom of fiddle music and the structure of traditional classical music. Another fitting dichotomy.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized a deeper reason why I love mash-up. There’s something so similar in what I do as an artist to what the mash-up creator does as an artist. I love to take music that’s already been written and interpret it myself. I love to make it my own, to put my stamp on it and make my mark. And isn’t this what the mash-up artist does? He takes preconceived, prenotated, prerecorded music and makes it his own. He puts his stamp on it and makes it the best version it could possibly be, and isn’t that what I do? We infuse our artistry with variations of creativity. We take advantage of changing characters, tempi, rhythm, and harmony. We embrace the differences between melodies within the same piece. We embrace the differences between composers born a hundred years apart. We find beauty in what makes art different.

Zoom In notes

Take an early peek at the notes for this weekend's "Zoom In" show, written as always by the fabulous Kathryn Bacasmot. 

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Henri Dutilleux (1946-2009) :: Ainsi la Nuit

Interesting things happen when you ask someone to step outside their usual compositional formats. Primarily the producer of larger scale, orchestral, works, Dutilleux was commissioned by the Koussevitzy Foundation in the late 1970’s to write a string quartet. The result was a work of astounding complexity and scope, symphonic grandeur encapsulated and disseminated by four instruments.

Ainsi la Nuit (Thus the Night) is written in seven sections linked by four “parenthèses” placed between sections I (Nocturne) through V (Constellations). With no formal pauses between sections, it is experienced as a single expanse of sound. Structurally, it relies on layer upon layer of musical self-referencing. An opening hexachord (a chord of six notes) presents the palette of intervallic relationships (the space of one note to another) and tones upon which the rest of the piece elaborates. As the music progresses, small segments of ideas and patterns are introduced and used as building blocks. It is sometimes noted that Dutilleux was an admirer of Proust, and some theorists speculate that Ainsi la Nuit was the composer’s way of playing with the idea of embedded memories. We, the audience, hear bits of musical ideas that are introduced or recollected within the sections, or the parenthèses, and when we hear them again, in full or in allusion, our minds begin to perceive the overall impression and totality of the music. In other words, the morsels of music awaken memory in the sensory cup of our ears.

Something perhaps similar, albeit stranger, occurs in our dreams in the night. Our memories mix and mingle with far-flung fragments of information and imagination projected in the theater of our mind’s eye. Thus, the night comes when no shadows lengthen, time seems to suspend, and our longings and memories meld into one.

Anton Webern (1883-1945) :: Langsamer Satz
The feelings of romantic love are often described in terms of rooms disappearing, and all else fading in the light of the lover’s visage. Langsamer Satz is a “slow movement” without a sonata or a symphony. It stands alone, reveling in its own pleasurable and beautiful melodies. It is the work of a composer in love.

Webern is perhaps most often recalled as one of the two prominent disciples (the other being Alban Berg) of Arnold Schoenberg, the composer who gave to posterity 12-tone music, a philosophy of sound that challenged the presumptions of centuries of music theory. Like his mentor, however, Webern started his compositional career writing in a more lush, late Romantic style (Langsamer Satz is often compared to Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht). Perhaps an overly simplistic observation, yet possibly true, would be to say that Webern’s expression of blissful romance needed to be expressed in a more “traditional” lyrical form. There would be time later for disillusionment with the state of art and music in the face of populism, and with a world torn apart by large-scale physical and ideological warfare. At this moment, in 1905, he had returned from a holiday with his beloved, Wilhelmine Mörtl. Nothing else mattered. She would become his wife.

Georg Muffat (1653-1704) :: Ciacona from Concerto Grosso No. XII, Propitia Sydera (To appease the stars)
The Italian violin virtuoso Arcangelo Corelli was at the center of a musical universe revolving around him, both in interest and influence. His renown stretched across the continent, and over to England, where the Italian music (especially of Corelli) was the rage. You either wanted to meet him, or did—and made sure to let everyone know about it.

Georg Muffat, a French composer of Scottish descent, was introduced to the concerti grossi of Corelli (his exact contemporary) during a sojourn to Rome, and subsequently wrote in the genre as well, completing twelve within his lifetime. An exciting instrumental format in the days prior to symphonies, the concerto grosso displayed the virtuosity of a smaller group of instrumentalists in conversation—at times perhaps argument—with a larger ensemble (the “concertino” and the “ripieno,” respectively). Movements of works were often imitative and inspired by dance. A popular one to riff on was the Ciaconna because of its repetitive base line upon which multiple variants of melodic material could be overlaid. Though traditionally a more fast-paced dance, as it became adapted for instrumental music it also was often slowed down to a more somber, or regal pace, as Muffat does here. Echoes of that earlier, jazzy, Ciaconna can still be found carefully embedded within Muffat’s composition; two contrasting versions of the same form, engaging in brilliant dialogue with each other.

Mark O’Connor (b. 1961) :: Quartet No. 3, Old-Time

Violinist and composer Mark O’Connor has dedicated his career to the cultivation and preservation of American music, infusing his work with traditional folk music and styles. About the Quartet No. 3, O’Connor has noted the work was “composed on the occasion marking 400 years of history dating from the days of the first European settlements” in the Hudson Valley. He continues:

For the musical genesis of the Quartet, I initially created phrases from the fiddle that were molded out of old-time fiddling tradition. With technical twists and turns, the phrases became unique and new but all the while still connected to the tradition. It is these phrases that I used as material to create the String Quartet. Through the process of composing, techniques such as re-harmonization, development, canonic applications spill over each other like the Hudson tributaries in the Adirondacks. The counterpoint of the Quartet invigorates and establishes itself. The result is a wholly participating body emphasizing transitions from the traditional to the contemporary in sound and style. The music here is no longer fiddle music as the inventions of the quartet embark on a new story, a new way to play, and with a new musical idea to put forward.

Program Notes by Kathryn J Allwine Bacasmot. Kathryn is a pianist/harpsichordist, musicologist, music & cultural critic, and freelance writer. She is a graduate of New England Conservatory, and writes program annotations for ensembles nationwide.

My not so normal week with A Far Cry

Some powerful thoughts on the significance of our "Pau" concert cycle, by one of our NEC Fellows, Alyssa Wang. 

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I’ve been a violinist for basically my whole life, so I’m familiar with a typical week in the life of a musician. We are experts at scheduling back-to-back rehearsals and showing up to at least one of them with a pencil. We’re used to forgetting a meal every now and then, and making up for it at the post-concert reception. We’re quite fast walkers when we want to be. This is a normal week. But I know my friends in A Far Cry and I can say that the week of preparation for November 11th’s Jordan Hall concert was anything but normal—because that week of preparation was also the week of America’s presidential election.

When I began to write this post, I did so with trepidation. The wrong words could make the retelling of my time with A Far Cry seem too politically opinionated or one-sided. It was also important that I somehow fit in some details of how amazing it was to experience the inner workings of a community like A Far Cry. And while I don’t wish to increase the divisiveness that has defined this election season, I must stand by my belief that the world of music cannot and should not be separated from current events—including politics. Our week of rehearsals was greatly affected by Tuesday’s Election Day, and we cannot pretend otherwise. I don’t think I could separate the two events even if I wanted to. But rather than describe the political views of the artistic community, I would like to explain what the combination of these two worlds did for me in the days following the election and beyond.

To start, I’m not actually a member of A Far Cry—I’m one of New England Conservatory’s student fellows. But I’ve been following A Far Cry for a few years, since before I moved to Boston to continue my studies in violin. What has always struck me about their playing is the magnitude of their energy, dedication, and innovation. You can see it through how they move, as a unit and with freedom. One of the ways they break tradition is by standing in concerts—in rehearsals, too, as my poor legs were about to find out. Walking into their rehearsal space in JP for the first time on Monday was surreal because the faces I saw were faces I already knew. (I kept it cool, though.) On the menu for Friday were a variety of works that are connected in some way to the Catalonian cello legend, Pablo Casals. There was the Schumann Cello Concerto, which he famously recorded, played by Casals’ own godson, Lluís Claret. Several pieces on the concert were composed and championed by Casals. The finale of the evening was the devilish Glosses by Ginastera, which overlaid Catalonian grooves with hair-raising, imaginative sound effects.

What began as a creative theme tying together a concert program became something much more relevant following Tuesday’s election. Pablo Casals was famous for using his music to speak out for justice. At one point he refused to perform in public as a statement of his fierce opposition to the rule of Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco. Our relationship with Casals would soon become more relevant than any of us could have predicted, and “music as a voice for justice” is a phrase that would echo through my mind for the rest of the week.

Monday was quite normal. We rehearsed all day in their cozy JP space located next-door to a shop that was so fond of incense that I could often smell it during rehearsals. The Criers, as they’re called, happily greeted each other in the early morning with coffee and tea in hand. A variety of stands were assembled amidst casual talk and laughter, and some sheet music was passed around. I noticed immediately how many of them took the time to welcome me. There was a lot more smiling than I expected. It couldn’t be more obvious: this was a community.

It turns out, it was a community made up of very cool people. There really isn’t another word for it. Everything from their Crier slang to how they played their instruments was just…cool. Playing with them involved lots of classical music head banging and jowl shaking. It was like being caught in an ocean wave. All I had to do to fit in was let myself get swept up in it all. Through the week I started picking up on little Crier colloquialisms. Instead of saying, “let’s run it,” when they wanted to play a piece from start to finish, they often said, “let’s lay it down.” “Open up the floor,” meant anyone in the ensemble could request specific spots to improve. They liked to endearingly call each other “chefs”, which alluded to everyone’s own imagined recipe for making a piece successful.

On Tuesday, November 8, we rehearsed as normal, although with a palpable buzz in the air that mirrored the whole country. We were nervous about Election Day, but busy enough to not notice too much. It was Wednesday that changed everything.

The morning after the election was surreal. I walked into the rehearsal space and no one smiled. Hardly anyone spoke, and when they did, it was with a kind of heaviness. I had trouble concentrating. What good was a little rehearsal when there were whole communities of people across the country now fearful of discrimination, deportation, and hate crimes? We assembled into our proper places. Lluís wanted to do a run through of Schumann Cello Concerto. We tuned, and no one talked, and we waited to start the piece. It took a while for the first violin to give us the cue because he was holding back tears. It might have been that moment when I understood how deeply this day would affect us. When it was time, he motioned his violin upwards in the tempo of the opening and the music began. I will never forget what happened next.

This wasn’t the first time we had played the concerto, but it was the only time it would feel like this. Lluís sang with his cello above the undulating harmonies of the opening. It felt as if something were compressing my chest. It hurt and the music seemed to understand that. Every change in harmony, every sorrowful slide in the cello, every exclamation—it all seemed so relevant. We were playing our grievances. And then, about half way through, the change began. The music started giving back to us. As we passed through the achingly beautiful second movement and angst-filled third movement, I could feel the grip that was clenching my insides begin to loosen. Hearing the pain in the music and expressing it with my own hands was therapeutic, like every stroke of my bow was somehow erasing a piece of that darkness. I felt as though I was being healed.

By the time we finished running the concerto I felt like an entirely different person. I was hopeful, grateful, humbled. Suddenly, it was easy to believe that everything was going to be all right. Anything that was going to come our way, we could take it. It was like our instruments had sucked up the sorrow straight through our fingers. It took me a few days to realize this, but I had never had an experience like this with music before in my life. Until then, I had never known what it felt like to need relief so badly and to be given it so viscerally by music.

It was from that moment on that A Far Cry carried on with different purpose. Our rehearsals weren’t just about making good quality music, they were about making our voices heard. We had something truly relevant to say now. As the concert date approached there were dramatic increases of hate crimes reported. Some of my own friends, minorities and women, were targets of verbal harassment on the streets by supporters of the winning candidate. So we practiced harder.

On Friday, we played a concert with different significance than any concert I had ever played up until that point. I remember walking out onto that stage and feeling like we had an extremely important job to do. The audience, too, was listening to us differently. I realized that we weren’t just a voice for us, but a voice for the people who came to see us. As we played that night, I remember being consciously aware at every moment that someone different from me was listening. Someone of a different race, a different religion, a different gender, different life experiences. And yet we were all listening to the same music. The concert went well, but perfection was not the number one priority that night. That night we were healers. We were orators. We were unifiers. We were exactly what so many of us needed.

I learned some important lessons during my not so normal week with A Far Cry. I learned that amidst times of uncertainty and anger there will be times of joy and purpose and togetherness. I was reminded again of the power of artistic voices in society. Our role in Boston that week became so much more than just entertainment because we had something to say and everything to give. I was reminded of how thankful I am to be a musician and how lucky we are to have music as a means of expression. We were able to provide our audience with something beautiful in a week filled with ugliness. Knowing that gives me purpose. My week with A Far Cry was exhilarating, painful, and unimaginably meaningful. I got to play music with genuinely good people and innovative artists. And through it all I was reminded that we all have music as a voice for justice, and we should use it to make something beautiful when people need it the most. 

Second Inversion streaming partnership

Big news today!

A Far Cry is completely thrilled to be beginning a new partnership with Second Inversion, who will be hosting video streams of all of our Jordan Hall concerts this year, beginning with "Pau" tonight!

Second Inversion is a vibrant and joyous home for a lot of classical and new music, and we couldn't be happier to be partnering with them. 

Read all about it here! 

On Casals and us

An introduction to tonight's program, from its curator Michael Unterman. Enjoy! 

This is not the first time we have played a concert that owes a debt to Pau Casals. When we play the music of Bach, or any of the works for cello or orchestra he recorded, his interpretations are felt, whether directly or indirectly. We also think of Casals when we think of Spain, of Catalunya, as one of the great heroes of that country and region. He left an indelible mark on the musical history of New England as well, through his 13 summers at the Marlboro Festival, teaching many of the musicians we admire today and with whom we have studied. Finally, he is there in our minds when we think of social justice and the struggle for peace as one of the great, principled, humanist statesmen. It would be difficult to plan a program that didn’t relate to Casals in some way: he is a giant.

Then again, this program in particular owes near everything to him, with all the pieces being either the subject of his recordings (as cellist and conductor), his own compositions and arrangements, and the Ginastera, which is dedicated to him. The Brandenburg Concerto that opens is a nod to his lifelong championing of Bach’s music, most notably of the Suites for Solo Cello, but also his interpretations of Bach’s orchestral works which he recorded twice. Our performance will be based on these recordings, to be played in more of an “old school” style, rather than our usual practice of borrowing elements from historically informed practices; most notably that means using a grand piano for continuo, rather than a harpsichord.

The next set of works for cello and orchestra features pieces that are the subject of celebrated Casals recordings. First, his arrangement of “El cant dels ocells” (“The Song of the Birds”), a Catalan folksong that, through Casals performances, became known as a song of protest against the Franco regime, of solidarity with the oppressed Catalan people, and as a plea for peace. Then, rounding out the first half, Schumann’s Cello Concerto. For these two works, we are honored to be joined by Lluis Claret, a cellist whom we adore, and also one who shares a deep family connection to Pau Casals, who was his godfather, and studied music with Pau’s brother, Enric.

The second half celebrates Casals the composer. First through his “Sardana de l’exili,” Sant Martí del Canigó, one of his many compositions, little known outside Spain; then in Ginastera’s brilliant Glosses sobre temes de Pau Casals, a work dedicated to Casals on his centenary. And now, this year, we also celebrate Ginastera’s 100th.

Pau notes

Program notes for our Casals concert - written by the fabulous Kathryn Bacasmot. Enjoy! 

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Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) :: Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 in F major, BWV 1046

The six Concerts avec plusieurs instruments (Concerts with several instruments) derive their nickname, the “Brandenburg Concertos,” from the Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg. Presumably, Bach met the Margrave in Berlin while he was in town checking on a new harpsichord for Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen, for whom he was serving as Kapellmeister. It’s also assumed that Margrave took the opportunity to commission Bach for some music. As an employee of Prince Leopold, it would have been inappropriate for Bach to accept a commission for new music from the Margrave. Three years later, however, Bach sent the concertos to Margrave, leading to the hypothesis they were sent as a kind of résumé. During those three years devastating change swept through Bach’s household: out of town on duty with musicians and the Prince, Bach returned to find his wife had died several days before and was already buried. Not only was he heartbroken, he was left to care for their several children alone. Perhaps he remembered meeting the Margrave and saw him as a ticket out of town. Whatever his motivation, they were sent and the met with silence. No reply. The Margrave never even had them performed.

Each of the six concertos stands out for its own reasons, with different instrument combinations used in the “concerto grosso,” (“big concert”) structure made popular by the Italians, where a smaller group (“concertino”) functions as soloist in conversation with the whole (“ripieno”). But the Brandenburg No. 1 has a very modern distinction: it was one of the pieces included on the so-called Voyager Golden Record that was included on board the Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977 as a testament to any entity that may find it of the intelligence and culture of our earthly civilization.

Robert Schumann (1810-1856) :: Cello Concerto in A minor, Op. 129

Schumann spent his life wandering in and out of shadows. Like many artists, reality was the pin threatening to burst the comfort of the creative bubble. Joy and misery were winnowed so thoroughly in the mind of Schumann that the distance between the two seemed impassable by the time he thrust his body into the icy Rhine in February of 1854. Or perhaps it was the opposite; each emotion faded into the other until the edges wore down into a single, indecipherable, dulling numbness that clouded over his mind.

It had been just four years before, in 1850 that he and his family enjoyed a happy and promising time marked by his appointment as music director of the Allgemeiner Musikverein in Düsseldorf. For Schumann, a man always placed a little off to the edges of popularity, the festivities, dinners, performances of his compositions, and general pomp greeting him must have ruffled a refreshing breeze of confidence his direction. Within two weeks of the move he had begun and completed the luminous Cello Concerto in A Minor.

Emerging from the shadow of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), the symphonic/sonata form revolutionary, meant a generation of composers had performance anxiety about following in his footsteps. As such, Schumann (though he wrote wonderful symphonies) focused on a genre largely untouched by Beethoven: smaller sets and collections, and charming miniatures. When Schumann returns to the larger, more traditional, forms he brings with him the same method of distillation resulting in pieces – like the Cello Concerto – that are incredibly potent. In one long continuous sequence of gestures the three movements never break character or mood with the addition of space to delineate their divisions. Nicht zu schnell (not too fast) relaxes with the reminiscence of a waltz into Langsam (slowly), the short melancholic path leading to the effusive Sehr lebhaft (very lively).

The parties and dinners were long gone by the time Schumann was pulled from the Rhine. He had been unceremoniously replaced as conductor in Düsseldorf following a disastrous string of erratic behavior toward his musicians. He would pass away in 1856 after two years in an asylum. His beautiful Cello Concerto of 1850 would not be brought to life by performance until its premiere in 1860.

Pau Casals (1876-1973) :: Sant Marti del Canigo

In 1890 when the cellist Pau (“Pablo”) Casals was on the verge of his fourteenth birthday, he visited a music shop in Barcelona. There, amongst the stacks of sheet music, he saw the six suites for solo cello by Johann Sebastian Bach. From our position in the early 21st century it’s difficult to imagine the cello suites being considered anything less than masterpieces, and yet in the not so distant past they were treated for the most part simply as exercises. They were pieces you would learn to bolster technique, or improve the agility and strength of the fingers. But Casals envisioned something else when he began to delve into the scores: music worthy of the stage. The rest, as they say, is history.

Casals can seem like such a modern presence in our lives that it’s hard to remember he was born in the late Victorian era—having actually played for Queen Victoria in 1899 at the age of twenty-three. By 1936 when the Spanish Civil War broke out Casals was famous, and used his notoriety to publically supported the Republic faction, opposing and drawing attention to what he viewed as a fascist government led by Francisco Franco. When Franco came to power Casals protested by refusing to set foot in Spain, or perform in any country that supported Franco’s regime.

In the early years of self-imposed exile from Spain, Casals composed Sant Marti del Canigo, named for a place in his native Catalonia—a region he was always extremely proud to be from, and to which he had a deep emotional attachment, all the more so when he felt it was under threat. The work is often described as an orchestral setting of a dance native to the region called the sardana, in which the participants move in the form a circle, grasping hands.

Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) :: Glosses sobre temes de Pau Casals, Op. 46

In a preface to his score, Ginastera wrote:

“It was with great emotion that I composed Glosses to the memory of Pablo Casals. Many things drew me to Casals: his personality; his great qualities as an artist and as a man for whom freedom was the essential element in all of life...the enthusiasm he showed for my works; his interest in keeping abreast of events everywhere in the world of music, and finally my own Catalan origin—the ‘ginesta’ (‘broom flower’) being one of the symbols of Catalonia. I still have in my mind a very clear, almost photographic, recollection of Casals sitting on the beach of San Juan with his inseparable umbrella, looking at the sea beyond the horizon as if trying to reach with his eyes the ocean’s opposite shore. A distant smile—at once enigmatic and mischievous, somewhat poetic, somewhat bitter—lighted his face from time to time, and I knew that his thoughts were over there in his native Catalonia. And I have kept from that time certain mental images of Casals that I have tried to bring back to life with love and friendship through his own musical themes.”

Rather than default to theme and variations, Ginastera’s colorful tribute to Casals took form as “Commentaries on Themes of Pablo Casals,” as the title is often translated into English. It’s as if Ginastera is showing us a sonic photo album of those mental images of his friend he held so dear. We hear a clip of Casals, and Ginastera pauses to provide the context. We hear glimpses of, or allusions to, Casals’ music woven into Ginastera’s modernist tapestry, an ingenious way to paint a musical portrait.

Dive in

The ocean is different.

There's a reason that we think of the sea as a being. There's a reason that it has moods we come to know, sweet on some days, violent on others, nurturing life in some moments and fueling blind destruction in others. 

I'm not here to talk about that reason - that would take a lifetime. And anyway, a job like that is best left to the poets. And man, do they love it. 

A certain fascination with that other world, that world of absolute other, draws us in and we start creating things that we almost don't recognize...

Tonight, we're presenting a show at the Gardner Museum that explores this strange new territory. We've been working with a group of four composer-performers, The Oracle Hysterical, to present an evening of entirely new works, a multi-media song cycle that uses every page of the book to evoke the wonder and weirdness and lore and mystery and sensuousness and rage of the ocean. And here's where the metaphysical waves come rolling in: 

The composers in turn have been working with a series of texts from the literary magazine Lapham's Quarterly, which organizes its material for each issue around a theme. So in a way, all the creative energy sprang from the pages of a book, curated by someone who in turn was inspired by each of the works of literature that chronicles each author's relationship with the ocean. Got that quite straight? 

And yet, the liquid energy of the sea pulses through all of it, every stage of the creation, always something you can feel, like interacting with a wave. 

(Slight digression: If you have a couple minutes and want to see something nifty and wave-related and super-cool, I can absolutely recommend this video, that chronicles the scientific work of one of my friends. Just don't give up at 00:45!) 

But back to tonight... 

We'll hear a work that takes us, foot by foot, from the surface all the way down to the deepest sections of the ocean's trenches. We'll hear a John Donne sermon, through the gauzy lens of the water. We'll hear the Book of Jonah, in swingin' recitativo accompagnato. We'll hear shimmering waves as they come crashing through the space once hosting a string quartet. We'll hear a Shakespearian soliloquy, and a digression into the truly fantastic life of the oyster. We'll hear Ulysses' take on his adventure with the Sirens, in an utterly out-there rap cantata that would only more absurdly, deliciously mad if it were accompanied by slides that were just as nuts - so fortunately, that's happening. 

There are more dimensions, more angles, more translations in this show than I can possibly keep track of. Everything is filtered, reflected, refracted. Light and water are everywhere. 

Come, if you can. Remember to keep breathing. 

- Sarah Darling

By heart

Some reflections on the process of tonight's concert, by Sarah Darling. Enjoy! 

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Playing by heart... 

It's the best. It's the worst. It's relaxing, wonderful, and intimate, when it's not terrifying, horrifying, and isolating. It's gazing into the chasm of the unknown - but's also having the chance to look adoringly at the known. 

I love committing things to memory. I feel like there's no better way to cement your relationship with a work of art. Of course, as any performer knows, memorizing something in your "mind" happens late in the game; your body has been internalizing and preparing the performance since the first time you started to play that Mozart sonata or deliver that monologue. Still, being able to separate yourself from the page feels like casting a spell; you weave layers of context, feeling, cues, markers, around the now-invisible work until it is dressed in the finest duds your mind has to offer. 

Sometimes it's a feeling that pulls you through; the trajectory of a dance of key relationships in the development section. Sometimes it's a little map or recipe that pops up on command (when you get to that spot the second time, add in the two extra notes.) Sometimes, it's simply a matter of relaxing into the motions of your own body, tracking them as if you're running an obstacle course for the hundredth time. 

Whatever else it is, memorizing means one thing for certain; You're giving something up in order to reach into the void for the prospect of something else. And there's danger involved; the void is real. You never know when it'll explode into being right in front of you, swallowing up that impulse you had to play C-sharp instead of C and suddenly derailing your fingers, which suddenly crash into each other like cars on a runaway train. 

Want to hear what it sounds like? 

Yeah. That. 

Sigh. 

But when it works (which is really, really, most of the time) - when the spell holds, and all your safeties keep guiding you along the path of the piece - the most magical and amazing things start to happen. You're not just aware of that moment on the page; you're aware of everything, the whole universe of the work and exactly where you are inside it. A sort of wild playfulness takes hold, a devil-may-care. You realize that you could play the fifth instead of the third inside that one chord, and it would be OK, and in the same moment, you realize exactly why the composer wrote that note there in your part, and you're more eager than ever to play it as it is, with complete understanding and sympathy. 

So, A Far Cry decided to try this out as a group. And the results are on display tonight! Tchaikovsky Serenade in Jordan Hall, with nothing on stage except... us. 

To say that memorizing has altered the rehearsal process, or has changed the way that we interact in the piece, would be a massive understatement. Pulling all the stands off stage, allowing us to really know that we're connecting with each other (and with each others' intimate knowledge of the piece) has opened a million doors. At the beginning of the process it would mean relatively simple things - like looking across and seeing who's enjoying your supporting syncopations, or that wonderful diminished chord. As we started to zoom out, we began to share a common structural knowledge; where we are harmonically, how that changes over time. (In a way, we've always known these things, but when G major versus C major shows you where you are in the piece's "roadmap," the function hits home in a different way.

Yesterday, we took it one step further and, just to see (so to speak) what it would be like, we played the whole darn piece with our eyes closed.

Suddenly, we were tapping into each others' collective sense of sound, dynamic, and rubato without the "aid" of a visual (which is much like the "aid" of visual music.) Without it, we were forced to go deeper, to listen like we honestly never have had to do before. Trust and forgiveness are off the charts in a situation like that. But other things spring up into the void; the colors of tones, the feelings of dynamics. The sense of rhythm. The unbelievable feeling that everyone in the room is defined by one thing and one thing only: sound. 

We won't be playing quite that way tonight, but we're keeping that sensation with us.

And we hope - and trust - that playing this piece together by heart, will change everything about the experience. For us and for everyone who listens. 

The way I see it, the true challenge of "by heart" is to open up your heart just that little bit more.