Oregon Art Beat; #203; Chamber Music Northwest (CMNW)

Thank you very much windows and windows. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know,

I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know So nice, it takes you from waiting Wait a minute. Tell me, when were you with me? I was, you know, there were 76 -76 So did you hear the interview now? Eric, you must have been in Boston very, I played in Boston or, we were still over there Oh yeah, those years? Oh yeah, yeah, we were there too You know who was at the concert tonight? He was the principal of Western Cleveland. And he lives here in Portland. He used to be my idol all time. He was all wind players. He was really? I don't know. He was a signer for me. I'm sorry. Thanks for reading. We were there from

56 until 84. So we've been there a long time. We've been listening to you play for the 20, 30 years or 20 years and we go. We love the discussion. I think you sign the album on this one. Thank you. Thank you. No, we love these things, but we live in Midland, Michigan. Our son lives in Portland. We have to get out here occasionally. Thanks for visiting. We call it whenever we can. Thank you. I think this works well here. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for sticking around. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm gonna say this one. Thank you so much. It's

okay. I really enjoyed the clarinet. Thank you. You're welcome. It would be beautiful. You're probably supposed to be doing something on it. Thank you. Well, thank you. So which one of these do you like? Here. I'm pretty far from this. Oh. Why is chamber music maintained this incredible popularity chamber music of all the performing arts I think is the most flexible adaptable portable all of the great composers of music for the last four centuries and more wrote some of their most compelling beautiful

profound works for small groups of instruments everything from duos for piano and violin or piano and cello to the most diverse combination of instruments ranging from two players up to 20 players there are thousands of works by all of the great composers that people have heard of from Bach Beethoven Mozart and Brahms through the 20th century to works being created today and the beauty of it is that you can adapt your performances to the community to the resources that a community has to compensate performing artists musicians to the kind of space that you want to have your performances is to the size of the audience and their ability to support an organization like that you can have the most chamber music is

probably the most adaptable flexible versatile portable of all the performing arts most if not all of the great composers throughout the last four centuries and more have written at least some works for small groups of instruments and most of the great composers from Bach Beethoven Mozart, Brahms, Hyden, Mendelssohn, Schubert have written at least as many if not many more works for various small groups of instruments as they have large symphony works and an operatic works there are hundreds of works for various combinations of small ensembles by a composer like Mozart alone Beethoven wrote 17 string quartets and ten violin sonatas and five cello sonatas the repertoire is enormous and composers chose the medium of chamber music or small ensembles as the vehicle for which they wrote some of the most personal

compelling and profound music that enables communities of any size to put on concerts at the very very highest level they can adapt to the size of the venue or the auditorium they have concerts can be put on in private homes and in small auditoriums and large auditoriums the number of musicians can be adapted from one or two to all the way up to to works for 20 instruments there are works that that we perform at chamber music northwest where each individual player has their own part in a work for 15 or 20 instruments and what we have is kind of a repertory company a number of musicians come together each season and come together in the most diverse array of instrumental combinations to play music from Bach

Brandenburg concerti to works that were written only a few months ago in the 21st century okay and that was one of the things that intrigues me is the quality of the players that you get I mean you're getting the very best players from around the country to come to Portland in July how are you able to attract the very best well you know there is a is a network of musicians who have great respect for each other and I've found through the years that in order to get the finest performers to come to Portland Oregon to play chamber music there are a number of elements that they're interested in in knowing about and probably the first one is who the other musicians are going to be that they're going to work with because there's something about chamber music and the idea of working with colleagues that is that is different from playing alone as a soloist or playing with an orchestra

where it's a collaborative effort and it's a kind of a shared responsibility for the interpretation of the great works so it is kind of a system that's built on trust and mutual respect amongst the musicians the fact that Portland in July is one of the most beautiful places on the planet to be and a very inviting city to be in and that we've come to know our audience and have a real connection and a friendship with the people who have been coming to the concerts for decades is very important too that that a world -class musician can come to Portland and know that all of those elements will be in place that they'll play great music with musicians they respect play for a supportive trusting and appreciative audience and have a pleasant living experience for their stay in Portland all combined to make it a really special event we have very nice places

to play at Reed College and at Catlin Gables School where the the auditoriums are on the small side and it's a very special connection that the the musicians have with the audience and the audience has with the musicians in these auditoriums that that seat only five or six hundred people how is the audience for chamber music different from the audience for our festival it's a good question I think that there are a lot of music lovers who like to hear symphonic music and like to hear chamber music and there are a number of audience members music lovers whose primary concern is here in great music played at the highest level by world -class artists and that's something that a chamber music organization can guarantee because with whatever resources you have you can scale the the size of the performance so that your highest priority is having only the

finest musicians you don't have to raise millions and millions of dollars to keep an orchestra of one hundred musicians on staff throughout the year to have a great symphony orchestra you can hire two musicians of world -class caliber and play literally days and days and days of great music with just those pianists and a violinist and a city like Portland and communities throughout the country and throughout the world are learning that this body of repertoire for small ensembles is as rich and varied as as repertoire for larger groups and that they can tailor their resources to put on world -class concerts so the the audience member I think who is looking for the finest quality performance knows that they can trust a chamber music organization like chamber music Northwest to only put on absolutely world -class performances with the finest musicians there are before the public the the other day when

we came we heard some very classical well -known works and we heard a brand new piece that you've never been before how do you mix introducing new works with keeping some of the classics there's so many different ways to build a program one of the things I like to do is to play works from different centuries and different styles and different periods on the same program so that an audience member who's familiar with a work say a quintet of Brahms or quartet of Schubert that they may have heard on the radio a number of times or own in their classical library for years will come to the concert because they want to hear first -class performance of a work that they know and while they're here we like them to hear something new so maybe something that we've just commissioned or that's just been written or something unusual so that they'll build you know a trust in in the unknown and and realize that there's so much still to be heard and enjoyed and learned

sometimes we do all music of one era sometimes we like to have works that are as contrasting as possible on the same program just to mix it up yeah we're about to go into rehearsal for a work that Aaron Copeland wrote in 1937 he was going through a time when he was experimenting with all kinds of rhythmic complexity and this sextet for Clarenette Piano and String Quartet was originally for a full symphony orchestra and it was called the short symphony and it was attempted several times and performed a few times and it's so difficult tricky in its rhythmic complexity that most symphony orchestras had such a hard time doing it in the amount of rehearsal time allotted that it's not being programmed very often Copeland then rewrote the piece for these six instruments knowing that chamber musicians

will take the time to rehearse it thoroughly work out all of the problems are not on a on the same kind of time constriction where where 100 musicians are on call and need to put a program together in in four short rehearsals and indeed the work took on new life as a chamber work and with different colors and textures much more transparent than the full symphony orchestra and much clearer ability to hear the rhythms and the textures the it's it's an enormously challenging work for the six players and I must say it's one of those works that that has much of Copeland's signature rhythmic vitality and lyric beauty but it's also one of those works that if we conquer all of the rhythmic complexities and difficulties it will then sound wonderfully easy to do the

audience so that's that's what we're doing we're working enormously hard to make it sound terribly easy that's the definition of art I think one of the problems of many classical organization musical organizations have is attracting the younger audience so that doesn't get old and die out what are you doing to attract the younger audience well it's an interesting challenge to attract the younger audience one of the things that we just have to do is is produce concerts that are diverse and always of the highest quality and certainly encourage families to bring their children we have special concerts for families with children we do special events throughout the year where we bring music to children in schools we have special ticket programs for students to come for very little money we recently did an experiment in New York City at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center which was enormously

successful and and told a real story we presented the entire Beethoven string quartet cycle six evenings 17 string quartets with our resident string quartet the Orion quartet which has played many times at chamber music Northwest as well and we gave it as a gift to the city of New York all the tickets were free we partnered with six institutions throughout the city of New York which benefit children and the arts the Harlem School for the Arts Opus 118 string program Brooklyn Children's Museum organizations like that and we honored a different organization each evening we invited the audience to come free of charge with reserved seating and invited them if they had the resources to make a donation not to the musicians or to Lincoln Center but to each of these organizations well the response was incredible within an hour and a half we had given away 6 ,000 reserved seats to hear Beethoven

string quartets and people use those tickets came to the concerts full house six nights and you could hear a pin drop the appreciation was enormous of people who had never heard this music before had never been to a live chamber music concert mixed with some of our regular subscribers who came out for the for the event and the average age of the audience was was about half of what our usual subscribing audience is and it proved a number of things and opened up a lot of questions for the future it proved that perhaps the price of a ticket is an obstacle to coming to these concerts and making partnerships with the community in different ways is a very important way to bring in a new generation of concert goers so we're exploring all kinds of things to do a chamber music northwest as well as throughout the country and various performing arts organizations to make sure that what is really a treasure

and and a great achievement of humanity and all of this great music is heard by as wide an audience as possible well it's the best of a number of worlds coming to Portland to play chamber music we get we get the best weather of the year I'd rather be in Portland Oregon and July than just about anywhere but moreover we have developed a relationship with our audience over decades and we know that we can put the work in and put ourselves into the music and then it has resonance that there are people who are our partners in coming to hear these performances and have a great appreciation for it and it's something that is tremendously rewarding year

after year