The Epoch Times: Gerard Schwarz, a Lifelong Music Educator

The Epoch Times
By Catherine Yang

Gerard Schwarz conducting the All-Star Orchestra during the filming of their PBS TV special at the Manhattan Center. (Steve Sherman)

NEW YORK—The mark of a great civilization is best and most completely left by its artistic achievements. This is what conductor Gerard Schwarz firmly believes, and something that has guided his actions over the course of his career.

“Culture is important to civilization: If you look at every advanced society through history, they’re always known for their contribution to the arts, whether it be literature or music or philosophy or painting. If you’re known for your wars, what a shame,” said Schwarz, who will celebrate his 70th birthday this year. To commemorate this, he’s recently released a memoir (“Behind the Baton: An American Icon Talks Music“) and will release a 30-CD box set of favorite recordings with Naxos Records in the fall. 

His achievements are usually given out as a long string of numbers—five Emmys, 14 Grammy nominations, six American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers awards, 300 world premieres, and 350 or so recordings. During Schwarz’s time as music director, the Seattle Symphony’s subscriber base grew from 5,000 to 35,000 and its audience numbers tripled from 100,000 to over 320,000. These numbers, while impressive, belie his personal and anecdotal approach to musical life.

His memoir, for instance, was easy and “very fun” to write, he said, because rather than recounting years and dates, he draws on his memories of projects, people, and most importantly, the repertoire involved. The book spans childhood to present day at a brisk pace, with an almost matter-of-fact tone and up close and personal vignettes. 

The notes for the CD set he’s currently working on are written in the same way—”I try to do everything from the personal perspective. … Why did I put this on the disc? What’s important? Why did I program them? What does it mean to me, and what’s the value they have for us?” Schwarz said. Everyone knows Brahms’s symphonies, for instance, so Schwarz would like to talk about why they are not just great music but also great orchestra-building repertoire. 

Since stepping down from his music directorship at the Seattle Symphony, Schwarz has been working on passion projects. All of his projects are fun, he explained, and meaningful too. 

“Behind the Baton” by Gerard Schwarz

A major one has been the All-Star Orchestra, a televised-only symphony orchestra made up of top players from about 30 different major orchestras across the country. Here, as it has been throughout his career, Schwarz’s purpose is to educate.

First, he said, you have to believe in the intrinsic power of music.

“For me, music is language. It encompasses every emotion, every intellectual exercise that we have, and it is a language that goes beyond words,” Schwarz said. 

Education

The best musical education is to learn to play an instrument yourself, Schwarz said. You then learn the language; you become literate. And beyond gaining musical knowledge, you learn things like focus, collaboration, and other character-building traits or social skills that come along with the study.

In addition to conducting, Schwarz is also a composer and is currently writing four duos for cello and piano that will premiere at Bargemusic in Brooklyn. (VanHouten Photography)

Born to Austrian parents, Schwarz’s upbringing was filled with music and culture. He was expected to learn an instrument from a young age—something like the piano or violin—but after hearing the horns in the procession scene of the opera “Aida,” he knew he had to play the trumpet. 

At age 18, he was freelancing for all the major ensembles in New York, and then joined the American Brass Quintet, which played concerts for students four to six times a week. “Every morning, we’d go to an elementary school to teach, to expose kids to this music and try to open their minds,” he said. The quintet traveled internationally, and so they were giving classes at various universities as well.

“Education has always been a priority for me,” he said. Even more so when he became a conductor and then a music director. “Because if you don’t educate, there is no future.”

Beyond learning to play an instrument—which Schwarz ardently advocates, citing numerous studies of the benefits of learning an instrument—music education is about experience. It’s about hearing Beethoven’s Fifth in full, not just learning the theory and history, which, though important and interesting, cannot replace firsthand experience. 

The All-Star Orchestra’s third season premieres in the fall. (All-star Orchestra)

He made the choice to switch career paths from being a trumpet player to being a conductor fairly early because he wanted to do more with his musical career, and ended his trumpet career on a high note, after being made the youngest-ever principal trumpeter at the New York Philharmonic. Then in 1985, he took on the music director position in Seattle and made the city his home. Being a part of the community, he could see the immediate results of his educational and outreach initiatives.

The education programs had been cut before he arrived, so one of the first things Schwarz did was restore them. Many of his efforts centered on outreach, whether it was through free concerts so that Seattleites could come downtown to visit the symphony’s hall for free, or bringing the orchestra to City Hall and to Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks, and every other major corporate headquarters. “This is your orchestra,” Schwarz said. “We’d love to have you come to us, but we’ll go to you too. … We’re there for you.”

All-Star Orchestra members play Dvorak’s “New World Symphony.” (All-star Orchestra)

Being a music director requires caring deeply for the community and having a great respect for history. The Seattle Symphony is the city’s only professional orchestra, and Seattle is not a regular stop on major orchestras’ international tours. Meaning, if the orchestra doesn’t play a Tchaikovsky symphony one season, it won’t be performed in the city at all that year. They are responsible for presenting the core repertoire, so that people can connect with the classics.

“In a place like Seattle, you are really responsible for musical life in the city,” said Schwarz, who must have conducted 50 or 60 Beethoven’s Fifths during his tenure. The individual players, too, were involved in education initiatives, and many gave private lessons to children. 

The result was an uptick in everything, from orchestra members’ salaries to the number of concerts programmed per season to the number of seats filled. The results of Schwarz’s dedication to musical education made his next project, which met with great skepticism, something his friends and supporters believed he could accomplish.

After Schwarz finished his music directorship in Seattle, he and his wife, Jody, came up with the idea of the All-Star Orchestra. The goal would be to film one-hour episodes of great musical works, plus additional education segments and discussion of the pieces, and give all of this content away for free online and on public television. 

“Yes, we [include talks], but the music is the key, not the talk,” Schwarz said. The program has already reached over 5 million viewers and last year was broadcast in the United States for 5,000 hours (equivalent to more than half a year’s worth, consecutively), so there has been traction. 

“Do I hope it’ll inspire other people to do the same thing? Yes. This isn’t something I own, I’m just one person, trying to make a difference,” he said.

Filming With the All-Stars: Musical Camp of the Highest Caliber

Working with the All-Stars Orchestra is great pressure, but also great fun, according to Schwarz. “It’s like going to camp—a lot of the players went to school together and haven’t seen each other for 20 years.” There is no audience, just the sound stage, so everyone is “playing for their colleagues.”

There were no auditions. Schwarz asked people he knew and took some recommendations as well. They represent about 30 orchestras, where most are principal players, and there have been 14 concertmasters in the mix. Everyone is incredibly experienced, because “I have to have people who know the repertoire. There’s no learning curve.” There’s no rehearsal. Everyone, including the conductor, is expected to intensely prepare because once the cameras turn on, and Schwarz gives a downbeat, they just have to go. There is maybe less than 3 hours to spend on a 46-minute piece.

A Good Conductor, in a Nutshell

“You have to have a very good ear,” Schwarz said. You have to be able to hear multiple things and distinguish them from each other all at the same time, while minding the beat. Additionally, “you have to have some kind of physically ability to be expressive, with your hands, eyes, body.”

“In some ways, the most important thing is to have a tremendous amount of knowledge of [and exposure to] music—knowing repertoire, knowing history.”

“You need to have good leadership abilities so you’re sensitive to people and their needs and where they are, rather than being an autocrat,” he said. “And you have to be the servant of the composer. You have to care deeply about the audience and the musicians, but the composer is first.”

“There are a lot of things, and not one is more important than another.”

American Heritage

The All-Star Orchestra partnered with the Khan Academy to create free educational material on music basics, the instruments in an orchestra, and analysis of masterworks. (All-star Orchestra)

History has always been a core interest for Schwarz, partly because it provides perspective, and maybe because it gives us something to build on. And this respect for history guides much of what Schwarz does.

An important piece of our heritage is classical music by American composers in the 20th century, but with the exception of a select few like Gershwin and Copland, most are relatively forgotten.

“There’s so much interesting repertoire that people just don’t do anymore, it’s shocking to me,” he said. He champions American composers like William Schuman (also former president of Lincoln Center and the Juilliard School), Howard Hanson, David Diamond, and over a dozen more. These are composers that continued in the tradition of 19th-century classical composing, Schwarz said, not the school that veered off into the avant garde in the last century. Schwarz is interested in the composers who built on what came before them, rather than disavowing it.

It’s especially surprising for Schwarz that American composers are rarely programmed because he grew up with these songs in his ear, alongside the more well-known classical masterworks. He played the trumpet, after all, and was in contact with a lot of band music, which is basically all American. 

Last fall, he and the All-Stars recorded another season of shows, which will go out to stations this summer to be broadcast in the fall. This season includes music performed by the United States Marine Band, which he also recently guest conducted in concert.

It’s not a marching band, but a concert band, he elaborated. “The Marine Band is very interesting—most people don’t know what bands are.” They are essentially wind ensembles, and people don’t hear many of those; not in New York, at least. In the Midwest, most major universities have a band, but the only full-time and professional bands are really the U.S. military ensembles.

“That’s a whole different repertoire,” Schwarz said. But if you’re not involved with a band, you’ve probably never heard the music and the composers’ names won’t ring a bell. “It’s fantastic, and what a joy, to educate and expose people to great music.”

Blogcritics: Concert Review - Israeli Chamber Project (NYC, 8 April 2017)

Blogcritics
By Jon Sobel

Mozart, Richard Strauss, and 20th-century composer Jean Françaix were on the menu Friday night at the Baruch Performing Arts Center as three members of the Israeli Chamber Project and guest violist Paul Neubauer served a repast of virtuosity and variety. Presented by the Sandra Kahn Wasserman Jewish Studies Center, the program showed off the ensemble’s deep grounding in a wide range of repertoire.

Israeli Chamber Project at Baruch Performing Arts Center

Sandwiched between the Mozart and the Strauss, the performance of Françaix’s 1933 String Trio was my first exposure to the prolific Frenchman’s relatively neglected music. Based on this piece, I’d be happy and interested to hear more. Neither firmly modernist nor strictly neoclassical, the piece begins with a perpetual-motion Allegro, all ghostly agitation on muted strings. The Scherzo jumps with echoes of ragtime, posturing in good-natured mockery of a classical vocabulary. Vaguely jazzy chords also underpin the early strains of the Andante.

Again muted for the final Rondo, the the musicians plunged through a tutti statement and into gently swaying harmonies, passing the melody from instrument to instrument. Carmit Zori (violin), Hillel Zori (cello), and violist Neubauer rendered the entire concise work with sensitivity, grace, and a touch of humor.

The fun Françaix was perhaps all the more effective following Mozart’s Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, K. 493, a mature work that in this performance put me in mind of the astounding String Quintets of Mozart’s final years, as it feels nearly as forward-looking in some aspects. A few slightly rushed passages didn’t reduce the overall sweetness of the first movement as pianist Assaff Weisman merged a ballet-like touch with the string trio’s warm tones. The audience had to bite back an impulse to applaud when the movement ended. (It’s a pity current propriety doesn’t permit that; I think less formality would make classical concerts more widely appealing, and the additional feedback could help musicians distinguish their good performances from their great ones.)

The Larghetto movement begins in a simple lullaby-like mode, then grows with subtle complexity into dense drama. The string players conveyed Mozart’s fascinating harmonies in superb balance, while Weisman played with soft, tasteful restraint without ever sacrificing the clarity that’s all-important in Mozart. This emotional movement is very much a dialogue, and the four musicians spoke its narrative like lifelong friends, delivering with exquisite sensitivity what was to me the most memorable performance of a thoroughly satisfying evening of music.

Then they delved into the laughing recesses of the light-footed and lighthearted Allegretto, with its call-and-response passages, setting up the Françaix trio nicely.

After an intermission came the heavier matter of Richard Strauss’s Piano Quartet in C minor, Op. 13. In the Brahmsian first movement of this youthful work, the musicians showed their deep understanding of the Romantic mode – though, to be honest, their performance of the Mozart had left that in little doubt. They achieved an orchestral energy in the striking three-instrument unison passages over rumbling thunder from the piano, and made the galloping Scherzo with its punchy accents an edge-of-your-seat experience. The Trio section felt like a Mendelssohn Venetian Boat Song.

In the Andante they brought out the heavy Rachmaninoff-like melodies and three-against-four rhythms with deep feeling but no schmaltz, and applied equal conviction to the Finale’s percussive energy and sparkling chromatics.

Based in Israel and New York, the Israeli Chamber Project has upcoming concerts in the U.S., Canada, and Israel.

BBC Music Magazine: Top 20 Live Events for April 2017

BBC Music Magazine

ANNE AKIKO MEYERS
92nd Street Y, New York, 20 April
Tel: 212-415-5500
Web: www.92y.org

In 2015, the Finnish composer Rautavaara wrote what turned out to be his last score, a violin-and-orchestra Fantasia for Anne Akiko Meyers (right). Meyers and Akira Eguchi present a violin and piano arrangement of the piece in a programme that also features a new arrangement of Morten Lauridsen's O Magnum Mysterium, plus music by Jakub Ciupinski, Arvo Pärt, Beethoven and Ravel.

See more of BBC Music Magazine's 20 Events for April in North America and more in their April issue here.

BBC Music Magazine: Grand Teton Music Festival Featured in Summer Music Festivals Guide

BBC Music Magazine

GRAND TETON MUSIC FESTIVAL

With Grand Teton National Park as a dramatic backdrop, this festival features seven weekends of orchestra concerts, each with a noted concerto soloist. They include pianists Yefim Bronfman, Denis Kozhukhin and Garrick Ohlsson, violinists Augustin Hadelich and James Ehnes, and cellist Maja Bogdanovic. It's also an opportunity to hear conductors Fabian Gabel, Vasily Petrenko and Cristian Măcelaru, along with music director Donald Runnicles.

WHEN: 3 July - 20 August
WHERE: Teton Village, Wyoming
TEL: +1 307-733-1128
WEB: www.gtmf.org
HIGHLIGHTS:
7 & 8 July: Wagner Prelude to Die Meistersinger, Sibelius Violin Concerto, Neikrug The Unicorn of Atlas Peak, Beethoven Symphony No. 7; Augustin Hadelich (violin), Festival Orchestra/Runnicles
14 & 15 July: Prokofiev Suite from Romeo and Juliet, Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto No. 1; Maja Bogdanovic (cello), Festival Orchestra/Cristian Macelaru
11 & 12 August: Holst The Planets, Aaron Jay Kernis Musica celestis etc; James Ehnes (violin), Festival Orchestra/Donald Runnicles

More on the BBC Music Magazine's full Festivals Guide here.

Haochen Zhang Receives Avery Fisher Career Grant

Photo Credit: Benjamin Ealovega

New York City, March 15, 2017 – Chinese pianist and 2009 Van Cliburn Competition winner Haochen Zhang has been selected as a 2017 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient. These Grants of $25,000 give professional assistance and recognition to talented instrumentalists believed to have great potential for solo careers. The Career Grants are a part of the Avery Fisher Artist Program, and are administered by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Zhang is the only pianist selected of the four winners announced today.

Zhang comments, “Receiving such a prestigious award as the Avery Fisher Career Grant is an incredible honor for me. I am inspired to walk in the footsteps of so many great artists who have won it in the past.”

Since becoming one of the youngest ever winners of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2009, Haochen Zhang has captivated audiences at the BBC Proms and Carnegie Hall; has given sold-out touring performances with the Munich Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, NDR Hamburg, and Mariinsky Orchestra; and has made highly acclaimed recital debuts throughout the globe.

Last month, Zhang released his first studio album on the BIS label, featuring works by Schumann, Brahms, Janáček, and Liszt. The recording was featured as a “Classical Pick” by the Philadelphia Inquirer. Highlights of the current season include engagements with Philadelphia Orchestra, Osaka Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony, and the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, as well as numerous solo recital appearances. Past seasons include debuts with LA Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, London Symphony, and Hong Kong Philharmonic.

Zhang is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where he studied with Gary Graffman.

This year’s recipients are Chad Hoopes and Stephen Waarts, violinists; Haochen Zhang, pianist; and The Dover Quartet.  Previous recipients of the Avery Fisher Career Grant include Gil Shaham, Yuja Wang, Jonathan Biss, Hilary Hahn, Joshua Bell, Escher String Quartet, Anthony McGill, and Augustin Hadelich.

The Career Grant performances are recorded for live webstream and radio broadcast by WQXR, New York’s classical music station, with host Elliott Forrest, and will air on Monday, April 24 at 9 pm on 105.9 FM and www.wqxr.org.

For more information about Haochen Zhang, please visit www.haochenzhang.com

Media Contact:

Patricia Price

+1.509.995.5546

patricia@8vamusicconsultancy.com

Violin Channel: Sirena Huang Awarded 1st Prize at NY Concert Artists Debut Auditions

Violin Channel

22 year old VC Young Artist Sirena Huang from the United States has been awarded 1st prize at the 2017 New York Concert Artists Worldwide Debut Auditions in New York City.

A graduate of the Juilliard School, and current post graduate student of Hyo Kang at Yale University, Sirena is a former major prize winner at the Singapore and Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competitions – and was just last month awarded 1st prize at the inaugural Elmar Oliviera International Violin Competition.

Sirena will receive a Berlin Philharmonie Hall debut recital – plus a concerto engagement with the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra.

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR AND FOUNDER KLARA MIN, VC YOUNG ARTIST SIRENA HUANG & 2017 JURY MEMBER ALISSA MARGULIS

Honorable mentioned were in addition awarded to 2017 Finalists, violinist Belle Ting from Canada/Taiwan and violinist Maho Irie from Japan.

Strings Magazine: Yo-Yo Ma and Silk Road Ensemble Members Team Up with Maestro Long Yu for Inaugural Youth Music Culture Guangdong

Strings Magazine
By Stephanie Powell

Music director Michael Stern fervently bounces along to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8 as he leads the string section of the orchestra. Stern pauses to offer thoughtful direction to the violins on breathing with their bows and asks the violas to sing into the cello section—and, also, to lighten the mood. “It’s joy,” he says of the passage in the score, “and it’s also just noise, right?” Laughter erupts. About 45 minutes into rehearsal, someone slips in through a side door. The students are so focused on the repertoire at hand they don’t notice.

But I take notice of the tip-toeing man, with Jacqueline de Pré’s 1712 Strad in hand, headed toward the last seat in the cello section—it’s Yo-Yo Ma. He shares a music stand and dives right into the Beethoven.

Ma is in Guangzhou, historically a major terminus of the Silk Road in the Guangdong province of China, acting as the artistic director of Youth Music Culture Guangdong—a program in its first year designed to shake up 80 young musicians with a flurry of chamber-music coachings, Silk Road Ensemble–style workshops, panel discussions, and two final concerts, where participants perform as chamber-music groups and as an orchestra.

The program is the brainchild of Ma, who tapped veteran orchestra players and some of his fellow Silk Road Ensemble members to join him, and maestro Long Yu—a powerful, almost single-handed force in China’s
classical-music scene. He holds director-level positions in multiple orchestras across the country, is the founder of the Beijing Music Festival, and much more. The participants, who together make up the YMCG orchestra, are between the ages of 18 and 35, and are all of Chinese descent from Guangzhou or neighboring provinces, Europe, and the United States.

Violinist Johnny Gandelsman coaches a group of YMCG participants on Beethoven’s Septet in E-flat major, Op. 20. Photo by Liang Yan

The two-week-long program takes place at the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra’s rehearsal hall, located idyllically adjacent to the Pearl River. The hall is surrounded by a jagged skyline of metallic skyscrapers and cutting-edge architecture, and the backdrop proves a perfect setting in which to explore the juxtaposition of new and ancient.

And exploration is exactly what Ma has set out to inspire. He’s not there to perform the Beethoven with the orchestra, which is billed on the final-concert program (though he can’t help but sit in and discuss the intricacies of the symphonic work with inquiring minds during rehearsal breaks). He’s there to take trained, technically proficient musicians on a journey to tackle the unfamiliar.

The faculty selected to help the students on that journey includes violinists Johnny Gandelsman and Shaw Pong Liu; cellist Mike Block; oboist Liang Wang of the New York Philharmonic; clarinest/composer Kinan Azmeh; trumpeter Bill Williams; percussionist and Silk Road associate artistic director Joseph Gramley; 22-year-old yangqin player Reylon Yount; singer/sheng virtuoso Wu Tong, and Harvard researcher Tina Blythe. Michael Stern, music director of the Kansas City Symphony and son of violinist Isaac Stern, takes charge as music director of the YMCG orchestra.

Yo-Yo Ma and Long Yu speak during a YMCG panel discussion. Photo by Liang Yan

With the upswing of growth in China’s classical-music scene, it’s no surprise this powerhouse team found its way here. From the inaugural Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition, which took place last January, to the opening of Juilliard’s first satellite campus in Tianjin in 2018, there is undoubtedly a driving force in China’s classical-music scene that feels like it’s only continuing to build momentum. Concert halls are popping up all around the country: Construction of the China Philharmonic Hall is set to finish in 2019, and will offer the country’s philharmonic its first permanent (and translucent) 11,600-square-meter home. It’s hard to ignore the buzz—but why Guangzhou? I ask Ma and Yu—and they each credit the other for the idea.

Guangzhou was the first Chinese port open to foreign traders and was a stop on the Silk Road—offering a convergence of cultures. “Guangzhou is a very interesting place,” Yu says. “It’s very open-minded and young people come here from all over China—from Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin—not just the Guangdong province.”

This sense of diversity is central to the YMCG experience. “What’s interesting is that there are people here from all the different Chinese cultures, from all the provinces,” cellist Mike Block says, “so, there’s this internal energy. It seems like it’s important that the participants are all here together.”

Chinese conservatories have a reputation for producing musicians with razor-sharp technique, which is apparent during any rehearsal. But conservatories also tend to place a heavy emphasis on orchestral works—programming that YMCG challenges with daily chamber-music coachings and improvisation exercises. “Education in China is a valid [topic] to be discussed—not only in China, but all over the world,” Yu says. “For this program, the most interesting [aspect to me] is opening more windows in the mind. [Showing participants] different ways to see—how you could be; how big the possibilities are as a person. You can change yourself. That is more important than only playing onstage. We can find thousands of talented players who are technically perfect, which [can be important], but I don’t want to see a perfect, technical machine onstage—I want to see a person full of life.

“[Playing] music is like having a conversation with a friend, and if the [participants] are learning that—to have that joy, that conversation—that’s the reason that we are doing this. To understand more meaning in life. Yo-Yo has such a big heart; he brings all the young people to another world.”

“Are you a comet?” Yo-Yo Ma asks a group of wide-eyed violists after they play a passage of Bach’s Concerto for Violin and Oboe in C minor. He pauses. “Are you a planet? Are you an alien?”

The blank stares continue, and then some laughter, as he tries to elicit excitement from the violists after a technically sound performance that still seemed to lack full heart. “This is the viola’s revenge,” he assures them. “We, too, are stringed instruments! This is your moment!”

This is a typical exchange during Ma’s chamber-music coaching sessions—he uses out-of-this-world metaphors, swaying along with the music, occasionally demonstrating on instruments, communicating in confident Chinese (albeit needing occasional backup on a few words, like “sister-in-law”), and with his breathing and body language.

Ma is in fact so committed to effective communication that his body language almost betrays him during a rehearsal of the Dvorak Cello Concerto in B minor with the YMCG orchestra. Stern and the participants are lost in the moment, moving so quickly through the music that Ma, bowing up front on the podium, leans so far forward that Stern has to grab him to keep him from toppling over.

During my first day observing chamber-music sessions and Silk Road workshops, I can see bemusement in the participants’ eyes. This isn’t about perfecting intonation or achieving technical accuracy—it is about finding freedom in the music, and revealing a part of themselves. “Today I said to the section leaders, ‘Look, your job as section leader is to communicate energy, character, gesture,’” Ma says. “And you have your back to everybody, so your shoulders—you have to communicate through that frame. If you want to communicate life, you actually have to look at your body space for what it is—and then, you actually have to exceed it.

“Think of air and boiling water,” he says. “If you’re a pot with a lid on it, the water’s cold, the air takes up a certain amount of body, and once it heats up, [the lid] starts to pop—that’s what you have to do. You have to show what is expected of you, and then you actually have to go further.”

This is not a school, Ma says of YMCG, “but what I love about it is that it’s what a school could be.” The model is simple—start out with a diverse faculty with varied skillsets, but similar values. “We don’t say, ‘Oh, this is the way to teach,’ but through those values, we sign on to sort of say, ‘OK, how can we do a 360 on music? How can we acknowledge different styles of music in large-group playing, and how do you take it to small groups?’”

The results are transformative. The participants’ schedule is jam-packed—the day starts at 10 am with a three-hour orchestra rehearsal, which is usually punctuated with laughter in between demanding passages, thanks to Stern and Ma’s witty banter. Chamber-music rehearsal follows for two hours before a Silk Road workshop. A panel discussion that melds music, philosophy, innovation, and tradition caps off the day.

Yo-Yo Ma sits in the back of the cello section during orchestra rehearsal at YMCG. Photo by Li Lewei

“What I like about coaching is helping the participants figure out what’s in the music. It’s kind of like music archeology,” violinist and Silk Road Ensemble member Johnny Gandelsman says. “Sometimes, if you don’t have a lot of experience with playing chamber music or looking at the score, you might not realize how special something is, so I like working with the groups on details, and helping them discover things for themselves.

“And then, once there is that moment of recognition, of, ‘Oh, I get it!’ That’s really rewarding—they’re excited about the music,” he says. “And now they have tools to succeed: to know how to listen to each other, how to look for unified sound. Building trust and having these building blocks that they can then take into their lives when this is over.”

About a quarter of the participants are professional musicians, Gandelsman says, holding positions in some of China’s most well-respected orchestras. Others, Ma later tells me, aren’t necessarily studying music performance or have aspirations of becoming professional musicians. One works as a physicist, and had about three years of violin lessons in his youth. Since then, he’s been essentially self-taught (which seems impossible upon hearing him play) and more than anything, he always wanted the opportunity to perform Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite with an orchestra. YMCG is his chance.

The Silk Road workshops are unmistakable highlights for the faculty and participants. On the first day of the workshops, the students choose one of six Silk Road tunes as a place to start, and they then have to improvise. Walking through the GSO during the workshops, I hear music singing from each corner that sounds like it comes from both the center of the earth and the beginning of time.

Block, director of Silk Road’s Global Musician Workshop, heads the workshops at YMCG. “Apparently the way that classical music is taught [in China] is very regimented,” Block says, “and the same can be said about American classical teaching. The warnings that I got were that it was somehow even more regimented here. So we were unsure how the participants would react to the Silk Road–band opportunity, and I felt from the first session I had with them that they were really no different than American classical musicians. They had various walls that we wanted to break through, but across the board they rose to the occasion.”

Cellist Mike Block coaches a chamber group before a YMCG “Tomorrow Concert.” Photo by Liang Yan

Block has led similar workshops with Silk Road’s Global Musician Workshop across the United States—even at Tanglewood last summer. Leading workshops in such strict orchestral arenas, like YMCG, can be challenging, he says. Typically the workshops take place in an environment where the participants are choosing to be there because they want to improvise and want to be creative. “I’m coming into an orchestral environment where participants aren’t necessarily expecting or planning to improvise, and that’s a very different environment to do this work in,” he says. “Yo-Yo is very passionate about taking those values and bringing them to people who don’t know they need them, or don’t know they value them yet. So, that’s a big part of why I’m here—to have this experience with them.”

There are three nights of final concerts, two chamber-music and one orchestral, that demonstrate the transformative power of this program. The final orchestral performance is energentic and fearless—the orchestra members distinguish themselves with a performance delivered with a contagious sense of enthusiasm and confidence. It is an exhilerating evening, and what one might expect given the participants’ intensive orchestral training.

A chamber group takes in the audience’s response after a triumphant performance of a Silk Road–style arrangement during a Tomorrow Concert. Photo by Liang Yan

But throughout the program, students have also been preparing two sets of chamber-music works for YMCG’s “Tomorrow Concerts.” The concerts take place over two nights—dividing the participants into two sets of chamber groups. In the first half of each Tomorrow Concert program, chamber groups perform a piece of standard repertoire from Debussy to Bach to Steve Reich. In the second half, participants perform works they arranged and composed in the Silk Road workshops. After witnessing a handful of the workshops myself, I think I have a sense of what to expect.

I have, after all, watched the participants work through incorporating unnatural playing techniques and sounds into their compositions—like using the violin as a percussive instrument, fumbling awkwardly with unfamiliar instruments, and interspersing their arrangements with vocals and choreography. The participants’ skills and confidence grew, and it feels obvious. But the transformation that takes place overnight from rehearsal hall to the stage still manages to leave me, and the audience, speechless (figuratively).

During each half of the Tomorrow Concerts series, personality, humor, and confidence shine through the seven groups vibrantly. They take turns owning the stage, breathing together, looking at each other during passages that require dialogue between instruments, and leaning into one another during the standard-repertoire section. The Silk Road–workshop pieces deliver such freedom and variety that the faculty can’t help but shout, yell, stand, and clap after—and during—each performance.

The concerts demonstrate an assortment of explosive cello chopping, solid percussive techniques, stunning vocals, a little shimmying around the stage, and even Mission Impossible medleys.

A violist from the second group grabs the microphone and addresses the faculty, who are all sitting together in the audience. “This has been . . . ,” she says, and pauses, “so damn hard.” The faculty cheers. “We’re going to show you what is courage, what is brave, what is happy.” She then looks into the crowd for the participants who performed in the previous night’s Tomorrow Concert. “Group A—you asked for this,” she says before her group jumps into an electrifying performance.

The energy in the hall instantly changes from polite and attentive to a rowdy musical party. At the close of the final group’s performance, the faculty stands up to give a standing ovation, and you could sense that a door had opened for these students, and they had just started to walk through.

“I still remember the first day when all the [participants arrived],” Yu says. “I saw their eyes, their confusion—you know, they [didn’t] understand what was going on. [Many came] here because of Yo-Yo, but then they realize later that it’s not only Yo-Yo himself, it’s also the things that he brings to them . . . I saw all of their eyes onstage shining with a lot of confidence, a lot of fun, and they finally know why they [are playing]. Today, they became [alive].”

Despite coaching many of the groups, Block says, they still had the ability to surprise him. “For the performers who played during both halves [of the Tomorrow Concerts], it seemed like they were able to access different parts of themselves for the different types of music—and that is really exciting.”

Even Yu admits a slight bias for this project—after more than 20 years of advocating for and advancing the classical-music scene in China—and that says a lot. “YMCG will help the future generation,” he says. “Yo-Yo and I have both talked about this—he’s over 60 and I’m over 50—and for us, for the rest of our lives and careers, the most important [task] is how to help young people.

Yo-Yo Ma after a performance of Dvorak’s Cello Concerto with the YMCG orchestra. Photo by Li Lewei

“It’s my life—music is my language. I tried working for 20 years to help China make a lot of things happen, and a lot has worked. Today [classical music in] China [is] so different than when I came back from Europe. I’m very proud to say we’ve made huge musical changes. [With YMCG], Guangzhou has now opened a new window—[one] that we can now explore for other musicians in China.Creativity and imagination—those are two words that are now very important for young musicians in China.”

The passion is tangible, and (in my case) even tear-inducing. “I think there are as many ways to awaken passion as there are people because it’s so individual and you can’t just say, ‘I want passion!’ It’s something that happens I think when people are using all of themselves,” Ma says. “What makes people remember something forever? What happens I think is, when you are maximally open to something, and you meet a different world, you will maximize the moments with that passion.”

When I ask him for his final impressions of the participants’ Tomorrow Concert performances of their Silk Road arrangements, he replies, “That’s a big victory moment.

“They’ve self-identified. That’s what we hope for. Because you can build from that. Nobody’s going to ever forget what they did. They can forget all we’ve said—all the [orchestra and chamber music] we played—it doesn’t matter. But if they build from those performances they’re in good shape—[they can remember] ‘we used all of ourselves to say something that we really wanted to say.’”

YMCG music director Michael Stern during the final orchestra concert. Photo by Li Lewei

Jewish Journal: Israeli Chamber Project sets sights small for UCLA program

Jewish Journal
By Rick Schultz

When members of the Israeli Chamber Project take the stage at the Jan Popper Theater in UCLA’s Schoenberg Music Building on Feb. 26, their interactions may provide a timely, if unintentional, example for U.S. residents and elected officials to follow amid today’s divisive political culture.

The ensemble’s leaderless music-making process — in the words of one of its pianists, Assaff Weisman — is comparable to the flexibility that successful politics demands.

“The ever-changing role of who leads a piece requires consensus and great respect for each other,” Weisman said. “When we’re on stage, we share in the duties of leadership to make a cohesive whole. Everybody contributes.”

Founded in 2008, the Project consists of distinguished 30-something musicians who get together throughout the year for chamber concerts and educational and outreach programs in Israel, the U.S. and other countries. It currently has 11 members, plus guest artists, who are deployed in different numbers and configurations depending on the program.

At UCLA, three Project members — Weisman, Carmit Zori on violin and Sivan Magen on harp — will take turns performing duets by J. S. Bach, Sebastian Currier, Carlos Salzedo, Claude Debussy and Béla Bartók.

Weisman, who offstage leads the group as its executive director, said “project” is the important word in its name. “We see our mission as ongoing, not finite,” he said. “We’re all about bringing music to as wide a public as possible.”

The UCLA concert, which will begin with Bach’s early 18th-century Sonata for Harpsichord and Violin in B Minor (BMV 1014), arranged for harp by Magen, follows the ensemble’s usual innovative programming of old and new music, except that this time it is traveling light.

“We’re doing a series of duos, which is unusual for us,” Weisman said. “We usually travel with a bigger group.”

Currier’s “Night Time” Suite for harp and violin from 2000, which follows Bach’s sonata, has a special place in the ensemble’s repertory — they performed it for their debut at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in 2012.

“The suite’s five short movements traverse different stages of the night,” Weisman said. “They are restless, quietly introspective pieces full of mystery.”

Weisman said he is especially excited about Salzedo’s 1922 Sonata for Harp and Piano. Indeed, the program at UCLA should be a feast for lovers of that ethereal instrument. Salzedo, a French harpist, pianist, composer and conductor from a Sephardic family, who died in 1961, also founded the harp program at the Institute of Musical Art in New York, which became The Juilliard School.

“There are not many works for harp and piano, and this is one of the best,” Weisman said. “It hardly ever gets performed. We try to take risks, and whether we’re performing old or new music, we push the envelope when we can.”

The idea for the Project came from its founder, Tibi Cziger, an Israeli clarinetist who is now its artistic director. Cziger, like Weisman, began his music studies in Israel and continued them at Juilliard.

“There was little to no support for the arts in Israel, so Tibi saw another way for us to develop our careers and address the musical brain-drain at home,” Weisman said. “Our mission became to give back to the places where we started — Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and the Haifa area — and to address a situation where musicians are compelled to find a career path elsewhere.”

Weisman recalled the group’s first tour of Israel, during which the musicians found themselves performing a folk piece by Bartók in a small jazz club in the middle of the Negev Desert.

“Children came with their parents and grandparents, and they sat on the floor,” Weisman said. “There was an upright piano that didn’t function well, but I made do. We played Bartók’s ‘Contrasts,’ a trio for clarinet, violin and piano. They were engaged. We saw that as proof that even a challenging piece can go over well in the strangest places.”

As cultural ambassadors, the ensemble has worked with a diverse cross-section of Israeli society, including the Orthodox, Israeli Arabs and Russian immigrants. Its impact and excellence was recognized in 2011 when it was named the winner of the Israeli Ministry of Culture Outstanding Ensemble Award.

In addition to their performances, the Project’s members also give master classes throughout Israel, as well as in the U.S. and Canada. In 2016, the group made its debut in China.

Another part of the group’s mission is supporting the next generation of composers by commissioning new works. In June, it will perform the premiere of a clarinet quintet by Menachem Wiesenberg, and in 2018 it will debut a new work for harp, strings and clarinet by Gilad Cohen.

After its performance at UCLA, the ensemble is scheduled to travel to Israel for a series of concerts from March 21-25, to New York for concerts in April, then back to Israel for a tour in June.

Weisman said the focus of the ensemble’s work and discussions in Israel is usually centered on music, not politics.

“Our interactions with all segments of Israel’s diverse society have always been filled with mutual respect and understanding,” Weisman said. “I find people are happy to leave politics at the door. But by focusing on music, we can, at least momentarily, break down some of the barriers of cultural identity, language and religion.”

The Israeli Chamber Project performs Feb. 26 at 2 p.m. as part of the free Chamber Music at the Clark series at the Jan Popper Theater in the Schoenberg Music Building at UCLA, 445 Charles E. Young Drive, East. Tickets are awarded by lottery. For information on how to enter the lottery, go to 1718.ucla.edu/lottery-info.

The Philadelphia Inquirer: Classical picks - Portrait of a pianist

Haochen Zhang: "Schumann, Liszt, Janácek, Brahms"

The Philadelphia Inquirer
By Peter Dobrin

Portrait of a pianist. Haochen Zhang was a pianist about whom aficionados were whispering expectant superlatives as he came through the Curtis Institute of Music. The next Yuja Wang, perhaps? Now, the 2012 Curtis graduate has released a studio album on BIS Records of some ambition: Schumann's Kinderszenen, the Liszt Ballade No. 2 in B Minor, Brahms' Three Intermezzi, and Janácek's Piano Sonata 1.X.1905, "From the Street."

Some might recall the 2011 Curtis recital when he filled in for Wang after travel problems. Zhang, who won a Van Cliburn International Piano Competition gold medal in 2009, was 20 at the time of that recital, and many of the characteristics he displayed then are apparent in this recording: restraint and control - until a specific moment of arrival.

The Kinderszenen are lovely, and he alternates between a gauzy dream state and great heat in the Liszt. Janácek arrives with a finely shaped sense of quiet, questioning wonder. Zhang's love for Brahms was clear at that Curtis recital. So, too, here, where he uncovers ideas well beyond those apparent from just the written note.

The Fairfield Mirror: Cameron Carpenter Changes the Concept of Classical Music

The Fairfield Mirror
By James Della Rocca

After Cameron Carpenter’s performance, the organ should no longer be considered strictly an instrument used in churches, but a beautiful instrument that everyone should experience listening to in this manner at least once in their lives, with speakers blasting walls of sound at the audience. Carpenter played at the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts on Saturday, Jan. 28 to a crowd so large that a screen was used so that people in the back rows could see both him and his one of a kind International Touring Organ.

Carpenter played a total of nine pieces, as well as a few sections of improvisation.  Even though many of the pieces he played were not generally known, he still blew the audience away with his instrumental proficiency. So much so that they gave him a standing ovation and he came back to perform an encore before receiving another standing ovation.

Carpenter played with his entire body, mind and soul throughout his performance. He used not only his hands to play the organ’s keyboard, but also used his feet on the pedal board. In between pieces, Carpenter would stand up and speak to the audience about the history of the organ and of the pieces he would play. This knowledge helped to increase the audience’s appreciation of his playing and of the pieces themselves. Just by looking at the way he played, the audience could tell that he loved what he was doing and enjoyed every moment he spent on that bench. Sophomore Ricci Gold said, “I thought Cameron Carpenter’s performance was amazing, because his touring organ allows more people to experience organ music and classical music in a way they might not normally be able to.“

The only drawback to his performance was that Carpenter had his back to the audience the entire time. He could have improved his performance by at least turning the organ on an angle so that the audience could see more of him. With his back to the audience, only the people on the front rows could see anything he was doing without looking at the projection.

Carpenter’s performance was an extraordinary experience that should be seen by as many people as possible.  Even though potential listeners might be turned off by the idea of an organist playing for two hours, Carpenter subverts this idea in the first piece he plays. People sitting down were probably expecting somewhat bland, traditional organ music. Instead they were treated to an incredible wall of sound created by the large number of speakers surrounding the stage at every angle, an array of pieces from different periods such as the Baroque, Classical and more Modern eras, and Carpenter’s sensational playing. Carpenter took center stage and was surrounded by over half a dozen enormous speakers. Cameron Carpenter brings new life to an instrument that has been brushed aside as a relic of the past.