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Chamber Music Northwest at Forty
Chamber Music Northwest is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, and it still has a few tricks up its sleeves.
The summer festival is still offering the requisite big-name ensembles playing old masters in grand spaces. But they're also adding a new twist: up-and-coming groups, like the Jasper Quartet, are bringing chamber music to spaces like Mississippi Studios, where concert-goers normally drink Pabst while rocking out to Northwest bands.
It's not the first time CMNW has pushed chamber music past its traditional envelope. Last year, for example, they invited the neo-bluegrass virtuosi Punch Brothers, who mix old time music with Bach to extraordinary effect.
This year's Protege Project is an even more concerted effort to widen the chamber music tent. The thinking seems to be that if young people aren't coming to chamber music concerts — and if my experience is any guide, they're not; I'm 34, and the people around me are often twice my age, if not older — why not bring chamber music to young people? So far it's gotten good reviews, but will it translate to new audiences?
We'll ask David Shifrin, who has been the artistic director for 30 years, and we'll talk to J Freivogle, a twenty-something in the Jasper Quartet, about where he sees chamber music 30 years from now.
Have you been going to Chamber Music Northwest for a while? What keeps you coming?
Are you a youngish fan of chamber music? How would you hook your friends on a Haydn quartet, or a Shostakovich trio?
GUESTS:
- David Shifrin: Artistic Director of Chamber Music Northwest, pre-eminent clarinetist, and professor at the Yale School of Music
- J Freivogel: First violinist of the Jasper String Quartet
Editor's note: Here are some extra credit Art Beat links for your viewing and listening pleasure:
- A 2005 story about David Schiff's "New York Nocturnes"
- A 2006 story about Chamber Music NW's Young Artist Fellowships
- A recent video blog featuring the Jasper Quartet
Tagged as: chamber music · music
Photo credit: Keith Cheng
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I love this topic! I play in a string quartet with 3 other 30-something women. We found each other on Craig's List about 5 years ago. By day we are non-musical professionals and by night we are Merlot-sipping, Fugue-playing chamber music lovers.
Our communities thought they needed to be on good behavior when they were around classical music and they sure didn't seem too excited when we announced we were going to play a concert. Our solution? Well, get a keg, of course! and play in the back yard! We've officially been renamed the "Kegger Quartet." Needless to say, rowdy behavior is highly encouraged. It's been three years now since our first Quartet Kegger, and I know it has transformed my friend's feelings about "stuffy" classical music. It's hard to be serious when the people around you are yelling "Kegger" during an intense crescendo or a grand pause!!!
Katie Pugh, Portland OR
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I love listening to chamber music and classical music. I'm 25, and was brought up with classical music in the house. I was also fortunate to be taken to live concerts by my parents growing up. It is great to listen to music on my iPod or the radio, but it is so much better in person.
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Welcome to the club, CMNW;). For the record, Classical Revolution PDX (www.classicalrevolutionpdx.org) has been bringing Mozart & more to the masses with regular gigs at places like the Someday Lounge & Castello's Travel Cafe for the last couple of years. A spin off from the original Classical Revolution San Francisco, founding violist Mattie Kaiser has infused the Portland classical music scene with a sweet funky vibe where you can have a martini with your Mozart, or a beer with your Bach. (Tho Castello's is all ages too by the way, so families can come hear us there). Heck, I even played a Telemann recorder Sonata with a harpsichord accompanist at the Holocene of all places a couple years ago at our Baroque Bash. (Harpsichords and the Holocene don't usually go together;). Yet, you can often hear a pin drop as audiences naturally quiet down to appreciate the often superb muisc being presented even in such relaxed settings.
I'm so grateful to Mattie as she has provided an outlet for both upcoming classical musicians and audiences alike that is way more accessible than anything else going. Only a handful of elite performers can get into any of the paid groups in town - the rest of us aren't exactly chopped liver and would love to get to play the chamber repertoire, and this group provides that outlet. And audiences of all ages can enjoy it for nearly free (we usually ask just $3-5 donation). I hope to see CMNW do more like this to keep classical music alive and accessible to wider audiences.
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Classical music in Portland has been innovative for awhile. I'm the program annotator for the Oregon Symphony, and I used to do freelance PR for them as well. When I first started working with the symphony earlier this decade, they had a series called Chamber Music On Tap. Symphony musicians, many of whom also play in smaller ensembles such as Fear No Music, the Bassoon Brothers and other groups, would get together at Bridgeport Brewpub's upstairs room (this was before the pub was remodeled), and present chamber music there. It was a great series, well-attended and a lot of fun.
It's important to remember that a lot chamber music originated as salon music, meant to be performed in small and often private spaces, such as people's homes. Some of what we consider to be the finest masterworks of the chamber repertoire, like Schubert's "Trout" Quintet, were originally written and performed at a party in a Viennese home. Taking chamber music out of the rarified environment of the concert hall and returning it to less formal venues is entirely appropriate, and brings the music back to its origins.
I'm 42, btw.
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CMNW is truly one of my summer highlights (as it has been since the early 1980's). There are a variety of venues and opportunities to enjoy, I especially make it a point to attend protégé events. Unfortunately, the ticket prices make it inaccessible to the unemployed (5 yrs+). But I'm on the volunteer 'wait-list' now for for a few yrs, so someday.... I'll be able to enjoy again.
Have a great summer!, enjoy the 'end-of-season'.
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Imagine an alternative future if the recording industry had NEVER been invented. All music would be live. Everyone would have some music ability to play, recreate and entertain. We would have thousands of local artists that have local niches and numerous local sounds...no national or world wide artist. We would have developed thousands of tiny venues and stages. There would not be multimillionaire or billionaire artists, just fairly distributed working wages and local artists. There would be NO ELVIS (or Beatles).
This is the world of Mozart, Beethoven and Bach. This is the world prior to 1890. With the Record Industry, we become homogenized, dumbed down and the Lowest Common Denominator--but that Justin Bieber is a Dreamboat, and I KNOW he is not a fad.
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A group on the central coast (The Oregon Coast Chamber Music Society) has been arranging home concerts of chamber music for the last couple of years - hearing this music in intimate groups brings a whole new depth of experience. I really enjoy hearing what our artists select. We usually have our concerts in the afternoon - sometimes overlooking the ocean at sunset. It's really a yummy experience.
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I'm 39 years old and have been a active fan and supporter of chamber music for at least 10 years. I've attended the Chamber Music NW festival a number of times since moving to Portland. I think the choice of venue for a musician will have more to do with economics and demand. Ensembles that play modern chamber music have a smaller market than ensembles that play everyone's favorite classical pieces, so a bar might just be a better sized venue with a lower economic risk to appeal to a smaller, younger audience. I wouldn't mind seeing chamber music in a bar, as long as the sound is good. For instance, I'd trust the Doug Fir.
But, while we're talking about venues, I've always found the Kaul Auditorium to be a soul-less place to hear and I suspect, play music. I never enjoy the performances at Kaul as much as Catlin Gabel venue and have stopped going to shows there altogether, no matter how good they look.
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Two comments.
First, I am 61. For several years I have been going once each year to a CMNW concert at Reed College with my neighbor, who is 99 this year. Well, she was a bit under the weather this year, so I went with her son and granddaughter, and a couple of friends. We do intend to attend next year, when she will be 100. Picnic dinner on the lawn there and then a fine concert. Great venue and music series.
Second, all in all, I would say one of, if not the, best and most artistically significant chamber music group of the past century or so would be the Grateful Dead. Maybe the next time you address this topic you could get Phil Lesh, a classically trained musician, to hold forth. That would be a heck of a show.
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Chamber music gives the audience a deeper and more intimate connection to classical music than the symphony so expands the potential audience base to those of us who enjoy smaller venues and who want to hear each instrument's individual contribution.
There is a lot of creativity and invention in the Portland chamber music scene also, including crossover styles with elements of jazz, Afro-Carribean music, Latin dance music and even some pop music. I personally enjoy the variety of music being presented by chamber groups and think it will help keep chamber music alive and vibrant.
The Protege Project which has brought 13 relatively young but highly talented performers to the CMNW Summer Festival this year, has been very exciting. The energy and enthusiasm of these young musicians has energized the festival enormously, and I would love to see much more intergenerational performance in the future, bringing more young musicians to play with the seasoned chamber players.
Thank you to Chamber Music NW for a terrific variety of exquisite performances!
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The advantage of chamber music is that it retains its parts. Because of its minimal nature it can seem crisp and vibrant---well if it works, and is well executed. You can distinguish the sounds and players with more ease then with an orchestra. Often it is easier to relate and find the passion in a smaller group, it is easier to understand because there are fewer degrees of separation between the input and output. In other words, you see where the sound is coming from. A full orchestra can sometimes come off as a drone, but with a smaller group this is perhaps, less likely to happen. I think it is hard to say whether chamber music is an inherently ‘better concept’ or simply that it has a greater chance at success because of its inherent simplicity. It is like the contrast of black and white photography versus color.
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[Taking off my impartial journalist's mask...]
This is EXACTLY how I feel, as a concert-goer. I love being able to pick out each voice, to know where the musical lines are coming from, to see the source of the line, and to understand how the parts form the whole. I can't do that with a symphony orchestra. It's funny how something as simple as this "what you see is what you get" sensibility can be the source of such joy. That, and some amazing music.
Of course, all of this is in addition to my hackish attempts at playing viola in pickup chamber groups over the years.
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Chamber music is alive in Portland! The new protégé project joins another well-established organization, Classical Music Revolution PDX, in redefining the meaning of the word ‘chamber’ by infiltrating such hip venues as the Holocene and The Woods with the sounds of classical music. That one can enjoy a refreshing microbrew in a local bar while listening to Beethoven puts a unique Portland twist on the conventional model for chamber music.
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Classical music lives on!
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First let me say that I am a great supporter of professional musicians and for many years was on the board of the Oregon Mozart Players, a fine professional chamber orchestra in Eugene. I thoroughly enjoy first-class chamber orchestra and woodwind chamber music concerts. (For some reason, I always nod off at string quartets, no matter who is playing.)
Now let me put in a plug for us amateurs. One of the special joys of chamber music is that it's not that hard to put together a small group of players of comparable abilities and get enormous joy out of playing accessible music. A lot of the chamber repertoire from the 18th and 19th centuries was meant to be played in intimate settings, so it's naturally suited to playing for fun (which doesn't mean not working hard) and for small audiences of friends and relatives. Much of the 20th century stuff, even if intended for the concert hall, also works in small venues.
Eugene is fortunate to have a city-supported series of free public concerts every Saturday afternoon, with performers including some of the best local amateurs. In the past year or so I've had the pleasure of playing some pretty serious woodwind quintet music in those concerts as well as performing an almost world premiere with The Uncalled Four bassoon quartet. Sure we're not perfect, but we and the audiences have fun with live "classical" music in an informal setting. Kids are welcome if they can sit still.
And of course there are dozens of amateur gigs here every year in places such as retirement centers, museum receptions, parties and the like.
Let's not automatically think of the value of chamber music as only related to professional performances.
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Comments are now closed.
Am eager to hear tomorrow's program on Chamber Music Northwest. Other arts organizations, including Portland Piano International, are experimenting with alternative venues, as well, in an effort to bring classical music to a broader audience. Phyllis Chen on the toy piano and Steinway Grand at Doug Fir was a revelation recently. I'd be interested in a program on arts organizations in general and what they are doing in these tough economic times to attract younger audiences.