Four Days of Luigi Nono, David Allen, New York Times

Fresh hearings for an avant-garde master, Jeremy Eichler, Boston Globe

Utopian Listening website

 

The Thursday lineup features 7:30 pm performances by Wadada Leo Smith and Vijay Iyer (whose album A cosmic rhythm with every stroke releases March 25) and Nicole Mitchell with Tomeka Reid and Mike Reed. At 9:00pm Okkyung Lee and the Steve Lehman Octet take the stage.

On Friday at 7:30 pm, hear Craig Taborn and Wadada Leo Smith with Ikue Mori. The 9:00 show features Courtney Bryan and the Tyshawn Sorey Double Trio.

“These are musicians who just go up there and create,” says Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts Vijay Iyer, who curated the 2016 Fromm concerts. “Every night is different, every time is different, and each has its own integrity and power.

 

"Improvisation really builds something. It’s not contra to composition; it’s another way of putting music together.”

The musicians in this year’s Fromm concerts span generations, geography, and style. What they share is that they are part of the creative music community. “What we call creative music, experimental music that involves improvisation, has an astonishingly diverse range of expression,” says Iyer. “Tyshawn Sorey plays the Village Vanguard but studied with Stockhausen; Steve Lehman is one of the transforming figures of 21st century jazz; Ikue Mori plays solo cello with a rock band [the legendary DNA], Craig Taborn is the most admired keyboardist of my generation.

“They’re all here,” says Iyer, “because they’re innovative and unique.”

All four concerts are free and open to the public. No tickets are required; first come, first seated. Free parking is available at the Broadway Garage, corner of Felton and Broadway Streets in Cambridge (a five minute walk from Paine Hall). Paine Hall is located directly behind the Science Center at 3 Oxford Street; the Hall is wheelchair accessible.

Graduate Student Awards

The Department’s OSCAR S. SCHAFER PRIZE is given to students “who have demonstrated unusual ability and enthusiasm in their teaching of introductory courses, which are designed to lead students to a growing and life-long love of music.” This year’s recipients are Manuela Meier, Emerson Morgan, Marek Poliks, Steffi Probst, and Caitlin Schmid.                                                                                    

RICHARD F. FRENCH PRIZE FELLOWSHIPSwere awarded to the following students in support of their scholarly work:
Ian Copeland to conduct ethnographic fieldwork in Malawi and Chichewa language study                       
Ruijing Huang to conduct dissertation research at Harvard libraries
Krystal Klingenberg to conduct dissertation research in Kampala, Uganda
Panayotis League to conduct fieldwork in Lesvos         
Laurie Lee to conduct fieldwork at a Buddhist monastery in South Korea
Matthew Leslie Santana for travel to Miami and Havana for fieldwork and festival attendance
Felipe Nuñez for travel to Sao Paulo and Montevideo to take musicology classes, conduct archival research, attend a conference, and for Portuguese language study
William O’Hara to support dissertation writing
Sam Parler to support dissertation research
Sarah Politz for travel to France and Benin for follow up research and interviews, and language study
Frederick Reece to support dissertation writing
Jeff Williams for intensive German language study in Freiburg                                                                                                                                                                                                             
JOHN KNOWLES PAINE FELLOWSHIPS were awarded to the following students in support of their scholarly and artistic work:
James Bean for an IRCAM residency and to attend a performance at Valencia Performance Academy and Festival in Spain
Sivan Cohen-Elias to attend a performance of her compositions and to collaborate on projects in Germany and Austria
Justin Hoke to travel to Germany and Australia for composition collaboration and performance
Clara Iannotta for intensive German language study in Stuttgart and to attend the Darmstadt summer course
Timothy McCormack to support travel to New Hampshire, Spain, and Australia for festival attendance and composition collaboration
Manuela Meier to attend the Darmstadt summer course           
John Pax to attend the Darmstadt summer course and the sketch workshop with ELISION Ensemble, and for intensive German study at Goethe Institute
Marek Poliks for travel to Germany, England, Denmark, Minnesota, and California for composition collaboration, performance and instrument development
Stefan Prins for travel to Berlin, Luzern, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Brussels, Zurich, and the Darmstadt summer course for composition performance and collaboration
Adi Snir for travel to Israel for rehearsals and concerts, to attend the at Darmstadt summer course, and to participate in Tzlil Meudcan Festival       
Rajna Swaminathan to conduct fieldwork and for Karnatik vocal study in Chennai, India
Christopher Swithinbank to attend the Darmstadt summer course, for travel to Berlin for composition collaboration and to Osaka for a composition premiere.
                                                                                                                       
THE HARRY AND MARJORIE ANN SLIM MEMORIAL FUND
Hayley Fenn to conduct archival research in Europe, puppetry and theatrical fieldwork, and German language study in Berlin. Fenn also received a Pirrota fellowship to support this work.
Monica Hershberger to support dissertation writing
Max Murray for travel to Wyoming to record footage for a music/theater project and to Vancouver for collaboration                                                                             
Tamar Sella for travel to New York, Newark, and Washington, DC to conduct archival research and fieldwork, and to support vocal lessons                                                                                       
Natasha Roule to support dissertation writing  
Michael Uy for travel to Tarrytown, New York City, and Washington, DC for dissertation fact checking                                                                                                                                                               
FERDINAND GORDON & ELIZABETH HUNTER MORRILL Graduate Fellowships were awarded to the following students:
Will Bennett to conduct intensive language program in Italy
John Dilworth to conduct intensive language program in Italy
Emerson Morgan to support dissertation writing
Henry Stoll to conduct archival research in London and for intensive Italian language study. Stoll also received a French Prize fellowship.
Daniel Walden to conduct archival research at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze          

THE NINO AND LEA PIROTTA GRADUATE RESEARCH FUND was awarded to:
Katie Callam to conduct archival research at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and The Robert W. Wodruff library in Atlanta                                                                      
Diane Oliva to conduct archival research in Lisbon       
Steffi Probst to conduct archival research in Berlin        

Many graduate students were additionally honored for their scholarship. Ian Copeland and Diane Oliva received a GSAS pre-dissertation award. Matthew Leslie Santana received a fellowship from David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies; Daniel Walden will be a graduate fellow at Villa I Tatti; the Kennedy, Knox, Sheldon Fellowship was awarded to Tamar Sella; and Michael Kushell received a Reischauer Instutite Fellowship.
                                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                                               
Undergraduate Awards

The John Knowles Paine Fellowships                                              
Kapena Baptista (Joint - Anthropology) to study Portuguese guitar and fado music in Lisbon, Portugal
Joshua Bean (Joint - East Asian Studies) for travel to China and Taiwan to study music and the culture    
Amir Bitran (Music Secondary) to attend the Cortona Sessions for New Music in Italy                
Henry Burnham (Music) for intensive German study at the Goethe Institut in preparation for graduate study in music theory                                                                                    
Joshuah Campbell (Joint - Romance Languages) to attend jazz festivals in Europe, and to collaborate       
Eric Corcoran (Joint – English) for travel to Seoul to research K-Pop music                   
Sumire Hirotsuru (Music) for travel to Japan to study Japanese folk music and Kabuki              
Dylan MarcAurele (Music) to research composition and orchestration with Alex Lacamoire and Brian Lowdermilk in New York
Scott Peters (Music) Scott to network with musicians and industry professionals in Nashville                   
Sam Pottash (Music) to attend Electronic Dance Music Conference and Expo to record interviews with artists and professionals 

Davison Prizes                                                                                                     
Audrey Chen (NEC, Molecular and Cellular Biology) to attend the Piatigorsky Cello Festival and the Taos Scholl of Music Chamber Music Festival
Auburn Lee (Music) to attend the Bowdoin Summer Composition Festival                                            
Alexander Scolnick-Brower (NEC, English) to Attend the Festival dei Due Mondi at Spoleto, Italy as Assistant Conductor
Sam Wu (Joint - East Asian Studies) to attend New Music On the Point and European-American Musical Alliance. Wu also received an OFA Artist Development Fellowship and an EAMA Merit Award.     

University Composition Prizes

John Green Fellowship (for demonstrated talent and promise as a composer)
Phillip Golub ’16 Sam Wu ‘17

Bohemians Prize
Adi Snir, Straight Portrait, for 2 violas
Christopher Swithinbank, union-seam, for 4 performers

George Arthur Knight Prize
Marek Poliks, tress i, for string quartet
Trevor Bača, Akasha, for string quartet

F. MacColl Prize
Michael Cheng ’19, Eka, for string quartet

Adelbert Sprague Prize
Manuela Meier, emergent properties #1, for ensemble

Francis Boott Prize
Clara Iannotta, Sotto voce stuff, for 26 voices and objects

Blodgett Composition Competition
Sivan Elias-Cohen

 

Since his arrival in New York in 1999, Cuban saxophonist/percussionist/composer Yosvany Terry has been making a difference in contemporary music. His innovative work, a unique confluence of Cuban roots music and jazz, “has helped redefine Latin jazz as a complex new idiom” (The New York Times).

Terry is an internationally acclaimed Cuban musician, American composer, saxophonist, percussionist, bandleader, educator and cultural bearer of the Afro-Cuban tradition. Born into a musical family in Camaguey, Cuba, he went on to classical music training in Havana at the prestigious National School of Arts (ENA) and Amadeo Roldan Conservatory. After graduating, Terry worked with major figures in every realm of Cuban music including pianists Chucho Valdes, Frank Emilio, and the celebrated nueva trova singer/guitarist Silvio Rodriguez.

From his earliest days in New York, he has been welcomed by the jazz and contemporary music community, playing with Branford Marsalis, Rufus Reid, Dave Douglas, Steve Coleman, Roy Hargrove, Henry Threadgill, Avishai Cohen, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Taj Mahal and Eddie Palmieri Afro-Caribbean Sextet. Terry’s latest release, the GRAMMY Award-nominated New Throned King (5Passion, 2014), features music based on Arará cantos and rhythms and has been called the “musical culmination of his spiritual exploration” (All About Jazz). His previous album, Today’s Opinion (Criss Cross, 2012), was selected as one of the Top 10 Albums of the Year by The New York Times’ Nate Chinen.

In 2015, Terry was named a recipient of the prestigious Doris Duke Artist Award. He has received recent commissions by the Yerba Buena Garden Festival (Noches de Parranda for 12-piece ensemble with the support of The MAP Fund), the French-American Jazz Exchange (Ancestral Memories with pianist Baptiste Trotignon and support from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation and Doris Duke Charitable Foundation), and the Harlem Stage (the score for the opera Makandal). Terry received a grant from Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and New York State Music Fund to create Afro-Cuban Roots: Yedégbé, a suite of Arará music. His latest project, The Bohemian Trio, is a genre-defying contemporary music ensemble based in New York recently released its first album.

His work has broadened almost immeasurably our understanding of how music was perceived in various eras and particularly in the nineteenth century. He has led a number of imaginative projects including the exhibition, ‘Sounding China in Enlightenment Europe’ and many distinguished articles ranging from ancient Egyptian music to enharmonicism in Rameau and Rousseau.

 

Voces de America Latina is a window on today’s vibrant new-music scene throughout the Americas. The composers represented here hail from Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, and Spain. Some made their careers in the United States or Europe. Others had significant artistic experiences abroad, then returned home. Together they form a multigenerational, multinational Latina/o network that extends beyond stylistic boundaries. With astounding flexibility and resourcefulness, they cross all sorts of borders with abandon.

Friday and Saturday’s programs include four works never heard before in Boston, and one US Premiere.

Cuban composer Leo Brouwer wrote the film score for Like Water for Chocolate; his Parabola, inspired by the artist Paul Klee, is programmed for Saturday’s concert. Fellow Cuban composer, Grammy-nominated Tania León, famously collaborates with artists outside her genre (writers Margaret Atwood and Derek Wolcott, theater director Julie Taymor). León has pieces on both Friday’s and Saturday’s program, and she co-curated “Voces” with Music Department Chair Carol J. Oja. On Thursday, April 16 at 4pm in Farkas Hall Studio (10-12 Holyoke Street, Cambridge), the OFA hosts a public interview of León by Alejandro Madrid. Tania León is the Eileen Southern Distinguished Visitor, Harvard Music Department.

Also on the “Voces” programs are works by five Mexican composers—Julio Estrada, Marisol Jimenez, Gabriela Ortiz, Hilda Paredes, and Carlos Iturralde—and Brazilian composers Marcos Balter and Felipe Lara. From Argentina, Pulitzer prize-winning Mario Davidovsky’s Divertimento for 8, Ambiguous Symmetries will have its Bostonpremiere.

Both concerts are free and open to everyone. There are no tickets required. Free parking is offered in the Broadway Garage, corner of Felton and Broadway in Cambridge. John Knowles Paine Hall is in the Music Building at Harvard University, and is located directly behind the Science Center (1 Oxford Street, Cambridge). The hall is wheelchair accessible (elevator), and is a short walk from the Harvard Square Red Line stop. Information: www.music.fas.harvard.edu 617-495-2791.

Gardiner is one of the fathers of the period-instrument movement and the founder of some of its most iconic ensembles — the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists, and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. He has recorded over 250 albums with these and other musical ensembles. Gardiner has served as chief conductor of the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra and has appeared as guest conductor with such major orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and Vienna Philharmonic.

Gardiner is a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur. He received Grammy Awards for Best Choral Performance (1994) and Best Opera Recording (1999).

In celebration of Professor Christoph Wolff's distinguished contributions to academic and musical life at Harvard University, his students, friends, and colleagues have established The Christoph Wolff Fund for Music. We are delighted to be welcoming our first distinguished guest, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, through the support of this endowment.

An opening symposium will launch the exhibit on January 26, 2015 at 4:30 PM in the Spalding Room of the Music Library. Carol J. Oja, William Powell Mason Professor of Music and Samuel Parler, Ph.D. Candidate in Music, will offer introductory remarks, followed by a keynote address from Louis Chude-Sokei, Associate Professor of English at the University of Washington and author of The Last “Darky”: Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora (Duke University Press, 2006). The symposium will conclude with a performance by Rhiannon Giddens, banjoist and singer of the Grammy Award-winning folk trio The Carolina Chocolate Drops. Both the symposium and exhibit are free and open to the public.

The exhibit is curated by students from the seminar “Blackface Minstrelsy in 19th Century America,” taught by Oja and Parler during the fall semester. The artifacts of 19th-century minstrelsy include materials with toxic racial images and powerful, culturally ingrained musical texts. The historical impact of both the images and the music has been huge, and the goal of this project has been to engage students in a conversation about this important aspect of American racial history. The materials displayed document minstrelsy’s wide geographic and chronological span. Topics include the careers of composer-performers Thomas Dartmouth Rice (of European-American heritage) and James Bland (of African-American heritage); minstrel performance in America’s western frontier; black perspectives on blackface; and minstrelsy’s legacy in the 20th and 21st centuries.

The exhibit is supported by grants from the Elson Family Arts Initiative Fund and the Provostial Fund for the Arts and Humanities.

You could hear the packed house inside Sanders Theatre hold its collective breath as jazz pianist Herbie Hancock slid onto the bench and gently settled his hands on the Steinway to pluck a few chords that he picked up from trumpeter Miles Davis. They were harmonic ideas, he said yesterday, that opened his mind to new creative possibilities and would go on to shape his illustrious, six-decade career as a performer and composer.

“The Wisdom of Miles” was the title of Hancock’s first lecture in the series of talks he will give over the next two months as the 2014 Norton Professor of Poetry. Hancock laid out his vision for the series and spoke of some of the early practical advice (start your own publishing company) and creative insights (learn to listen) that Davis imparted to the then-artistically struggling young musician.

Established in 1925, the title of Charles Eliot Norton Professor in Poetry at Harvard has been held by giants in literature, fine arts, and music, including T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Charles Eames, Igor Stravinsky, and Leonard Bernstein.

Hancock’s appointment marks the first time that jazz will be the subject of the Norton lectures, and the first time an African-American has been named a Norton Professor, said Homi Bhabha, the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities and director of the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard, which sponsors the post. MORE

As an artist-in-residence at Harvard, Brown will participate in Professor Carol Oja’s seminar, “American Musical Theater,” as well as give master classes and workshops for Harvard students though the Office for the Arts Learning From Performers program. In addition, Brown’s music will be showcased in a concert/cabaret performance at the American Repertory Theater’s Oberon theater on March 27, 2014.

The New York Times refers to Brown as “a leading member of a new generation of composers who embody high hopes for the American musical.” The Last 5 Years was cited as one of Time Magazine’s 10 Best of 2001 and won Drama Desk Awards for Best Music and Best Lyrics, and has been adapted for the screen by Brown and director Richard LaGravenese. Brown won a 1999 Tony Award for his score to Parade, a musical written with Alfred Uhry and directed by Harold Prince, which subsequently won both the Drama Desk and New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards for Best New Musical. Brown is the winner of the 2002 Kleban Award for Outstanding Lyrics and the 1996 Gilman & Gonzalez-Falla Foundation Award for Musical Theatre.

Additionally, Brown was conductor and orchestrator for Yoko Ono’s musical, New York Rock, at the WPA Theatre (on Capitol Records), and he orchestrated Andrew Lippa’s john and jen, Off-Broadway at Lamb’s Theatre. He has conducted and created arrangements and orchestrations for Liza Minnelli, John Pizzarelli, Tovah Feldshuh, and Laurie Beechman, and his songs, including the cabaret standard “Stars and the Moon,” have been performed and recorded by Audra McDonald, Betty Buckley, Karen Akers, Renée Fleming, Philip Quast, Jon Hendricks, and many others. Brown’s new Broadway musical The Bridges of Madison County, with a book by Marsha Norman based on Robert James Waller’s novel, opens next January, directed by Bartlett Sher and starring Kelli O’Hara.

The Blodgett Artist-in-Residence program of the Department of Music is made possible through a gift from Mr. and Mrs. John W. Blodgett, Jr. The program provides for visiting artists to lecture and perform in a variety of musical disciplines. Recent appointments have been Koo Nimo (Ghanaian music), Sir Harrison Birtwistle (composer), Neba Solo (Malian balafon musician), and jazz pioneer Geri Allen.

The Learning From Performers program of the Office for the Arts at Harvard (OFA) brings to Harvard professional artists in all disciplines who interact with students in a range of educational forums, many open to the public. Through this and other programs and services, the OFA supports student engagement in the arts and integrates the arts into University life.

The Music Department’s alumni experience seems to square with this, as recent graduates report working in the arts, journalism, science, education and health, and cite their music concentration as a source of skills applicable to their professional lives. We asked some of our recent alumni weigh in on how their music concentration helps shape their careers. (Read the full interviews)

Forrest O’Connor ’10, co-founder, Concert Window

I co-founded and run a national live concert webcasting network. I actually met my co-founder, Dan Gurney, in a class I counted toward my concentration, so perhaps my job wouldn’t exist had I not chosen to study music! But the truth is that music pervades my job. Dan and I started Concert Window because we love music and wanted to create a new revenue stream for the industry. As an undergraduate, I learned how different people value different types of music, and that has helped us figure out how to present webcasts to the public, why some webcasts work and others don’t, and all the implications of making a musical event in one place immediately accessible to anyone in the world with an Internet connection.

Aram Demirjian ’08, Assistant Conductor, KSO

My primary responsibilities with the Kansas City Symphony are conducting the Pops, Family, Education and Outreach concerts, and covering all Classical Series concerts. My extracurricular activities at Harvard, particularly conducting BachSoc, were the best imaginable hands-on preparation for life as a professional conductor. My training in the Harvard Music Department prepared me for becoming a conductor better than I could have ever predicted as an undergrad, especially the theory classes. It sounds cliché, but all of that work—playing and analyzing Bach chorale upon Bach chorale, endless form and harmony exercises, and ear training practice—really pays off.

Ben Eisler ’08, Health Producer, CBS News

I oversee health coverage for CBS This Morning, a national news show. Music taught me how to listen to melodies, but also to sources, colleagues, and supervisors. Its tensions and structures have made me a better story teller. Its elements of performance have improved my ability to engage people. And perhaps most importantly, it has heightened my sensitivity to the human condition. It has in many ways made me who I am today.

Kathleen Stetson '08, Founder, Trill

I'm enrolled in the MIT Sloan School of Management MBA program to explore the possibility of starting my own business, one that combines music and technology, called Trill. Trill is a web and mobile platform for live show discovery designed to get more people to more shows – to make it easier for audiences to find performances that interest them. Today’s audiences are omnivorous in their tastes. Trill will list everything that happens on a stage, from hip hop to opera to jazz, to give the performing arts just as much exposure as the popular arts.

Emily Richmond Pollock ’06, Assistant Professor, MIT

The first two years I was at Harvard, I pursued a joint concentration in music and social anthropology, but I came to be more and more interested in the history of Western music and especially in the history of opera, and I eventually decided to finish my degree in the music department alone. Sophomore tutorial in particular was a transformative experience for me, because it was in that course that I discovered all the wonderful music that I had never heard growing up as an oboist in orchestras. Harvard’s curriculum was phenomenal preparation for pursuing a PhD in music history. [Now] I teach music courses to undergraduates at MIT, including a music history survey, a symphonic repertoire course, and a course on opera. As a teacher and writer, not a day goes by that I don’t use the concepts and strategies I learned during my time in Harvard’s music department.

Lara Hirner ’05 Speech Language Pathologist

I work as a speech language pathologist in an adult acute care hospital (Massachusetts General Hospital). My career as a musician is what guided me to the field of speech pathology. I wanted to find a career that would wed my knowledge and training in voice with my interests in providing care. I also feel that my training in ethnomusicology and analysis of identity has helped foster another skill I use daily: cultural sensitivity and the value of difference, diversity, and belief systems when helping to facilitate health care decision making.

In addition to my work as a speech therapist, I continue to perform as a singer in a limited capacity. One of my favorite long-standing performance opportunities is my work as the soprano soloist for the New York City Ballet’s production of the West Side Story Suites. My performance career post-graduation was largely facilitated through connections I made at Harvard.

Berenika Zakrzewski ’05

Pianist, Arts Administration

I am a concert pianist and the music department at Harvard offered me the capacity to grow as a musician and scholar. I joined my music concentration with Government, as I wanted to see my place as an artist and musician in a context beyond myself. Music is a great connector of people and it functions as a conduit for social and economic progress in various fields.

Renovation of the music building this past year has resulted in new, state-of-the-art practice rooms, upgraded classrooms, and modernized heating and cooling of John Knowles Paine Concert Hall. In celebration, the Music Department is hosting a performance of a recently-premiered work by its founder and Portland, Maine native, John Knowles Paine. The manuscript score of Paine's String Quartet in D Major, Op. 5 (1855), was made available to the Portland String Quartet by Houghton Library, and was premiered by the quartet in 2011. Also on the program is Quartet No.1 by Harvard composer and former Music Department chair, Walter Piston.

"We are convinced that this work should become recognized as an important part of America's music history,"writes Julia Adams, violist of the Portland String Quartet. "For complex part writing, beautiful melodic content and a mastery of classical forms, this work demonstrates why a young lad of 16 from Portland, Maine, was to become through his dedicated career at Harvard 'the dean of American music."'

Paine Hall was the subject of a recent booklet by the late Professor Reinhold Brinkmann, and was named for Harvard's first music professor, who chaired the new department from1871 when music was established as an academic study through his death in 1906. The concert hall has a long and storied history, but has never seen the performance of a work by its namesake until now.

The public is invited to the concert and to a reception immediately afterwards in the Taft Lounge.

About the Portland String Quartet

Coming together from musical training at Curtis, Eastman, Indiana, Juilliard and Oberlin, the Portland String Quartet has played an important role in the artistic renaissance of the City of Portland and the State of Maine, championing Maine and American composers both nationally and internationally. Their recordings span the repertoire from Bach to living composers. Of particular note are the complete string quartets and piano quintets of George Whitefield Chadwick, Ernest Bloch and Walter Piston for which they have received “Best Recording of the Year” commendations from The Boston Globe, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

Concert tours throughout Europe, Latin America and Japan, in addition to music river cruises to Europe’s major cultural destinations are international highlights of their career. Annual String Quartet Workshops for professionally aspiring young students and adult amateur players attract students from all over Maine and New England and as far away as Russia, Japan, Israel, and many countries in Latin America. Since l976 the Portland String Quartet has worked extensively with two generations of musicians from Venezuela’s internationally renowned Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra.

About John Knowles Paine

Besides receiving a solid training in music theory and musicianship in his native Portland, Maine, Paine had become a formidable organ virtuoso. His performances of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach were held in especially high regard; more and more, the professional critics recognized Paine’s extraordinary musicianship. In 1861, immediately after his return from the obligatory studies in Europe (in the mid-nineteenth century still primarily in Germany) Paine accepted the prestigious position as the organist at Boston’s Old West Church; the job included teaching organ, piano, and music theory (composition). Harvard reacted promptly and offered Paine the position of “teacher of sacred music.” Once he was associated with Harvard as an instructor in 1862, Paine’s goal was to establish the study of music as a full-fledged University department. This did not happen without opposition among the faculty, the loudest from Professor Francis Parkman, a well-known historian who, in meetings of the Corporation, used to proclaim: “musica delenda est” (music must be destroyed).

Against all adverse circumstances, Paine succeeded, establishing a music curriculum, courses for credit, and advocating for the position of music within the University, as well as a constant need for space. John Knowles Paine was not able to experience the fulfilment of his professional dreams: the Music Building, which would have been the capstone of his work at and for Harvard, was finally realized in 1914, eight years after his death in 1906. Paine had discussed the project with the inner circle of the Department so intensely and in such detail that it is safe to say the 1914 building in fact still realized his ideas.

The exhibit, Transmission/Transformation: Sounding China in Enlightenment Europe, opens in the Loeb Music Library February 1, 2012.

Much of the knowledge the eighteenth century had about Chinese culture was owed to Jesuit missionaries in the Far East, who wrote extensively about their encounter with this foreign world, and whose reports were eagerly studied by European Enlightenment philosophers and music scholars mesmerized by anything Chinese. To some, China represented an opportunity for critical reflection on Western society, and to others China represented a radically different societal order. Scholars incorporated missionary accounts—often in highly imaginative variants—into their own published works on musical evolution and knowledge, while Enlightenment composers began transcribing melodies and harmonizing them to make them “more palatable” to the European ear. The eighteenth-century public’s curiosity about China ensured that many bourgeois homes would own such musical arrangements. The operatic stage, too, eagerly took up the idea of China as a colorful backdrop for exotic extravaganzas.

“The whole idea for the course grew out of a score [Acting Loeb Librarian] Sarah Adams showed me a couple of years ago,” says Rehding. “It was a English arrangement from 1796 of a song transcribed in China. It became clear to me that this apparently insignificant piece of music encapsulated the whole story of the transmission of Chinese music into Europe: from the— faulty— transcription of a popular Chinese tune to its setting in a manner that could be easily sung in a bourgeois parlor. In many ways, these simple arrangements were the precursor of the radio and the CD player: they provided simple musical entertainment at home, but in this case with an additional educational and exotic flavor.”

The class gathered material for the exhibition throughout the fall semester. In addition to the usual seminar settings, they visited many of the ongoing exhibitions at Harvard and spoke to numerous curators and experts.

“This course covers such a vast terrain,” says Rehding, “that it is quite impossible to be expert in all areas. We have made great use of Harvard’s extraordinary resources and its amazing library and museum staff.”

Schweig adds, “We’ve reached out to musicians, scholars and instrument makers from Taipei and Shanghai as well, which has helped make this a very transnational experience.”

To enhance the visual experience of the exhibit the class worked on digital augmentation—audio files of music, documentation, film files—for some of the pieces.

“The trouble with musical exhibitions,” says Schweig, “is that you really want to hear the music. In an exhibition setting this is not an easy task to accomplish. So we had to think about alternatives.”

“The Loeb library was eager to help,” adds McMurray. “They bought a number of ipads that visitors will be able to use to access the digital augmentation.”

McMurray and Schweig, two advanced graduate students in ethnomusicology, have been instrumental in developing this innovative course as part of the expanded PITF (Presidential Information Technology Fellowship) program, that now also includes Museum (MITF) and Library (LITF) variants—precisely the kinds of expertise needed for this project. In the course of planning the class and the exhibition that is its final product, the digital component of the exhibition took on an increasingly weighty part. Schweig has a background in Asian Studies and museology, and McMurray is an old hand in digital media.

“These two are the perfect collaborators,” enthuses Rehding. “I would not have been able to launch this ambitious project without them.”

Everybody involved agrees that the project has been a huge learning experience. “One thought that is always at the back of my mind,” says Rehding, “is how relevant some of these ideas are. Sure, the details have changed—sometimes drastically so—but China still occupies the central place in western imagination that it’s held since the Enlightenment.”

Exhibit open through April 30, 2012. Supported by the Provostial Fund for the Arts and Humanities, the Department of Music, and the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Harvard University.

Talk a bit about your thesis and how you combined your concentrations? My thesis is a one-act opera, based on French and Francophone retellings of the myth of Medea. In a way, it is as much an “opera” as it is a song cycle with spoken dialogue interpolated; the interesting thing is the language divide. I took up a more classical idea of aria and recitative and applied it to the dialogue and songs, so I’ve chosen to have the dialogues spoken in English translation (my own), while the songs stay in their original French. The three versions I’m working with are by Pierre Corneille, a 17th century French playwright; Jean Anouilh, who wrote during and shortly after WWII; and Max Rouquette, a writer of French-Occitan descent who died in 2005. Paradoxically, it is the anachronism of combining the three texts that has elucidated precisely what is so timeless about Medea’s character.

Did you intend to concentrate in both areas when you came to Harvard or have you developed these interests over your time here? I knew that I was going to study music in one way or another, as music is what I want to do with my life. French literature had always been an interest of mine, and I was fortunate enough to take two years of courses in literature at Dartmouth College while I was in high school (my hometown in Vermont bordered Hanover, NH). When it came time to declare a major, I had already taken so many courses in both that a joint concentration made the most sense. I also had the idea of a song-cycle or small-scale opera in mind as a possible senior thesis.

Has the undergraduate composition scene changed during your time here? It has changed immeasurably. I joined the Harvard Composers Association as a freshman. Every meeting was different; sometimes twenty people showed up—one with a piano arrangement of ‘Happy Birthday,’ another with a dodecophonic composition for large orchestra—sometimes it was just a handful of people. We began to organize collaborations between student composers and student performers once a semester, and developed weekly masterclass-style meetings with our advisor, Edgar Barroso, who really helped us blossom into what we are today. We were very fortunate to receive funding from the Music Department and the OFA, and in March of 2012 put on a concert with the Juventas New Music Ensemble in Paine Hall. It was a huge success, I think, and the new board, led by Lydia Brindamour and Aviva Hakanoglu, has arranged to bring in the Callithumpian Consort for a concert of our work this February, which is tremendously exciting!

When do you compose? Do you have a regimen, or are you deadline-driven? I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently. Amnon Wolman, with whom I had the great privilege to work in the fall, talks a lot about the idea of composition as a skill that should be practiced daily, as an instrument. This is not necessarily how I work, but, in a way I’m never not working on something. Roger Reynolds, whom I also worked with, said that when we have a project we’re always thinking about it to some degree. A composer is never really divorced from thinking about sound or creation in one way or another. As nice as this sounds, real life gets in the way sometimes! Projects often require a big push toward their deadlines, especially since it’s important to be so exact and detailed in one’s notation. This takes time, so the piece better be intellectually and creatively squared away well in advance of when it needs to be sent to a player.

Do you write for specific musicians you know? Very often, yes. While I’ve been at Harvard, I’ve had the opportunity to work with the Bach Society Chamber Orchestra, the Brattle Street Chamber Players, the Harvard University Flute Ensemble, and a number of “pick-up” groups who have assembled to play my pieces at Harvard Composers Association Concerts. Many of these have been done with the specific players in mind.

You won the Bach Soc’s composition competition in 2010, then again in 2012—do you see a difference in your work over those two years? My music has evolved exponentially. That’s the thing about being exposed to such a diverse and stimulating place like Harvard (not to mention having teachers like Chaya, Roger, or Amnon!): you grow and change and think so tremendously quickly. My first Bach Soc piece was an orchestration of a piece I wrote when I was 17 (a nice jazzy thing for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano), and my second piece was written for Professor Cortese’s orchestration class. It’s interesting for me to think about the trajectory from one to the other to now.

Who do you write for? Who inspires you? I see beautiful things all the time: in nature, in literature, in other art, in philosophy, in whatever. Turning any of these compelling thoughts into music is a little bit different every time, and it’s rarely important that the inspirations are identifiable in the music. Generative principles are funny things—the most fragile and ineffable we deal with as artists. In terms of who I write for, I think Bernard Rands, a former faculty member here, has a beautiful answer to that question: “I never think, in a sense, about writing for an audience, because I don’t know who they are. I only assume that like me, they’re human, they have all the frailties of humanity; they have aspirations, they have disappointments, they have nostalgic memories of when they heard one piece or another, but collectively we don’t know who they are. They are as many people as are in that hall, and they will hear the piece that many times, all differently from each other.”

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Zach Sheets:
Gathers no moss
What Is one the End of a Feather