Hi everyone! I just wanted to drop a quick note to ask Vermonters to tune in to 101.7 WCVT Classic Vermont on Sunday September 16th 11:00am, when I will chat with Linda Radtke on Vermont Notes about A Far Cry's September 22 concert in Montpelier!
Also, A Far Cry will appear en masse live on Vermont Public Radio on Friday September 21 at 11am, performing selections from and talking with Walter Parker about that September 22 concert.
Well, we had an awesome week in Maine, and driving back with Karl and his bass in the little Protege, I realized how much more I appreciated each individual in our group after rehearsing, brainstorming, eating, swimming, living, and spending every day and night of the week together. There's something unbeatable about seeing so many sides of each personality in such a concentrated time. More of a sense of the whole person emerges in my mind each time I think of them. This morning I sent out our rehearsal and concert schedule which we labored over so much on our last day, and it's really a lot. A lot of rehearsing, a lot of work, and a lot more time together. So it's good we love each other! I'm totally excited by the momentum that's gathering inside and out of the group. We were able to get a lot rolling last week, but the action is all really starting now. Here we go!
Well, after an incredible week of rehearsing, reading, organizing, and bonding, A Far Cry moves on out tomorrow. Thanks so much to Ellen and Kneisel Hall for hosting us and also to the many generous and friendly residents of Blue Hill, Maine. There are many stories to tell and pictures to share - watch this space!
The Criers are celebrating a full and productive first day of our retreat in Maine. After a summer spent with various individual projects, A Far Cry has reconvened. (Mostly, that is: we are missing David and Sharon, who couldn't be here this week). It has been an exciting day for everyone - to have this time at beautiful Kneisel Hall sharing music and making plans for the future. For me, this day was particularly significant because it was my first full day spent with A Far Cry since joining the group earlier this summer. I feel inspired by the Criers' enthusiasm, dedication and love for each other and for the group. And now, to prepare for tomorrow's rehearsals, meetings and concert, time for some R & R!
Here we go! This afternoon the Criers convened at the Forest Hills T Station to start the five-hour caravan up to Blue Hill, Maine. Kneisel Hall, a wonderful summer chamber music festival (of which six Criers are alums) has generously lent us their facilities for the week. Thanks, Ellen + Kneisel Hall! So now, after five hours on the road (suffering through the radio broadcast of a painful Red Sox loss), the surprise appearance at Kneisel of an old friend, dinner at the the local restaurant, and a first group meeting, it is time to relax, party, and go to bed! Rehearsals start at 9:30 tomorrow morning!
Summer can be a strange time for musicians. The situations we find ourselves in are usually the most relaxed (summer pops) or the most intense (chamber music festival) without very much of the usual in-between. Festivals of all kinds dominate the summer, and most of them invite musicians year to year with no future guarantees. We therefore scramble to network and impress our way to tangible "real life" advantage. Summer is not "real life" for a musician. That was doubly true for me and my early-summer festival (sadly concluded). The feeling of "alternative reality" was complete, for I was not only in a different country, thousands of miles from home, and thousands of feet higher in elevation: I was playing entirely different genres of music (most entirely new to me), I was composing and arranging pieces for public performance (also entirely new), and I was being musically stretched and challenged nearly to the breaking point!
The Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music was three tumultuous weeks of improvising. The first improvisation was simply figuring out what I was doing there. The Workshop is Banff's most selective program, and is truly international, with emerging and established professionals aged 18-40 attending in order to study with, jam with, and be inspired by a jaw-dropping revolving faculty. Some of the participants and faculty are straight-ahead jazzers, through and through. Some are drawn to the more experimental and avant-garde side of jazz. Some are drawn to the more experimental and avant-garde side of classical music. Some are so far outside of my previous experience that I don't even want to try to classify them, and some (workshop leader Dave Douglas, for example) are drawn to anything and everything. The one common thread was improvisation, but as I came to understand, that is a bit like saying the one common thread between a group of writers is "language," or the one common thread between a group of sculptors is "space:" true but at such a basic level as to be almost meaningless.
I am, at a basic level, a classical chamber musician. I interpret notes on a page with my mind and realize those interpretations with my body. What was I doing at a "jazz and creative music" workshop? I had applied to the Workshop on a whim after hearing Dave perform at NEC, using in my application stories and recordings of various ethnomusical collaborations I had taken part in, a bit of a jazz standard I had recorded for an earlier project, and a sample of chamber music playing. When I arrived and found so many world-class improvisers, I suddenly felt very much the black sheep. Who was I kidding? The Workshop is not really about learning (although a lot of learning takes place)... with such a high level of participants, the Workshop is about doing, and I had to figure out what I could do to contribute to the incredible music around me!
Initially I worked extensively with the saxophonist Oliver Lake. Oliver is a ferocious improviser who just blows you away with the feeling and authenticity behind his playing. Even though we played some of the most "jazzy" tunes of the summer, with Oliver no wrong note could disappoint him like a halfhearted phrase. Notes are inconsequential. Feelings and emotions are everything. This was also conveyed (in a completely different way) in conversations with the classical and klezmer clarinet guru David Krakauer and the club-touring classical cellist Matt Haimovitz. Having started down that path, and realizing some of the ways a rigorous classical training was helping me to contribute, the arrival of Mark Feldman showed me just how much is possible when improvising on the violin. My hypothesis, that the violin is, at some basic level, just not quite natural in improvisation, was blown out the window. Mark helped the small contingent of string players in the peculiar art of sounding good on strings. Nothing in the world, however, could have prepared me for the arrival of the Instant Composers Pool in the third week of the Workshop. I'm at a loss to describe the ICP orchestra, besides "ten crazy Dutch people." The music wasn't freely improvised; it was instantly composed. They might start playing one piece, spontaneously modulate to a different piece, and end up with the drummer throwing a cymbal on the floor. It was during a spontaneous Workshop-wide improvisation with the ICP that I lost my last inhibition, interjecting with a wild fiddle-inflected solo, and simultaneously connecting everything I had experienced at Banff back to "real life."
It's ALL improvisation. From Corelli to Tonasphernia 12. In the entire wide range of determinism, from the performer inventing everything all the way to the most painstakingly notated Boulez, when we actually perform, what we are doing is improvising - or should I say "instant composing?" I will have a good time this coming year trying to infect A Far Cry with some of this freedom-inspiring outlook!
We are gathering steam for a one week retreat in Maine where we will come together and offer ideas for programs, collaborations, and venues; schedule upcoming seasons; audition different repertoire; refine our rehearsal technique; break into committees to tackle issues such as non-profit incorporation, management offers, museum/art gallery parterships, fundraising, and financial management; and solidify the mission and goals of A Far Cry as we launch our very first full season! We are so excited for this year and the years to come!
Jason and Jesse are in Seattle, working on upgrading and redesigning afarcry.org! If things look strange for a few days, please don't worry! The site should be finished by this weekend.
This is the homepage of A Far Cry, which is a conductorless chamber orchestra made up of energetic young musicians from Boston! Please take a look around and make yourselves at home. The web site is in transition at the moment - we're adding sound clips, pictures from our concerts, and reorganizing, but if you poke around you can find the musicians' individual biographies, join our email mailing list, and even find Jason's killer (formerly secret) recipe for bacon-wrapped dates.
Andrea Stander of Montpelier saw our Vermont concert and was moved to write a wonderful letter to the editor of The Times Argus, the big Central Vermont newspaper. Read Andrea's letter
