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Meg Quigley Vivaldi Competition: Second Joint Concert—a grand night for the bassoon

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by Mike Telin

It was a grand night for the bassoon last evening (Saturday, January 16) when five outstanding judges and clinicians from the Meg Quigley Vivaldi Bassoon Competition and Symposium came together to perform the second of three Joint Recitals of the weekend in Warner Concert Hall at the Oberlin Conservatory.

In general, the programming of bassoon recitals is problematic. Keeping the audience musically engaged for 90 minutes is not an easy task, however these five soloists chose works ranging from the unknown to staples of the bassoon repertoire, as well as transcriptions that brought out each individual performer’s unique personality and playing style. This, in addition to some brilliant programming co-ordination from Oberlin Professor of Bassoon George Sakakeeny, proved that a bassoon recital is able to provide audiences with a musically magical listening experience. [Read more…]

Meg Quigley Vivaldi Competition: Interviews with the Co-Directors

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By Mike Telin

The Meg Quigley Vivaldi Bassoon Competition and Symposium gets underway on Friday, January 15 at the Oberlin Conservatory. As background to the event, I reached Founders and Co-directors Kristen Wolfe Jensen and Nicolasa Kuster for phone interviews last week.

Kristin Wolfe Jensen

MQVC Co-Director Kristin Wolfe Jensen has been the bassoon professor at the University of Texas at Austin since 1995, and is also on the faculty of the International Festival Institute at Round Top, and the Eastern Music Festival, where she is Principal Bassoonist of the Eastern Philharmonic. Ms. Jensen is Principal Bassoonist with the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra and previously has toured Europe with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and served as Acting Principal Bassoonist of the Houston Grand Opera. The American Record Guide reviewer said of her solo CD Shadings, “…She has simply turned in the finest-played Bassoon recital I have ever heard… She obviously sees tone quality as the foundation for her fluent technique…It is a ravishing sound, siren-like in its attractive flair…Ms. Jensen could teach a lot about musicality to a number of famous violinists…”. Her other chamber music and solo recordings can be heard on the Cambria, Opus One, Klavier, and Centaur labels.

Mike Telin: How did the idea for this competition come about?

KWJ: Nicolasa and I were sitting in a Café in Buenos Aires at the 2001 International Double Reed Society Convention. We had been friends at Oberlin, and we were talking about how we would like to see more young women bassoonists empowered. It seemed as though the majority of bassoonists who were participating in International competitions for the bassoon were male although at least 50% of bassoon students enrolled in music schools were female; so why are female bassoon students not succeeding in International Competitions? We had to ask ourselves what was causing this to happen. I think at that time about 72% of principal bassoonists in orchestras in the United States were male, and why were the females not rising to the top? There has been some change in this in the past decade, which is good.

[Read more…]

Digging Deeply into Dvorak: ‘Musically Speaking’ at Severance Hall

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Photograph by Roger Mastroianni

by Mike Telin

On Sunday, November 29, the Cleveland Orchestra presented the first of three events in its new ‘Musically Speaking’ series, an initiative designed to bring Severance Hall audiences closer to the music and the musicians.

The afternoons begin with a 40-minute chamber music concert in Reinberger Hall, followed by a 3:00 multimedia exploration of the orchestral work of the day (this afternoon, Dvorak’s ‘New World’ Symphony) using a narrator, actors, projected visuals and live excerpts played by the orchestra. After intermission, the work is played in its entirety, followed by a question and answer period.

The central format of the first two ‘Musically Speaking’ events  derives from the Chicago Symphony’s ‘Beyond the Score’ series, which, as in this case, is franchised to other orchestral organizations. I experienced the CSO’s version of the Dvorak afternoon at the League of American Orchestras conference in Chicago last summer, so it was interesting to be able to compare the two throughout the afternoon.

[Read more…]

Fridays @ 7 at Severance Hall: An Interview with Percussionist Jamey Haddad

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Jamey Haddadby Mike Telin

Jamey Haddad is in charge of programming world music for the second half of the Cleveland Orchestra’s new five-concert series ‘Fridays @ 7.’ We caught up with Jamey in New York while playing gigs for the Rock Hall Festivities, and asked him about his thoughts on why audience building initiatives such as the Fridays @ 7 are needed.

[Read more…]

An Interview with cellist Alisa Weilerstein

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Alisa Weilersteinby Mike Telin

We spoke to Alisa Weilerstein about many things, including the dual role she will have this week when she performs the Dvorak Cello Concerto and later joins Jamey Haddad, Dylan Moffitt, Keita Ogawa and Michael Ward-Bergeman in the World Music portion of the evening on the Fridays @ 7 series on November 20. We also talked about her passion for Russian literature, her upcoming live television performance of the Elgar Concerto with Daniel Barenboim, and her work as spokesperson for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

We began by asking her about her participation in Classical Music Day at the White House, and her feelings about the significance of the event that had occurred the previous day.

[Read more…]

The secret life of the Shawm: an interview with Ciaramella’s Adam Gilbert

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GILBERT-AdamCiaramella, the Renaissance Wind Band, is in town this week for a masterclass and concert at Case. We reached shawm player Adam Gilbert in Los Angeles to ask about his career as a specialist in early wind instruments.

Mike Telin: What I first want to know, you are a shawm player. How does one go about becoming a shawm player?

Adam Gilbert: That’s a really good question. It’s changed in the last bunch of years, I think. I came to shawm because I was a recorder player. Long story. I played recorder as a kid because I wanted a clarinet – to be like Benny Goodman. That was pretty geeky in the first place, but then after I started playing clarinet I realized I wanted to play recorder, and that’s how I got involved in early music. And that was because I actually saw a concert of my hometown college collegium.

MT: And where was that?

AG: Columbia, South Carolina. I was thirteen, and that was the moment that I discovered Renaissance dances and was really excited by it. I went to New York to go to music school in January of 1981 and when I was there I was told, it’s great, you can study recorder, but my teacher said, I’ve got a gig for you if you can play a little bagpipes and shawm.  A lot of people of my generation got into it from playing a lot of Renaissance instruments but nowadays you see a lot more modern oboists or baroque oboists going back and playing the earlier instruments because they’ve already had that specialty of playing double reeds.

[Read more…]

Noteworthy: Round 2 Session 3

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IMG_7459-2As they did on Wednesday afternoon, the performers in group number 3 treated us to a special afternoon of music making.

Esther Park (USA) opened the session with a lovely set of Scarlatti sonatas K 531, K 322, and K 203, performing all three with grace, and poise. It was too bad that her performances of the Chopin Etude in C Op. 10 #3 and the Brahms Variations on a Theme of Paganini did not fare nearly as well. Ms. Parks possesses outstanding technique, however too many missed notes crept into the Chopin, and while the Brahms had many lovely moments, during some of the louder, faster variations she had a tendency to apply too much pedal, causing a blurring of the sound.

As in round one, Evgeny Brakhman (Russia) sounded and looked as though he wanted to do nothing more than play the piano. He was in total control in the Brahms Seven Fantasies Op 116, often building phrases over long periods, as well as bringing a full color palette to the performance. In Kopelmann’s  ‘Everything is foreseen and free will is given’ we saw another side of him as a performer. During the first round, Mr. Brakhmann enthralled us with his magical playing of a Mozart sonata, but he is equally at home performing a
piece that emphasizes the percussive qualities of the piano.

[Read more…]

A Special Afternoon: Round 1, Session 3

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sound_boardWednesday was one of those truly special occasions where from the very opening of the Schnittke Improvisation & Fugue you knew could settle into your seat for an afternoon of good music making. Everybody today came through with unique personalities.

Esther Park (USA) delivered a rousing performance of the Schnittke, though she also demonstrated her delicate side in a really beautiful performance of the slow movement of Beethoven’s Sonata op. 111.

[Read more…]

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