Author: Zach Carstensen

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It is a rare night for a symphony concert to host two concertos, and Thursday night at Benaroya Hall was a rare night.

The unfamiliar work was Sam Jones’ Trombone Concerto, “Vita Accademia,” and the familiar, Brahms’ Violin Concerto, both given stellar performances by Ko-ichiro Yamamato, SSO principal trombone, and violinist Vadim Repin.

Jones, composer-in-residence at the Seattle Symphony since 1997, is no stranger to writing for brass instruments. The trombone concerto is his third, the first being for tuba and the second, French horn. He has a gift for bringing out the virtuosity of each instrument, their tonal qualities and  dramatic breadth. His tuba concerto was astonishing for what it asked the soloist to accomplish. Who would haver thought a tuba, even in the right hands, could move so fast and sound so convincing in lyrical passages? The trombone concerto was perhaps not quite so surprising because we know the instrument better, but still, one marveled at its dynamic range and beauty of tone.

The composer did not just fashion a set of exercises to demonstrate the many lives of the trombone but created a real concerto, with all sorts of interests. Its bits of contrived collegiate nostalgia must have put a smile on many peoples’ faces. The subtitle, “Vita Accademia,” is quite justified. The work’s wit was the leavening agent for the passagework which could be heard throughout the piece, as well as its full-blooded romanticism. The work is one of his most persuasive. His duet for trombone and tuba was especially effective.

A major factor in the concerto’s success was Yamamoto, one of the symphony’s most respected figures. One does not normally hear the full range of an orchestra’s principal trombonist’s abilities. This concerto was a first-class opportunity to do so. Yamamoto did not disappoint. He has a big technique, seemingly capable of doing anything, but certainly anything Jones put before him, which was considerable. He swam through those treacherous waters with enormous confidence, no doubt justified by a lot of work. Yamamoto possesses a big, generous tone and a dramatic sensibility. He can also turn a phrase eloquently and vividly.

Repin’s assignment was wholly different: to bring a great work of art, ubiquitous to say the least, to life once again, to give it perhaps a fresh viewpoint. The Siberian violinist began his brilliant career very early — winning the gold medal at the Wienawski Competition at the age of 11. He has not stopped since then. He made his Seattle debut about a decade later at the Seattle International Music Festival where his technical and musical abilities were a revelation. All young virtuosos today have fingers; otherwise they would not be on any major concert platform. However, Repin seems to go one step further with his bravura and bravado. Not only does he play every note but every note accurately and with clarity,. The effect was often electrifying Thursday night at Benaroya. A mere technician he is not. He molds everything he does — fast and slow, soft and loud — into something musically coherent and provocative, Little is simply played as just notes: Repin makes every phrase count and come to life,  sometimes in an amazingly muscular way — really theatrically in the best sense of the word —  and sometimes softly lyrical. He can romance the music with a tone that is sweet but never cloying and always penetrating. Undoubtedly his 1736 Von Szerdahely Guarneri del Gesu violin makes a significant contribution.

Not surprisingly, Gerard Schwarz held everything together skillfully from the podium and with empathy for the soloists.

The evening began with David Diamond’s “Rounds.” There was a time when the Seattle Symphony heard a lot of David Diamond — too much. “Rounds” is one of his better pieces, even if it runs on too long. The strings played in a splendid fashion.

In the late 1930’s two young composers – Lou Harrison and John Cage –  found themselves teaching at Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts.  It is doubtful many people knew who these twenty-something composers were.  Neither stayed in Seattle long, but during their stay, each pioneered new instruments, systems of notation, and sounds.  Last Thursday through Sunday, Cornish brought Harrison and Cage’s music to the forefront through the college’s Drums Along the Pacific festival.  The festival commemorated the 70th anniversary of a series of percussion concerts lead by Cage and Harrison that their mentor Henry Cowell dubbed “drums along the Pacific.”   In the process, musicians from around Washington and the country gave a convincing argument for the seldom heard music of two pioneering American composers.

Festival events were spread out over four days.  The first night devoted to Cage and Harrison’s mentor Henry Cowell.  The Seattle Chamber Players and the Pacific Rims Percussion Quartet handled a selection of Lou Harrison’s music, including his ebullient Concerto in Slendro.  The focus of the entire festival, however, was Saturday.  Beginning early in the afternoon combinations of musicians came together and played four hours of John Cage’s music – encompassing his entire output.  This four hour marathon, interrupted only by a brief dinner break, is probably the first (and maybe the last) time so much Cage was played live in Seattle.  The fourth day, presented Gamelan music by Cage and Harrison.

Of the two composers, Lou Harrison is the easiest on the ears.  Like Cage, Harrison dabbled in sound, just not as much.  The pieces on Friday night showed this experimentation.  Double Music is a product of both Cage and Harrison and is played on “found” instruments that included brake drums, thunder sheers, and tam tams to name a few.  In May Rain the prepared piano and percussion played a supporting role to baritone John Duykers.  Of course, Harrison’s “tack piano” is used in the Concerto for Slendro.  Violinist Mikhail Shmidt led two tack pianos, celesta, and an assortment of percussion in a vigorous performance that sounded larger on stage than the assembled musicians.

The new sounds produced by these instruments were never overwhelming.  Their sounds were punctuated and precise and fit well with the constant rhythmic pluck, push, and pull of Harrison’s music. It is in rhythmic invention where Harrison really excels.  Unfortunately, his music doesn’t do much more.  Perhaps that is why Lou Harrison is easier to hear than John Cage and why by the end of the night Harrison’s cascading rhythms seemed pat.

The same was not true for the next night – the Cage marathon.  We know John Cage because of his experimentation with noise as music and chance in music.  Flipping coins, found objects, and of course, the prepared piano are all associated with Cage. Less so, are Cage’s works for more traditional sounds and instruments.  The pieces chosen for the Cage marathon encompassed the composer’s entire output and balanced what is common knowledge about the composer with what is not.

I was surprised by a number of pieces over the course of the evening.  The Seasons, a piece for piano played by Cage expert Stephen Drury, teemed with tangible life even though the piano is so ordinary compared to some of the other instruments being used.  Imaginary Landscape 2 was a clattering good time.  Who knew the conch shell is played by blowing into it?  Third Construction was just as fun.  Except, twenty seconds into the piece one of the percussionists stopped and announced his cans (literally empty coffee cans turned upside down were out of order).  He switched a few around and started playing again.  The audience had a nice chuckle.  A few days later, when I explained what happened to a friend, he responded, that maybe the mistake and the interruption were intentional?  If it was intentional, the Pacific Rims Percussion Quartet played it well.  Two pieces for closed piano and voice –  A Flower and The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs –  made me reassess how I think of the piano as an instrument.  Finally, Root of an Unfocus for prepared piano, stirred so many new sounds out of the instrument I was rapt.

If I were generalizing John Cage’s output, I would say his best music is music where instruments and notation are out of the ordinary.  Crumpled paper and tin cans.  Chance run amok with the help of clearly defined parameters for the musicians.

John Cage and Lou Harrison are not everyone’s cup of tea.  In fact, I would guess very few people prefer the sweet bitterness that is Cage’s music.  But, last weekend’s Cowell, Harrison, Cage festival – Drums Along the Pacific – exhibited the best and worst of these composers.  The performances were exceptional, from some of the leading advocates of this music in the country, and the experience unforgettable.  I have been told the festival organizers are maneuvering to take some or all of the festival on the road, replicating the original Drums Along the Pacific concert tour.  If that happens, Seattle would be lucky to get a repeat performance of this beautifully strange music.

You can read a replay of the The Gathering Note’s live blog of the John Cage marathon portion of the festival here.

Peter F. Donnelly

1938-2009

Peter F. Donnelly, one of the most significant voices in the cutural life of the Puget Sound for the past four decades, died Saturday of complications from pancreatic cancer. He was 70.

His influence was vast, his charm undeniable, his knowledge encyclopedic, his connections legendary. No one compared with him in the scope of his power, touching every art form in the area, directly or indirectly, not only in terms of major capital projects but the daily life of dozens of arts groups. Knowing everyone, he sat at the center of the arts community, his office a clearinghouse for groups and individuals and ideas. There was no one like him. His career was synonmous with the huge growth of the arts in Seattle.

He arrived in the city, in 1964, as a Ford Foundation fellow at the then fledging Seattle Repertory Theatre and became a Seattle icon, first as producing director at the theater and later as president and CEO of ArtsFund, an umbrella fund-raising organization for King and Pierce county arts organizations. He retired in 2005.

“Peter Donnelly was the single most powerful voice for the arts in the Puget Sound area,” said Speight Jenkins, general director of Seattle Opera. “He changed the culture of raising money for the arts. When he returned from Dallas (in 1989) to take over the Corporate Council for the Arts (now ArtsFund), the organization had become a shield against substantial fund-raising and turned it into a dynamic force for the entire region. Peter could convince people who would not ordinarily give to the arts to give, and to give generously.”

“Peter was the most unusual and effective and fun person I have ever known,” said Susan Trapnell, former managing director of ACT Theatre and senior consultant with the Arts Consulting Group.

Upon Donnelly’s retirement from ArtsFund, Ken Kirkpatrick, president of U.S. Bank Washington State and ArtsFund chairman, said, “We wanted someone with his personal charm, connection to the community and passion. Mayor Greg Nickels summed it up at a civic function: ‘One listens to Peter Donnelly.’”

A native of Boston, Donnelly was a graduate of Boston University and had aspirations to be an actor. “I was lucky,” he said an interview, “I found out early how bad I was.” He worked in various theaters in the Northeast and had been offered a job as manager of the newly founded Trinity Repertory Theater in Providence, R.I., when the Ford Foundation offered him a management internship in Seattle. “I thought why not look at Seattle,” he remembered 40 years later. “The trip was free and the West Coast foreign territory.”

What attracted him was the “sense of possibility” with the Rep and the city itself. “It was a place on the move, just beginning to feel its own muscle, ready to take its place in the world. Anything you could contribute was welcome. It was hungry for talent. I thought about the job very hard, knowing the decision was important. It became life-altering, and I never regretted it.

“When I arrived, Seattlelites apologized for the weather, lack of good restaurants and cultural opportunities. Now they don’t apologize for much of anything There were only a few professional arts venues: Seattle Symphony, which paid its musicians most of the time; Seattle Art Museum – a boutique Asian art museum; Seattle Opera, which had just opened its doors; the Ladies Musical Club, which brought individual artists to town. There was also Cecilia Schultz (an independent impressario who presented noted musicians). The Henry (Art Gallery) was sleepy, and the Frye (Art Museum), another boutique operation. Theater was either a touring company from New York or at the University of Washington.”

Fast forward a couple of generations to 75 arts organizations, some of which enjoy a national reputation, unprecedented in a city of this size. “This all happened because of the city’s ambition, basic optimism, commitment and curiosity.” Donnelly was at the center of this growth, encouraging and pushing artists, patrons and audiences. Early on at the Rep, Donnelly was approached by a civic leader who wanted advice about starting another professional theater in town (A Contemporary Theatre, now called ACT). Donnelly was uncertain: “We were having such terrible times at the Rep, finding audiences, going from one crisis to the next, to help seemed dangerous to ourselves. But I found I couldn’t say no, and I gave advice and our mailing list. Whatever we had in assets we were not using, we lent. Better to hang together than alone.”

That kind of civic sensibility and collegiality, for which Seattle is now known, is due in a major part to Donnelly’s generosity of spirit.

Civic leader and philanthropist Bagley Wright remembers well Donnelly’s arrival. “I was president of the Rep then and the place was in turmoil. Peter was very civilized, had good manners, was diplomatic and genial. Peter gave board members a sense that being at the Rep was fun when it was not.”

Day after day, week after week, year after year, Donnelly worked in the trenches to make the Rep not only a place of artistic achievement but a place of administrative and financial stability. He succeeded. The Rep became a leading regional theater, and, in 1983, had a new home on the Seattle Center campus, the Bagley Wright Theatre, which was the first major capital project for an arts group in the city since the World’s Fair in 1962.

In his spare time Donnelly helped draft legislation that created the Seattle Arts Commission and provided the idea for a blue-ribbon civic committee to focus on financial problems of arts groups that led to a $7.5 million grant from the National Arts Stabilization Fund.

Thinking that his work in Seattle was done and he needed a new challenge, Donnelly accepted a job as producing director of the Dallas Theatre Center.

“That was the only mistake Peter ever made,” said Wright.

Donnelly returned to Seattle in 1989 to take over the troubled Corporate Council for the Arts. He restructured the organization from one that was barely able to stand on its feet to one that is a model nationwide. Its yearly allocations doubled, derived from its annual campaign, both corporate and individual, and income from 12 separate endowment funds, initiated through his wide circle of influential friends and allies. Their collective assets total more than $11 million. The most recent, the Peter F. Donnelly Merit Fund, was created on his behalf in honor of his retirement.

He was instrumental in convincing the Bullitt sisters — the late Priscilla Collins and Harriet Bullitt — to donate KING-FM to a consortium comprising ArtsFund, Seattle Symphony and Seattle Opera; and the Kreielsheimer Foundation to donate the Century Building on Lower Queen Anne to ArtsFund. In the 1990s, he helped ensure the survival of the National Endowment for the Arts when it was under attack in Congress, particularly by securing key support of then Sen. Slade Gordon. Donnelly was the prime mover, in 1991, in the formation of the statewide Building for the Arts program, which has contributed $57 million to 150 capital arts projects such as Benaroya Hall, On the Boards, Intiman Theatre, Phelps Center (Pacific Northwest Ballet’s administrative home and studios), Seattle Children’s Theater and the Leo Kreielsheimer Theatre at the Rep.

Donnelly long played a crucial, and often quiet, role in dozens of other projects around town by getting the right people in touch with one another and providing advice to seemingly legions of important, and not-so-important, arts people. He was the ultimate insider, known for his energy, affable manner, political savvy, discretion and indefatigable enthusiam for the city and its culture.

“Peter sometimes got flak for being too powerful,”said Trapnell, “The fact is he didn’t have any power. This was the interesting thing. ArtsFund is a totally transparent organization with a very specific purpose and purview: to raise money and send it out into the community at the discretion of the board, not him. The source of his power was his good advice. People listened to him and paid attention. They didn’t have to take it but were happier when they did. He was a firm advocate of the glass half-full philosophy.”

His influence extended well beyond Seattle. He was a member of Boston University’s National Council; vice-chairman of the Americans for the Arts, based in Washington, D.C.; chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts Challenge
Grant panel; national advisory panel of the National Coalition of United Arts Funds, and a trustee of the American Arts Alliance and Theatre Communications Group.

Before his retirement, one of the major collections at the newly built Seattle Central Library was named the Peter F. Donnelly Art and Literature Collection, in recognition of his decades of arts advocacy.

He has also been given numerous awards, including the Governor’s Arts & Heritage Award, Seattle Center Legion of Honor Award, honorary doctorate of the arts from Cornish College of the Arts, Michael Newton Award for Excellence presented by the National Coalition of United Arts Funds.

After his retirement from ArtsFund, he was appointed a trustee of the Seattle Art Museum, 5^th Avenue Theatre and the Frye Art Museum, of which he was president.

He is survived by his partner, David Farrar; sisters Donna Down of Winchester, Mass., and Patricia Fabucci of Lynn, Mass.; four nieces and a nephew.

A celebration of his life will be held April 20 at 6 p.m. at the Seattle Repertory Theatre.

Donations may be made to the Peter F. Donnelly Merit Fund at ArtsFund, P.O. Box 19780, Seattle 98109.

Maybe it’s the music, maybe it’s the youth of the performers, maybe it’s the setting which leaves everything to the imagination, and surely it’s in part the lighting and stage direction, but Seattle Opera Young Artists’ production of Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is enchanting, enthralling and very funny.

You wouldn’t think a classroom with serviceable table, chairs and a white board could possibly function as a backdrop for Shakespeare’s forest fantasy in ancient Greece. Or that a bunch of British boarding school kids in uniform (school colors navy and yellow) and their hormone-mad faculty could become the fairies and mortals. But it does and they do, while the workmen who gather to create an entertainment are the same as Shakespeare’s workmen, but their impact is more immediate thanks to the intimate space of the Theatre at Meydenbauer Center.

Britten’s music is quite spare much of the time, and changes style and mood according to which group is on stage, most notably at the very end when Duke Theseus (mellifluous bass Jeffrey Beruan, the headmaster) and his fiancee, Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons (mezzo-soprano Margaret Gawrysiak, soon to be headmistress) arrive to suddenly lush, tonal harmonies.

With only nine Young Artists in the Seattle Opera program, another nine plus a children’s chorus have been brought in to fill out the cast, but these are all themselves young and many have been in other young artist programs or are past members of this one. Counter-tenor Anthony Roth Costanzo as a superb Oberon was in the Glimmerglass Opera program, and last month was a winner of this year’s Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. Baritone Jeffrey Madison as an irrepressible Bottom the weaver is a past Met auditions district winner.

These two shone in the rewarding roles Britten and Shakespeare wrote for them. Soprano Megan Hart in this year’s Seattle Opera program made a convincing Tytania, encompassing with ease the the very high sustained singing Britten requires and at the same time including every late teenage gesture familiar in a senior high school girl.

It was harder to see the four lovers as faculty members, behaving as they did more like randy college types. To my mind these are the least interesting characters in Shakespeare’s play without a lot of individuality, but all four singers from the Seattle program gave them all they could.

The workmen, in contrast, were highly individual, and a delight as both actors and singers.

Seattle actor David S. Hogan with a punk hairstyle in the speaking role of the impish Puck moved with the speedy lightness of a dancer. However, he was hampered by being given differing British accents to speak in at different times, none of which truly sounded right particularly the one from northern England which, since it’s my own home base, I found excruciatingly wrong. However this may not bother others.

Given the plain setting and clothing reminiscent of Hogwarts, it was Peter Kazaras’ inspired stage direction and Connie Yun’s lighting which made this production magical.

Kazaras married the school with the fantastic seamlessly, and nothing seemed out of place. Every tiny move or expression in each character combined to make a whole as detailed as a Brueghel painting. Kudos here too to costume designer Heidi Ganser for the workmen’s ‘found” costumes for their show which were nothing short of hilarious.

Mention, too, should be made of the children’s chorus. Britten never wrote down to children, saying children rose to the occasion, as did these eight who acted and sang their roles like veterans.

Brian Garman, seemingly no older than the Young Artists, is now the program’s formal music director, and gave an unerring pace to the opera with an orchestra many of whose players came from the capable Auburn Symphony.

In short, this is a show not to be missed. Worth every penny of a not very big price for opera and a student rate barely more than a movie ticket.

Five more performances through April 5^th, at Meydenbauer Center Theater. Tickets $15-$35 at seattleopera.org.

Last night’s John Cage Marathon, night three of Cornish’s Drums Along the Pacific festival, was an ear opener.  The marathon surveyed pieces from through out the composer’s life.  Music for percussion, prepared piano, and unprepared piano dominated the programs.  Cage believed all sound, no matter how alien, how repulsive, can be music.

I will be writing about night two and three of the festival.  But, last night, The Gathering Note conducted its first live blogging event.  Perched in the balcony of the recital hall, I followed the festival from start to finish.  I hope we will have more live blogging events in the future.

You can read the replay below.

When Joshua and his troops blew down the walls of Jericho, they did it with an animal horn, maybe a ram’s horn or an ibex’s; but by the 16^th century in Italy that popular instrument had evolved into the cornetto, and was mostly made of fruitwood with a small cup-shaped mouthpiece and a standardized pitch. Octagonal-shaped with a diamond pattern in the resonating area, it was wrapped tightly with black leather or parchment to keep even a hint of air from leaking in through the long wood seams; and it still had great symbolic meaning as a ceremonial instrument.

The cornetto was used in the military, but it became the instrument in Renaissance art of the Last Judgement, played by skeletons in a dance of death, or on the way to the underworld. That diamond pattern, and the instrument’s gentle curve and black color reminded the viewer of a snake.

It still curves gently (there is a straight version, but the curved is the usual).

If you laid it flat you might say it is in the shape of a smile.

And a smile of sheer pleasure is what it will bring to your face when you hear it played by a master, as you can this weekend when Bruce Dickey plays it with Seattle Baroque Orchestra and violinist Monica Huggett in a program of Italian renaissance music.

Towards the end of its heyday, 16^th-18^th century Italy, a 1635 account describes the cornetto sound as “like a ray of sunshine in the shadows of the cathedral.” As Dickey puts it, less poetically but more practically, it sounds something like the brass family because of its mouthpiece shape, but sweeter and softer; like a boy soprano combined with a soft trumpet, plus the volume range and flexibility of the voice.

The cornetto was immensely versatile, says Dickey, “but profoundly connected with vocal music. The same things that are difficult to sing are difficult to play on cornetto. It has no problems with agility, with the horizontal, highly ornamented vocal line” that flourished in late 16^th to early 17^th century Italy.

But though the cornetto lasted in use and was written for for several more centuries heading north from Italy (even in the 1800s in Norway: Dickey comments that there must have been at least one seriously good player there judging by the music written for it in 1840), it went into sudden decline in Italy in mid-17^th century and never recovered.

What happened?

Three things combined to oust it from its position of eminence.

Firstly, musical performance changed. Until then, it had always been vocal and largely sacred with instruments copying and supporting the vocal line, a practice at which the cornetto excelled. But by the time of Monteverdi, more and more music just for instruments was appearing.

Secondly, the violin had been invented around a century earlier, and in the 1600s was coming to the fore. Violinists and composers began to experiment to see, with the new instrumental style, what that instrument could do, and soon discovered that it could leap around all over the tonal range, something very difficult for the cornetto.

Thirdly, the coup de grace perhaps, plague hit Italy hard around the 1630s, and the cornetto players were decimated. It was said that all the cornettists in Venice died of it, and perhaps, says Dickey, there were more violinists than cornettist by then, so some of them survived. After that, there was a drop in music specified “for cornetto.”

“It became old-fashioned,” says Dickey, “a publisher wouldn‘t put cornetto on the title page, because the music wouldn’t sell as well as if specified for violin.”

However, there is a wealth of Italian Renaissance music for both cornetto and violin, and Seattle Baroque’s performances this weekend will be somewhat a mirror of what went on in the1600s there, an “Any thing you can do I can do better” duel between the instruments. We don’t hear as much of the instrumental music from the Renaissance in period performance today. Dickey thinks fewer people know the repertoire and are not inclined to take the risk. But with Monica Huggett and Dickey, two of the prime exponents of their instruments worldwide, frequent colleagues over the years and extremely knowledgeable about that repertoire, performing the brilliant adventurous music of the era, there’s little risk a listener wouldn’t find these concerts fascinating.

Seattle Baroque Orchestra: Stile Fantastico: Virtuoso Violin & Cornetto, Nordstrom Recital Hall, Saturday, March 28 at 8:00 p.m., Sunday, March 29, at 3:00 p.m. Directed by Monica Huggett. Tickets $10-$35 at 206-322-3118 or seattlebaroque.org

If there is one event this year every classical music lover should make an attempt to hear, it is Cornish College’s four-day festival: Drums Along the Pacific. Over the course of four days various musicians, including the Seattle Chamber Players, Stewart Dempster, Stephen Drury, and Gamelan Pacifica will play music by former Cornish faculty members Lou Harrison and John Cage, and Henry Cowell who mentored both Cage and Harrison. This may be the only chance you will ever get to hear this much John Cage, Lou Harrison, and Henry Cowell music live –ever.

The Early Music Guild is bringing the Tallis Scholars to Town Hall on Sunday. This group of early music specialists will be exploring Spanish High Baroque. There are few groups with the authority and expertise of the Tallis Scholars. I am sure Seattle’s eager early music community will be out in force for this concert.

The Seattle Opera Young Artists kick off a run of Benjamin Britten’s opera A Midsummer Night’s Dream starting Friday. Benjamin Britten’s operas are performed too infrequently around these parts. These performances should be welcome news for anyone who loves 20^th Century opera.