FALL 2004THE ANNUAL MAGAZINE OF THEPHILADELPHIA MUSIC PROJECT

Photo: Gene Martin

pmpPhiladelphia’s Treasures of Jazz, Blues and Improvisation

The String Quartet and Beyond

Musical Borderlands

Making the Arts Meaningful

The Philadelphia Music Project (PMP) was initiated by The Pew Charitable Trusts in 1989 to foster artistic excellence and innovation in the region’s nonprofit music community. PMP meets this objective by supporting commissions and productions of new compositions, presentations of large-scale or long-neglected works, interdisciplinary collaborations, and similar programmatic enhancements that challenge the bounds of traditional repertoire and musical practice. Maximum grants of $160,000 fund projects that contribute to the advancement of participating organizations and the cultural life of Greater Philadelphia. PMP maintains a comprehensive professional development program, producing seminars, conferences, and field trips; providing consulting services in strategic planning, public relations, and audience development; and offering modest grants for professional development to the leadership of local music organizations. The Philadelphia Music Project has received $9,789,000 in funding from The Pew Charitable Trusts, including a grant of $3,379,000 in December 2001. PMP is administered by Settlement Music School.

Message from the DirectorPMP Awards Mine Philadelphia’s Treasures of Jazz, Blues, and ImprovisationBy Larry BlumenfeldPMP Announces 2004 Grant Awards2004–2005 Calendar of Funded EventsThe String Quartet and Beyond: Chamber Music Flourishes in PhillyBy Peter BurwasserMusical Borderlands: Exploring Interdisciplinary Art in PhiladelphiaBy Alyssa TiminSymposium Brings Interactive Technology to the Forefront in Music EducationBranding and Publicity Conference Draws a Crowd: Music Groups Gather to Talk BusinessThe Cave Man and the Public Relations Firm: Making the Arts MeaningfulBy Josephine HemsingPMP Sponsors Trips to New York City and Tanglewood Music CenterUpcoming Professional Development OpportunitiesPMP and the William Penn Foundation Help Groups Attend NPACGPCA’s Campaign for Culture ExpandsNews CornerPMP Welcomes Alyssa TiminGrantee Spotlight: Orchestra 2001 and the Curtis Institute of Music

Front Cover:McCoy Tyner, jazz luminary and Philadelphia native, presented by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society

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Fall 2004pmpThe Philadelphia Music Project is pleased to present the premiere issue of our new annual magazine, PMP.

Feature articles by the Philadelphia City Paper’s Peter Burwasser, Jazziz’s Larry Blumenfeld, and the Project’s own Alyssa Timin offer a compelling profile of Greater Philadelphia’s music community as well as a preview of particularly intriguing musical explorations taking place in the 2004-05 concert season.

In The String Quartet and Beyond, Burwasser covers the local chamber music scene, illuminating a cultural environment that sustains ensembles, presenting organizations, conservatories, and alternative venues like clubs and salons, each dedicated to a unique brand of chamber music. Blumenfeld and Timin focus on the creative work of Philadelphia Music Project grantees, organizations embarking on public programs that span a grand artistic continuum. Treasures of Jazz, Blues, and Improvisation gives a historical context for a new wave of PMP-sup-ported projects that not only pay homage to jazz’s roots in early blues, but also explore its relationship with opera, theater, film, and non-Western musical traditions. Musical Borderlands focuses on interdisciplinary projects undertaken by the Mendelssohn Club, Network for New Music, Prince Music Theater, and Relâche, all decidedly music-driven but developed in partnership with videographers, choreographers, poets, and installation artists. In creating work that integrates many forms of art, these grantees are developing new visual/sonic languages and finding common ground with audiences traditionally segmented by discipline and genre.

This issue of PMP spotlights two other grantees: Orchestra 2001 and the Curtis Institute of Music. Orchestra 2001 stands among a handful of U.S. chamber orchestras dedicated almost exclusively to contemporary repertoire. In its twenty-year history, Orchestra 2001 has premiered more than seventy works by many of the nation’s most prominent composers, including George Crumb, Bright Sheng, and Gunther Schuller. The Curtis Institute, one of the world’s finest conservatories, has been synonymous with Philadelphia music since its founding by Mary Louise Curtis Bok in 1924. Represented by alumni in leading orchestras and opera houses, it remains a wellspring for the nation’s most talented young musicians.

In these pages, you will also read about the Music Project’s recent professional development activities, in-cluding field trips to New York City and the Tanglewood Music Center, a seminar examining the intersection of music technology and education, and a conference on branding and public relations. We also highlight upcoming professional development events, including a workshop in “raising the invisible curtain” between performers and audiences and a conference on interdisciplinary and cross-cultural programming. Our inaugural issue also fea-tures an update on the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance’s Campaign for Culture, news about the Philadelphia Music Project and William Penn Foundation’s partnership to support local music organizations’ attendance at the first National Performing Arts Conference, and a News Corner, with announcements of recent developments from our music community. Finally, PMP offers a complete list of 2004 grantees and a calendar of funded events.

Since 1989, the Philadelphia Music Project has awarded over $7.4 million in project grants to local nonprofit music organizations. This support, along with other initiatives of The Pew Charitable Trusts, including the Phila-delphia Cultural Leadership Program, Philadelphia Cultural Management Initiative, and the Pew Fellowships in the Arts, has contributed to a vibrant music community, encouraging artists to take creative risks and enhancing the quality of life for area residents with programs that both challenge and enrich us.

MATTHEW LEVY DIRECTOR

Message from the Directorcontents

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Editor: Matthew Levy, DirectorCopy, additional editing, and

production coordination: Alyssa Timin, Program Associate

Design: fluxism.com

Philadelphia Music Project 1500 Walnut Street, Suite 305 Philadelphia, PA 19102

T 215 893 0140 F 215 732 9057www.philadelphiamusicproject.org info@philadelphiamusicproject.org

That legacy — especially its forward and outward thrust, and its con-nection to other musical traditions — will get a mighty boost from the latest round of grants awarded by the Philadelphia Music Project. And the projects that flow from this funding will display not just the diversity of forms the jazz impulse takes these days, but also the variety of venues and artistic endeavors that the jazz tradition touches.

The innovative work seeded by this latest round of PMP funding in-cludes the following initiatives: Opera North will present a fully staged production of Vanqui, an opera scored by flutist and Philadelphia native Leslie Burrs, at the Prince Music Theater; the Prince, which received a separate grant, will mount CrossCurrents at the Prince, a series including the world premiere of Mr. Mystery: The Return of Sun Ra to Planet Earth, which is a collaboration between jazz composer Fred Ho and writer Quincy Troupe; the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society’s Modern Masters series will feature new music by Odean Pope; the Painted Bride Arts Center will

utilize PMP funds to support JazzJaunts, a series that stretches over two years and spans the far-flung geographical roots of some of today’s best jazz, incorporating musicians and instruments from South Africa, Cuba, Brazil, South India, Iraq, Japan, and throughout the Jewish Diaspora; Montgomery County Community College’s All Hues... All Blues series will display the vitality and range of that distinctly American art form; and Relâche’s Future Sounds series will commission brand-new scores to circa-1920s animated films.

Nearly all of this work has some logical and formative connection to Philadelphia’s musical heritage. Odean Pope remembers when the city’s Columbia Avenue, since renamed for local hero Cecil B. Moore, was home to dozens of thriving jazz clubs. “There’d be a club on every block along that Avenue, all the way from 2nd Street to 33rd,” he recalls from his home. There are still dedicated jazz haunts in the city — Ortlieb’s, Zanzibar Blue, and Chris’s Jazz Café among them — but now, Pope notes, the music has intermingled with other forms and has integrated with the programming at other venues.

So it comes as no surprise to Pope that his new commission stems from an association with the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. “Still, it’s an honor,” he says. According to the society’s executive director, Philip Maneval, “The commission grew out of a performance that Odean did as part of Max Roach’s group. He had an innovative and exciting approach to jazz. He really explored the full range of harmonic and sonic possibili-ties of his horn. And his music connects quite naturally with the sort of contemporary composition we usually support.”

Indeed, “Foliage,” the piece Pope will present, is a composition based on a six-tone scale, to be performed in a quartet that augments his saxo-phone with bass, drums, and harp, and which makes extensive use of Pope’s multiphonic approach to the saxophone, wherein he produces two, three, and even four tones at once.

“Especially since 1960,” Maneval explains, “Philadelphia has been enormously influential for jazz and for contemporary classical music.” The chamber society’s funded projects will also boast the premiere of a new work by Philadelphia-based composer Richard Brodhead. And it will include performances and workshops by the legendary pianist and home-town hero, McCoy Tyner, as well as by violinist Regina Carter.

When Leslie Burrs, whose opera Vanqui will be presented by PMP grantee Opera North in May 2005, was growing up in Philadelphia, he was influenced by the full swirl of musical activity that encompassed nearly all forms of African American music.

“My greatest aspiration back then was to be one of the Temptations, to sing doo-wop,” he recalls. Burrs, who started out as a trombonist as a child and then gravitated to the flutes he’s since mastered, had his ears opened by the free-thinking 1960s jazz of Charles Lloyd and Keith Jarrett, but also by experiences closer to home: singing in the choir of Philadelphia’s St. Mark’s Church and playing in dance and marching bands at his public high school.

One of jazz’s greatest drummers was so strongly as-sociated with the city of Philadelphia that the town literally became part of his name. Philly Joe Jones,

who died in 1985, made his mark with legendary play-ers from Duke Ellington to John Coltrane. Through Jones’s drumming, the city’s influence changed the beat of jazz. In fact, Philadelphia always was and still is both home and birthplace of a long list of jazz standard-bear-ers, ranging from the traditional to the commercial to the avant-garde. Saxophonists Charlie Ventura, Jimmy Heath, and Stan Getz were born in Philadelphia. Both trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and saxophonist John Col-trane made important stops in the city. The legendary bandleader Sun Ra and the hit-making saxophonist Grover Washington Jr. both called the town home. And today, saxophonist Odean Pope and guitarist James “Blood” Ulmer reside in Philadelphia, along with many other influential musicians who play jazz full-time or who have been affected forcefully by jazz.

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Left: Leslie Burrs’ opera, Vanqui, will be performed by Opera North at the Prince Music Theater on May 21–22, 2005. Photo: Deborah Boardman.

Right: Odean Pope and his quartet will be presented by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society at the Gershwin Y on November 12, 2004.

Below: Fred Ho’s Voice of the Dragon, Part 2 and Mister Mystery: The Return of Sun Ra to Planet Earth will be performed at the Prince Music Theater on May 1-15, 2005.

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Right: Dafnis Prieto will perform at the Painted Bride Art Center in the 2005–2006 season.

Below: James “Blood” Ulmer will perform with Cephus and Wiggins at the Science Center Theater of Montgomery County Community College on November 20, 2004.

PMP Awards Mine Philadelphia’s Treasures of Jazz, Blues, and Improvisation

By Larry Blumenfeld

Indian American saxophonist Rudresh Mahan-thappa has long integrated his family’s background into his brand of jazz to a certain extent. But for his JazzJaunts performances, Mahanthappa is develop-ing an extended piece that will focus on a collaboration with a South Indian saxophonist Kadri Gopalnath, who has adapted the Carnatic traditional style of music to his horn.

“Some years ago, my brother bought me an album called ‘Saxophone, Indian Style,’” he recalls, “with this really tacky photo of Gopalnath on the cover. It was supposed to be a joke, but it turned out to be killing. So when I heard he was playing in the United States, I sought him out. I thought it would be exciting to take these two traditions of saxophone playing and combine them. We play differently, but we do have a point of connection.” The two saxophonists will work on their collaboration both in the United States and in India.

Cuban-born drummer Dafnis Prieto has become one of Latin-jazz’s most in-demand drummers since coming to the United States about a decade ago. But while opportunities to play are plentiful, chances to explore the full scope of his artistic ambitions are hard to find and even harder to fund. He considers

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PMP AWARDS MINE PHILADELPHIA TREASURES

his JazzJaunts commission “the chance to do what I dream of doing in front of an audience.” For his concerts, Prieto plans to augment his working group with strings and additional percussion. And he will do something that’s natural in his native Cuba — incor-porate dance into the performance.

Among the other participants in JazzJaunts are South African pianist Abdullah Ibrahim, who will add a horn section to his band, Iraqi trumpeter Amir el-Saffar, who will feature Middle Eastern string players and percussionists, and New York trumpeter Steven Bernstein, who will blend New York jazz, traditional Jewish melodies, and New Orleans brass. Each of seven commissioned artists will play two concerts and conduct a workshop.

Over at Montgomery County Community College, Director of Cultural Affairs Helen Haynes was struck by the Martin Scorcese’s recent PBS series on the blues. “It made me remember how the blues gained in popularity again when I was in college,” she says, “and how it took British rock musicians to get Americans to recognize these great indigenous artists.”

With a title that winks at a famous Miles Davis tune, “All Blues,” Haynes’s curated series, All Hues... All Blues demonstrates the vitality and breadth of modern blues music, ranging from James “Blood”

Ulmer’s gritty takes on classics to Mose Allison’s wry Southern wit, from the bold, swaggering swing of singer Kevin Mohogany with Kendrick Oliver’s New Life Jazz Orchestra to the Piedmont country style of Cephus and Wiggins.

And although the ever-inventive Philadelphia-based organization Relâche has commissioned eight new works for its PMP-funded series called Future Sounds, the resulting performances will actually do some fascinating revisionist history. Diane Monroe and Arthur Jarvinen will take on the task of scoring short films by early animation master Max Fleischer.

“The concept is formed around the idea of comedy and this heroic genre that these early films produced,” Relâche’s former Executive Director Thaddeus Squire says of the works for animation. “Fleisher, who was the creator of ‘Popeye,’ really founded this good cop-bad cop paradigm that’s infused much of our popular culture.”

Monroe, a former member of the Relâche ensemble, is an African American violinist/composer who freely blends classical and jazz influences, and is equally at home in both contexts. She was energized after view-ing Fleischer’s film shorts, many of which portrayed the artist interacting with his animated creations.

“There’s just this amazing sense of possibilities,” she says. “He would put some ink in his hand and just blow on in it and open his palm, and produce a whole figure, who would then run around and create a whole storyline.”

Monroe hopes to capture some of that surrealistic magic in her compositions. And although Fleischer’s films were made in the 1920s, in keeping with the Future Sounds theme, Monroe’s score will sound thoroughly contemporary, reflecting moden jazz and contempo-rary classical music. “It will come from my life and times,” she says, “superimposed over his work.”

Inspired by imaginary pasts and fictional futures as well as real-life roots and contemporary sounds, the constellation of projects funded by this latest round of PMP grants will take elements of blues, swing and improvisation and carry them into new territory

— all of which speaks of and to the city of Philadelphia, where so much innovative music has been birthed.

Larry Blumenfeld is editor-at-large of Jazziz magazine. He is a former Fellow in the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University. His work has ap-peared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Village Voice.

Nearly all of this work has some logical and formative connection to Philadelphia’s musical heritage

All of those influences, as well as traditional African music and Western classical forms can be heard in Vanqui, to form what Burrs refers to as “urban classical music.” Musically, Burrs blends a jazz quartet (which features African hand drums instead of a traditional trap set, and Burrs’ own use of bamboo flutes) with a chamber orches-tra and operatic soloists. “The work addresses issues and concerns of diversity, American history and African American representation in opera,” he says, “primarily due to the great work of my librettist, the celebrated poet and novelist John A. Williams.”

Vanqui traces a powerful imaginary history. The story, which begins in the mid-1700s and ends in 1861, is part mythical and part real, expressing both down-to-earth and spiritual issues surrounding slavery in the United States. A young runaway slave, Prince, is killed during a slave revolt after his wife, Vanqui, is sold to another plantation. A jealous plantation owner’s wife in turn, murders her.

“The idea is that Prince and Vanqui are spirits,” Burrs explains, “yet they have the ability to walk the earth. They are consigned to ‘ride the wind’ in search of each other. And along the way, the audience gets introduced to historical figures such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and John Brown.”

Composer Fred Ho’s commissioned opera is likewise rooted in the real but finds its voice in the realm of the imagined. Mr. Mystery: The Return of Sun Ra to Planet Earth focuses on one of Philadelphia’s — and jazz’s — most interesting and enigmatic figures of the 20th century. Sun Ra was a wildly talented and eccentric musician and composer, whose work ranged from doo-wop to large ensemble jazz. He wore flamboyant costumes and claimed to be from Saturn, facts that often obscured the seriousness and spiritual heft of his musical achievements, and the ways in which he extended the tradition of Duke Ellington’s and Fletcher Henderson’s orchestras.

“The piece isn’t meant to be biographical,” says Ho, who is a veteran of innovative opera works. “It’s totally fic-tional, and starts with the premise that Sun Ra never actually passed away, that he just returned to Saturn. It takes place in the not-too-distant future, during which a planetary distress signal is sent from earth, which is careening toward crises — ecological, social, and political. And Sun Ra answers with his extraterrestrial orchestra.”

Ho’s opera is set on the bridge of a spaceship; onstage musicians are members of the flight crew. And his ambi-tious storyline will be fleshed out by writer Quincy Troupe, whose long list of credentials includes a biography of trumpeter Miles Davis. As with Burrs’ project, it’s the realization of a collaboration that the composer has wanted to do for a long time. And it enables Ho to make an aesthetic statement about music.

“Sun Ra was a very innovative large ensemble composer,” Ho explains, “and he used all sorts of unconventional instrumentation. That’s what grabbed me. I’ve been fixated on the composer tradition in so-called avant-garde jazz, because it’s presumed that the music is all improvised or ‘free.’ But Sun Ra epitomized the extended notated strategy of composition. It sounds improvised but it’s largely composed.”

For Marjorie Samoff, the Executive Director of the Prince Music Theater, works such as Ho’s ambitious opera and another opera by Paul Dresher, both of which are featured in the PMP-funded CrossCurrents series, enable her organization to take on new work that looks to a new generation of creators. Combined with the master classes, panel discussions, films and smaller productions that will complement these operas, Samoff hopes to create some of the excitement of a European festival.

“It doesn’t matter how much you ended up liking or not liking the show,’ she says. “You come out afterwards and argue about it in the café, and you get a real sense of creativity and ferment and of people developing new ideas.”

The Painted Bride has been a favored stage for jazz for some 35 years. In 1986, Lennie Seidman began curating a world music series for the theater. For Seidman, who is a tabla drummer and composer specializing in what he calls “intercultural percussion,” tracing the far-flung roots and flowerings of various styles of music is nothing new. But with the two-year JazzJaunts series he’s curating with PMP funding, he is able to showcase the particular lineages of seven different musicians.

“The idea was to bring in artists that are from another culture or who are predominantly bringing another culture to bear on and expand the ever-changing notion of what jazz is,” he says. “I always naturally lean toward intercultural work, but this was an opportunity to formalize that idea and to really explore it with the proper financial support.”

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This March, the Philadelphia Music Project awarded its project grants for 2004. The Project provided a total of $593,150 to fifteen music organizations. This year’s grants range from $15,000 to $120,000 and were selected from among twenty-nine applicants. They illustrate a substantive dedication to presenting adventurous music of the highest quality across the spectrum of genre and musical tradition, encouraging

artistic excellence and diversity throughout the region.“In its fifteen-year history, PMP has funded a compelling range of music programming that has captured the

imagination of Greater Philadelphia audiences,” said PMP director Matthew Levy. “While PMP continues the critical work of supporting historical and folk traditions in the local music community, the 2004 grantees will undertake an unprecedented thirty-six commissions and world premiere performances of compositions spanning classical, jazz, and world music. Several new works will incorporate interdisciplinary features, exploring the means by which music, film, dance, poetry, and other forms of art inform one another. Taken together, these efforts are a profound measure of Philadelphia’s increasing cultural vitality.”

These thirty-six commissions demonstrate a singular commitment to new music on behalf of the Philadelphia-area music community. The projects promise to involve the composers not only in the development of the works but also in the enrichment of their audiences. Several of PMP’s 2004 grantees highlight the composition of new works, providing the opportunity for area audiences to experience everything from jazz and world fusion, to the

“completion” of a Mozart opera, to a full length radio show.The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia received $23,150 to commission and present the world premiere per-

formance of a work by Guggenheim Fellow Michael Hersch. The composition will be performed in the Perelman Theater of the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts with Music Director Ignat Solzhenitsyn conducting.

The Network for New Music was awarded $60,000 over two years to commission and premiere twelve works. Compositions by Ingrid Arauco, James Primosch, Jan Krzywicki, Philip Maneval, Chen Yi, Robert Maggio, Ber-nard Rands, and Lee Hyla will be presented as part of Doubletake, programs performed by the NNM ensemble first alone and then with choreography by Philadelphia’s Phrenic New Ballet. The project will also include major chamber works by Steven Mackey, Shulamit Ran, Jay Reise, and a new multimedia production entitled Nightmaze by Sebastian Currier in collaboration with video projection artist Sage Carter and author Thomas Bolt.

Orchestra 2001 received $30,000 to commission and premier four works. The compositions will include The River of Life, the third volume of Pulitzer Prize-winner George Crumb’s American Song Cycle, based on hymns and revival tunes and featuring Crumb’s daughter, soprano Ann Crumb; Piano Concerto, by local composer/pianist Charles Abramovic; Mozart’s opera Zaide, to be completed with an overture by Peter Schikele and featuring soprano Tamara Matthews; and a new chamber orchestra work by Adam Wernick. Programs will be offered in both Philadelphia and Swarthmore with Artistic Director James Freeman conducting.

The Painted Bride Art Center was given $120,000 in support of a two-year series entitled JazzJaunts. Seven jazz artists will compose and premiere compositions that incorporate musical traditions from their cultural roots, spanning South Africa, Cuba, Brazil, South India, Iraq, Ja-pan, and the Jewish Diaspora. Alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, drummer Dafnis Prieto, percussionist Guilherme Franco, pianists Abdul-lah Ibrahim and Shoko Nagai, and trumpeters Steven Bernstein and Amir ElSaffar will each be presented with expanded ensembles in two public concerts and a workshop.

The Prince Music Theater received $80,000 to produce CrossCurrents at the Prince, a new contemporary musical theater festival featuring the work of composers Fred Ho and Paul Dresher. The Prince will commis-sion and present the world premiere performances of Fred Ho and Quincy Troupe’s new opera, Mr. Mystery: The Return of Sun Ra to Planet Earth, and Paul Dresher’s The Tyrant, featuring tenor John Duykers. The project will also include theatrical productions of Ho’s Voice of the Dragon, Part 2 and a new version of Dresher’s Slow Fire with vocals by Rinde Eckert.

Master classes, panel discussions, and films will be presented to comple-ment festival programs.

Relâche was awarded $30,000 to commission and premiere eight works on its three-concert Future Sounds series at the Prince Music The-ater. Diane Monroe and Arthur Jarvinen will compose scores for animated films by Max Fleisher in a program co-produced with Film at the Prince. Gavin Bryars and Toby Twining will compose new secular oratorios. Dennis DeSantis, Roshanne Etezady, Adam B. Silverman, and Ken Ueno of the Minimum Security Composers Collective will be commissioned to create a full length radio show based on the life and work of Maurice Sendak, presented in cooperation with the Rosenbach Museum & Library.

Choral Arts Society also plans to commission a work for their PMP-funded project. This group, as well as the Philadelphia Singers and Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, will be presenting vocal concerts that explore religious themes in collaborative, interpretive contexts.

Choral Arts Society was awarded $30,000 to support their project en-titled Stained Glass — an Exploration of the Spirit. This project will examine the ethnocentric and cultural boundaries of vocal practice in the Santeria, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish religions by juxtaposing Javanese, Brazil-ian, Bata, contemporary American music, and newly commissioned work by Benjamin Broening in a collage-format concert, to be conducted by acting Artistic Director Mathew Glandorf. Guest artist performing in the concert will include the Congregation Rodeph Shalom Choir with mezzo-soprano Jody Kidwell, early music vocal ensemble In Clara Voce, Bata drumming ensemble Ire, Gamelan Son of Lion, and the Keystone State Boychoir.

The Philadelphia Singers received $20,000 to present Psalms of Joy

PMP Announces 2004 Grant Awards The 2004 grantees will undertake an unprecedented thirty-six commissions and world premiere performances of compositions spanning classical, jazz, and world music.

Left to right:

Kevin Mahogany will perform with Kendrick Oliver and the New Life Jazz Orchestra at the Science Center Theater at Montgomery County Community College on December 4, 2004.

The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia will perform Michael Hersch’s new work in the Perelman Theater at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts on June 5 and 6, 2005. Photo: Paul Sirochman.

Relâche’s Future Sounds series will include a radio show inspired by Maurice Sendak created by the Minimum Security Composers Collective. Photo: Catherine Hennessy.

Uri Caine will be performing his Diabelli Variations with Orchestra 2001 in their Piano Summit!!! concert on November 19, 2004 at the Trinity Center for Urban Life, and on November 20 in Lang Concert Hall at Swarthmore College. Photo: Bill Douthart.

Bernard Rands, and Rob Maggio, composers, will each contribute works to Network for New Music’s Doubletake series.

presented yearlong in Curtis’ Field Concert Hall.Piffaro, The Renaissance Band received $30,000 in

support of its 20th Anniversary Season — Winds, Strings, and Voices. Piffaro will present three programs that will integrate bowed and plucked strings and voices with its wind instruments to portray distinct periods of early music.

The series will feature music of Flemish composers from the fist half of the 15th century, music for the Christmas season from early 17th century Portugal, and repertoire from northern Italy and France from the mid-16th century. Guest artist include vielle artist Shira Kammen and the medieval vocal/harp/lute trio Trefoil, the chamber choir Fuma Sacra, and the violin band The King’s Noyse with soprano Ellen Hargis.

Finally, Sruti, The India Music and Dance Society was awarded $25,000 to present Tradition and Innovation in Indian Classical Music, a series of three concerts blending traditional and contemporary forms of both vocal and instrumental Indian classical music. The project will feature perfor-mances by the duo of vocalist Shankar and ten-string stereophonic double violinist Gingger, mridingam artist Padmashi Umayalapuram Sivaraman, and vocalist Sanjay Subrahmanyam, and will present six percussionists in a lecture/demonstration on rhythmic aspects of Indian classical music.

In sum, the 2004 PMP-funded projects will produce a total of 147 events, including the commissioning and performance of thirty-six new works, the world premiere of one additional work, and the regional premiere of four works; fifty-eight residency and educational activities; and over eighty public performances encompassing thirty-two chamber music perfor-mances, nine orchestral performances, six choral performances, fifty-nine new music performances, eighteen world/folk music performances, twenty jazz performances, ten early music performances, and seventeen musical theater performances, as well as four opera performances. Funded activi-ties are expected to benefit 416 local artists and 489 guest artists and to reach nearly 35,000 live audience members in the five-county region and

more than 315,000 regional radio audience members through broadcasts on Philadelphia’s WRTI and WHYY. National audiences will gain exposure to funded events through broadcasts on NPR.

PMP grants are awarded on a competitive basis and are selected by a panel of artists, scholars, and administrators from around the country with expertise in various aspects of music as well as a broad knowledge of the field. A distinguished eight-member panel reviewed this year’s applica-tions and was comprised of Samuel C. Dixon, classical music management consultant (panel chair); Louise Basbas, Executive Director, Music Before 1800 and Director of Music, Corpus Christi Church, New York City; Harolyn Blackwell, Metropolitan Opera soprano and EMI, RCA-Victor, and Telarc recording artist; Robert E. Brown, President, Center for World Music; Greg Osby, saxophonist, composer, and Blue Note recording artist; Robert Page, Music Director, Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh, Choral Director, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and Professor of Music, Carnegie Mellon University; Bright Sheng, composer and Leonard Bernstein Distinguished Professor, University of Michigan; and Hanako Yamaguchi, Director of Music Programming, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

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and Liberation, a program featuring the world premiere of Thomas Whitman’s Babylon, a lament for chorus and orchestra with text from a poem by Nathalie Anderson based on Psalm 137. The program will also include Handel’s rarely performed Dixit Domius, with text taken from Psalm 110, and Schubert’s set-ting of Psalm 23. The program will be conducted by Philadelphia Singers Music Director David Hayes and performed with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. In addition, the Singers will present a series of educational and community outreach activities, including multidisciplinary school workshops, panel discussions, and a pre-concert conversation.

Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia received $30,000 to present Richard Einhorn’s cantata, Voices of Light, written and performed as live accompaniment to Carl Dreyer’s 1928 silent film, The Passion of Joan of Arc. The program, offered in collaboration with the Philadelphia Film Fes-tival at Irvine Auditorium, will be conducted by Mendelssohn Club Music Director Alan Harler with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia.

Other thematic programming that music organizations will present with assistance from the Music Project includes projects intended to bring blues- and jazz-inspired music to the concert stage. Montgomery County Community College, for example, was awarded $25,000 in support of All Hues… All Blues: The Voices of American Music. They will present a new concert series designed to explore three distinct styles of the blues aes-thetic in American music, including the Memphis and Kansas City sounds. The series will feature James “Blood” Ulmer, Kendrick Oliver and New Life Jazz Orchestra featuring Kevin Mahogany, and Mose Allison. The project will also involve ethnomusicologist Dr. Gloria Goode and the duo Cephus and Wiggins in residency and outreach programs.

Opera North received $25,000 to present a fully staged production of Leslie Burrs’ opera Vanqui at the Prince Music Theater, featuring so-pranos Carmen Balthrop and Lisa Edwards-Spurrs, and baritone Brian Johnson. Vanqui, with a libretto by John A. Williams, narrates the struggle of a murdered slave couple who seek one another beyond death. Burrs’

PMP ANNOUNCES GRANT 2004 AWARDS

Left to right:

The Philadelphia Singers will be performing Psalms of Joy and Libera-tion at Irvine Auditorium on May 8, 2004. Photo: Candace diCarlo.

David Hayes, Artistic Director of the Philadelphia Singers. Photo: Paul Sirochman.

Abdullah Ibrahim, pianist, will perform at the Painted Bride Art Center on November 2, 2004.

U. Sivaraman and his ensemble will perform Carnatic violin and percussion music in a concert presented by Sruti, the India Music and Dance Society, on October 30, 2004 at International House.

composition style, which he refers to as “urban classical,” draws from jazz, African-American, and contemporary music genres, introducing new traditions — many of which derive from the blues styles presented by Montgomery County Com-munity College — into the realm of opera. Opera North’s project will also involve lyric coloratura soprano Iris Fairfax and baritone Cailin Manson in educational and community outreach activities.

The remaining projects funded by PMP repre-sent various presentations of chamber music. The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society is pushing the bounds of chamber music explicitly with its upcoming series, Modern Masters. They were awarded $50,000 to present the new series consisting of nine concerts of both contemporary classical music and modern jazz, as well as the commissioning and premiere of a work by Philadelphia composer Richard Brodhead. The project will feature touring artists Regina Carter, the McCoy Tyner Trio, the Imani Winds with pianist Gilbert Kalish, the Mannes Trio, the Arditti String Quartet, and the Colorado Quartet as well as Philadelphia artists including the Odean Pope Quartet, pianist Charles Abramovic, Network for New Music with soprano Lucy Shelton, pianist Marcantonio Barone, and violinist Scott St. John. Several performing artists will also conduct master classes at collaborat-ing educational institutes, including the Curtis Institute of Music, Temple University, the University of the Arts, and the High School for Creative and Performing Arts.

The Curtis Institute of Music received $15,000 for its 80th Anniver-sary Celebration — Concert on the Square. To celebrate its 80th birthday, Curtis will present a concert in Rittenhouse Square Park featuring music by Curtis-trained composers and performed by student brass, percussion, and string ensembles. The concert will serve as an “open door invitation” to the Philadelphia community, to be followed by one hundred free concerts

Top row, left to right: 1: The Mannes Trio will be presented by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society on February 13, 2005 at the Curtis Institute of Music. Photo: Christian Steiner. 2: Trefoil, an early music trio, will perform with Piffaro in their concert of 15th century Flemish music on October 22, 2004, at St. Mark’s Church and on October 23, 2004, at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill. Photo: Thomas O. Kriegsmann Studios. 3: Orchestra 2001 in concert. Photo: Kenneth Hiebert. 4: The Prince Music Theater will premiere Paul Dresher’s The Tyrant and present an updated version of Slow Fire, one of Dresher’s defining works, in their May 2005 series, CrossCurrents at the Prince.

Bottom row, left to right: The Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia will present Stained Glass— An Exploration of Spirit on March 11, 2005 at the Philadelphia Cathedral (Episcopal) and on March 12 at Daylesford Abbey in Paoli. Photo: Allegra Boverman.

The Network for New Music. Photo: Joanna Lightner.

Alan Harler, Artistic Director of Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, will appear on May 1, 2005, at Irvine Auditorium. Photo: JL Shipman.

Quartet of Curtis Institute of Music violinists. Photo: Jean Brubaker.

Text inset: Carmen Balthrop, soprano, will be singing in Opera North’s production of Vanqui on May 21–22, 2005 at the Prince Music Theater.

SEPTEMBER 2004

09.11.04 Sanjay Subrahmanyam and ensemble, Carnatic vocal musicSruti, The India Music and Dance Society; www.sruti.orgLocation: Montgomery County Community College

OCTOBER 2004

10.1.0480th Anniversary Celebration: Concert on the SquareCurtis Institute of Music; www.curtis.eduLocation: Rittenhouse Square Park

10.7.04Kimmel Center Presents Fresh Ink series: George Crumb’s The River of Life world premiere and Music for a Summer Evening (Makrokosmos III)Orchestra 2001; www.orchestra2001.orgLocation: Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

10.21–23.04Philadelphia Orchestra First Performances: Richard Danielpour’s Songs of Solitude world premiere, with Copland’s Quiet City and Sibelius’ Symphony No 5 Philadelphia Orchestra; www.philorch.orgLocation: Verizon Hall, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

10.22.04Modern Masters series: Imani Winds with Gilbert Kalish (piano)Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; www.philadelphiachambermusic.orgLocation: Philadelphia Museum of Art

10.22.0415th Century Flemish music with Trefoil and Shira Kammen (vielle)Piffaro, The Renaissance Band; www.piffaro.comLocation: St Mark’s Church

10.23.0415th Century Flemish music with Trefoil and Shira Kammen (vielle)Piffaro, The Renaissance Band; www.piffaro.comLocation: Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill

10.30.04Carnatic violin and percussion music by U Sivaraman and Ensemble Sruti, The India Music and Dance Society; www.sruti.orgLocation: International House

NOVEMBER 2004

11.6.04JazzJaunts: Abdullah Ibrahim (piano) with ensemble Painted Bride Art Center; www.paintedbride.orgLocation: Painted Bride Art Center

11.12.04Modern Masters series: Odean Pope QuartetPhiladelphia Chamber Music Society; www.philadelphiachambermusic.orgLocation: Levitt Auditorium at Gershwin Y

11.12 –14.04Future Sounds series: New works by Diane Monroe and Arthur Jarvinen world premieres, with works by John Zorn, Joseph Koykkar, and Raymond ScottRelâche; www.relache.orgLocation: Prince Music Theater

11.14.04Dance Project series: New dances by Jan Krzywicki and Bernard Rands world premieres; also, Jennifer Higdon’s Zones world premiere of revised version, and Rands’ Concertino for Oboe and Ensemble Network for New Music; www.networkfornewmusic.orgLocation: Settlement Music School

11.19.04Piano Summit!!!: Charles Abramovic’s Piano Concerto world premiere,David Finko’s Moses: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, and Uri Caine’s Arrangements and Improvisations after Beethoven’s Diabelli VariationsOrchestra 2001; www.orchestra2001.orgLocation: Trinity Center for Urban Life

11.20.04All Hues… All Blues: James “Blood” Ulmer and Ensemble with Cephus and WigginsMontgomery County Community College; www.mc3.eduLocation: Science Center Theater, Montgomery County

11.21.04Piano Summit!!!: Charles Abramovic’s Piano Concerto world premiere, David Finko’s Moses: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, and Uri Caine’s Arrangements and Improvisations after Beethoven’s Diabelli VariationsOrchestra 2001; www.orchestra2001.orgLocation: Lang Concert Hall, Swarthmore College

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DECEMBER 2004

12.4.04All Hues... All Blues: Kendrick Oliver & The New Life Jazz Orchestra with Kevin MahoganyMontgomery County Community College; www.mc3.eduLocation: Science Center Theater, Montgomery County

12.5.04Modern Masters series: Arditti String QuartetPhiladelphia Chamber Music Society; www.philadelphiachambermusic.orgLocation: Curtis Institute of Music

12.17.0417th Century Portuguese music for the Christmas season, with Fuma SacraPiffaro, The Renaissance Band; www.piffaro.comLocation: Old St Joseph’s Catholic Church

12.18.0417th Century Portuguese music for the Christmas season, with Fuma SacraPiffaro, The Renaissance Band; www.piffaro.comLocation: Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill

JANUARY 2005

1.14–15.05Philadelphia Orchestra First Performances: Luciano Berio’s Stanze with the Philadelphia Singer Chorale, additional programming Wagner’s Act III from ParsifalPhiladelphia Orchestra; www.philorch.orgLocation: Verizon Hall, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

1.28–30.05Future Sounds: New works by the Minimum Security Composers CollectiveRelâche; www.relache.orgLocation: Prince Music Theater

1.31.05Modern Masters series: New work by Richard Brodhead, performed by Charles Abramovic (piano) world premierePhiladelphia Chamber Music Society; www.philadelphiachambermusic.orgLocation: Temple University

FEBRUARY 2005

2.4.0516th Century Italian and French music, with The King’s NoysePiffaro, The Renaissance Band; www.piffaro.comLocation: St Mark’s Church

2.5.0516th Century Italian and French music, with The King’s NoysePiffaro, The Renaissance Band; www.piffaro.comLocation: Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill

2.13.05Modern Masters series: Mannes TrioPhiladelphia Chamber Music Society; www.philadelphiachambermusic.orgLocation: Curtis Institute of Music

MARCH 2005

3.5.05JazzJaunts: Steven Bernstein (trumpet) with ensemblePainted Bride Art Center; www.paintedbride.orgLocation: Painted Bride Art Center

3.8–9.05Doubletake: New works by James Primosch, Chen Yi, Lee Hyla, and Robert Maggio world premieres with choreography by Phrenic New BalletNetwork for New Music; www.networkfornewmusic.orgLocation: Arts Bank

3.11.05Stained Glass — An Exploration of the Spirit Choral Arts Society; www.choralarts.comLocation: Philadelphia Cathedral (Episcopal), Philadelphia, PA

3.12.05Stained Glass — An Exploration of the SpiritChoral Arts Society; www.choralarts.comLocation: Daylesford Abbey, Paoli, PA

3.12.05All Hues... All Blues: Mose Allison and quartetMontgomery County Community College; www.mc3.eduLocation: Science Center Theater, Montgomery County

Calendar of Funded Events 2004–2005

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MARCH 2005

3.12.05Shankar and Gingger with ensemble, Carnatic and Hindustani contemporary and traditional musicSruti, The India Music and Dance Society; www.sruti.orgLocation: Zellerbach Theater, Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

3.17–19.05Philadelphia Orchestra’s First Performances: Roberto Sierra’s Concerto for Violin, Viola, and Orchestra (co-commissioned with the Pittsburgh Symphony) with Salonen’s Insomnia and Ravel’s Suite from Mother Goose and Suite No 2 from Daphnis and ChloéPhiladelphia Orchestra; www.philorch.orgLocation: Verizon Hall, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

3.18.05Modern Masters series: Regina Carter QuintetPhiladelphia Chamber Music Society; www.philadelphiachambermusic.orgLocation: Levitt Auditorium at Gershman Y

3.19.05Mozart’s Zaide—Completed!: Mozart’s Zaide with a new overture by Peter SchikeleOrchestra 2001; www.orchestra2001.orgLocation: Trinity Center for Urban Life

3.20.05Mozart’s Zaide—Completed!: Mozart’s Zaide with a new overture by Peter SchikeleOrchestra 2001; www.orchestra2001.orgLocation: Lang Concert Hall, Swarthmore College

APRIL 2005

4.3.05Modern Masters series: Network for New Music with Lucy Shelton (soprano)Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; www.philadelphiachambermusic.orgLocation: Settlement Music School

4.3.05Composer Connections: Angela Zator Nelson (percussion) performs new work by Andrea Clearfield world premierePhiladelphia Classical Symphony; www.classicalsymphony.orgLocation: St Luke’s Church

4.3.053 Premieres & A Masked Ball: New works by Adam Wernick and Melinda Wagner world premieres, Richard Wernick’s Sextet for String Quartet, Double Bass, and Piano, and Francis Poulenc’s Le bal masquéOrchestra 2001; www.orchestra2001.orgLocation: Trinity Center for Urban Life

4.7–9.05Philadelphia Orchestra’s First Performances: James McMillan’s Symphony No 3, “Silence” (U.S premiere), with Fauré’s Suite from Pelléas et Mélisande and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 1Philadelphia Orchestra; www.philorch.orgLocation: Verizon Hall, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

4.8.05Modern Masters series: McCoy Tyner TrioPhiladelphia Chamber Music Society; www.philadelphiachambermusic.orgLocation: Levitt Auditorium at Gershwin Y

4.10.053 Premieres & A Masked Ball: New works by Adam Wernick and Melinda Wagner world premieres, Richard Wernick’s Sextet for String Quartet, Double Bass, and Piano, and Francis Poulenc’s Le Bal MasquéOrchestra 2001; www.orchestra2001.orgLocation: Lang Concert Hall, Swarthmore College

4.27–30.05 & 5.3.05Philadelphia Orchestra First Performances: Nicholas Maw’s English Horn Concerto with Elizabeth Starr Masoudina (English horn) world premiere, Philadelphia Orchestra; www.philorch.orgLocation: Verizon Hall, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

MAY 2005

5.1.05Carl Dreyer’s film The Passion of Joan of Arc, with Richard Einhorn’s cantata Voices of Light in live accompanimentMendelssohn Club; www.mcchorus.orgLocation: Irvine Auditorium

5.1–15.05CrossCurrents at the Prince: Fred Ho’s Voice of the Dragon, Part IIPrince Music Theater; www.princemusictheater.orgLocation: Prince Music Theater

5.4.05Dance Project series: New dances by Philip Maneval, Ingrid Arauco, and Jan Krzywicki, and Nightmaze, a new multimedia work by Sebastian Currier world premieresNetwork for New Music; www.networkfornewmusic.orgLocation: Haverford College

5.6.05Dance Project series: New dances by Philip Maneval, Ingrid Arauco, and Jan Krzywicki, and Nightmaze, a new multimedia work by Sebastian Currier world premieresNetwork for New Music; www.networkfornewmusic.orgLocation: Rock Hall, Temple University

5.6–14.05CrossCurrents at the Prince: Fred Ho’s Mr Mystery: The Return of Sun Ra to Planet Earth world premierePrince Music Theater; www.princemusictheater.orgLocation: Prince Music Theater

5.7.05JazzJaunts: Rudresh Mahanthappa (saxophone) with ensemblePainted Bride Art Center; www.paintedbride.orgLocation: Painted Bride Art Center

5.8.05Psalms of Joy and Liberation: Babylon by Thomas Whitman world premiere with Handel’s Dixit Dominus and Schubert’s setting of Psalm 23Philadelphia Singers; www.philadelphiasingers.orgLocation: Irvine Auditorium, Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

5.8.05Modern Masters series: New work by Richard Brodhead, performed by Charles Abramovic (piano)Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; www.philadelphiachambermusic.orgLocation: PA Convention Center

MAY 2005

5.15.05Modern Masters series: Concert of all Rochberg with Colorado Quartet, Marcantonio Barone (piano), and Scott St John (violin)Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; www.philadelphiachambermusic.orgLocation: Curtis Institute of Music

5.19–21.05CrossCurrents at the Prince: New version of Paul Dresher’s Slow FirePrince Music Theater; www.princemusictheater.orgLocation: Prince Music Theater

5.19 & 22.05CrossCurrents at the Prince: Paul Dresher’s The Tyrant, written for John Duykers (tenor)Prince Music Theater; www.princemusictheater.orgLocation: Prince Music Theater

5.21–22.05Vanqui, fully-staged opera by Leslie BurrsOpera North; www.operanorth.comLocation: Prince Music Theater

5.23–25.05Future Sounds: New works by Gavin Bryars and Toby Twining world premieresRelâche; www.relache.orgLocation: Prince Music Theater

JUNE 2005

6.05–6.05New work by Michael Hersch world premiereChamber Orchestra of Philadelphia; www.concertosoloists.orgLocation: Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

PMP recommends that you visit grantees’ websites for the most complete, up-to-date information about each event. For a full list of PMP-funded events in the current season, check out our online calendar of funded events at www.philadelphiamusicproject.org.A more complete calendar of arts and cultural events in Philadel-phia can be found at PhillyFunGuide.com, the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance’s online events calendar.

Calendar of Funded Events 2004–2005

imagine life without them. In fact, they have only been around since 1986, when they presented seven concerts. In the upcoming season, they will offer sixty-three concerts at ten different venues, with programming including a healthy dose of new music and even jazz. PCMS is especially valuable as the leading presenter of that quintes-sential chamber music entity, the string quartet. Thanks to PCMS, Philadelphians can regularly hear from the venerable masters of the form, including the Guarneri, the Julliard, the Tokyo, the Emerson, and such outstanding upcoming foursomes as the Miami, the Brentano, the Artemis and many others.

“At this point,” says executive director Philip Maneval, “while we never intended it, we believe that PCMS may be the largest presenter of chamber music in the United States. Our motivation along the way, however, has always been to allow area audiences to share our great enthusiasm for outstanding music-making, in all its many forms, and to make these concerts as broadly accessible as possible.”

Although PCMS was not formally constituted until 1986, their roots go much further back, with connections that have much to do with the currently robust state of the pool of freelance instrumentalists here. The great pianist Rudolf Serkin was a co-founder of the legendary Marlboro Music Festival, in Vermont, and was the artistic director at the Curtis Institute of Music some years later. The Marlboro-Curtis connection remains strong to this day, and an important source for world class music-making here. The direct predecessor to PCMS was the three-concert Musicians From Marlboro series that Anthony Checchia, PCMS’s artistic director, had been presenting in Philadelphia since the 1960’s.

If chamber music is defined simply as small ensemble music-making, and there is probably no better way to put it, then the category becomes huge, encompassing almost every musical entity in town in some way. All of the orchestras, for example, also engage in chamber music programming of some sort, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, and Orchestra 2001. The orchestra series, in particular, offers

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a stimulating reflection of the large scale repertoire, with music director Christoph Eschenbach often joining in as pianist, just as his predecessor Wolfgang Sawallisch did.

And then there are the specialty groups, from the two chronological ends of the music world: original instrument groups and contemporary music. Ensembles such as Philomel, Tempesta di Mare, and Piffaro perform music from the baroque and before on period instruments, and although in some cases these organizations can muster enough musicians to break into the category of an orchestra, in most cases they are chamber music ensembles. That same basic operating principal also applies to the two major Philadelphia-based new music ensembles, Relâche and Network for New Music. The Prism Saxophone Quartet, of course, neatly falls into the class of chamber music by virtue of their constitution. Prism and Piffaro also serve as musical ambassadors for Philadelphia in their extensive touring activities, which take both ensembles around the world. And all of these groups portray the diversity of this city’s musical community with an extensive catalogue of CD releases.

Contemporary chamber music comes with a special set of challenges, as Network for New Music artistic director Linda Reichert explains, “The study and performance of traditional music has always informed my own performances of new music, and vice versa. The study of Beethoven sonatas, and the perennial newness of his writing, was what originally got me interested in new music and composition in the first place. The big challenge, and the fun of it, is for us musicians to bring the same nuance, the same emotional and intellectual understanding and level of expressivity that we automatically bring to Brahms or Beethoven, to the contemporary work. This level of understanding and conviction, usually translating into lots of practice, is absolutely necessary to ‘sell’ the new work to the audience. ‘Good-enough’ performances of contemporary music are just not good enough any more!”

Another vital source of chamber music is the college scene. The University of Pennsylvania does not have a performance faculty, but there has always been a solid concert series there, consisting of both homegrown talent and visiting musicians. In addition to the pioneering work of the Penn’s venerable early music programs, there has long been an emphasis on the presentation of the music of Penn’s famous composition department, with important concerts of music by such luminaries as George Crumb, George Rochberg, Richard Wernick, as well as younger voices such as James Primosch and Jay Reise gaining prominent exposure.

The situation steps up considerably in the case of such conservatory institutions as the Curtis Institute of Music and the Esther Boyer School of Music at Temple. Both schools offer generous seasons of superb concerts, almost all

The chamber music scene in Philadelphia runs the gamut from the world renowned offerings of the Philadel-phia Chamber Music Society and the Kimmel Center to informal gatherings of musician friends playing for small audiences in churches and neighborhood parks. The remarkable and completely wonderful reality of

this situation is that the range in quality and inspiration within this world is very narrow. This is partly due to a high level of expectations; a substandard musical presentation in Philadelphia is as doomed to failure as is a mediocre restaurant in Paris.

The scene is also informed by the special place of chamber music in the hearts of the performers, as is the case the world over. It is common, in this town, to hear a musician performing on the stage of a Kimmel Center venue one night and encounter the same person happily playing away in a small community concert the next day.

At the core of the scene are the well-established organizations that specifically refer to their mission as pre-senting chamber music, chiefly, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, which will present concerts by many of the world’s best-known musicians in the coming season, but also local groups such as 1807 and Friends, Conwell Woodwind Quintet, Westminster Brass, Philadelphia Classical Guitar Trio, Time for Three and others. The Kimmel Center has become a tremendously important new component of the chamber music season in Philadelphia, with programming that not only brings in international superstars, but also expands the very definition of the genre with world music, jazz, and new music events presented in the exciting Fresh Ink series.

The self-presenting groups deserve special attention because they cater to intensely devoted audiences, whom they reward with unusual repertoire and gutsier and more technically risky performances than they might offer in a more institutional setting. 1807 and Friends, for example, has been giving public performances since 1981, but the musicians, including some of the finest in the city, have played privately at the group’s namesake, a row-house at 1807 Sansom Street, for over forty years. The public face of the organization grew out of a desire to get that pure love for music and spontaneity of expression onto a concert stage.

There is no doubt that at the present time, the epicenter of the local scene is the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. They are such a vital part of the concert world here that, like the Philadelphia Orchestra, it is hard to

Happily, there seems to be a new group forming nearly every season… simply because the members like making music with one another, and relish the opportunity to share that joy.The String Quartet and Beyond: Chamber Music Flourishes in Philly By Peter Burwasser

Mozart on the Square, and Davidsbund Chamber Players. This last group, organized by violinist Charles Parker, hung in there for over twenty years, but like all such groups, operated as a labor of love. “Our annual budget was, don’t laugh, about $5000, and we didn’t always make it. We would get calls every August from regulars who just wanted to make sure we were having another season.”

Happily, there seems to be a new group forming nearly every season. They are created for any number of reasons, usually to fill a niche that is perceived by the musicians, but almost always simply because the members like making music with one another, and relish the opportunity to share that joy. Chamber Music Now! begins their third season this fall. It was founded by composers Richard Belcastro and David Langella as a means of dis-seminating their own material and showcasing other new music as well as a variety of music and performers in differing venues. The Chamber Music Now! lineup this season certainly reflects this outlook, with a tango program from the Auros Group for New Music, a multimedia event in conjunction with First Friday in Old City, a piano recital by the extraordinary new music specialist Marilyn Nonken, and a return visit from the Serafin String Quartet in the spring.

Belcastro wants his concerts to do a better job connecting to the audi-ence, something he thinks there is a need for in Philadelphia. So far, he is pleased with the results, noting a growing audience and a more youthful one at that. Last season’s presentation of the Swedish guitar group Duo Con Forza was a model of their working philosophy. “The audience fell in love with them. They wouldn’t let them go backstage during intermission and stayed after the concert and chatted some more.”

The very latest addition to the scene is the Ninth Street Music Project, named after the famous South Philadelphia market street, in the neighbor-hood where most of the musicians live. The group was formed last year by double bassist Mary Javien and New York City native David Yang, violist. They have been joined by violinist Zachary DePue and cellist Yumi Kendall,

of them free. Settlement Music School, which is not a professional training institution, is nevertheless an important venue for a wide variety of chamber music concerts throughout the year, featuring both visiting groups and members of the excellent faculty. The Curtis student recitals, which take place three times a week during the school year in their venerable Rittenhouse Square hall, are in a class by themselves, combining world class musicianship and youthful ardor in a uniquely inspiring way.

One of the more dynamic new organizations presenting chamber music is Astral Artistic Services, and they are, in a direct sense, an outgrowth of the fresh young face of the student scene. Astral was founded in 1991 by Vera Wilson as a showcase for the many superb musicians emerging from Curtis, Temple, the Academy of Vocal Arts and elsewhere, and behind the scenes, provides career development and guidance, with a special emphasis on community outreach. Wilson does not consider Astral a chamber music organization, exactly, but much of their programming involves ensembles: “Our applicants are looking for solo careers, but they often tell us of a thirst for the opportunity to play chamber music with other performers of their caliber.” And Astral serves as a stepping stone to big league performance series around the world. “We consider it a real sign of success when our musicians appear on the roster of the Chamber Music Society, as many of them eventually do.”

And chamber music is popping up in all kinds of unusual venues, even the occasional bar. The modern pioneer for such a concept is probably the legendary punk club CBGBs, in lower Manhattan, but the Old City club Tin Angel did showcase cellist Matt Haimowitz last season. There are also excellent series at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, offbeat but compelling chamber music at the annual Fringe Festival, and a particularly invigorating monthly salon that is organized by the composer and pianist Andrea Clearfield and held at her Center City home.

Of course, there have been casualties over the years, including the Chamber Music Consort, the Mozart Orchestra,

THE STRING QUARTET AND BEYOND

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both new members of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Yang has been disappoint-ed by some aspects of the local chamber music world, noting, for example, that “there’s no great full-time string quartet based in Philadelphia.” With six concerts already planned for the coming season, Yang wants to help make Philadelphia more dynamic and expand the scene, hoping to make music where “there’s a fire on the stage.” As usual, it is all being done on the proverbial shoestring. Yang laughs in agreement when it is suggested that it is not the profit motive that is driving Ninth Street Music Project. “Joseph Gingold, many years back, said something like this: chamber music is the most rewarding musically and least rewarding financially.”

Chamber Music Now! and Ninth Street Music Project are comprised of young musicians who yearn for an audience of their contemporaries, and in doing so battle a persistent misconception about chamber music, mainly, that it is a format that appeals primarily to older audiences. It is hard not to notice, for example, the sea of gray heads at most PCMS concerts. Philip Maneval: “I remember Charles Rosen’s comment, that the death of classical music is perhaps its oldest continuing tradition. Gary Graffman pointed out that in the 1940’s there were only two major concert managements, with a total of about 40 pianists between them. Last year’s Musical America direc-tory listed 624 pianists. So maybe we should be worrying more about glut then decline. Clearly this is an art form that, for whatever reason, seems to have greater appeal to people later in their lives. Fortunately, however, once people become regular classical music attendees they are usually very faithful and devoted, unlike popular music audiences who can easily change their tastes and allegiances.”

Peter Burwasser is the classical music critic for the Philadelphia City Pa-per, regular contributor to Fanfare Magazine, and free lance contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer. He also serves on the editorial advisory board for New Music Connoisseur Magazine.

Page 14, top: Tempesta di Mare in concert. Photo: Eileen Lambert Photography.

Page 14, bottom: Marilyn Nonken. Photo: Sara Press.

Page 15, top: The Brentano String Quartet.

Page 15, bottom: Time for Three. Photo: Jean E. Brubaker.

Page 16, top: Philadelphia Classical Guitar Trio. Photo: Jaime Demarco.

Page 16, bottom: Maestro Eschenbach at the piano with members of The Philadelphia Orchestra. Photo: Candace diCarlo.

Page 17: The PRISM Quartet. Photo: Pierre Dufour.

Amidst the wide array of music being made in Philadelphia, from jazz to folk to classical, some groups are looking beyond music itself for adventurous programming. Several regional music organizations, among them PMP grant-ees Mendelssohn Club, Network for New Music, Relâche, and the Prince Music Theater, are planning performances for the 2004-2005 season that cross disciplinary borders, integrating elements from other artistic arenas into their concerts.

Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia will present an event combining song and a feature length film. In collabora-tion with the Philadelphia Film Festival, Mendelssohn Club will sing Richard Einhorn’s cantata Voices of Light, written to accompany Carl Dreyer’s famous silent film, The Passion of Joan of Arc. The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia will provide instrumental accompaniment.

The Passion of Joan of Arc, made in 1928, is well-known both for its ground-breaking film techniques, which influenced Bergman, Fellini, Hitchcock, and others, as well as the extraordinary and haunting performance of Renée Falconetti in the title role. Einhorn composed Voices of Light after seeing the film and being so moved as to begin serious research into its history, the life of Joan of Arc, and the writings of several other female mystics. The cantata he composed employs texts from Joan’s letters, quotes from the Bible, and poetry from mystics including St. Hildegaard of Bingen and Beatrice of Nazareth.

Alan Harler, Mendelssohn Club’s Music Director, comments, “There is a terrific history of film present in Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc and terrific history of oratorio present in Richard Einhorn’s contemporary cantata, Voices of Light, based on ancient texts from revered female mystics as well as Joan of Arc herself.” Together these works engage the musicians and the audience in an unusual experience that attempts to balance seeing and hearing. “This includes understanding the difficulties of successfully projecting film concurrent with live performance,” Harler adds. The interdisciplinary project requires a cooperative sensibility in both its practical and creative aspects.

Harler finds this opportunity to involve other media in the work of the Mendelssohn Club an exciting move that addresses both the origins and the future of artistic performance: “From earliest recorded time, people ‘mixed’ art forms. Drama was not done without music and dance; poetry was not read, but sung; instruments accompanied singers and dancers and actors. With the rise of the formal concert as a form of public performance, we now had

separate orchestra concerts, chorus concerts, theater, poetry readings... all as independent performance me-dia. This was a good thing.”

He continues, “Integrating the disciplines in new and interesting ways is also a good thing. Today, peo-ple, especially young people, are accustomed to layers of media-driven entertainment. This offers exciting possibilities for choral music to go outside the usual format of ‘the choral concert’ to artistic expression of a much more accessible and highly dramatic nature.” However, Harler emphasizes, “Accessible should not, and does not, mean that it is a less meaningful or valuable experience.” The concert will implement audiences’ increasing fluency with multidisciplinary performance to present a challenging oratorio with a challenging film, both of which explore the religious themes traditional to choral music.

The women of Mendelssohn Club will introduce the concert with Francis Poulenc’s Litanies á la Vierge Noir: Notre Dame de Roc-Amadour, a supplication to a French feminine icon of the Church, acting as an alternative to a film short, which traditionally opened a silent picture. The entire concert promises to be an unusual and moving opportunity for audiences to wit-ness two masterful, entwined responses to the tragic life of a charismatic mystic. It will take place on May 1st, 2005, at Irvine Auditorium, located at 34th and Spruce Streets.

The Network for New Music will present a number of different interdisciplinary performances this season. In their Doubletake program, the Phrenic New Ballet

will join the NNM ensemble in the performance of sev-eral dances, including works by Chen Yi, Lee Hyla, and local composers James Primosch and Robert Maggio. Doubletake will be performed on March 8 and 9, 2005 at the Arts Bank, on the Avenue of the Arts.

NNM’s final production of the 2004-2005 season will be Nightmaze, a multimedia work for live instru-mental ensemble, digitally processed sounds, spoken voice and video projections, with music by Sebastian Currier, text and concept by Thomas Bolt, and projec-

Musical Borderlands

tions by Sage Carter. Like the Mendelssohn Club’s project, this work seeks to balance its various elements equally, here between visual imagery, narrative, and music. Currier explains how the collaborating artists balance the piece: “It seems to me that visual images more easily engage our attention than sounds do under ordinary circumstances, and so part of our chal-lenge in Nightmaze is to be able to neutralize the visual image at some points while letting it take over at others.”

Nightmaze enacts the troubled dreams of a student who is exhausted after several straight days of studying for exams. His nightmare knots his studies of philosophy and psychology with the shadows of his own consciousness. As Currier describes it, “In this state of complete exhaustion, he falls into a deep sleep and, his mind still saturated with fragments of Freud, Burke and cosmology, dreams he is driving down an imaginary highway. Nightmaze follows his journey through a dark world of sexual desire, fear, and longing as strange road signs loom up in front of him and he must choose the course to take on his nocturnal joyride.”

Bolt illustrates this symbolic journey as along “a nightmare Interstate in which the pro-tagonist is confronted again and again with stark, binary choices...along with foreshortened warnings, instructions, and paired alternatives from the worlds of Physics, Economics, and Psychology. The static world of reading and ideation is continually set against the restless, demanding sensory experience of travel, music, dream.” The visual components of the work, which remain spare, alternate text and sign, and with the music foster a rhythmic attention that, according to Currier, “ceaselessly propels one forward into distant places.”

Currier commented that he appreciates this opportunity to work with Bolt, whose writings he has known and admired for a decade. A pleasant surprise, he said, was finding that “the basic structure of Thomas Bolt’s narrative seems to relate with great ease to the purely musi-cal structures that I use in my music in general.” He wonders whether or not the correlation is coincidental, or whether it perhaps influenced their choice to work together. Their collabora-tion has encouraged Currier to consider more extensively the relationship “between concrete representations of the world and the abstract language of music,” including parallels that he recognized between the three-dimensional spaces that Bolt and Carter rendered in their text and images, and the “spatialization” of his music.

Nightmaze will be performed at Haverford College on May 4, 2005 and at Rock Hall at Temple University on May 6. An atmospheric take on the dark conflicts of the psyche, audi-

ences may find Currier, Bolt, Carter, and the Network for New Music transporting them into the wilder realms of their own minds.

Relâche, an instrumental octet, has pursued significant amounts of multidisciplinary work since 2000, including The Bell and the Glass. This co-collaboration with the Philadel-phia Museum of Art spawned video, installation, and performance elements exploring two of Philadelphia’s most famous residents, the Liberty Bell and Marcel Duchamp’s The Bride Undone By Her Bachelors, Even, nicknamed “The Large Glass.” Relâche has also created two live silent film programs, Sonic Cinema I & II, and two dance collaborations with choreographer Meredith Rainey and the Phrenic New Ballet.

This year, PMP will provide support for the 2004–2005 installment of Relâche’s Future

Exploring Interdisciplinary Art in PhiladelphiaBy Alyssa Timin

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More and more, musicians take on work with painters, writers, dancers and directors, rejuvenating traditional forms with projects that seek to discover, and perhaps recover, common artistic ground.

Sounds series. Each of the three programs will involve in-novative collaborations with other media and disciplines. Relâche has organized the Future Sounds series through an overarching thematic lens. The first program, Comedy + Heroism, will be produced with the Prince Music Theater’s Film at the Prince and will address how early animation, while intended as entertainment, simultaneously laid the foundation for crucial American tropes. Focusing on the films of Max Fleischer, Relâche will screen early animated shorts with commissioned works by Diane Monroe and Ar-thur Jarvinen, as well as perform related works by Joseph Koykkar, John Zorn, and Raymond Scott, whose work with Carl Stalling drove Warner Brothers’ animation music.

The second program, entitled Tragedy + Hope, will in-clude commissioned works by local composer Toby Twining and Gavin Bryars. Twining, who is known for composing microtonal vocal works, will write a piece for the Relâche ensemble and one of the voices in his a cappella quartet. Bryars, a British composer, will create a piece for multiple musicians and will incorporate theatrical elements.

The final program of the Future Sounds series will be Innocence + Joy. It will center on the concepts of childhood wonder, nostalgia, and fantasy through the work of Maurice Sendak, author of the children’s literature classics Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen. The project will feature a radio show composed by Relâche’s first-ever composer collective, the Minimum Security Composers Col-lective. The show will be based on the variety radio show that incorporated talk, skits, music, readings and more, and will encompass 75 minutes worth of coordinated pieces by the four Minimum Security composers, Dennis DeSantis, Ken Ueno, Roshanne Etezady, and Adam Silverman.

According to the group, Minimum Security began as a presenting organization and creative collective hybrid, hop-ing to match talented performers with a concert’s worth of newly-composed works. Etezady explains, “Since the early days of MSCC, our methods have changed somewhat, but our goal is still the same: to be ‘evangelists’ for new music, and to continue to build strong, lasting connections be-tween composers, performers, and audiences.” She remarks that she was drawn to this project “because of the evocative work of Maurice Sendak.” In his stories, she sees a passion-ate and candid rendering of children’s imaginations: “His work reflects the fact that childhood isn’t all teddy bears and lollipops. Kids live in a mysterious world, sometimes wonderful, sometimes terrifying, sometimes both, that adults often forget about. But not Sendak. His work is at

once knowing and naive, whimsical and serious.” The program will be recorded live for regional broadcast

on WHYY’s “Sunday Showcase” and may be syndicated through NPR. The Rosenbach Museum & Library, which houses the largest Sendak collection in the world, will also provide support for the project. Etezady emphasizes her enthusiasm for collaborating with Relâche, comment-ing, “These performers are tremendous, and I had such a wonderful experience working with them in the past. The in-strumentation of Relâche is absolutely unique — their sound is one that cannot be replicated by any other ensemble, and it gives a composer many exciting opportunities.”

Relâche consciously seeks to explore connections be-tween popular culture and the avant-garde, evident in its interest in animation and children’s books. Former Executive Director Thaddeus Squire argues, “While contemporary art music must maintain its values as a lead art form, dedicated to musical innovation, it must also fully embrace popular culture, the sense of belonging, familiarity and entertain-ment value that people desire.” The playfulness of pop and the freedom in bridging artistic traditions come together in Relâche’s world of contemporary chamber music, capturing the spirit of their 1924 music-theater namesake: “Relâche is perpetual movement, life, it is the minute of happiness we all seek...” (Francis Picabia). Look for the Minimum Security Composers Collective with Relâche at the Prince Music Theater on January 28-30, 2005.

In May of 2005, the Prince Music Theater will mount an extensive program of experimental music theater works under the heading CrossCurrents at the Prince. Two of the featured productions will come from Paul Dresher, a famously versatile and innovative composer whose own Paul Dresher Ensemble both produces and tours its col-laboratively-created opera and experimental music theater works and performs as the Electro-Acoustic Band with a diverse repertory of commissioned works from a range of contemporary composers.

Slow Fire, one of the Dresher Ensemble’s defining works, will be brought out of the retirement it entered in 1996 after being performed nearly two-hundred times and exhausting the live analog tape loop system that Dresher built specially for the piece. For this production, Dresher will develop a new digital performance system utilizing a Mac PowerBook and MAX MSP software to replace the analog system, as well as update the show’s topical references. Rinde Eckert, Slow Fire’s singer/performer, will modify his contributions to the work to reflect “a more modulated, less-consistently ‘over-the-top’ approach,” as Dresher describes it.

Slow Fire tells the story of Bob, “a comic but danger-ous everyman,” and follows him through a day and night of remembering his father. More than just a character study, however, the piece uses the cartoonish bluster of Bob and his dad to critique the destructive underbelly of certain con-temporary attitudes. Dresher cites “the hubris of manifest destiny, the despoiling of the environment, the destruction of indigenous cultures in the name of progress and property, and the obsessive enforcement of power in a climate that poses the threat (and actuality) of violence” all as issues at

work in the piece as Dad bellows, “Get yourself some land, Boy, /Anybody’s land!” Ultimately, he hopes that Slow Fire

“will offer audiences a renewed opportunity to reflect upon the connection between our choices and actions as indi-viduals and our current condition and choices as a nation.”

The political convictions rendered in the piece spoke clearly to its original audiences, as the piece quickly drew a cult following and, through several national and interna-tional tours, found expanded audiences from the spheres of opera, rock and roll, modern dance, and the visual arts.

“There was something about Bob and Dad that resonated with most of our audiences,” Dresher comments, “who could see in these figures a part of themselves, their fathers, or someone close from their past.” Dresher even discovered that the piece appealed to children. He hopes that with this revival of the show, people who loved the first version will now be able to introduce it to their kids.

Dresher’s new piece that will enjoy its East Coast premiere at CrossCurrents at the Prince is The Tyrant, composed for tenor John Duykers and created in collabo-ration with him and writer Jim Lewis. The Tyrant takes its inspiration from Italo Calvino’s short story, “A King Listens,” though this production will abandon all of the original text in favor of simply appropriating the narrative’s premise. As Dresher tells it, “A king, unable to physically leave his throne for fear of overthrow, is forced to experience his kingdom entirely through the medium of sound.”

The work is being written as a companion piece to Peter Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969), and is being scored for the same instrumentation, the classic

“Pierrot” chamber quintet plus percussion. Together, the two works constitute an evening’s performance for Duyk-ers, whom Dresher regards as a mentor in opera and music theater composition. The Tyrant has provided Dresher an opportunity to realize a long-held goal of his, to create a substantial solo role for the tenor. He comments, “The score is being written to draw out the full range and depth of Duykers’ extraordinary voice...Indeed, at one recent per-formance, it was described as having attained the richness of fine wine.”

It was Duykers himself who helped influence Dresher to integrate collaboration and interdisciplinary methods into his compositional style more than twenty years ago. They found success with a co-created show called The Way of How in 1981, and Dresher found himself hooked on collaborative music theater. He values mixing performance media as a means of building contrasts into an audience’s focus; in fact, he says, “I find that this approach continually refreshes the audience’s palette and actually can result in the music having greater impact.” Slow Fire, for example, is led by different media in different scenes, though he expects The Tyrant will rely more consistently on music for the development of its drama.

Dresher also values interdisciplinary work for the chance to set texts, even “found” texts that were never intended to be sung. “I love...finding music solutions to language that was not created with any conscious music scheme,” he enthuses. “I believe that one of my skills is that

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MUSICAL BORDERLANDS I can set almost any text.” On another level, working in theatrical contexts lets

Dresher comment more directly on social, political and philosophical issues than he might if he routinely stuck to the concert stage. Clearly, this commentary is at work in the formation of The Tyrant, and its “irreverent” libretto will surely zing as an operatic exposé on the panic at the heart of power. Slow Fire and The Tyrant will play at the Prince Music Theater May 18-22, 2005.

Though audiences have come to expect commercial en-tertainment to interact with multiple senses simultaneously, multi- and interdisciplinary arts performances may induce audiences to engage in a new kind of listening, a new kind of attention. Audience members are asked not only to look and listen at the same time, but to consider how such seeing and hearing work together — or apart — in appreciating the work of art. Music’s established formats and genres stabilize these experiments with their authority and nuance, a rich soil for planting new attempts at expression. More and more, musicians take on work with painters, writers, dancers and directors, rejuvenating traditional forms with projects that seek to discover, and perhaps recover, com-mon artistic ground.

Page 18, top: The Phrenic New Ballet will be performing with the Network for New Music in NNM’s Doubletake series on March 8 and 9, 2005 at the Arts Bank. Photo: Cylla Von Teidermann.

Page 18, bottom: Paul Dresher’s Slow Fire and The Tyrant will be performed at the Prince Music Theater on May 18-22, 2005.

Pages 19, 20: Still images from The Passion of Joan of Arc.

Page 21: Sebastian Currier’s work, Nightmaze, will be performed by the Network for New Music on May 4, 2005 at Haverford College and on May 6 at Temple University’s Rock Hall.

Left to right:

“Forestbots,” designed by Eric Singer.

Eric Singer with his “Sonic Banana.”

The “Shaper,” designed by Tod Machover for the Toy Symphony Project.

DSOKids website.

O n the ninth of October last year, nearly fifty professionals from the Greater Philadelphia music and performing arts community gathered at the Curtis Institute for Music for the Philadelphia

Music Project’s 2003 panel discussion entitled Music, Technology, and Kids. PMP invited distinguished panelists Tod Machover (moderator), Professor of Music and Media at MIT and director of the Toy Symphony Project; LeAnn Binford, Director of Education for the Dallas Symphony and producer of DSOKids.com; Michael Cain, composer, pianist, and profes-sor of improvisation and jazz studies at the New England Conservatory of Music, and director of Digital Playground; and Eric Singer, musician, artist, engineer, programmer, and founder of the LEMUR project. PMP convened these speakers in order to address the intersection of technology and music education, and, specifically, the potential for electronic instruments and internet and recording technologies to contribute to children’s musi-cal enrichment.

The morning-long panel discussion began with a brief introduction by Tod Machover. Machover noted the growing trend in education to approach music in new ways and commented that he became involved in the field because of his sense that, while music is omnipresent in the contemporary environment, its very ubiquity has led to audiences listening less carefully. He sees his work as revitalizing and refocusing the public’s attention to music. Machover advocates applying advances in technology to music education as a means of promoting students’ engagement in the creative process. Through emerging technologies and new pedagogical approaches, he said, children can feel not only closely involved as music listeners, but can also be active performers and composers in forms they might otherwise find intimidating.

Machover’s comments were followed by brief individual presentations by panelists. LeAnn Binford offered the first presentation of the morning,

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which was an overview of the DSOKids website. The rich and captivating interactive platform engages children and educators in the study of music, and intends to orient children toward live musical experi-ences. The site distinguishes areas for students and teachers, both filled with information on the orchestra and classical music generally. Teachers have access to curricula on instrument making and composition, as well as a music education bibliography and much more. In the “Music Room,” students can enjoy fun memory games, a listening library, and lessons on music histo-ry, theory, and orchestration. Binford emphasized the success of DSOKids: the site received over 730,000 visitors in a one-year period, averaging an internet session time of 3.5 minutes. She further discussed its growth, commenting that while the site is currently oriented toward middle school students, the Dallas Symphony intends to enhance its online format and content in order to engage older students.

Whereas DSOKids uses web technology to teach children about music, the Digital Playground, a pro-gram of the Native Drum Institute, functions as a comprehensive recording studio and learning site for at-risk youth. Michael Cain presents a progressive ed-ucational environment to his students. He grounds the Playground as an affirmation of culture; rather than asking participants to create a certain kind of music, he orients the program with questions such as: What do you like listening to? What is important to you in

music? What would you like to make possible? He also encourages students to recognize the extent to which our experience of music is filtered through technol-ogy, from the microphone that captures sound to the speakers through which the listener hears recordings. The site contains a spectrum of instruments, from shakers to keyboards, and appeals to a wide range of ages. Cain explained that kids age six to seventeen have used the Digital Playground to compose, learn, record, master, print to CD, and distribute their own music. And, said Cain, the Playground is expanding. It will soon be included in a charter school in Boston and several schools and YMCAs in the Chicago area. Plus, they will all be linked so that participants can share and co-create music online.

Eric Singer presented third, demonstrating what he calls his “music input devices,” electronic instru-ments that use software and sensors to generate sounds in response to a performing artist. One such music input device is the “Sonic Banana,” which can be pulled, twisted, and further manipulated to create sound. Singer also demonstrated robotic musical instruments that play themselves: the “GuitarBot,”

“TibetBot,” and “ForestBot.” All three of these already have been utilized in multimedia exhibitions and street performances with LEMUR, the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots. Singer emphasized the acces-sibility of these devices to children — admitting that it’s adults who are stumped by his inventions — and he

hopes to introduce this technology to kids in classrooms. He envisions that his highly interactive Bananas and Bots will provoke students’ creativity in general, as well as interest in the study of acoustics, computer science, and programming.

The final presentation was given by the event’s moderator, Tod Macho-ver. Machover introduced instruments, technologies, and artistic concepts of his Toy Symphony Project. The primary aim of the Project is to engage students as quickly and directly as possible in music composition and per-formance. Like Mr. Cain, the Project employs constructivist — or learning by doing — methods for engaging children in a coherent musical context. Through the Toy Symphony Project, Machover seeks to foster collabora-tion between children and symphony musicians in which they can perform together as equals. Similar to Mr. Singer’s music input devices, the Toy Symphony Project uses electronic instruments called “Beatbugs” and

“Shapers” that are both tactile and interactive, and which often have the outward appearance of toys. Machover explained how children use these

“toys” to create music through expressive gesture and delicate touch, often before they are able to command traditional musical instruments. Mr. Machover also demonstrated “Hyperscore,” a computer application that enables students to create compositions graphically, rather than with music notation. Through the technological resources of the Toy Symphony Project, students feel they are contributing to real art, and not just to a

“kids’” ensemble. The presentations were followed by a panel discussion and question

and answer period in which panelists addressed a range of issues, includ-ing how best to stay abreast of the rapid advancements in technology, how new instruments might be integrated as viable and useful teaching tools, and how new technology-inspired pedagogical approaches might best be reconciled with more traditional music education.

Symposium Brings Interactive Technology to the Forefront in Music Education

The program opened with Branding the Music Organi-zation and Musician, a two-hour seminar conducted by Liam Abramson, Course Leader of Business and Professional Development for Musicians at London’s Royal Academy of Music and Trinity College of Music. Abramson discussed the basic tenets of marketing theory: how to brand an organization, or establish a unique image among similar groups.

Abramson encouraged attendees to approach brand creation comprehensively. According to Abramson, brand creation is not just about adopting any symbol, but using a symbol that communicates an organization’s identity and mission effectively. The speaker provided attendees with a checklist for successful development of a name, an image, and a brand, and stressed the degree to which consumers are inundated with advertisements; he emphasized that successful branding depends upon a music organization’s ability to focus its artistic profi le for prospective audiences. He noted that a brand should be comprehensible to consumers, itemizing elements of a symbol such as typeface and color and how the public interprets each alternative. Abramson then went on to address how these visual aspects of a brand contribute to its overall feel, or its “essence” and “personality.”

A two-hour panel discussion focusing on Suc-cessful Publicity Strategies for Music Organizations followed Abramson’s seminar. The panel included Josephine Hemsing (moderator), founder and Man-aging Director of Hemsing Associates; Aleba Gartner, new music publicist and founder of Aleba Gartner Associates; Don Lucoff, jazz publicist and founder of DL Media; and Cindy Byram, independent world music publicist. Panelists discussed the best practices for garnering media attention, outlining their approaches to preparing press materials and developing working relationships with music critics. Citing an often stressful work environment for journalists, panelists emphasized the importance of establishing their cred-ibility by promoting only those music events that are truly newsworthy and by presenting press materials that are clear and succinct. The panel encouraged at-tendees to avoid generic and clichéd language in press releases and concluded with a question and answer period, maintaining that participants adopt reason-able and modest goals for attracting press attention.

Below left: Liam Abramson, lecturer.

Below right: Publicity Panelists, from left: Cindy Byram, Aleba Gartner, Deborah Hemsing, and Dan Lucoff.

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At noon on Monday, August 25, 2003, sixty-three professionals from the Greater Philadelphia music and performing arts community gathered at WHYY for the Phil-adelphia Music Project’s 2003 conference entitled Branding and Publicity for Music Organizations. These individuals represent-ed forty-nine organizations, including PMP applicants and grantees, music schools and universities, arts centers, local foundations, and representatives of The Pew Charitable Trusts and Settlement Music School. The conference was also attended by individual artists, including Pew fellows and roster artists from Pennsylvania Performing Art-ists on Tour (PennPAT).

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Branding and Publicity Conference Draws a Crowd: Music Groups Gather to Talk Business

The Cave Man and the Public Relations Firm: Making the Arts Meaningful

Josephine Hemsing delivered the following remarks to open PMP’s Branding and Publicity Conference.

get bored writing a press release, think of that man 32,000 years ago. Think of him crouching in the dark on his back in a passage no higher than a few feet, the cave illuminated with nothing but a fl ickering torch. Think about the impos-sibility of freeing his mind up long enough to dream. You are publicizing him.

Everyone assumes a publicist specializes in spin and hype, but in fact, it’s the good publicist’s job to strip bare the misconceptions which may have sprung up around the artist or ensemble. After all, which self-respecting journal-ist is going to believe a publicist — and for how long — if you misrepresent a violinist and claim he’s the best musi-cian that ever was? In truth, he may just be a journeyman performer. You enter into an unspoken contract with the critic; either there is trust, or you will fi nd yourself without clients. The journalist is your conscience. Bring him a bal-anced view, and he may even listen to you, or at least see for himself whether he is interested. Steer him wrong just once or twice, and he will never even bother to open your press releases.

To make sure what you’re saying is believable, you have to tell the truth. Play to the strengths of the artist or organiza-tion involved. Don’t lie to the journalist; don’t lie to the artist (or client), and don’t lie to yourself. If you are the publicist for an organization or an artist and you know a particular event or concert or production is not of the highest caliber, how do you deal with it? Be realistic. There are many ways of phrasing “good.” Use sensible language that conveys who the artist is, what differentiates him from others, why the journalist’s readership or listenership should want to know more about him. Ask the journalist what he needs from you: which facts, which written materials, and so on. If your pitch is properly phrased, a serious writer, editor, or producer will be able to catch the nuances. If you sense he’s not interested at all, leave room for a possibility the next time around. Don’t nix your chances of ever getting a major feature; don’t waste your one shot at asking for a huge favor from a friend who is an important television producer; weigh the possibilities of success before approaching the media.

And if you’re feeling discouraged, remember that fi rst art-ist whose canvas was a cave.

Public Relations is the fastest growing fi eld in the world today. While some worry that the all-pervasiveness of Public Relations is turning us into a canned society, the negative effects of PR are not damaging in the fi eld of music. The development of public relations strategies has been more controversial, more insidious, in medicine, politics, and law. Look at four newspapers, turn on four TV news programs, or click onto your web news homepage on any given day, and you will see the exact same stories in each place. Even the positioning of the stories will be similar. It’s as though PR fi rms were pulling invisible strings to make each outlet sound identical. Of course, there are a few catastrophes whose coverage is less orchestrated—earth-quakes, blackouts, terrorist attacks—but the release of all other information is driven by publicity. The large public-ity fi rms, whose clients include cable television programs, political parties, major business corporations, Hollywood production companies, and even prominent hospitals have in a sense become the arbiters of public taste; they dictate which development you will think about with your morning coffee or evening drink, and, in effect, condition you to ac-cept their version of what’s important.

All of us in this room, however, are lucky. We’re in mu-sic. No matter how many grievances we face — graying audiences, the recording glut, music cutbacks in school curriculums, commercial pandering by serious artists, or the faltering economy — we can take heart and refl ect: on thousands of podiums tonight, from the humble community theatre stage to the world’s most elegant concert halls, the evolution of the human mind has made it possible for us to free ourselves from the humdrum of the day. The fi rst man who interrupted his urgent routine of hunting for food and instead extracted pigment from a berry, dipped a stick into the liquid color, and ran the wet end of this early brush over the surface of his cave wall to recreate the graceful shape of a woolly mammoth or tell the story of a man being gouged by a bison’s horns was the world’s fi rst artist. Imagine all the elements that went into this act: not only did he have to make that leap into the abstract, but the people around him had to allow him to do it. Whether for religious, medicinal, or esthetic reasons, he was a man apart. The next time you

A World of Music in the City of New York

Blackbirds and Barbers on PMP’s Fourth Professional Development Trip

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On the evening of Wednesday, March 10th, the trip began with a performance at Carnegie Hall by the American Composers Orchestra entitled Fanfares and Fire, conducted by Steven Sloane. The program included Ned Rorem’s Lions (A Dream), Daron Hagen’s Fire Music, and Nicholas Maw’s The World in the Evening, the latter two pieces enjoying their New York premieres. However, in many ways, the central work of the evening was the world premiere of David Schober’s Split Horizon, a concerto for sextet and orchestra. The piece was commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation and featured the prodigious talents of new music ensemble eighth blackbird. The crisp performance of this emergent group was highlighted by its decision to play from memory.

Thursday morning, representatives from music service organizations and advocacy groups Meet the Composer and Arts International gave presentations on the variety of grant support their organizations offer. PMP then held a Meet the Artists panel discussion, allowing some of the musicians participating in the weekend’s performances to express their own insights into what might be seen, and, more importantly, heard in their concerts. The panelists included Mr. Sloane, eighth blackbird’s pianist, Lisa Kaplan, and “Doctor” Lonnie Smith, a jazz organist who performed at the Iridium Jazz Club later that night. The panel was moderated by John Schaeffer, host of WNYC’s popular new music show New Sounds. The panelists addressed how they came to their individual performance idioms and shared their diverse perspectives on improvisation in both classical music and jazz. Lonnie Smith later noted the need for a retirement home for jazz musicians, which Kaplan and Sloane said they wanted to join.

The Jazz Organ Summit at the Iridium was a hit, and, according to many, far too short. It involved the collaboration of Dr. Smith, Jimmy McGriff, and Philadelphia-native Joey De-

PMP continued its tradition of sponsoring an annual professional development trip to New York City this March, bringing twenty-seven Philadelphia-area music presenters and per-formers, in addition to PMP and Pew staff, to the city for a long weekend of concerts and panel discussions. The trip, spanning four days of new music, jazz, world music, and musical theater performances, offered the participants an artistically — and professionally — inspiring context for discussion.

Francesco on Hammond B3 organs, as well as veteran tenor saxophonist Houston Person, the soulful guitarist Melvin Sparks, and the ever-versatile drummer Joe Farnsworth. Mr. de Francesco, the youngster compared to Dr. Smith and Mr. McGriff, described the honor of performing with artists he used to listen to on records as a child. The three first played individually and then as an ensemble, building toward a climactic wash of organ sound highlighted by DeFrancesco’s technical virtuosity, McGriff’s masterful restraint, and Dr. Smith’s brilliantly constructed solos.

Friday morning began with a roundtable discussion intended to ad-dress “challenges and opportunities” specific to Philadelphia’s music community. Artists and presenters vocalized concerns regarding the limited opportunities for folk and world musicians to perform in the city, and the tricky business of building audiences for new music. The morning’s events continued with a panel entitled Connections Across Cultures, again moderated by Mr. Schaeffer. The panelists included Robert Brown-ing, Director of the World Music Institute, and Bob Hurwitz, President of Nonesuch Records. Schaeffer posed questions to Mr. Browning and Mr. Hurwitz on the logistical difficulties of bringing international artists into the United States, especially in the post 9/11 political climate. Browning addressed both the successes and difficulties with which American au-diences receive the music he presents, from traditional Russian music to Afro-Peruvian fusion. Hurwitz mused on love and luck in the record industry, and reminded the audience how an artist’s talent can break down barriers of audience and genre.

Bob Hurwitz, President of Nonesuch Records: Rather than do-ing things I thought I should do because I thought they were important, I thought instead I’d just do things that I really loved. Because, if I failed… based on things I did because I thought I should do them, that would be one thing. But if I failed because I did the things I loved then I couldn’t feel that bad…I think, in terms of a guide, you could probably find more in Darwin than you could in any kind of Record Company A-B-C, which is to say, we were living in an age of dinosaurs, and we were these small little mammals run-ning around, and we just learned how to adapt our behavior in…treating every new challenge in as fresh a way as pos-sible, and deal with our intuition, and never be seduced into trying to get too big too fast. And managed our costs and tried to balance art and commerce together, and, by the way, got really lucky.Paola Balsamo Prestini, Co-founder of VisionIntoArt: (On finding appropriate performance spaces) For us, venue is really wherever we can get into… We’ve done crazy things…It’s really about our following, which is mostly through these different artists that come together and have their own strong followings, and so form this collective audience base. But for us, the conditions have actually been the most exciting part, you know — performing in the basement of a church, there’s nowhere to project, so you wind up project-ing on a table, and that gives you a really cool projection surface. These things are exciting, and part of creating multimedia is dealing with conditions. Some of the most fascinating results have come from those conditions. Harold Meltzer: We’ve done every kind of music that I can think of doing… I couldn’t program something I dislike, but I work very hard to like things that are as far away from what I do as possible, and there are times that something doesn’t have an emotional meaning to me but I can tell is really good and is emotionally resonant for other people, and I have no problem programming that. One touchstone: before we started, one of my co-founders was cousins with Robert Beaser…So we went to see him, and he said, “Don’t program to make yourself look good…If you’re going to be the composer that you want to be, you can’t be afraid, as a programmer, of where your music is going to fit it, and you’ve got to put the best stuff that you can on a program, and that will have the benefit, also, of challenging you as a composer.”

Meet the Artists roundtable discussion with (from left) Dr. Lonnie Smith, jazz organist, Lisa Kaplan, pianist for eighth blackbird, Steven Sloane, director of the American Composers Orchestra, and John Schaefer, moderator, host of WNYC’s New Sounds.

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From left to right: Bob Hurwitz, Paola Balsamo Prestini, Harold Meltzer.

PMP NEW YORK

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PMP sponsors professional development trips in order to foster ties within the Philadelphia music community, as well as to expose trip participants to external programming philosophies.

The trip participants attended a concert presented by Mr. Browning’s World Music Institute that evening. The concert, called Fiesta Mexicana: Masters of Mexican Music, took place at Town Hall and featured four different styles of Mexican music and dance. José Gutiérrez Y Los Hermanos Ochoa performed in the Veracruz Trio Jarocho style, and the entertainment continued with Domingo “Mingo” Saldivar, nicknamed “The Dancing Cowboy,” who lived up to his name while singing and playing the accordion with his Conjunto Tejano band. The Ma-rimba Chiapas performed third, concentrating on traditional sones, both waltzes and up-tempo pieces, spiced with Spanish sesquilatera syncopation. The program culminated with the Ma-riachi Los Camperos de Nati Cano, who displayed their mastery of the breadth of the mariachi repertoire, from classic sones, rancheras, and regional folk rhythms, to pieces marked by the harmonically and rhythmically rich contemporary sound.

Saturday, March 13th, the final day of the trip, the morning panel discussion centered on Creating, Programming, and Presenting Interdisciplinary Work, and was moderated by Frank Oteri, Composer and Editor of the American Music Center’s web magazine, NewMusicBox. Speaking on the panel were Harold Meltzer, Composer and Artistic Director of Sequitur, Paola Balsamo Prestini, Composer and Co-founder/Director of VisionIntoArt, and Steven Vitiello, Composer and Archivist at The Kitchen. Both Sequitur and VisionIntoArt create multidisci-plinary programs that fuse new music with theater, opera, dance, and spoken word poetry. The Kitchen is a presenting organization committed to supporting the performance of vital and pioneering artists. Beyond his “day job,” as he joked, Vitiello also works as a sound artist and has collaborated extensively on interdisciplinary installations with visual artists, both in the United States and in Europe. This group spoke on the challenges inherent to interdisciplinary programming, from clarifying priorities of theme and content, to overcoming technical re-strictions in traditional venues, to coaxing musicians beyond their disciplinary comfort zones. Much of the discussion focused on intersections of artistic and curatorial work. They spoke positively on the reception of experimental programming, and the excitement of convening diverse audiences, which members of PMP’s group affirmed with anecdotes from their own performing and presenting experience.

Before returning to Philadelphia that afternoon, the group attended a matinee performance of Steven Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd at the New York City Opera. Sweeney Todd tells the story of “the demon barber of Fleet Street,” who survives imprisonment, exile and shipwreck and returns to his native London, evoked as sordid and corrupt, to avenge the death of his wife. The City Opera presented Hal Prince’s seamless production of the famously macabre musical, with Timothy Nolan in the title role stalking woodenly around the 19th century city and shifting to a trembling rage as he took his razor in hand.

PMP sponsors professional development trips in order to foster ties within the Philadelphia music community, as well as to expose trip participants to external programming philosophies. This is the fourth year PMP coordinated such a field trip. Attendees of last year’s professional development trip enjoyed performances by the Kitchen House Blend, with guest artists/com-posers Tiyé Giraud, Evan Ziporyn, and Roy Campbell; the Geri Allen Trio, featuring Buster Williams and Billy Hart; and the Metropolitan Opera’s production of William Bolcom’s A View From The Bridge.

The intention of the Philadelphia Music Project, to foster adventurous programming among music organizations in the Philadelphia area, has fre-quently led it to explore ways of encouraging the

work of living composers. In August, PMP’s search for new music took it and a small group of representatives of new music organizations to the Tanglewood Music Center in rural Massachusetts for five days of concerts, meetings with artists, and discussion on the position of contemporary music in Philadelphia.

The summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Tanglewood Music Center hosts an astounding array of programming on its extensive, wooded grounds. PMP joined its 2004 Festival of Contemporary Music, under the direction of Robert Spano, music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and attended concerts by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Meridian Arts Ensemble, New Fromm Players and Tanglewood Music Center Fellows with guest artists Dawn Upshaw, Lucy Shelton and André Watts. As Allan Kozzinn noted in the New York Times, the wide-ranging festival “touched on virtually every stylistic current in modern composition.”

Composers represented in the festival included Samuel Barber, Luciano Berio, Elliott Carter, Michael Gandolfi, Elliott Gyger, Jonathan Harvey, Magnus Lindberg, Bernard Rands, Kaija Saariaho, Esa-Pekka Salonen, David Sanford, Elliott Sharp, Alvin Singleton, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Amy Williams, and Frank Zappa, many of whom were in attendance. Programs included a Composition Film Project that paired Tanglewood student composers with filmmak-ers to co-create works that balanced their visual and aural elements.

PMP held four roundtable discussions in which the group was joined by composers Elliot Sharp, Elliott Gyger, Michael Gandolfi; performing artists Daniel Grabois of the Meridian Arts Ensemble, soprano Lucy Shelton; and administrators Ellen Highstein, Director of Tanglewood Music Center and Anthony Fogg, Artistic Administrator of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The discussions addressed topics from new compositional modes to the challenges faced by modern chamber music groups in touring to Tanglewood’s history and aspirations. During downtime at the festival, the group attended Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard at the Wil-liamstown Theatre Festival and visited Mass Moca (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art), where it was given special tours by the Laura Heon, head curator, and Jonathan Secor, Director of Performing Arts.

The excursion to Tanglewood provided its participants with an invigorating community of contemporary musicians and music lovers, and, perhaps more importantly, a forum for exploring questions about new music’s rise in the consciousness of local, national, and inter-national audiences. Professional development opportunities such as this trip enable members of Philadelphia’s music scene to renew their imaginations and rededicate their efforts toward further invigorating the artistic offerings in the region and beyond.

The audience watching someone just doing a computer, just hearing a tape music concert or someone playing a laptop is a completely different vibe, you know? I mean it’s more, for me, in the realm of installation, which is completely valid, but if you’re going to be live, you might as well be live. You want someone up there sweating, you know? Because the audience can smell it, and the performer can smell the audience…that’s just an important part of the concert experience. I’d say my main writing work now is with these algorithmic pieces that are instruction sets and sets of composed materials… they’re mostly based on kinds of bio-logical metaphors and network systems, like cellular automata or computer games that create artificial life. It’s about creating an organism that has some purpose. And that purpose is usually to groove, you know, and to mutate itself and to create little structures that are always related somehow to the core material…and you always recognize the life form from its source but at the same time, every manifestation of it is completely different. It’s different than improvisation, but it uses improvisatory tools.

Above: (From left) Bob Capanna, Executive of Settle-ment Music School, Katy Clark, Philadelphia Chapter Director of the American Composers Forum; Linda Reichert, Artistic Director of Network for New Music; Thaddeus Squire, Artistic and Producing Director of Peregrine Arts; Chris McGlumphy, Managing Director of Relâche; Daniel Grabois, French hornist of the Meridian Arts Ensemble; and Elliott Sharp, composer.

Left: Michael Gandolfi, composer, and Lucy Shelton, soprano.

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Group Visits Tanglewood Music Center’s Festival of Contemporary Music

ELLIOTT SHARP ON TECHNOLOGY AND COMPOSING

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SEMINAR AND ROUNDTABLEAdvanced Branding Strategies for Nonprofit Music OrganizationsWednesday, September 15, 2004, 9:00 am to 1:00 pmSettlement Music School, 416 Queen Street, Philadelphia

Arts marketing consultant Deborah Obalil will present a morning seminar on branding techniques for music organi-zations. She states, “Branding is one of the most important marketing tools available to music organizations. Phila-delphia has a vibrant music scene, so differentiating your organization from the crowd is paramount to developing audiences.” Building on the basics of branding and identity development covered in previous workshops, this session will review how branding works, evaluate examples of music brands from across the U.S., and give you the tools to de-velop your own unique identity. Following the seminar, Ms. Obalil will be joined by music publicist Aleba Gartner to lead a group discussion focusing on audience-building strate-gies specific to Philadelphia-area music organizations.

SEMINARUsing and Understanding Research for More Effective Marketing Strategies Monday, October 18, 2004, 9:00 am to 11:00 amSettlement Music School, 416 Queen Street, Philadelphia

Marketing expert Kate Prescott will discuss marketing research and the “meaning behind the numbers,” because, as she puts it, “The greatest learning comes from under-standing that it’s not in the numbers but in the people — the people who come and don’t come to share our performances. What we really need to think about is who they are, how they feel and what they think about us. We’ll stand from the outside looking in, get a sense of the big picture, and, importantly, examine several frameworks you can use to

identify your true self in relation to your audience (current and prospective). Using examples from the music and arts world and for-profit organizations, we’ll assess what kind of partners we are, where we are in our audience relation-ships, and potential strategies for strengthening these critical bonds.” Ms. Prescott is the President of Prescott & Associates, a strategic marketing and research firm located in Pittsburgh. Her clients include the Pittsburgh Ballet The-atre, Pittsburgh Symphony, Pittsburgh Opera, Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, Phipps Conservatory, Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium, Pittsburgh Playhouse Theatre, New York Philhar-monic, and the American Symphony Orchestra League. She is currently serving as President on the Board of Directors for ProArts, Pittsburgh’s arts service organization and Arts & Business Council affiliate.

SEMINAR AND WORKSHOPRaising the Invisible Curtain: How Can We (and Why Do We?) Bring Listeners Further Inside the Music? seminarHands On: How to Enhance the Interactivity of Your Program workshopThursday, October 28, 2004, 9:00 am to 1:30 pmCurtis Institute of Music, 1726 Locust Street, Philadelphia

PMP has invited arts educator Eric Booth for a seminar and workshop on how to create more engaging artistic experi-ences for audiences. “Recently,” he says, “I worked with the Philadelphia Orchestra for some months to explore the possibilities of their new strategy ‘Raising the Invisible Curtain’ — what did this mean in practice? The questions we addressed inside the orchestra were fundamental to all musicians who aspire to connect to current and new audi-ences in more relevant, dynamic ways. This PMP workshop will explore ways we can invite people inside musical pro-cesses to enhance the excitement, the sense of relevance, and the success in making personal connections when the

Fall 2004 Professional Development Opportunities from PMP

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music plays. We will build to hands-on practice with musi-cians who experiment with the morning’s ideas to expand the interactivity of their programs in a master class situa-tion. The skills we will address are exactly those needed to revitalize traditional audiences and attract and excite new ones.” Eric Booth works with the American Symphony Or-chestra League, Chamber Music America, and professional ensembles and orchestras across the country to help them transform their interactions with audiences. As a faculty member of Juilliard, the Kennedy Center and Lincoln Center Institute, and one of the most sought-after presenters in the country, he has helped hundreds of young musicians more fully realize their potential as live presenters and as advocates for concert music.

SYMPOSIUM: NEW FRONTIERS IN MUSICInterdisciplinary Art: New Directions (panel)Chinese Currents in Contemporary Music (panel)10:00 am to 4:00 pm (lunch included)Wednesday, November 17, 2004 College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 19 South 22nd Street

PMP presents New Frontiers in Music, a symposium con-sisting of two panel discussions. Interdisciplinary Art: New Directions asks leading composers, presenters, and promoters of music-driven interdisciplinary art to discuss its origins, current impact, and artistic horizons.

Frank Oteri, Editor of NewMusicBox, the online maga-zine of the American Music Center, will moderate a second panel discussion addressing the profound influence of Chinese and Chinese American artists on Western music. In turn, the panel will reflect on how modern Western per-forming and presenting organizations have integrated the cultural, aesthetic, and spiritual elements of Chinese music in recent years and how the work of Chinese artists has been influenced by this East/West cultural exchange.

SEMINARArtfully “E”: Internet Marketing for Nonprofit Music Organizations Monday, December 6, 2004, 9:00 am to 11:00 amSettlement Music School, 416 Queen Street, Philadelphia

How can non-profit music organizations utilize the Inter-net to increase their profile, audiences or donors? Internet and arts marketer Vicki Allpress has the answers. This is a seminar which will give you practical ideas (in non-techni-cal language) that you can immediately put to use, as well as plenty of case study examples to show you how the Internet’s power can be harnessed for the arts. Whether you work in classical, jazz, world or other types of music, this is a chance to pick up some relevant new techniques to help your organization grow. Ms. Allpress has headed marketing departments in Internet and arts organizations across three continents, having previously held senior marketing roles with Classical International Inc., GMN.com, Tickets.com, English National Ballet, The Royal New Zealand Ballet and Chamber Music New Zealand. She is a regular international speaker and writer on the subject of using Internet technologies to attract and retain patrons of arts and music services. Vicki is the co-author of the Arts Council of England’s recently published “A Practical Guide to Developing and Managing Websites” and is currently based in her home country of New Zealand in the role of Marketing Manager for The NBR New Zealand Opera.

If you would like to request information about these events, please contact Alyssa Timin, Program Associate by phone at 215 893 0140 or by e-mail at alyssa@philadelphiamusicproject.org.

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Left to right: Deborah Obalil, arts marketing consultant. Frank Oteri, editor of the American Music Center’s New Music Box. Photo: Jeffrey Herman. Eric Booth, arts educator. Vicki Allpress, Internet marketing specialist.

This June, twelve arts organizations collaborated to hold the first-ever National Performing Arts Conven-tion in Pittsburgh. The Convention brought together the efforts of music, dance, and theater organizations to produce six days worth of conferences, forums, performances, artist workshops, cross-disciplinary sessions, and other joint activities in hopes of gen-erating dialogue and collaboration among disciplines and promoting arts issues in the national media.

The Philadelphia Music Project and the William Penn Foundation, who supports non-profit organiza-tions in the Philadelphia region, cooperated to provide funding for representatives of local music organiza-tions to attend the convention. These organizations included the Academy of Vocal Arts, Bucks County Choral Society, Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia, Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, Musica 2000 — The Symphony Orchestra, the Haddonfield Symphony, Opera Com-pany of Philadelphia, Opera North, Orchestra 2001, the Philadelphia Orchestra Association, Philadelphia Singers, Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra, Pottstown Symphony Orchestra, and Singing City.

The William Penn Foundation’s Arts and Culture Di-rector, Olive Mosier, explained, “Both the William Penn Foundation and the Philadelphia Music Project believed that the first National Performing Arts Convention would be an exciting and worthwhile professional development opportunity for performing arts administrators and their board leadership. The William Penn Foundation’s funding collaboration with the Philadelphia Music Project provided us with the opportunity to support the participation of a range of music groups that included choruses, orchestras, and opera companies. PMP brought an important expertise to the partnership, hav-

ing worked with virtually all of the region’s top music organizations.” She added that, “We hope that this is the first of many such funding partnerships.”

Seminars and conferences ranged in topic from the changing relationships of artist and audience to the increasing influence of technology and the internet in music education. One discussion focused on the “high” versus “low” art dichotomy and how it affects artistic production in America. Along with such breadth of op-portunity for discussion, the convention coordinated performances from the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, the Pittsburgh Opera, the Pittsburgh Symphony, Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh, and the Pittsburgh Public Theater. At the close of the convention, Bobby McFerrin performed with a large supporting cast.

Twelve national arts organizations acted as primary participants in the convention: the American Sym-phony Orchestra League, Chorus America, Dance/USA, and OPERA America all held their annual conferences within the convention, and the American Composers Forum, American Music Center, the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, Chamber Music America, Meet the Composer, Music Critics Association of North America, National Alliance for Musical Theater, and Theater Communications Group also dedicated their efforts to make the event a success.

PMP AND THE WILLIAM PENN FOUNDATION HELP GROUPS ATTEND NPAC

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The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, the thirty-two year old grant-making and advocacy organization, continues to expand its three-year Campaign for Culture, which it initiated in the Spring of 2002. With its goals to stimulate public awareness of arts and culture, increase public attendance at cultural institutions, and develop marketing capacity at nonprofit arts and cultural organizations, the Campaign has grown considerably throughout the past two years.

The first stage of the Campaign focused on projects such as a marketing campaign through the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation and a comprehensive online events calendar called PhillyFunGuide, as well as a permission-based e-mail service that now includes discounted ticket distribution, called PhillyFunSavers. Individuals can explore the calendar and subscribe for half-price tickets to cultural events throughout Greater Philadelphia at www.phillyfunguide.com. Look for events in all genres of music and dance, theater, sports, outdoor activities, lectures, festivals, and more.

The Campaign also includes initiatives that can be engaged by cultural institutions themselves. In the Fall of 2003, the GPCA introduced a cooperative advertising campaign to coordinate and subsidize the advertising of individual institutions. GPCA offers a bi-weekly advertising block in major media outlets that provides high-quality promotion for institutions currently unable to afford sufficient advertising. More than thirty organizations took part in the first year of the initiative, and the GPCA expects yet more to participate during the 2004-2005 performance season.

This winter, the GPCA will implement one additional initiative intended to benefit and strengthen cultural institutions and communities in Philadelphia. The Campaign for Culture will grow to include a training and mentorship programming for middle managers in cultural marketing positions throughout the region. Through this program, GPCA hopes to secure an ongoing talent pool for the local culture industry, as well as to increase the expertise and job satisfaction to these professionals.

Peggy Amsterdam, GPCA’s President, remarks on the breadth and success of the Cam-paign’s efforts: “Our marketing programs have continued to produce real benefits for our members. From subsidized cooperative advertising to one of the country’s largest cultural mailing lists, members have a powerful mix of resources available to stretch their tight market-ing budgets. Combine that with our weekly Funsaver e-mails, which have already generated over half a million dollars in ticket sales, and groups have more ways than ever to increase attendance and reach a wider audience.”

The GPCA began with support from nine Philadelphia cultural organizations and has in-creased its membership to over 260 organizations. Core funding for its Campaign for Culture was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts. For more information, see www.philaculture.org.

Peggy Amsterdam, President of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance.

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GPCA’S CAMPAIGN FOR CULTURE EXPANDS

The Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia has appointed associate conductor, Matthew Glandorf, Acting Artistic Director for the 2004-2005 season. Mr. Glandorf, who assumed his new position in early May, conducted Choral Arts’ 2004 season finale which included the Philadelphia premiere of Schnittke’s Concerto for Choir. Raised in Germany, Mr. Glandorf attended the Curtis Institute of Music at the age of 16 and graduated after three years. He earned his master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music and, at the age of 23, was appointed to the faculty of Curtis, where he continues to teach theory and music history. Mr. Glandorf is frequently in demand as a conductor, organ recitalist, lecturer, and composer.

Albany Records recently released a new CD The Wishing Tree — Choral Music of Robert Maggio (TROY645), which included a work commissioned as part of the Bucks County Choral Society’s 2002 PMP grant, Rachel and Her Children - Small Hands Relinquish All. In the live performance recorded on April 2, 2003 at First Baptist Church in Philadelphia, the Choral Society was joined by the Pennsylvania Youth Chorale, Eileen Finley, director, Suzanne DuPlantis, mezzo soprano, and a 15-piece wind ensemble, all directed by BCCS artistic director Thomas Lloyd. The CD also includes Maggio’s The Wishing Tree (2000) performed by the Chamber Singers of Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges, also directed by Thomas Lloyd, and his Aristotle (1998) and Jacklight (1997) performed by the West Chester University Concert Choir, directed by David P. DeVenney.

The Opera Company of Philadelphia has announced the appointment of Maestro Corrado Rovaris as the first Music Director in the Company’s history. His appointment, which begins this fall with the 2004-2005/30th Anniversary Season, follows several appearances leading the Opera Company Orchestra, including The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, La Traviata and The Italian Girl in Algiers. Maestro Rovaris, who enjoys a career performing throughout Europe and as a regular with Milan’s revered La Scala, will be in residence in Philadelphia, and conducts Don Pasquale, Aida and Die Fledermaus in the upcoming season.

In the 2003-2004 season Astral Artistic Services presented exciting performances while its artists continued to gain notice. Astral harpist Bridget Kibbey and cellist Clancy Newman were two of only four winners of the 2004 Avery Fisher Career Grants; contralto Meredith Arwady was one of three top winners of this year’s Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, where soprano Karen Slack was also one of the seven finalists; pianist Spencer Myer took first prize at the UNISA International Piano Competition, winning as many as five additional special prizes throughout the competition; and violinist Ayano Ninomiya presented an overwhelmingly successful New York recital debut as the second-prize winner of the prestigious Walter W. Naumburg Competition. Astral also

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News Corner

PMP WELCOMES ALYSSA TIMIN

Alyssa Timin joined PMP’s staff as Program Associate this January. A 2003 graduate of Swarthmore College, Alyssa came to PMP with a background in religion and the arts, including a lifelong love of music. At Swarthmore, she co-edited Spike, a bi-annual humor magazine, and is pleased to return to journalism for the premiere issue of PMP.

The Opera Company of Philadelphia’s new Music Director Corrado Rovaris, on stage at the Academy of Music. Photo: Kelly & Massa.

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welcomes Julia Rubio as its new Director of Development and wishes former Director Stephen D. Cohen all the best in his retirement.

While alumni of The Academy of Vocal Arts go on to sing on all the great opera stages of the world, it’s not often that an artist makes a major debut before graduating from AVA’s intense program. But that’s just what bass Burak Bilgili did when he sang the role of Leporello in Don Giovanni for the Metropolitan Opera for an audience of thousands at the end of May. Not long after saying goodbye to Burak and his fellow grads, AVA began its seventieth anniversary season with a wonderful, free community event — “Opera on the Square Featuring Artists of The Academy of Vocal Arts,” a part of Sunoco Welcome America! More than 2,500 music fans braved a downpour and damp seats to hear opera’s greatest hits performed by AVA’s extraordinary alumni and resident artists. Singers included tenor James Valenti, who could be seen profiled in the pages of Opera News that month. AVA master vocal coach David Antony Lofton conducted the soloists plus an orchestra and chorus drawn from Philadelphia’s diverse neighborhoods.

WHYY and the Philadelphia Tribune were awarded an Arts and Business Council Award (May 11, 2004) for their ground-breaking collaboration with Denyce Graves: Breaking the Rules. Both companies were honored with a Business/Arts Partnership Award for helping to create a diverse audience for the live broadcast of the program at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts (June 2003). WHYY produced two companion pieces for Denyce Graves: Breaking the Rules: A video tape of the concert as broadcast, which included eight to ten minutes of additinal footage as well as a DVD with additional footage and features. Both are called Denyce Graves: Breaking the Rules. The DVD and VHS were released in March 2004. In addition, there is a companion CD called Kaleidoscope, which includes two of the songs Ms. Graves sang for the TV program.

This March, Philadelphia favorites Spoken Hand Percussion Orchestra released their highly anticipated debut CD, self-titled Spoken Hand. The independently produced release is the culmination of the local world music ensemble’s eight years of drum building, culture-crossing, and music-making. Winner of two consecutive “Best World Music/Roots Performance” awards from the Philadelphia City Paper, and nationally recognized for their 2002 collaboration, “Flammable Contents,” featuring Spoken Hand, tabla master Zakir Hussain, and hip-hop dance guru Rennie Harris, the ensemble has established itself as leaders of world music in the city, and has earned its national reputation through concerts and residencies at festivals, theaters, art centers, and universities around the country. The release kicked off with a live stage show and CD Release Party on March 12, 2004 and followed with performances and workshops throughout the weekend at the Painted Bride Art Center.

One of the region’s premiere new music ensembles, Orchestra 2001’s mission is to present performances of 20th and 21st century works for chamber orchestra and large ensembles, as well as to act as a resource for living composers, particularly those with ties to the Philadelphia area. The Orchestra affirms that “the best music of our time is… powerful, beautiful, and above all accessible” and manifests such conviction by actively commissioning, presenting, and recording new music. They have recently released three CDs and have initiated a broader recording plan in hopes of widening audiences for new music.

Since its founding in 1988, Orchestra 2001 has presented more than seventy world premieres, performing both as its core fifteen-member ensemble and in expanded groups of up to thirty musicians. Recently, the Orchestra has premiered new operas by Jonathan Holland and Thomas Whitman, as well as works by Gunther Schuller, James Matheson, Tina Davidson, Andrea Clearfield, Luis Prado, Bright Sheng, David Crumb, and George Crumb.

Orchestra 2001 enjoys a rich history of performing George Crumb’s work. In the Orchestra’s program notes from the 2002-2003 season, Artistic Director James Freeman described his passion for Crumb’s music. When Freeman, a bassist, was invited to perform Crumb’s Madrigals with the Philadelphia Composers Forum, he “was immediately entranced by the sensuous sounds, the remarkably acute understanding of the instruments, the clear sense that every note and every rest were essential to the piece, and the extraordinarily beautiful reflection of [Federico Garcia] Lorca’s haunting poetry.” Since then, he has premiered Crumb’s Music for a Summer Evening (Makrokosmos III) for the inauguration of the Lang Music Building at Swarthmore College, where the Orchestra is in residence. During the 2004-2005 season, Orchestra 2001 will have the opportunity to premiere the third part of his American Song Cycle, entitled The River of Life, on the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts’ Fresh Ink series and at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre.

This season, Orchestra 2001 will present two other new works with PMP support, one by emerging composer Adam Wernick, and another by Peter Schikele. Orchestra 2001 has also performed the works of Schikele’s comic alter ago, PDQ Bach. The concerts will be performed both at Swarthmore and in central Philadelphia locations.

Orchestra 2001 has also performed internationally in Russia. In 1993 and 1994, they served as the Moscow Conservatory’s Ensemble-in-Residence during its Festival of American Music and returned in 1997 to act as the featured ensemble at St. Petersburg’s Sound Waves International Festival of Contemporary Music.

Orchestra 2001 performing in Lang Concert Hall at Swarthmore College. Photo: Kenneth Hiebert.

George Crumb, left, composer, and James Freeman, Orchestra 2001’s artistic director, discuss a score. Photo: Kenneth Hiebert.

Grantee Spotlight: Orchestra 2001 and the Curtis Institute of Music

ORCHESTRA 2001

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The Curtis Institute of Music was founded in 1924 by Mary Louise Curtis Bok. Since that time, the Institute has become known as one of the finest music conservatories in the world, training young musicians for careers at the highest professional level. Curtis alumni perform with nearly every major orchestra and opera company nationally and internationally, hold-ing seventeen percent of the principal chairs and two music directorships of America’s leading orchestras. Additionally, over forty graduates of the Institute have sung with the Metropolitan Opera.

These achievements are perhaps more remarkable in consideration of Curtis’s size. Their student enrollment “has always been kept very small in order to provide a highly personalized education, the cornerstone of which is one-on-one study with some of today’s leading musical artists.” All students at Curtis are on full merit-based scholarships, including the 180 currently enrolled. They work closely with the school’s 85-member faculty, which includes Richard Danielpour, Leon Fliescher, Claude Frank, Pamela Frank, Gary Graffman, Jennifer Higdon, Ida Kavafian, Jaime Lar-edo, Seymour Lipkin, Otto-Werner Mueller, Ned Rorem, Aaron Rosand, Joseph Silverstein, members of the Guarneri Quartet and many of the principal players of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Curtis’s major performing programs are the Curtis Symphony Orches-tra and the Curtis Opera Theatre. The Symphony Orchestra, composed of over a hundred players aged fourteen to twenty-six, gives at least three

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CURTIS INSTITUTE OF MUSIC

public concerts a year. They have worked with numerous distinguished conductors and are directed regularly by Otto-Werner Mueller, head of Curtis’s conducting department, and David Hayes, music director of the Philadelphia Singers. The Opera Theatre is composed of about twenty-five singers between the ages of eighteen and twenty-eight. They present several fully staged performances each season, both at Curtis and at other locations in and around Philadelphia, including the Prince Music Theater and Centennial Hall at the Haverford School.

The Institute also features an extensive recital series, hosting student recitals almost every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday night. These per-formances are free and open to the public and allow the students regular opportunities to present in both solo and chamber formats. This October, with the support of the Philadelphia Music Project, Curtis will take its chamber brass and string ensembles outdoors to Rittenhouse Square Park in order to celebrate its eightieth anniversary with a free public concert of works by Curtis composers. Curtis hopes that this event will act as an invitation to the public to attend further recitals throughout the season.

The brass and percussion sections of the Curtis Symphony Orchestra. Photo: Pete Checchia.

The Philadelphia Music ProjectAn Artistic Initiative of The Pew Charitable TrustsAdministered by Settlement Music School

The Pew Charitable Trusts serves the public interest by providing information, policy solutions and support for civic life. Based in Philadelphia, with an office in Washington, DC, the Trusts make investments to provide organizations and citizens with fact-based research and practical solutions on challenging issues. With approximately $4.1 billion in dedicated assets, in 2003 the Trusts committed more than $143 million to 151 nonprofit organizations.

Founded in 1908, Settlement Music School is the largest community arts school in the country. With locations in Germantown, Jenkintown, Northeast, South, Southwest, and West Philadelphia, the school provides more than 9,000 students with quality music, voice, and dance instruction regardless of their age, background, or ability to pay.

Nonprofit Org.U.S. PostagePAIDPhiladelphia, PAPermit No. 2710

Settlement Music SchoolPhiladelphia Music ProjectP. O. Box 63966Philadelphia, PA 19147-3966