By RILEY
WOODFORD
THE JUNEAU
EMPIRE
It's a harmonic convergence.
German composers and Korean musicians are joining Japanese composers and
Web posted Thursday, July 8, 1999
Crossing Boundaries
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By RILEY THE JUNEAU It's a harmonic convergence. German composers and Korean musicians are joining Japanese composers and |
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| American musicians in Juneau this weekend for the first CrossSound music festival. | International effort: German composer Oliver Schneller, left, conducts Sally Schlicting and members of a quarter in rehearsal for the CrossSound concerts this weekend at Northern Light Church and Chapel by the Lake. BRIAN WALLACE / THE JUNEAU EMPIRE |
Five new musical works composed especially for the occasion will be performed, and special presentations will be offered.
The first concert will be held at 8 p.m. Saturday at Northern Light United Church, and the second will be at 3 p.m. Sunday at Chapel by the Lake. The concerts won't be identical - some pieces will be performed at both shows and others only once. Pre-concert discussions with the composers, including demonstrations of the baroque cello and the Korean instruments the kayagum and changgu will begin an hour before each concert.
``We're crossing every kind of boundary we can think of, not just national boundaries,'' said CrossSound co-producer Jocelyn Clark. ``Folk instruments and classical instruments, Asian instruments with Western instruments.''
Clark, who grew up in Juneau and graduated from Juneau-Douglas High School in 1987, has been working on this project for the past year as she completed her doctoral degree in east Asian languages and civilizations at Harvard University.
She also spent several years in Korea studying the kayagum, a traditional instrument similar to the zither. The instrument is almost always played with an hour-glass shaped drum called the changgu, and two accomplished Korean musicians will be performing on those instruments this weekend.
Clark credits her fiance, German-born composer Stefan Hakenberg, with much of the work planning CrossSound. The two met at Harvard when Hakenberg enlisted Clark to play the koto in an unusual composition involving that Japanese instrument and trombones. Clark and Hakenberg are in Juneau not only for the concerts, but for their wedding next week as well.
The concerts will offer a sample of different instrumentation and styles in a variety of combinations.
``Each piece will shift, and there will be a different ensemble and a different conductor,'' Hakenberg said.
The nontraditional combination of instruments that marked the coproducers meeting is a hallmark of the CrossSound Festival. They approached a half-dozen composers to create new works, and music had never been written for some of the ensembles that Hakenberg and Clark envisioned. German composer Cord Meijering said he had never even heard the Korean kayagum when he agreed to compose a piece of music for it.
``You hear a new instrument, you get new ideas,'' Meijering said. ``I try to find out what it is in that sound that inspires me.''
Meijering has composed music for ballets, orchestras and films, and has collaborated musically with American poets Martha Ronk and Richard McCann. His newest composition, debuting Saturday, is for flute, viola, kayagum and changgu.
``We live in a time when people from all over the world come together, so why should we not make music together,'' Meijering said.
``It's so exotic and ambitious,'' said Sybil Davis, director of the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council, one of the sponsors of the festival. ``The thing I like is that it is encouraging original contemporary compositions.''
Composer Oliver Schneller is originally from Koln, Germany, and now lives in New York. He has long admired the work of baroque cellist Phoebe Carrai of Cambridge, Mass., and was delighted to be a part of the CrossSound festival when he learned that she would be participating as well.
``Her group, Musica Antiqua, is very famous in Germany and they have many CDs,'' he said. ``I wanted to write a piece for Phoebe and the baroque cello, and wanted to make a novel take on the accompaniment.''
Carrai said the baroque cello is nearly always wedded to the harpsichord as a musical unit. Schneller composed a piece that blends the muted trumpet, flute and oboe into the role traditionally held by the harpsichord.
Carrai will demonstrate the baroque cello before the Saturday concert, and Harvard professor of music Kay Kaufman Shelemay will moderate a pre-concert musical discussion.
The guest musicians will be joined by seven Juneau musicians, flutist Sally Schlicting, euphonium player Nathan Bastucheck, violist Julia Young Bastucheck, oboist Jan Coldwell, violinist Steve Tada, trumpeter Rick Trotstel and Bill Paulick on French horn.
``It will be new and strange, and I hope people will come with open minds,'' Clark said.
Clark would like to see the festival as an annual event, held in the winter, that would include children, amateur and professional musicians, and would tour to Southeast communities.
Tickets to the concerts are $12, $10 for students and seniors and $18 for both shows. Tickets are available at the arts council at 207 N. Franklin St. and at the door.
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The best bet for the weekend is the CrossSound Music Festival. It's an unusual opportunity to hear new music - brand new music - and different instruments, see guest musicians, and learn about contemporary classical music. Two concerts will be presented, Saturday night at Northern Light United Church and Sunday afternoon at Chapel by the Lake, and both will feature pre-concert discussions about the music, the instruments and the composers. It's the kind of event that rarely happens in a town this size.