Several years ago, when Alaskan-born musician Jocelyn Clark and German-born composer and conductor Stefan Hakenberg met, they first began to play with the idea of a concert series featuring new composers and Alaskan musicians. Hakenberg, trained primarily in classical Western composition, and Clark, who had focused her musical training on Eastern classical instruments, and who are now husband and wife, wanted to give meaning to their mutual passion for music. What was born out of that union is CrossSound, an organization working to bring new compositions from around the world to Southeast Alaskan listeners and musicians.
"Because Southeast Alaska is so isolated and relatively unpopulated, traditional ensembles comprised of Southeast musicians are difficult to put together. There are groups of musicians that want to play together but have no music," Clark explains.
Clark wanted to give back to Alaska what she had gained growing up here, and to that end she and Hakenberg set out to create a fusion of Southeast Alaskan musicians and composers with others from around the world. The result is an entirely unique musical organization. This year's series features artists not only from Southeast Alaska, but from China, Japan, Germany, and other parts of the U.S., as well. Clark, who now lives in Korea, performed on the traditional Korean kayagûm, a sort of zither, which is one of the many distinctive non-Western instruments that are accented in the CrossSound ensembles.
The music presented by CrossSound is defined as
"Contemporary Classical." For those who are unclear
about the apparent oxymoron, let me clarify. "Classical"
is the established school of music that became traditional in
centuries past and is still performed; we might automatically
think of such good old boys as Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms. "Contemporary"
places the style of music into the present and suggests innovation.
The compositions that emerge from CrossSound push the already-controversial
definition to the edge. Bringing together as it does composers
and artists from around the world, the music is entirely "custom
made".
CrossSound also features musicians of all ages. "Ensembles are created that reflect the United States today. They are inclusive ensembles rather than exclusive because they involve musicians of all levels," Clark believes.
This year, 17-year-old violin soloist Hale Loofbourrow of Juneau worked with Japanese composer Hiroko Ito, who explained why CrossSound was so important to her: "How many times in a composers life time does one have the opportunity to have such an unusual combination? It's so inspiring!" Ito, who has a doctorate in composition from Harvard University, was enchanted to be working with the youngest member of CrossSound's crew in the early August concerts. Ito's Sonata Lumière du Soleil was composed specifically for Loofbourrow, who performed the piece incredibly in Juneau and in Sitka for the "Stephen's Passage" program.
As much as it is thrilling for composers to have such an experience, it is as exciting for players and audience alike to be able to experience the presence of living composers with their new and growing music. As CrossSound vocalist Joyce Parry Moore commented, "Most people think of classical music as a something written by a bunch of dead white men, when in fact it is alive and well and written by all kinds of exciting people all over the world."
This year, CrossSound has involved three concert
series, the first two presented in Sitka and Juneau in August,
the third coming up in those two places and in Ketchikan. The
three programs "Stephen's Passage" and "Sitka Sound"
in August and "Revillagigedo Staccato" in November include
a cast of more
than 30 artists. As well, many volunteers and technical support people are involved in presenting the events.
Although the series brings an international tone to three Southeast towns, the foundation of CrossSound is perhaps rooted in Sitka, where Clark first met many of the colleagues who are now involved with it. She cited her days at the Sitka Fine Arts camp, held each summer, which she attended with friends Paul Cox, Roger Schmidt and Susan Brandt-Ferguson, all of whom have been intimately involved in CrossSound since its inception.
Roger Schmidt, as well as performing on trombone, enlisted the participation of his brass students, many of whom are Sitka Fine Arts Campers themselves. He is currently the director of the Fine Arts Camp, and is encouraged to see how the influence of the camp can come full circle in sustaining a healthy arts community in Alaska. The CrossSound concert series gave his students an opportunity to be musicians, rather than just students of musicians.
"It was important to me when I was a kid to meet artists. But it was a challenge to meet people who made their living through art. CrossSound is clearly for the sake of music. And the music is theirs," says Schmidt. He and Sitka music teacher and saxophonist Susan Brandt-Ferguson, along with local student musicians Mike Bagley, Laurinda Marcello, Matt Howey, Nicola Trainor, Greg Hunter, Jody Totten, Mica Trani, Clea Will, Jenny MacDougal, Kari Perensovich, Logan Wild and young trumpet soloist Mary Marx performed a work titled Cross Sounds, composed by Kurt Stallmann.
Stallmann, who is a professor at Harvard, wrote
this all-brass piece with local inspiration: "As I imagined
the Alaskan landscape and long dark hours of many days, a sense
of solitude arose which inspired the opening of this work."
He remarked in a Raven Radio interview with Susea Albee on how
freeing it was to be working on his first all-brass piece with
the young people: "I found the students to be very open and
generous with the 
piece."
This year another Sitka-raised festival stalwart, Paul Cox, composed a piece that involved his marimba, a stunning instrument that complements the intriguing variety played in the concert series. The marimba is a five-octave instrument of tuned, resonant wooden bars, laid out like a keyboard and played with a variety of mallets, hard and soft, held by the player sometimes more than one to a hand. The instrument originated and evolved in Africa, where large slabs of wood were first laid in ditches and then played. The slave trade brought the marimba to the Americas, to the Caribbean, Mexico and finally the United States, where it evolved further. The instrument then made its appearance after World War II in Japan, where it underwent further evolution.
The instrument that Paul owns and plays and transports around is the largest kind of marimba being made waist-high, a good eight feet long, with two rows of keys. The keys are made of rosewood, the frame of oak and the resonators of metal alloy. Cox now lives in Ohio, where he graduated from the Oberlin Conservatory. He returns often to his native Sitka, and expressed strong feelings regarding CrossSound: "I was excited and primed for coming back to Sitka to share what I love, love, love to do, in an environment that I cherish."
As well as composing for CrossSound, Cox performed in the piece The Oort Cloud by Japanese composer Yuriko Hase Kojima. Cox found the CrossSound experience to be fantastic and entirely Alaskan. He related: "Memorable was the moment that Stefan stopped the ensemble and asked the bass trombonist why he was playing out of tune. The trombonist responded by pulling out his teeth, saying, 'my bridge broke . . . I need my teeth to play in tune . . .' This defined the perfect 'Alaskan' ensemble experience."
The originality of the music ensembles brought together such groupings as the kayagûm with the marimba,and mandolin with bass and trombone. Marti Epstein's piece Chant featured soprano Joyce Parry Moore of Juneau, who sang, unusually, from a chair among the instruments rather than from the front of the stage, redefining her role as a vocalist. Moore was not just a singer, but a musician whose voice became the instrument she was playing.
"I was used as part of a 'flute choir,' which
seems to blend the idea of a wind instrument and a 'voice.' It
was a pleasure to play with the flute section, and to be a member
of the orchestra. As a part of the ensemble, I blended with their
sound and breathed with them. A very nice change of perspective,"
Moore said of the experience.
This year, CrossSound was also pleased to be able to present Liu Xiangyun, who performed on a classical Chinese instrument, the pipa, in Sitka and in Juneau. The pipa is a stringed instrument that is a distant relative of the Western lute. It is known as one of the oldest instruments in the world, first mentioned in Chinese texts more than 2000 years ago. Its 30 frets, that extend down the long neck onto the sound board, give it a wide range. The guitar-sized instrument with four metal strings is held almost vertically in the lap of the player, who uses a thumb pick and four finger picks. This technique allows for a great variety of sounds, including those of flowing water or even galloping horses. At times the pipa sounds very like a banjo.
Liu, who is from Nanjing, has been studying the pipa for more than 20 years. CrossSound was very lucky to have her; her visa application had at first been turned down, but after much frustration she was granted a visa at the last minute. Dressed in red Chinese satin, Liu gave a fervent and much-applauded performance of Run, a contemporary piece by Bun-Ching Lam, in Sitka's Sheet'ka Kwan Naa Kahidi community house, soon after arriving in Alaska from China.
Although the concert series is still in its infancy, it is gaining an encouraging audience. In the future the co-directors, Clark and Hakenberg, would like to see CrossSound expand to include other parts of Southeast.
Paul Cox says of CrossSound now: "Each day is a mystery for everyone in the community, the artists, the people housing us, and so on. The music is new, rehearsal intense and long, meals improvised - it's all so exciting if one's had enough sleep. In short, the organization is in a growing phase."
The next CrossSound performances will be in Ketchikan November 16, Sitka November 17, and a matinèe in Juneau November 18. The program, "Revillagigedo Staccato," features an all-Southeast Alaskan ensemble and the Duo Contemporain from Rotterdam, The Netherlands on bass clarinet and vibes. For more information, check out the web site: www.CrossSound.com
