Featured performers at the Intermedia Festival, part 1

Descriptions come from the Festival website


Saturday, April 24 9:00 pm Concert 8, Library: Big Robot with guests Luke Dubois and Bora Yoon
Sunday, April 25 4:00 pm, Concert 10, Library: Luke Dubois and Bora Yoon

Bora Yoon is an experimental multi-instrumentalist, composer and performer, who creates architectural soundscapes from found objects, chamber instruments, digital devices, and voice. Featured in WIRE magazine and on the front page of The Wall Street Journal for her musical innovations—Yoon has presented her original soundwork ( (( PHONATION )) ) internationally, at Lincoln Center, the Nam June Paik Museum in Seoul, Patravadi Theatre in Bangkok, the Bang on a Can Marathon, BAM, and John Zorn’s Stone. Her music has been presented by Samsung and the Electronic Music Foundation; commissioned by the Young People’s Chorus Chorus of NYC and SAYAKA Ladies Chorale of Tokyo; awarded by Billboard, BMI, and Arion Foundation; and published by Swirl Records, MIT Press, and the Journal of Popular Noise. Website: http://www.borayoon.com


Friday, April 23 7:00 pm, Concert 1, Library: Pamela Z.
Pamela Z is a composer/performer who makes solo works combining a wide range of vocal techniques with electronic processing, samples, and gesture activated MIDI controllers. She has toured extensively throughout the US, Europe, and Japan. Her work has been presented at venues and exhibitions including Bang on a Can (NY), the Japan Interlink Festival, Other Minds (SF), the Venice Biennale, and the Dakar Biennale. She’s created installation works and has composed scores for dance, film, and new music chamber ensembles. Her numerous awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Creative Capital Fund, the CalArts Alpert Award, the ASCAP Award, an Ars Electronica honorable mention and the NEA/JUSFC Fellowship. Website: http://www.pamelaz.com/



Saturday, April 24 3:30 pm IUPUI: Lecture by Luke Dubois; 9:00 pm Concert 8, Library: Big Robot with guests Luke Dubois and Bora Yoon

R. Luke DuBois is a composer, artist, and performer who explores the temporal, verbal, and visual structures of cultural and personal ephemera. He holds a doctorate in music composition from Columbia University, and has lectured and taught worldwide on interactive sound and video performance. He has collaborated on interactive performance, installation, and music production work with many artists and organizations including Toni Dove, Matthew Ritchie, Todd Reynolds, Michael Joaquin Grey, Elliott Sharp, Michael Gordon, Bang on a Can, Engine27, Harvestworks, and LEMUR, and was the director of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra for its 2007 season. Website: http://www.music.columbia.edu/~luke/



Saturday, April 24 7:00 pm Concert 7, Library: World Premiere (concert version) of “Auksalaq”, a telematic drama. Music composed by Matthew Burtner, with Jordan Munson, IUPUI Telematic Ensemble, Morris Palter, Ensemble 64.8 and Mabel Kwan.

Auksalaq is a live, telematic, multimedia opera composed by Matthew Burner performed simultaneously in multiple venues worldwide. Using distance technology, live music, dance, movement, visual arts and commentary, the work creates a rich counterpoint of media linking great distances. Auksalaq, the Inupiaq Eskimo word for “melting snow”, will integrate artistic expression, scientific information and social/political commentary to present an interactive, multi-dimensional experience that embodies relevant complex cultural and empirical processes. The piece illuminates scientific analysis as well as cultural and political issues surrounding global climate change.

Matthew Burtner’s music has been described by The Wire as “some of the most eerily effective electroacoustic music I’ve heard,” and 21st Century Music writes “There is a horror and beauty in this music that is most impressive.” First prize winner in the Musica Nova International Electroacoustic Music Competition, his music has also received honors and awards from Bourges, Gaudeamus, Darmstadt, Prix d’Ete, Meet the Composer, ASCAP, Luigi Russolo, American Music Center, Hultgren Biennial, and others. His music has been commissioned by Spectri Sonori , Musik i Nordland, Phyllis Bryn Julson and Mark Markham, the Peabody Trio, Augsburg Kulturburo der Stadt, Heidelberg Ministerium of Arts/ Trio Ascolto, and Ensemble Noise among others. Burtner is currently Associate Professor Music at the University of Virginia where he is Associate Director of the VCCM Computer Music Center.
Abstract | Website: http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~mburtner/

Illustrated program notes for Jim Beckel's "In the Mind’s Eye: Images for Horns and Orchestra"

In the Mind’s Eye: Images for Horns and Orchestra


Program Notes

In the Mind’s Eye is a Konzertstuck for horns and orchestra inspired by visual art. Visual artists and composers have often collaborated or have been influenced by each other’s work. A famous example of this is Stravinsky and Picasso working together on ‘Pulcinella’.

Impressionistic music occurred during the same period as impressionistic art. In a similar vein, this piece has been greatly influenced by visual art, and employs the use of musical effects that replicate various brush stroke techniques. Five paintings were used as inspiration for this three-movement work for horns and orchestra.

Movement I – Random Abstract

The first movement is dedicated to abstract expressionism artists. The specific painting that I used as inspiration in this movement is from the contemporary artist Ingrid Calame, who has used some of the concepts of abstract expressionism in her painting entitled ‘From #258 Drawing: Tracings from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the L.A. River’. This painting uses tire tracks from the Indianapolis 500 as its basis.

This first movement is written from two perspectives. Part of the music reflects the perspective of the artist, while other moments in the movement represent the perspective of the viewer. The opening of the first movement is a good example of the brush stroke imitation mentioned earlier. The opening glissando of the harp, followed by the fast scalar passages in the woodwinds, represent the fast, broad, stroke of a paint brush on the canvas. Jackson Pollack was known to actually paint to music and there was often a rhythm to his brush stroke. Throughout this first movement the listener will also hear short, chromatic chords that are meant to represent an abstract artist randomly throwing paint onto the canvas.

In this opening movement, the first entrance of the horns is my musical representation of a patron’s first impression upon viewing such an abstract painting. The music of the horns is meant to portray curiosity, interest, and questioning. The main second theme is music representing the painter’s perspective. The euphoria of an artist totally submerged in his or her creativity can be heard as the music grows in animation and intensity. This music, still in the voice of the artist, becomes more calm and ethereal as the artist’s mind searches for inspiration. After the artist’s inspiration is realized, the music intensifies with the return of the second theme. This pure adrenalin increases to a final climax of frantic brush strokes portrayed in the fast scalar passages now heard in strings, woodwinds, harp, and xylophone. The voice of the viewer at the art museum, who is pondering the final product of the visual artist’s work, is heard next in the solo entrance of the horn. The first movement ends from the consumer’s perspective, relishing the vivid colors and shapes on the canvas from the abstract artist’s mind.

Movement II – Daniel in the Lion’s Den

A painting of the above title by Robert E. Weaver inspires this movement. This biblical subject has been a favorite choice for many artists over the centuries.  For me, Robert Weaver’s work is the most stunning of those I have seen. The music, as well as the painting, addresses the concept of faith. The movement opens quietly with the horns in a quasi-Gregorian chant, setting the stage for Daniel’s overnight trial in the den of lions where his belief in God is tested. The trials and tribulations associated with man’s faith over the millenniums are reflected in this dialogue between horns and orchestra throughout this movement in G Minor. At the end of the movement you will hear a tremolo in the strings, taking us to a moment of Eb Major, which represents the answer to Daniel’s prayers as morning arrives and Daniel has been spared from the jaws of the lions.

Movement III - Reflections

The third and final movement is meant to deal with artists’ fascination with light’s reflection, particularly on water. There are three paintings chosen as inspiration for this movement. They are ‘Roussillon Landscape’ by Georges-Daniel DeMonfried; ‘The Channel of Gravelines’ by Georges Seurat; and ‘The Regatta Beating to Windward’, by Joseph M. W. Turner. Each painting is reflected in different parts of this third movement.

The movement opens with an exciting, heroic horn call from all of the horns, representing the excitement of a sailing contest as portrayed in Turner’s painting of the Regatta.

An orchestra tutti follows this opening fanfare, where the music is very secco, representing the pointillist brush technique of Seurat’s neo-impressionistic painting.

The excitement of an ocean adventure is continued when the horns re-enter. The solo entrance of the harp transitions the music into a more tranquil section that is meant to represent the beauty of sunlight reflecting off the ocean as seen in DeMonfried’s seashore landscape.

Horn calls abound in the next section, depicting the adventure and pure beauty of water and light in these paintings. As viewers looks at these paintings, their imagination brings their own images of the ocean and reflected light. These images are heard in the music. A final return to the opening horn call signals the end of this movement climaxing in a robust celebration of life as portrayed in visual and aural art.

Instrumentation

1 Piccolo 1 Trumpet in C
2 Flutes 1 Timpani
2 Oboes 3 Percussion
1 English Horn in F 1 Harp
2 Clarinets in Bb
2 Bassoon 5 Solo Horns
Strings

Duration: Approx. 17 minutes

Mvt I (4 min 15 sec)

Mvt II (5 min 15 sec)

Mvt III (7 min)

Philosophical roots of Know No Stranger's "Thrift Store Music"

Made for Each Other: A Series of Interactive, Community-Inspiring Events will be presented through May in the Clowes Auditorium at Central Library, 40 E. St. Clair Street. It’s sponsored by Big Car Gallery and Know No Stranger.

Thrift Store Music

Wednesday, April 28 at 7 p.m.
Sunday, May 2 at 2 p.m.

This two-day event invites local bands to explore, create and share self-made musical instruments. On April 28, musicians will meet at Central Library, be given a budget, and sent to thrift stores to find objects that can be used as musical instruments. For the next four days the musicians will create songs with their self-made instruments. On May 2, the musicians will return to Central Library to perform music created from their thrift store finds.  

Recycling, small scope, community engagement. Negligible carbon footprint. Bill McKibben would love this event. This is from his "Deep Economy":

You can make a strong economic argument, even in conventional terms, for more localized economies… Tangible commodities such as timber and apples are not the only ones that might be localized. Take entertainment, for instance. During almost all of human history, people provided it for themselves: music (like food) was something you produced, and the pleasure was as much in the production as the consumption. With the advent of recording, and then of broadcasting, all that changed; the new technologies allowed us to be more efficient and single out the best musicians and let everyone else listen to them simultaneously, much as factory farming allowed 1 percent of Americans to feed the rest of us. We began to take it for granted that music came from somewhere else: Tin Pan Alley, Hollywood, Nashville. Now, of course, new technology is beginning to undermine that century-old system: file-sharing allows listeners to, in essence, wander onto the big farmer’s fields and glean what they like. The recording industry’s short-term solution was to sue file sharers, and the slightly longer-term fix was to sell their music over the Web; if they can’t protect the profit margin, they argue, there will be a “reduction in creative activity” because without the possibility of growing rich, fewer people will write songs.


Perhaps. But people wrote songs for millennia before they had any chance of making big money at it. At most, you could make a decent living as a wandering bard – a profession that seems to be coming back into style. The New York Times rock critic Jon Pareles wrote recently that while “selling pop music on expensively produced and promoted CD’s is a paradigm under siege,” “jam bands” in the tradition of the Grateful Dead and Phish ‘have flourished as concert mainstays and as an alternative to canned music,” and in the process bring “music’s ancient business model – the roving troubadour – to the interconnected modern world.” Imagine, he says, “current pop turned inside out. Playing concerts would be a living rather than a promotional tool, bands would take music chances nightly, wardrobe would be an afterthought… Music’s past would be a foundation rather than a scrap heap.” Such changes aren’t only only taking place in America. In England, government figures showed “a live music renaissance underway across the country,” with half of pubs, clubs, and restaurants featuring at least occasional live acts. Bands still sell recordings, but more and more, they sell them to the people who come to the shows, audiences that are interested in a shared community at least as much as virtuosity.

It’s as if musicians were suddenly, like the new wave of farmers, able to grow smaller quantities of more interesting crops and find reasonable profitable markets for them. The live shows that provide more of their revenue are the equivalent of farmer’s markets, places that customers love not only for the product, but for the experience. No one gets superrich, a la Mariah Carey or Archers Daniels Midland or Exxon Mobil; but plenty more people get to do something lovely, whether it’s grow berries for their neighbors or write songs for their region. This parallel musical universe may not replace the centralized global one, but it’s clearly gaining. How far might it go? Here’s a statistic that gives some small indication: in 1900, in the state of Iowa alone, which was then crowded with small farmers, there were also thirteen hundred local opera houses, all of them hosting concerts. “Thousands of tenors,” writes Robert Frank, “earned adequate, if modest, livings performing before live audiences”.

Joe Deninzon comes back to Indiana

Another part of the absurdly crowded global music schedule for February 16 is a visit to the Indiana History Center by genre-bending fiddler Joe Deninzon, ho'll present an evening of cabaret-style jazz, thanks to the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. This comes from the ">Indy Star:

"Deninzon Trio likes to mix it up"
By Jay Harvey

Cross-pollination of musical genres is hugely popular these days, and some musicians see no limit to the musical value that these experiments produce.

Joe Deninzon is one such musician. He branched out from classical violin, which he learned at an early age, to find virtue in just about any genre you can shake a (fiddle) stick at.

Deninzon will give a sample of that variety Tuesday night when he brings his violin-guitar-bass trio to town. The band is on a Midwestern tour promoting its CD "Exuberance." It's scheduled for release this month, and it offers an update on the famous Quintette du Hot Club de France style pioneered in the 1930s by guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stephane Grappelli.

Interviewed on his way to a New York studio session, Deninzon recalled being inspired by the Grappelli tribute of his fiddling idol Mark O'Connor, at whose summer string camp he'll be teaching rock violin next summer.

"I started to do that material and put my own twist on it," said the thirtysomething violinist. "So I do the original things and some rock/pop things, and the framework is the Grappelli style."

Updating the Gypsy jazz of Reinhardt and Grappelli is just one part of Deninzon's musical profile. For about 10 years, he's led a rock band called Stratospheerius, in which he sings and plays seven-string electric violin. Its drummer, Lucianna Padmore, has joined the acoustic trio for the tour that comes to Indianapolis.

His musical beginnings didn't predict such breadth. The son of a concert pianist and a violinist in the Cleveland Orchestra, Deninzon began violin study at age 6. As he progressed, he grew susceptible to the lure of jazz and rock.

After studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music, the wide-ranging violinist went to Indiana University, where he was a student of Josef Gingold in that revered teacher's final semester. "That was an experience I will never forget," Deninzon said.

At IU, he joined a major in violin performance to the jazz studies major he started out with. "I grew tremendously as a musician while I was there," recalled the 1997 graduate.

All along, he was certain he wouldn't pursue a traditional classical career. He entered the master's program at the Manhattan School of Music in jazz and commercial violin. The classical arena receded into the distance.

"I don't know if it was rebellion as much as it was a deep love of the music," he said of the drive that led him to work with rock and pop performers, including Sheryl Crow and Smokey Robinson, and in the world-music genre.

"Fusion is usually defined as the mixing of jazz and rock, but the word 'fusion' is any blending of styles, and it continues to happen," he said. "From the time of Mozart up through modern times, it's constantly changing: You use what you like."

He credits the rise of all music's availability online with helping to end pigeonholing. "The traditional idea of going to a record store and seeing jazz over here, rock over there -- that's gone." So he finds nothing to fear in the mega-selling music that got most of the attention at the recent Grammy Awards.

"I love a lot of the stuff of Lady Gaga, the Black Eyed Peas, and the hip-hop realm is where many of the most creative things are happening," he said.

"To achieve skill and produce that music is a very great art form and requires many years of practicing. It's definitely not to be discounted."

Maybe John Bell is doing well if his singers know Cameroon exists

John Bell of the Iona Community is coming to Indy Tuesday February 16. He'll lead a daylong workshop at CTS on "Singing with the Global Church: The Gift of Music from Other Cultures," and do the music free for chapel at CTS ... all part of a ridiculously over-packed day of global music in Indy.

The Iona Community is a great example of ecumenical cooperation and creativity, drawing thousands of Christians from all denominations to a small island off Scotland's coast, a shared effort to rejuvenate and redefine their faith. John Bell is an important part of the Iona Community story as a driving force behind the Wild Goose Resource Group, which takes its name from one of the ancient Irish symbols for the Holy Spirit. The Group enables and equips congregations and clergy in the shaping and creation of new forms of relevant and participative worship. Bell has sought to integrate musics from around the world in Christian worship.

How's that going? You can find out for yourself on February 16, but maybe this is a hint. This traditional Christmas song from Cameroon was scored and arranged by John Bell:





Well, that's nice in a calypso kind of way. (After the Saturday Night Live parodies of Blue Oyster Cult, it's good to hear a group willing to risk the call of "more cowbell!") But did John Bell need to go all the way West Africa for this nice piece of music? Cameroonian music is cool, very cool, even when it is removed from its original context and suffuses Western forms. Check out the great Manu Dibango:




Maybe some of the coolness of Cameroon got lost in translation, moving from tribal celebrations to Manu Dibango and his slinky crew to the well-meaning middle aged white people with a cowbell.

Or maybe something more troubling is at play here. Go to YouTube to find videos of music from World Vision Music Team in Tiko, Cameroon. (They can't be embedded in this blog, sorry.) It's nice music, but it could have come from any number of churches in the US or anywhere else. Maybe that's the point of World Vision Music. What might be thought of as Cameroon Coolness has been replaced by Global Gospel Niceness.

Fortunately, the music of the Gospel doesn't have to be reduced to a lowest common denominator of niceness. This performance by Odile Gaska is a marvelous expression of "la musique chrétienne camerounaise," inspiring an uplifting of the spirit even if you don't understand the words.




The wholesome middle aged white people would have a different performance if they were singing Cameroonian music by Odile Gaska, in fact they would surely have a different worship experience entirely.

So maybe the Iona Community and John Bell can help us do more than integrating music styles into ecumenical worship. When we draw on new ideas and experiences, we have the chance to create something new and better than any of the particular cultures could offer alone. Consider this bit of prayer by founder of the Iona Community, George MacLeod:

Let us pray for the less worthy members of the Church:
They are already limbs of Your mystical body:. . .
All too tribal, as if Bethlehem were a Scottish village
and Nazareth an English town:
or Capetown were Calvary itself
when you really died for all men everywhere:
At a crossroads whose signpost had to be in Latin and Hebrew and
Greek and Urdu and Russian and Afrikaans.
Yes, Lord, we pray for the less worthy members of the Church. They are of course none other than ourselves.

The point ought not only to be that we in the West are just as unworthy as those in developing countries. It ought to draw our attention to the particularities of those other cultures. Those particular experiences should be a basis for us understanding ourselves better.

It works for Cameroon Gospel music. What's great about this last video isn't just the music and the cultural cross-pollination, although that's great. The first song draws on the particular experience of political corruption in Cameroon (among the greatest in the world, according to Transparency International) to illuminate the Gospel's message.



Watch NGEH LOVELINE in Music  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

So when you hear John Bell at CTS, remember that he isn't just teaching middle aged white people in Indianapolis about the joys of calypso rhythms and cowbells. He is trying to teach us how to learn more about ourselves, to use music from around the world to become better than we are now.

If all that is not enough to justify going to CTS in the snow, take the recommendation of Prof. Carol Johnston: “Bell is a delightful Scot and Presbyterian minister who enchants and will have you chanting and laughing, so come and be refreshed!” Based on this video clip, he seems as much Scottish stand-up comic as minister.

NUVO's nice article -- "Time for Three: A classical garage band"

Just in time for "World View, One Sound" -- Take Time for Three's February 16 appearance at Marian University as part of the Lugar Franciscan Center for Global Studies speaker series -- Scott Shoger at NUVO writes this nice article.

Time for Three blends classical, country, gypsy and jazz

Time for Three, a classically-trained trio that blends classical, country, gypsy and jazz, stand in their traditional triangle formation on the Hilbert Circle Theater stage — violinist Zach de Pue on stage right facing violinist Nick Kendall on stage left, double-bassist Ranaan Meyer upstage behind the two, directly facing the audience.

As de Pue calmly but intently fiddles through another impossible riff, Kendall waits, poised at a quarter-turn between the audience and de Pue, absorbing de Pue’s energy before negotiating another equally difficult riff.

Behind the two violinists, Meyer grimaces and bobs his head, deep in the groove.

This is Time for Three's first Indianapolis concert following their three-year appointment as ensemble in residence at the ISO. “Concerto 4-3,” written for Time for Three by Jennifer Higdon, represents one side of what the group, which transcends genres and scenes, can do. It incorporates American folk music — bluegrass, jazz, blues — into an art music setting that gestures towards the open plains sound of Copland and Bernstein and the more European pleasures of Stravinsky and Bartok.

Time for Three wasn’t at the theater that night to only execute the concerto. The members, classically trained but interested in trends way outside the academy, are also showmen interested in moving the audience, in giving them an emotionally-charged, musically-impressive experience that they won’t forget on the way home.

So, like any good soloists, the three virtuosi in the band take an encore on a piece that reminds the listener that those violins can also function as fiddles: the bluegrass classic “Orange Blossom Special.” But because these are enormously talented young men — de Pue is the concertmaster of the ISO, and both Kendall and Meyer are in-demand soloists who could have an orchestra seat if they weren’t so busy doing their own thing — this is bluegrass as you’ve rarely heard it before.

Meyer is even more demonstrative during the opening of the song, swaying back with some bent opening notes like James Brown stepping into a hot tub that is much too hot. De Pue and Meyer urge each other on, having themselves a good old-fashioned fiddle-off for which it might take days to decide the winner.

It’s after a performance like that — one that’s both crowd-pleasing and -challenging, sweet and savory — that one understands why Simon Rattle, the principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, called the gentlemen in the trio “three benevolent monsters, monsters of ability and technique surely…but also conveyors of an infectious joy that I find both touching and moving.”
And Indianapolis is fortunate that these three monsters have elected to spend a few years in town, that de Pue will take on another role with the ISO, and that Kendall (who’s currently living in New York City) and Meyer (Philadelphia) will pencil Indy into in their extraordinarily busy schedules.

On a mission: Zach de Pue

Zach de Pue has the plain, blond-haired, blue-eyed good looks of a Mormon just back from mission. And he does proselytize with the ardor of a true believer — in this case, for the classical music experience. He thinks Americans have been deprived of the opportunity to appreciate art music — from the beginning in the educational system — and hopes that through his role as a liminal figure, he can subtly reintroduce classical music to a pop generation.

De Pue uses his visit to a European Hooters at age 19 — and this is where the Mormon comparison falls apart, because de Pue has a bit of the frat boy to him — as an example of the drastic difference between Europe and America where classical music is concerned. He and some friends from the Curtis Institute of Music — the Philadelphia-based conservatory where the members of Time for Three met as students — were in Europe to perform Beethoven's Fourth Symphony, and they wondered if their waitress knew about the venue they were playing. "She knew where we were playing, she knew the composer — she knew who Schubert was, she knew his music," de Pue says, as he summons up this memory of surprise. "This is just a regular girl who has nothing to do with classical music.

“We are really starting from a more primitive point than even 30 years ago,” he notes, then emphasizes that the classical world will have to take things slow to reverse this de-evolution. "We just want to give our music in small bits, because obviously our music is in large chunks, a full meal; we just want to give them a taste so that they aurally start latching their life on to what an orchestra is, because it’s non-existent in many people's lives.”

That visit to Europe marked the beginning, the pre-history, of the Time for Three story, when the first two members began playing together. But it helps to start from de Pue's beginning to understand how Time for Three came about.

On the Elks Lodge circuit

"A normal childhood does not relate to ours," de Pue says of growing up with his brothers in Bowling Green, Ohio, playing violin under a music professor father who raised his sons, practically from the cradle, to be professional musicians. "We weren’t jack of all trades; we weren’t doing eight different things and experimenting. We each started on violin when we were five ... I hated it."

De Pue and his three older brothers didn't just spend hours practicing at home; their dad also thought it important to put them before audiences, and Zach, the youngest de Pue, eventually became a member of the the de Pue Family Musicians.

"I can't tell you how many Elks Lodges I played at," he says, although things took off soon enough, and the band played opening gigs for the Lettermen and Marie Osmond. The group was something of a vaudeville throwback, playing folk tunes, fiddle tunes, singing a little barber shop harmony, executing a Bach fugue. (The brothers, who all remain professional musicians, recently reunited as the De Pue Brothers Band, and continue to perform whenever schedules align.)
It wasn't until de Pue won a competition with the Toledo Symphony — which he insists he shouldn't have won — that he began to find playing the violin gratifying, that the shouting matches between him and his dad ceased. Some of the de Pue brothers accompanied Zach on that trip to Europe that included the Hooters visit.

Nick Kendall, another Curtis student and a free-thinking violinist raised on the Suzuki method, got wind of them, and heard that they were playing bluegrass fiddle tunes.

"They started playing in the streets, bluegrass, country fiddle," Kendall remembers. "And I said, ‘Oh my god! You guys do this, too!' It was a very exciting moment. So they allowed me to play with them, and that was the first time I started hanging out with Zach."

Soon Kendall was on the search for a bassist. He went to some gigs Ranaan Meyer played at Philadelphia-area jazz clubs, and asked him to join the group.

And that's how it started, with the three just hanging out, jamming between Curtis Orchestra rehearsals. And like at any jazz jam session, the members of this pickup group pushed each other to new heights of invention and virtuosity. "Zach and I would see how fast we could play the Concerto for Two Violins by Bach — swung, with Ranaan doing a swing bass line," Kendall remembers, noting that the Bach concerto remains a part of their repertoire.

Meyer was hooked from the first gig. "There was this incredible, fun energy that none of us had ever experienced. Time for Three was born because of that, because you can’t deny that…I always tell people the sex is good." Meyer pauses, then clarifies. "I am not physically attracted to Nick or Zach — that’s not what I’m saying — but the music is the reason that we’re together. After that, we worked on everything else, building a healthy relationship.”

Thunder and lightning

Only two of the three were there for Time for Three's dramatic break-out show, which came during a — cue the sound effects — lightning-induced power failure at Philadelphia's Mann Center that delayed a July 2003 performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Both de Pue and Meyer were performing as members of the Orchestra that night, and they seized the opportunity make their backstage shenanigans the impromptu main event, something like the bush leaguer finally getting that cup of coffee in the majors. The captive crowd was treated to a fiddle repertoire that included "Jerusalem's Ridge," "Ragtime Annie" and what became a Time for Three staple, "Orange Blossom Special." And they were pleased.

“That experience of the power outage was an opportunity for a large classical audience — the largest classical audience, for Beethoven Ninth — to hear music that they would have never gone in search of," de Pue explains. "Literally as the evening evolved, you could see people dancing in the aisles because they had never heard this stuff."

De Pue goes on to make a bolder point: "I think it opened up a world of instrumentalists now that we can consider bringing into the classical setting. It may not have been the door, but it was one of the doors — I think Yo-Yo (Ma) playing (on the roots-classical project Appalachian Spring) with Edgar (Meyer, no relation to Ranaan) and Mark (O'Connor) was another door. But it just started proving that this was good music and let’s start taking an approach to it that evolves it from roots to higher art without getting too hoity-toity.”

I put it to de Pue that that last sentence is an excellent way to sum up Time for Three's approach in general. He laughs, maybe not sure if "hoity-toity" should be used in a mission statement.

The dreamer: Nick Kendall

"I just want to say that I'm walking through the streets where The Truman Show was filmed," Nick Kendall tells me via cell phone. Is it a little surreal? "It's totally surreal."

Kendall is calling from Destin, Florida, where he's performing two versions of the "Four Seasons" with the Symphonia Gulf Coast Orchestra: Vivaldi's and an update by Argentine bandoneon player Astor Piazolla. Maybe that program would be a surprise to the ordinary subscription-holder, but it's certainly of a piece with Time for Three's mission — a little of the old, the established, the venerated, paired with something respectful of the tradition but retooled for indigenous music and instruments.

While he's taking on the role of producing the first two Happy Hour concerts, and is in Indianapolis enough to have a temporary office at the ISO, Kendall has an enormously busy schedule that sends his around the country, doing, he says, "stuff that I’ve wanted to do for a long time."

There's the conductor-less East Coast Chamber Orchestra, a group which he co-founded. The Dryden String Quartet, another family band comprised of Kendall, his sister, his cousin and a close family friend (all three in Time for Three play professionally with family members). And his active solo work, with Destin only the latest stop on a schedule that's booked two years in advance.

Kendall quickly realized that he would have to make his own scene in the classical world. “After leaving Curtis and going into the professional scene, I got depressed, seeing the professional, union aspect of the world beyond the walls of Curtis," he notes. "I’d do a pickup orchestra gig on the side, and people there looked upset; they did not want to be there playing this music…”
And Kendall has always made his own groups when the available options weren't satisfying. Maybe his only concession to mainstream taste was recently cutting back an afro that sacrificed in style everything he may have gained in height.

“I’m half-Japanese, and when I went to Japan when I was young, I heard taiko drummers during a summer cultural festival," Kendall remembers. "My parents told me that, while other kids may have been scared of the sound of a drum, I was drawn into it. Back home, in middle school, I wanted a drum set, but my parents said no, not in the house. So I just made it out of paint cans, garbage cans. Then I formed my own trash can drumming band, and we used to play on the street corners of Georgetown in Washington D.C. on the weekends.”

That pick-up drumming group evolved, by the time he reached Curtis, into Baraka, a group that offered two disparate experiences: all strings before intermission, then all trash can drumming in the second half.

De Pue sums up Kendall's approach: "Nick brings a rules-free attitude, a complete open canvas to everything, in a manner that allows him to have a lot of ideas. A lot of ideas that he doesn’t necessarily realize at the time, that push the envelope…It’s strictly based on how he feels."

Kendall is a little less rhapsodic when he talks of himself, noting that de Pue keeps his imagination in line: "If anybody’s gonna fault me, maybe myself, it’s because I’m too high on coffee all the time. But I’m relying on Zach’s complete knowledge of structure and deep musical instincts to be able to weed out BS from what will actually work."

On the road

Following the breakthrough that was the Philadelphia power-outage show, Time for Three began to figure out what it would mean to be an actual group, particularly given each member's individual goals — and the lure of established jobs offered by orchestras after graduation.
The band tried out one model, that of the touring rock band, stacking up shows one upon the other for months (148 dates over one year), touring the country in a conversion van.

“It’s amazing that we didn’t commit murder," Kendall says of that period of intense togetherness. "It isn’t natural … but you have to do it; it’s kind of like hazing. You have to go through a certain process to get your stripes.”

But they got the chance to see the country, and to meet friends they didn't know they had. The Texas high schooler footballers who were huge fiddle fans, for instance. "The common denominator through the whole thing was that people respond when the thing on stage is sincere, real, exciting and fun," Kendall notes. "No matter if we're fighting or tired or whatever, for some reason, whenever we get on stage and play with each other, it always works.”

And the band picked up some well-known friends, Paul Newman, for instance. In preparing to play the wedding of Claire Newman, the daughter of Paul and Joanne Woodward, they got a request from Cool Hand Luke himself. “Paul said, ‘You know, Claire really loves the Beatles," Kendall remembers. "Is there any way, during the ceremony, you guys can play some Beatles?” Thus, after some deliberation, "Blackbird" was added to the group's repertoire. He says the band tried to play a rock ode — to stay true to the Beatles — but ended up writing something in a classical music vibe. The piece is available on the band's second album, 2006's We burned this for you!, which followed on a self-titled 2002 album.

During the endless tour, the band continued to work on their relationship. "We know that we’ve got each other’s backs, we know what each person is supposed to do, musically but also in character, and that's something I can rely on," Kendall says. "I think it’s allowed for the three of us to grow as people because we’ve been there for each other. We’re not afraid to call each other out on anything ... And it’s helped us on our own individual path."

Dancing with the bass: Ranaan Meyer

Ranaan Meyer has been asked a few times to tone it down. Teachers asked him: Do you really need to make a face just to bow the bass? Can't you keep your legs still?

But like Glenn Gould vocalizing through the fugues, Thelonious Monk dancing in a circle or Keith Jarrett experiencing ecstasy with every chord, Meyer says he needs to express himself physically to play at his best.

And he found some like-minded teachers: the bassist Rufus Reid, for instance, who, in order to teach him how to get his arm, back and shoulders into the pulse of the music, grabbed his hand and duct-taped his fingers into a fist, leaving only the first finger free.

“I don’t look in the mirror; I don’t practice how to play," he says, reached in Philadelphia on an off-morning. "Sometimes when I’m watching a video, I’m laughing my butt off at myself, thinking, who in the heck would want to watch this?”

But it's become an instinct which can be exploited elsewhere: “I can’t dance unless I pretend that I have a bass in my hand."

Not surprisingly, for someone so inspired by the dance, and for a bassist, Meyer maintains that the groove is one of the most important elements of music, and something that's sometimes lost in a classical setting. "Human beings need that feeling of pulse and drive," he notes. Do Time for Three have that groove? "It’s something we naturally fall into; Nick, Zach and I, we groove together. I don’t think we’d be together if it didn’t groove…It’s the same mentality as a garage band, where it’s all for one and one for all.”

Like his cohorts, Meyer was bound to be a musician from the beginning. “As a little boy, when I watched my elders get up on stage, I thought they were the most famous people — more famous than Pavarotti," he says. "I wanted to be like that, I wanted to be like my brother or mother or father."

And he's come to play with those elders, even as a bandleader: his mom, Norma Meyer, plays piano in the Ranaan Meyer Band, a classically-oriented ensemble that's just as eclectic as Time for Three.

Meyer is perhaps more involved in education than the other members of Time for Three. He organizes three summer camps — a full-scholarship double-bass camp called Wabass, a tuition-based double-bass camp for those who don't make the selective cut for WaBass and a classical jam band camp, where students playing the range of classical instruments learn to improvise, compose, arrange and perform in different styles of music. He also teaches privately on the side, brings his jam band program to high schools and takes up work as a sideman, in jazz settings and with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Like Kendall, Meyer is looking outside the classical music hierarchy, trying to create a different scene for younger players. "The standard job opportunities are to win a job in an orchestra, be a chamber musician, be a soloist, if you’re fortunate enough, or a teacher," he says. "I’m trying to create a broader industry than just those jobs for double-bassists and for musicians in general.” Meyer has come to be known as the composer for Time for Three, although that's a title that takes some qualification. For one, Meyer has historically been hesitant to call himself a composer: "I’ve always known of composers as being Mahler or Beethoven or Brahms … I would always laugh it off uncomfortably."

But more than that, his pieces for Time for Three start off as little more than a lead sheet, a theme, maybe some variations, never a through-written piece. So a piece starts with Meyer, and then the band figures it out together in rehearsal, locking things in when they work. The arrangements are largely settled when they get to the stage, but the material linking one piece to another, providing a listening experience without breaks, is entirely improvised.

A new album

Three Fervent Travelers, Time for Three's album released this year on E1 Entertainment, is, according to Meyer, an encapsulation of everything Time for Three has done to this point. The best pieces have risen to the top of the album, and it represents "so many different styles, so many different influences that have found their way over time, organically, to our music.”
The CD comes out at a time that Time for Three have taken the time for their music to settle, to take a step back and consider their goals after intense years of touring.

De Pue sums up that goal this way: "To celebrate American music in a performing arts setting with the same attention to detail you would get from a group playing a Beethoven string quartet.”
Meyer tries this one out: "Victor Borge meets Rolling Stones — rock band mentality meets classical chops."

Kendall notes that the ISO residency was a godsend for the group, and is effusive when he thinks of all the things the group can do while working with an orchestra. "We come from the house of classical music. We come from that art form and believe in it. That’s just in our blood; our values are there. However, we have a dynamic and uncensored way of appealing to other people who may not know how to relate to that art form, and especially the experience at a concert hall...We love playing with an orchestra and we love playing in a concert hall; we love having that captive audience. So to be able to use the symphony as a platform is just extraordinary."

Kendall gets at the symbiotic relationship the ISO has formed with Time for Three. Through the residency, the ISO will work with a young, creative group that might appeal beyond the core subscription base, but isn't so free-thinking that they're going to throw a bomb, figuratively, into the orchestra hall, or so inclined towards polemics that they might reject particular ideas, genres or eras outright. And Time for Three gets a steady gig, the chance to preach the classical gospel to a wide audience and a laboratory in which to experiment on new hybrids, using whatever materials they like from the American music experience.

Happy Hour

The week of the November performance of Higdon’s “Concerto 4-3,” Time for Three and a couple collaborators — conductor Steve Hackman, a friend of the group’s from Curtis days with similarly eclectic taste, and arranger William Brohn (Wicked) — locked themselves in a room at the Circle Theatre, and set themselves a goal of programming the first installments of Happy Hour, the occasional series that the Symphony had established to reach out to a younger crowd, with earlier-in-the-day concerts, a more accessible repertoire, cheaper tickets and more youthful accouterments (video, dancers, a booth selling White Castle).

Kendall says that sometime during the process, “We realized that the Eroica (Beethoven's third symphony) was in the same key as “Fix You” by Coldplay.” And not only that, but at a certain point in the score, “Beethoven’s Third goes literally into the same notation as ‘Fix You.’”
It was a fortunate moment, and made the question asked on promotional materials for the show — Who says Beethoven and Coldplay don’t mix? — more than just an empty reference intended to draw in the young people.

From there, the planning committee — surrounded by stacks of CDs, 3 Macs, a stereo and their instruments — put together the rest of the program. John Adams’ brisk, percussive “Short Ride in a Fast Machine" kicking off the show, then Thomas Newman’s score for the film Meet Joe Black, Debussy’s “Claire de Lune" towards the close.

Perspectivalism

The Happy Hour show is proof enough that Time for Three can appeal to uninitiated audiences. But there are many sides to the group.

Say you want new music, defined as synonymous with contemporary classical? You got it, with that meaty Higdon concerto and upcoming pieces, one written by of the greatest living American composers, William Bolcom; another by Chris Brubeck, the jazz-inspired son of Dave Brubeck.
De Pue says one of the group’s goals is “to start celebrating music created here and creating a classical music experience around that style.”

You want your roots music, your fiddle tunes, mined for everything they’re worth? Time for Three keeps “Orange Blossom Special” in repertory, and most of their original songs incorporate some recognizable American folk music, expanding on Copland and Thomson’s groundbreaking work.

And say you’re reading this piece and haven’t heard of any of the above names? Well, you’re missing out, but none of the guys in Time for Three are at all snobs, and there’s a seat waiting for you at the next Happy Hour.

And of course, those three options don’t exhaust the ways of viewing Time for Three, or the scenes the group can fit into. An October 2009 Washington Post feature on the “alt-classical music" lumps Time for Three with other young musicians exploring music outside of the canon and academy, suggesting that they’re following in the path of groups like the Kronos Quartet or Bang on a Can All-Stars. The piece notes that these new music groups aren’t on “some lunatic fringe of experimentalism,” but that “the spirit of these groups is permeating, and invigorating, the whole classical experience.”

The article calls Kendall the “poster child” for a breed of “super-musicians” who bridge genres, and have the capacity to play just about anything, in just about any scene, deftly and authentically.

And while that “alt-classical” scene has more established homes in major cities — the nightclub Le Poisson Rouge in New York City, for instance, will host violinist Hillary Hahn as well as whatever indie rock band is passing through — that relationship between classical, rock and any other genre is being explored by artists on labels like Asthmatic Kitty, by groups like Orkestra Projekt and in places like Butler’s composition program and IUPUI’s electronic music program.
And Time for Three could be a force, particularly since they're staying for at least three years, in uniting all those "alt-classical" threads around town. It's good to hear that de Pue is getting comfortable: "This is my third year living here, and honestly, I’m now starting to feel great, not just good, but great about here."

And the group has enough gumption to surpass whatever expectations people have for a night at the symphony, for new music coming from the city. “We’re a team, just like a sports team gunning for a major championship," Meyer notes. "We’re always pushing each other, and there’s three of us, so if one guy doesn’t want to work, the other two are there to kick him in the butt. We’re not trying to compete with anybody else. But we’re competing with ourselves; we want to make sure that the audience is getting the most incredible experience as listeners as possible in a musical environment."

Time for Three: World View, One Sound

The Richard G. Lugar Franciscan Center
for Global Studies presents:

Time for Three: World View, One Sound
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
7 p.m. - 9 p.m.
Marian University Chapel
Hear the sound that's breaking down musical barriers and discover how this trio is defying the limits of their instruments and industry one note at a time.
Free; open to the public.

One of the last things that likely comes to mind when considering classical music is contemporary flair and a country western swing. Zach De Pue, Nick Kendall, and Ranaan Meyer beg to differ. This trio of talented are setting out to shatter the classical stereotype, introducing an entirely new approach to a more traditional art form. Their blending of genres is representative of the blending of cultures

Five reasons to hear Lara St. John perform with the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra May 8

On May 8 Lara St. John will perform with the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra at the Indiana History Center. Says the blurb:

The finale of the ICO’s Sterling Season – Celebrating 25 Years – will feature Lara St. John, the Canadian-born violinist who has been described as “a phenomenon” by The Strad and a “high-powered soloist” by the New York Times. She joins the ICO to perform selections from Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Ms. St. John appeared with the ICO in its 2000-2001 season, and, fittingly, returns to close the ICO’s Sterling Season – Celebrating 25 Years.

Ms St. John is quite popular. By coincidence, as I write this WICR is playing her performance of Ravel's "Tzigane" at Wolftrap. Tzigane or Cygan is the slightly derisive term for Roma (Gypsies) in Eastern Europe. Bill McLaughlin just informed me she was sent to Hungary to play and study as a pre-teenager, which accounts for "the Gypsy in her soul." OK. Regardless of how she shaped her soul, her late 1990s album "Gypsy" is very good.

In the years to follow, she has continued developing Roma-influenced music -- perhaps more accurately, music influenced by non-Roma composers' ideas of what Gypsy music sounds like. Here's a bit of her performing with Ilan Rechtman, his "Variations on Dark Eyes" (Occhi Chornye) from "Gypsy."






As you see, she has quite a presence. You might recognize this performance from the 2008 Olympics, from Nastia Luikin's gold medal winning floor exercise.



So why should you make the time to go to the Indiana History Center to hear Lara St. John? Five reasons come to mind.

1. We can never get enough Astor Piazzolla.

One of St. John's most recent recordings is a pairing of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" and Astor Piazzolla's "Four Seasons."

Piazzolla is great, a favorite of Provocate. You surely know Vivaldi's "Four Seasons," but probably not Piazzolla's. The Argentinian tango-master doesn't intend his music as an homage or variation on the Red Priest's ... when listening to the pieces of the similar name, remember that the four seasons in the Southern Hemisphere are opposite of teh four seasons in the Northern Hemisphere. It's an excellent performance. On her website Ms St. John helpfully provides a bunch of excellent reviews ... but I haven't seen a poor review. She performs with the hot young conductor, Eduardo Marturet, and the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela.If her record seems familiar, you may be thinking of the same two pieces paired on "The Eight Seasons" by Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica.

Good for St. John, if you are going to swipe an idea, swipe it from the best. I like hers better. Depending on your technological skills and attitude about copyright laws, you can download her "Four Seasons" at the great music blog, Music is the Key. Otherwise, the good people at Amazon would be happy to sell you a copy.

2. Lara St. John has survived the double-edged career trauma of hottie-ness. 
As you may gather from her album covers above, Ms St. John has not been afraid to let the world know that she is an attractive young woman. The willingness to put herself on display stirred controversy with the cover of her debut album, "Bach Works for Solo Violin."

"Nothing comes between me and my music" was her rationale, echoing what Brooke Shield said about her "Calvins" a couple decades before. The album was one of the best selling of the 1990s, although the cover probably contributed to sales only indirectly, by signaling that this was not a conservative or conventional performer of Back. (Ironically, her Bach on this album was played more conservatively than on later albums when Ms St,. John posed wearing more than a Guadagnini violin.) Even before the internet fully took off, there were cheaper ways to obtain less grainy pictures of scantily clad young women than buying a CD. The risk she took as a provocatively posing 24 year old was that her music wouldn't sustain her career over the long run. Lucky for her and for us, she is good enough, imaginative and creative enough, to hold our attention as she approaches 40 and wear buttoned blouses.

3. She has consistently pushed the classical music to the edges of new technologies. 
Lara St. John led the way with the use of her website and iTunes to sell her music. she also lent her music to the path-breaking web-based video series, lonelygirl15, which is said to have had 110 million hits.



4. She has managed to preserve fidelity to the original music while drawing on new sources for creative inspiration. 
All this mishing and mashing of popular culture, East European influences, and more could go astray if she were twisting and distorting Bach for the sake of appealing to pop culture. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with reinterpreting the classics in light of contemporary tastes ... that has been going on for centuries. The first Lara St. John album I listened to carefully, "re:Bach," left me cold.



Listening again, within the context of her project for reinterpreting and preserving, it makes more sense. So just enjoy her video "Goldberg 2" without worrying about its lack of connections to Bach's Goldberg Variations. It's a cool use of images, language, music.






5. Apolkalypse Now!
Lara St. John's latest project is my favorite. Polkastra, with its new album "Apolkalypse Now":

Here we see all the aspects of her curiosity and desire to integrate and reinterpret old sources in order to create something entirely new. It's more than a jokey poking at polkas, a musical style was probably seemed outdated when the first accordian started the farmers stomping. This video shows an amazing tribute to the Romanian and Hungarian cembalon players of Central Europe two or three incarnations in the past.






This interview with violin.com about the inspiration behind Polkastra shows Ms St. John flashing her intellect and wit.

Good for ICO to bring Lara St. John back to Indy to perform Vivaldi and Piazzolla. But I hope it will be possible for us to talk with her, to explore some of the ideas of cross-genre musical creativity that is bubbling in Indy right now.

Provocate's Picks for Music Performances and Discussions in Spring ... part 1

January 9 ... Hoosier Dylan in poetry and music

January 15 ... Ensemble Voltaire performs "Coach Class”

January 21 ... "Hip Hop and its influence on global culture"

January 23 ... pianist Adam Gorka explains why Chopin's 200th birthday matters

January 25 ... Molto Piano (Words with Music) at UIndy

January 27 ... Fauré Piano Quartet plays Mahler, Mozart and Brahms

January 29 & 30 ... The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and the Indianapolis Symphonic Choir join forces for Faure’s Requiem

February 1 ... UIndy Faculty Artist Series: Classics to Moderns

February 10 ... Carrie Newcomer talks about The Deliverance Project

February 12 & 13  ... Mahler Project: Midwinter Dance Festival

February 15 ... Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra's program 1775–1780: Paris, Vienna, Hamburg, Mannheim . . . and Celebrating

February 16 ... Singing with the Global Church: The Gift of Music from Other Cultures

February 16 ... "Time for Three: World View, One Sound" at Marian

February 16 ... International Violin Competition of Indianapolis Laureate Series collaborates with “Deninzon’s Jazz Cabaret”

February 16 ... Mozart and the Moderns at UIndy

February 19 ... Béla Fleck's Africa Project at Clowes

February 24 ... Brooklyn Rider plays cutting edge music

February 27 ... Poems & Parables

March 9 & 10 ... Shen Yun Performing Arts

March 13 ... Double-Shot Music Documentary Day at the IMA

March 15 ... Celebrating Chopin's 200th birthday at UIndy

March 17 ... Richard Pressley on Chopin's 200th

March 17 ... Sérgio and Odair Assad, classical guitarists

March 18 ... Ching-chu Hu, UIndy's Guest Composer in Residency

March 21 ... International Violin Competition of Indianapolis Laureate Series: 1990 Silver Medalist Marco Rizzi

March 22 ... New Century String Quartet's 10th anniversary at UIndy

March 29 ... UIndy’s Chamber Evening

April 10 ... IndyBaroque, Inc.'s "Baroque Bash" make the bucks for baroque

April 11 ... As part of the Mahler Project, the Butler Wind Ensemble commemorates Holocaust Remembrance Day

April 12 ... UIndy’s Faculty music series season finale whirls around three continents

April 17 ... Gleb Ivanov and the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra

April 18 ... American Pianists Association's Grand Encounters presents Nobuyuki Tsujii

April  21 ... Takács Quartet performs Beethoven and Psathas

May 4 ... 2006 IVCI Laureate Yura Lee with the Ronen Chamber Ensemble and pianist Chih Yi Chen

May 8 ... Lara St. John with the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra

May 13 ... Mitchell Douglas premieres his tribute to Donny Hathaway, “Cooling Board: a Long-Playing Poem”

May 20-23 Dance Kaleidoscope performs “Pictures at an Exhibition” at IRT

May 21 & 22 ... Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra performs Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony

June 8 ... 1986 IVCI Gold Medalist Kyoko Takezawa In recital with pianist Akira Eguchi