Americanensemble

AmericanEnsemble When the husband-and- Some—but not all—of the composers came to Repertoire wife team of Michael their assignments well versed in the duo’s instru- Refreshers Newman and Laura Oltman mentation. Bogdanovic is an accomplished guitarist first formed their guitar in his own right; Moravec played guitar as a kid; duo, they knew they could Sierra is an experienced guitar composer, with a long choose from a repertoire list of compositions that use the instrument. But for stretching back to the others, the Newman & Oltman commission became Renaissance. “But there an exploration of new territory. Thomas bought a hadn’t been quite as much happening with contem- guitar and gave herself a crash course; she presented porary music,” says Newman. “That’s where we thought her piece Memory: SWELLS with most of the finger- we could make our best mark.” ings already worked out. “She has her own sound In the three decades since, the Newman & Oltman universe and she wanted her own fingerings,” says Duo has added to the two-guitar repertoire with a Oltman. series of commissions from leading lights in con- Liebermann wrote his Nocturne Fantasy without temporary music, including Paul Moravec, Augusta guidance; then he presented it to the duo and asked, Read Thomas, Lowell Liebermann, Roberto Sierra “What works?” The couple worked with him to and Dušan Bogdanovic. figure out chord voicings and how the music should be apportioned between two instruments. “Lowell doesn’t know jack about fingering,” Oltman says, “but he knows about music!” New music, of course, represents only a portion of Newman and Oltman’s repertory, which ranges from Monteverdi to Albéniz to Piazzolla. Tran- scriptions figure prominently in the mix, since, as Oltman puts it, “The guitar does not have a ton of repertoire by very famous composers—and that’s a fact.” But the duo has definite ideas about what kinds of music are appropriate for guitar tran- scription: a proposed Pictures at an Exhibition got an unequivocal thumbs-down. “The guitar’s really intimate,” Oltman explains. Newman and Oltman run two important annual projects: In May, the Raritan Music Festival brings chamber concerts and outreach to western New Jersey. And in July, the five-day New York Guitar Seminar, brings students of all ages into the city’s Mannes College to work with an elite group of guitarists. In the midst of all this professional activity, the two guitarists have also sustained a long-running marriage. The trick? “We keep our professional fighting and our personal fighting very separate,” says Newman. “If you have to make your living out of this, you have to make it work,” says Oltman. “This is all we know how to do, really—we don’t have a lot of other skills!” www.guitarduo.com Michael Newman and Laura Oltman 20 july/august 2010 Hometown Many ensembles The grade-school and high-school quartets of make touring the ACMS work each Saturday, September through Heroes backbone of their April, in coaching sessions with one of the Artaria’s professional lives. But members. Sometimes visiting luminaries pitch the Artaria String in; this past year featured masterclasses with the Quartet has taken a different tack: the ensemble Takács and St. Lawrence Quartets. But the week- has made itself a force for chamber music right in, week-out work consists of introducing young in its hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota. The players to the string quartet repertoire and the emphasis is partly the result of circumstances: process of playing chamber music. all four of its members are parents of school-age “For some of the young ones, it’s their first children, a situation that makes touring difficult time in any kind of ensemble,” says Laura Sewell, at best. The quartet makes local appearances the quartet’s cellist. “They have no idea of how to throughout the year, including a four-concert cue—they have to learn to answer the question series in St. Paul’s Sundin Hall at Hamline ‘How are we going to start together?’ Then they University. Nonetheless, in celebration of its learn that everyone is responsible for keeping 25th anniversary, the ensemble will undertake an their own rhythm going. That’s hard for some ambitious foreign tour in 2011. kids: they’re so influenced by what they hear The quartet is as committed to education as to around them that they can’t keep counting for performance. Early in its history, it became one themselves. I’ve done it for so long—but of of the first ensembles to get a Rural Residency course it’s hard! You really have to learn that. grant from the NEA. It was a nine-month posting “You learn how to be tactful, how to work things in Tipton, Georgia. “And let me tell you, it out,” Sewell continues. “And it’s not instantly was rural!” says Ray Shows, the group’s first gratifying—you really have to work hard. I think violinist. “We met people who had never seen chamber music is a lesson for life.” a violin!” The residency took the quartet to www.artariastringquartet.com public libraries, state parks, factories and halfway houses all over the state of Georgia; the musicians even jammed with local country bands. Nearly two decades later, the quartet’s educa- tional bent continues. It runs the Artaria Chamber Music School (ACMS), a weekly coaching program for young string quartets, and Stringwood, an annual chamber-music summer camp that mixes rehearsals and coaching with outdoor activities and explorations of the ecosystem of southeastern Minnesota. Capping it all off: the Saint Paul String Quartet Competition, attracting young ensembles from all over the country. The Artaria String Quartet, L to R: Nancy Oliveros, Ray Shows, Laura Sewell, Annalee Wolf 21 AmericanEnsemble Perhaps the reason Dawson’s A Manual for the Modern Drummer New York music education is became his bible. “It was good guerrilla war- School so important to fare training,” he says. Bobby Sanabria is His prowess got him a scholarship to Days that he started out as Boston’s Berklee School of Music. As early as an autodidact. As a freshman year, he got an offer to tour with teenager growing up in the Bronx of the Al Di Meola’s band. But (to the amazement 1970s, the jazz drummer and composer had of his classmates), he turned it down in order no money for lessons, and his high school to keep studying. “I was always a good Afro- Cuban percussionist,” he says. “But because I finished school, I became an accomplished jazz drummer.” More than three decades later, Sanabria is still a resident of his native borough. He recently became an inductee in the Bronx Walk of Fame, with a street sign just blocks from Cardinal Hayes High School, his alma mater. As a per- former, his career is thriving—he’s a multiple Grammy nominee, and has been named Percussionist of the Year by DRUM! magazine. Teaching is a key part of his professional identity. “Teaching is a noble, honorable and—unfortunately in jazz— disenfranchised profession,” he says. “Every time I read about a young up- Bobby and-coming musician, I think ‘If this Sanabria had only a minimal music program. But he guy’s so hot, I’d like to know who the hell had a bountiful musical upbringing, none- taught him!” He’s a professor at The New theless. The family radio brought an amazing School for Jazz and Contemporary Music multicultural mix of sounds into his family’s and leads the Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra at home: soul music and salsa; Ellington, Basie Manhattan School for Music. and Sinatra; Edgar Winter and Miles Davis; Sanabria also visits local public schools with Spanish-language talk radio—even Spanish his band. “My whole thing is to get young toreador music. It was the era of the Vietnam people involved not only as students, but as War, black consciousness, and the Puerto fans,” he says. “We have plenty of jazz stu- Rican nationalist group the Young Lords. dents—we don’t have to worry about the next “Even though the city was bankrupt and the generation. But want about the kids who are South Bronx was burning,” Sanabria says, not studying jazz? I want them to become “with all this crazy chaos it was a rich cultural fans of the music. environment.” “Jazz is our national music,” says Sanabria. It may not have been a formal education, “It represents our truth, our ethos. My dream but Sanabria was a good learner. He would is to make it part of the curriculum of every accost street musicians and ask them to show classroom. It’s American’s most precious art him how they played. He formed a band form.” www.bobbysanabria.com with a schoolmate who played trumpet. Alan 22 july/august 2010 Chamber music is important business at the Yale School of Getting to Music. All of its students, whether composers, soloists or orchestral Carnegie musicians, are required to take chamber music every semester. And each full-time faculty member has to coach two student ensembles. “The greatest pleasure of my day is when I have a group to coach,” says Robert Blocker, a pianist and the school’s dean. When Blocker talks about chamber music at Yale, he cites the views of a high-school class- mate, software entrepreneur G. Larry Wilson. “He likes to hire musicians as middle managers— especially if they play chamber music,” Blocker says. “They have discipline. They can work independently or as a team. They have initiative.

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