Harvard University Department of M usic MUSICnewsletter Vol. 15, No. 2 Summer 2015 Osnat Netzer on Teaching & Composing The first time she taught Music 2, Osnat Music Building Netzer approached the Department’s largest North Yard course idealistically. “In a perfect world,” she Harvard University thought, “how would I teach this? It was Cambridge, MA 02138 my chance to invent, to create a new way to teach theory and composition to students 617-495-2791 who have never studied them before.” www.music.fas.harvard.edu Then ealityr hit. Netzer had 100 stu- dents at various skill levels and with many different interests. “Performers want to INSIDE understand what they’re playing. Some stu- dents want to arrange popular songs, some 2 Faculty News are simply looking to deepen their appreciation of her first full-length opera, The Wondrous Woman music, some aspire to be professional musicians but Within. Woman is a comic opera in two acts with 2 Laurie Anderson have another concentration to fall back on. I have a libretto adapted from the play of the same name 3 Gardiner, Vance George at to accommodate all of them.” by controversial Israeli playwright, Hanoch Levin. She began visiting all of her sections to meet The work will premiere this fall at the Cameri Harvard students and get to know them better. Theatre in Tel Aviv. 4 Talking with the Parker Quartet “I can conceptualize classes with an ideal world Netzer wanted the opera to be an Israeli 6 Graduate Student News in mind, but I needed to know the actual students. opera, and she wanted to write it in Hebrew, so it So what I do now is tailored to what students are made sense to her to base it on a play written by 6 Walden on Musical Experiments looking for; is this relevant to them? How will this Israel’s iconic playwright. “Levin’s early plays were in the Renaissance be helpful in their lives?” brutal and extreme politically; some were censored Now in her second year as Preceptor, Netzer has or banned. Later he found more subtle ways to 7 Early Music in Boston a successful working structure for her course. When write about the state of affairs in Israel, in allegory, 8 Alumni News an unprecedented number of blizzards shut down where politics were disguised as family dynamics. the Harvard campus this past winter, she found an But The Wondrous Woman Within is not that. It’s 8 Chin’s Travels in Nepal innovative way to make up material the students had a funny sexual farce about two suitors, neither of 9 Library News missed. whom has a chance at winning the diva. 10 Calendar of Events “We called them the Snowstorm Sessions. They “If you’re creating an opera from a play, you were spontaneous, really,” she says of the several have to make sure that there’s a reason to add 12 Voces de America Latina short instructional videos she and Head TF William music. Music for Levin’s plays, I think, is essential. O’Hara created at the Derek Bok Center Media I think he knew it, too. The characters are unsym- Literacy and Visualization Lab. The videos covered pathetic on the page. The plays have moments concepts such as tetrachords, sharp keys/flat keys, with incidental music that contrasts with or is “avoiding enharmonic errors,” “character in major completely antithetical to the stage action. Levin and minor modes” and many more—eleven three- knew that music was essential in order to make the to-four-minute mini-lessons in all, meant to help deep criticism bearable and the characters more students catch up and review content they’d missed. believable. I try to employ music in a similar way, “This is one of the great things about Harvard,” only on a more extreme level. she says of the Bok Center’s staff. “There’s a team “For my first opera, I didn’t want to take Department Chair available to help you do your job better. It’s amazing.” something too close to my heart. You have to Carol J. Oja live with opera for years and years, so I’d like to Director of Administration The Wondrous Woman Within be able to be slightly emotionally detached from Nancy Shafman As Netzer completed her second year of teaching at it. I know the outcome will be a little out of my Newsletter Editor Harvard she also finished casting for the premiere of control.” Lesley Bannatyne continued, p. 2 [email protected] Netzer, continued Faculty News Netzer began work on the opera in 2008, composing full-time in Berlin for a year, then Yosvany Terry Joins Faculty Preceptor Richard Beaudoin gave a talk at the six months in Boston. She finished it in 2011 American Consulate in Shanghai, called “What and workshopped the first scene on New York Makes Music Beautiful.” City Opera’s 2012 VOX Festival. A grant for Parker Quartet members Daniel Chong Fringe Opera by the Israel National Lottery and Jessica Bodner welcomed a son this sum- Council for the Arts helped fund a production mer, Cole Franklin Chong. of the opera in Israel. Julia Pevzner will direct In May, Professors Emily Dolan and the 2015 premiere of the fully staged version Alexander Rehding hosted an exploratory at the Cameri, with the Israel Contemporary Yosvany Terry has been appointed Visiting seminar at the Radcliffe Institute entitled Mak- Players serving as the orchestra, Yuval Zorn Senior Lecturer on Music and Director of Jazz ing Sense of Timbre. Twelve music scholars gave conducting. Ensembles for the 2015–16 year. short presentations. Rehding was the Rieman Netzer will travel to Tel Aviv to see some Terry is an internationally acclaimed and Baketel Fellow for Music at the Radclifffe of the staging and vocal rehearsals. “It’s so excit- Cuban musician, American composer, saxo- Institute for Advanced Study this past year. ing—the opera will be premiered at the Cameri phonist, percussionist, bandleader, educa- This past summer ranklinF D. and Flor- Theatre’s second Levin festival. It’s his house tor and cultural bearer of the Afro-Cuban continued, p. 5 theater, and this play premiered there in 1992. tradition. Terry’s latest release, the Grammy If the opera’s good, it will hopefully get another Award-nominated New Throned King (5Pas- production. If it requires some revisions, the sion, 2014), features music based on Arará performances will reveal that need. Every step cantos and rhythms and has been called the of the way I’m happy but cautious.” “musical culmination of his spiritual explora- tion” (All About Jazz). His previous album, Israeli composer, pianist, and singer/songwriter Today’s Opinion (Criss Cross, 2012), was Osnat Netzer received her doctorate from New selected as one of the Top 10 Albums of the England Conservatory. She joined the Music Year by the New York Times. In 2015, Terry Department faculty as Preceptor in 2013. was named a recipient of the prestigious Doris Duke Artist Award. Pianist Jenny Chai discusses and performs music by Marco Stroppa, Debussy and Ligeti in Richard Beau- Laurie Anderson Gives 2015 Elson Lecture doin’s Music 51b. When asked how she introduces herself, Laurie mother witnessed: ducks, their feet frozen to the Anderson says that she references whatever she’s icy surface of a pond. At performances in Italy, working on at that moment. “Right now,” she one older man came to every performance she told a group of graduate and undergraduate had, she said, and told spectators that she and students, “I’m a filmmaker.” her grandmother were once frozen to a pond. Anderson spent a day on campus as the “Close enough,” Anderson thought. Department’s Louis C. Elson Lecturer. She met She showed images of her invented instru- with students informally, and later gave the an- ments, including the tape bow for which she’s nual Elson Lecture to a packed Paine Hall. best known, and some of her installations, such “Hearing is the last sense to go,” she told as her table with built-in holes where a sound the crowd. “Tibetan monks believe this; the installation could be heard through the audi- subtitle to the Tibetan Book of the Dead is Great ence’s elbows. Liberation Through Hearing. After the heart Anderson’s never been shy about push- stops and the eyes go dark, the hammers in your ing through assumptions, or the barriers that ears are still going. Tibetan monks yell into your separate one artform from another. ears when you die—mostly instructions: there “I’m always interested in discarding as- are two lights. Go toward the faraway light.” sumptions,” she told students in an informal Anderson’s new film project works with the meeting. They’re usually so sad: You have to do I’m not so worried about new, or experi- Tibetan Book of the Dead, and dogs. During her this in a certain way? WOAH. Says who. We mental. I work in the oldest artform in the Elson lecture she showed images of her work-in- all have the freedom to discard assumptions. I world. I’m a storyteller. There’s nothing new progress as well as images of past projects and became an artist because I wanted to be free. about that. I love good stories, and I love performances, such as one of herself performing “People may tell you to get back into your trying to make them. on the violin in the mid-1970s, wearing ice discipline—that you don’t know enough to do —Laurie Anderson skates and standing on blocks of ice.