The Ithaca Summer Strings ensemble consisting of 14 instruments of the new violin family presented an open rehearsal at Ithaca College (NY) in the Beeler Rehearsal Room on August 4th at 8:00 p.m. A small but appreciative audience heard the group's debut. After just eight rehearsals, the group performed three English Madrigals in five and six parts by John Bennett, Michael Cavendish, and Thomas Morely, and gave the world premiere performance of Robert Spear's Old Master's Suite, a collection of four short movements of late Renaissance music in the style of Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances. Maestra Cayenna Ponchione then led the group through the first movement of Peter Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings in C major. The program concluded with a medley of three Beatle's songs arranged for the new family of instruments. Organizer Robert Spear said that he plans to continue the Summer Strings Orchestra in 2009 with an even larger group.
OctaVivo! Non-Profit Association to Form.
Robert Spear, Lin Tollefsen, and Mark Goldberg have announced the formation of an ad hoc steering committee to organize a new 501 (c) (3) not-for-profit corporation to sustain, support, and advance the violin octet concept and the expanded violin family in Ithaca, New York and elsewhere. Among other things, the committee hopes the new non-profit can create and support various performing groups along the same lines that Sharon and Joe McNalley have followed in their work for the Hutchins Consort in California. Spear, who is the former newsletter editor for the New Violin Family Association (NVFA), Tollefsen, who is a former director of the Association, and Goldberg, who served as advisor to the NVFA Board of Directors, will be assisted by Dr. Robert Nersasian, another former NVFA Director, William Hurley, and Carrie Reuning Hummel. The group has already secured space for an office and hopes to file for incorporation within the next several weeks. Work on the bylaws and articles of incorporation are well under way, a placeholder for the new organization's web site is already parked online, and the group is developing a 7-year plan that includes projects beginning as early as the summer of 2009.
Piano Trio Debuts.
Bill Hurley, mezzo violin; Elisa Evett, baritone violin; and Karen Melamed Smith, piano, currently playing as the whimsically named "8:00 A.M. Piano Trio," have begun to make public appearances after weeks of rehearsal. The group played at the Gloria Perry Gerstman Memorial Scholarship Concert at the Community School of Music and Arts in Ithaca on April 20, and then on June 25 at Kendal of Ithaca as part of a concert organized by Music's Recreation. Both performances were well-received by audiences who seemed taken by the sound of the expanded violin family instruments. The group will next perform at Hospicare of Ithaca at 2:00 p.m. on August 31, 2008. More information here. Hurley and Evett have also formed a string trio with mezzo violinist Carrie Reuning Hummel. The as yet unnamed trio will make its debut at the Hospicare concert playing works by Boccherini and Borodin. Both trios plan to perform at other public venues in the Finger Lakes Region this fall, so keep checking our public events page.
Expanded String Orchestra Rehearses.
Another first in the progress of the expanded violin family has occurred in Ithaca this summer with the formation of a 14-piece string orchestra consisting entirely of new family violins. Robert Spear, who organized the group, says that as far as he knows, it is the first group of its kind. He says that the orchestra is the direct result of having low-cost, Chinese-made instruments available to lend the players. The orchestra, which is conducted by Cayenna Ponchione, consists of three sopranos, three mezzos, three altos, three tenors, a baritone, and a contrabass. The small bass has a cracked neck and could not be used since it is apart for repairs, and there was no music available for the remaining instruments that called for the treble violiin. Many of the chairs in the group were filled by word of mouth from the initial players who became excited by the orchestra concept. Spear relates that he ran out of instruments before he ran out of players, and that he even ended up with a small waiting list. The group will hold eight rehearsals through early August, the last of which will be an open rehearsal at the Whelan Center for Music, Beeler Rehearsal Room, on the Ithaca College Campus. Check the public events page for further details.
I have just received some information and photos from Grigory Sedukh's 2008 concert tour in Japan, which occurred between February 25 and March 23, 2008. Sedukh performed on the piccolo (treble) violin in the cities of Urawa, Gunwa, Chiba, and a number of venues in Tokyo. His tour was supported by grants and funding from the Pioneer Corporation, Taiho Pharmaceutical, Taguchi Enterprise, the Russian Embassy, and the Global Citizen Club, among others. Sedukh has a large repertoire of music consisting of several hundred arrangements he has made for the piccolo violin. His previous tours of Japan took place in 1999 and 2007. He also played a tour in the United States in 2005 that included solos and master classes at the Octet 2005 convention of the New Violin Family Association. Sedukh is a resident of St. Petersburg, Russia and a former member of the now-disbanded St. Petersburg Violin Octet. He is at present the only performing virtuoso playing the piccolo violin, and he is featured on a number of CDs produced by the Catgut Acoustical Society and the New Violin Family Association. He has also self-produced several CDs that are not currently offered in the US. Available CDs can be found on the CD Baby and New Violin Family Association web sites.
I exhibited a tableful of octet violins at the New Directions Cello Festival on this date. Held at Ithaca (NY) College in the Whalen Center for Music, the New Directions Festival focuses on non-traditional and non-classical uses of the cello. It also includes a substantial component of amplified instruments, both acoustic and non-acoustic, and other electronic equipment such as amplifiers and digital signal processors. About 100 cellists of varying ages and nationalities attended, according to festival organizers.
I brought two sopranos, three mezzos, two altos (plus one standard viola for comparison), two tenors, one baritone and a contrabass. At one time, almost all were being played, thanks to the loan of some nice Coda carbon-fiber bows by the friendly folks at Hickey's Music Center, who had a table near mine. The new family was generally well accepted. A number of the older players attending knew of Carleen Hutchins and the original effort by the Catgut Acoustical Society in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, but few were aware that anyone was carrying the work forward at present. The opportunity to play the new Chinese mezzos and altos brought me many words of encouragement, and the news of their greatly lower cost seemed welcome. One attendee wanted to know why this hadn't been done years ago. Good question.
Some fun memories of this event are those of watching and listening to German cellist Gunther Tiedemann playing the octet contrabass with a violin bow-- and both of us being utterly astonished at the ease with which the big instrument spoke and the amount of sound it produced; a female violinist about 12 or 13 years of age who came to my table and played all the sopranos, mezzos, and altos with grace and a beautiful tone (unfortunately, her mother would not let me keep her); and listening to Sera Smolen playing my newest tenor violin in a group of 50 improvising cellists and hearing its distinctive tone above the entire group!
Henry Brant wrote his first musical composition when he was eight. Born in Montreal, he moved to New York City in 1929 when he was just 16 years old to study at McGill and Juilliard. He composed for a wide array of venues and ensembles that included radio, film, ballet, jazz, and the concert hall. He taught at Columbia University and Juilliard after World War II, and then he taught composition at Bennington (VT) College from 1957 to 1980. Brant was already known for his spatial compositions by the time he reached Bennington, but he was not satisfied with the sounds available from conventional stringed instruments. He envisioned a family of violins that would have the characteristic violin sound across as many instruments as it would take to play the range of the standard piano keyboard. He thought seven more in addition to the violin should do it.
His search for luthiers willing to build such a set of scaled instruments was unsuccessful until 1957 when he and cellist Sterling Hunkins visited Carleen Hutchins in Montclair, NJ. Hutchins agreed to work on his project, and so began the history of the new violin family. Brant remained interested in the development of the octet at least until 1965 when he wrote his Consort for True Violins for a performance in New York City.
In later years, Brant moved away from the octet and wrote works for massive ensembles that were often difficult to stage. He seemed not to think that his role in the creation of the octet was all that important, telling one interviewer that he had merely suggested the idea and that Hutchins had created "a rational string orchestra." But the wheel eventually came full turn. At the time of his death, Brant was working on a piece for Joe McNalley's Hutchins Consort, a California-based ensemble that plays on the original models of the new violin family.
Beginning in 1981, Brant made his home in Santa Barbara, California, where he died at the age of 94.
Composer Frank Lewin died at his home in Princeton, NJ on January 18, 2008. He was 82 years old. Born in Breslau, Germany, Lewin came to America by way of Cuba in 1940 after his parents fled Nazi Germany in 1939.
Lewin studied with a number of noted composers during his University years, including Felix Dayo, Jack Kilpatrick, Roy Harris, and Paul Hindemith. He received his Bachelor of Music Degree from Yale University in 1951, and returned there to teach composition as a professor at the Yale School of Music from 1971 to 1992. His academic career came to an end a few years later when he lost his sight. He continued to be involved with music through 2007, producing six CD masters of his music for Albany Records.
Lewin appreciated the potential of the new violin family and composed some of the earliest works written for the full octet, including an arrangement of the Sanctus and Pleni Sunt Coeli from the Mass L’Homme Arme by Palestrina. Original works included the Dramatic Suite for New Violins, scored for the lower six instruments of the family, and the Introduction on a Psalm Tune, which many have called a “masterpiece in miniature.” These pieces appeared first on vinyl discs from the Musical Heritage Society in 1979, and were subsequently remastered by Lewin and former NVFA President RJ Miller for a Compact Disc released by the New Violin Family in 2004.
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