MAW Welcomes Mosher Guest Artist Claire Chase

Classical musicians don’t come much more ambitious and open-minded than flutist Claire Chase. The accomplishments of the soloist, collaborative artist, curator, and advocate for new and experimental music are numerous, including founding the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) in 2001, which has premiered more than 800 works since its inception, while her recognition includes being named a MacArthur (“Genius Grant”) Fellow in 2012, and a recipient of the Avery Fisher Prize in 2017.

In 2014, Chase launched Density 2036, a 22-year commissioning project to create an entirely new body of repertoire for flute that has already paid dividends with new works from several important composers already created, including one by Matthias Pintscher, who conducted the MAW AFO two weekends ago. (We’ll hear two of the selections at the Lobero on Friday.) As evidenced by her MAW residency this week, Chase is also a deeply committed educator, and began serving as Professor of the Practice in the Department of Music at Harvard University in 2017. She has also overseen the development and implementation of education programs such as The Listening Room (for K-6 school children with no musical background), EntICE (for middle-school and high-school youth orchestras in underserved areas of New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles) and a wide variety of collegiate and pre-professional training programs. 

Chase talked about her career and her upcoming appearances at MAW via a recent email interview.

Q. What was it that led you to take up the flute? How has that affinity and resonance grown over the years? 

I saw the flute at a San Diego Symphony concert when I was three years old, and was immediately transfixed – first by the look of it, the way that the flute caught the light in the hall as the orchestra was warming up, and then when it started to sound I remember thinking that I had never heard anything so beautiful. The rest of the orchestra vanished for me; I just heard the flute. I told my mother after that concert that I wanted to play it. I was a little too young, so I started on the violin and piano, but I kept asking for a flute for each birthday until I was eight. Finally, at eight I was given a flute. I was the happiest little girl in the world, and I haven’t put it down since!

What has receiving the MacArthur Fellowship in 2012 allowed you to do you might not have otherwise? 

I contributed the bulk of the money back into the new-music community – to ICE and other small and artist-run nonprofit organizations dedicated to transforming new music and new modes of cultural production for the music of our time. I saw the award as an award to the work, not to me as an individual, and so I wanted the resources – the cold hard cash, yes, but also the far more meaningful platform that comes with it – to be shared with the communities that are building new and more equitable ecosystems for the music and musicians of our time. Takemitsu said something so beautiful about this, calling into question our Western fixation on the individual: “The art music of the West has developed throughout its history by means of individual geniuses, and out of the soil supporting them; non-Western musicians were born, and grew like the grasses of the field.” We really need to loosen our grip on this genius thing; everything of meaning that we do, we do together. So I would say that the Fellowship allowed me to build, resource, and cultivate more togetherness, as well as seed new projects and organizations. For this I am unspeakably grateful.

You have long been a champion of new music, both in terms of founding ICE back in 2001 (which of course has appeared several times at Ojai Festival – maybe you have some thoughts about those experiences?) and specifically for the flute with your ambitious Density 2036 project. What inspired you to create these projects? Why is commissioning and championing new music important to you? How has the Density project worked out so far? What’s on the horizon?

Commissioning and creating new music collaboratively with composers has been the through line of my life’s work, and was the impetus behind the formation of ICE nearly twenty years ago, so in many ways Density 2036 is just an offshoot of that larger pull. Density is inspired by a line of inquiry that begins, “How far can we push this instrument – and the spirit that runs through it – into the future?” Varese opened up a whole world of possibility in four and a half minutes of music in 1936. What worlds can we open through the lens of this little tube by 2036? I want each piece in the project to be a spark-plug for other pieces and other ideas, which is why it’s very important to me that the project and the repertoire serve to ignite an emerging generation of flutists and composers and audiences working together to imagine and make possible new densities. Even though I am committed to playing 21st century music in this lifetime, my great love is flute music from the 18th century. That was really *our* century as flutists, as soloists and chamber musicians, before we got absorbed in the orchestra. I’d like to think of the 21st century getting a little closer to the inventiveness, the joy and also the sheer volume of the outpouring of flute music in the baroque era. A girl can dream! Density 2036 is just one little part of that.

You have many years of experience with residency programs at a summer educational music festival via the Banff Centre Festival. How might that inform what you bring for a shorter tenure (I believe) at MAW? Why do you devote so much time to such programs?

For me, playing, teaching, and learning are all part of the same breath. Each is an extension of the other. There is nothing more important to me than mentoring a younger generation – which means transmitting knowledge and sharing experience, yes, but just as importantly, learning and changing and questioning myself in the process, too. The young people in my life – at Harvard, at Banff, through ICE’s education programs, and those that I meet and work with on the road in every city that I play in – inspire and challenge me, and I view them as my creative equals. I have more experience than they do, but creatively we are equals and when that respect and trust is in the room in a music-making environment, magic can happen. I’m deeply inspired by Paolo Freire’s writings about pedagogy, and by the notion that education either functions as an instrument to bring about conformity or freedom. Freedom is far more difficult. But that is what I am committed to bringing about in my students, peers and in all of the musical environments I seek to create.

I have only a little bit of information about the program you are performing at your concert on July 25 with MAW fellows. But I do understand there are some unusual pieces, including one where you sing and move around the room. Would you talk about the various works to be played, how you chose them, why they fit together, which ones you are playing with fellows, and the challenges/rewards of working on such new material with “students.”

In the spirit of freedom, we’re going to do an ambitious, deeply collaborative – and conductorless! – program of large ensemble works by Pauline Oliveros, George Lewis, and Marcos Balter – works that ask a body of players, in this case 19 people, to communicate and make complex musical and social decisions together as a group without language. The pieces are all very different stylistically and in terms of the processes they ask the performers to undergo creatively, but they are bound by a kind of sociality and collectivism that I think will be exciting and challenging for this extraordinary group of young people.

That same evening you will be performing at the Lobero with some other faculty, selections from Destiny 2036, which I believe were composed for you. Felipe Lara “Meditation and Calligraphy” (2014) for solo bass flute, and Olga Neuwirth “Magic Flu-idity” (2018) for solo flute and typewriter. Those sound pretty interesting. (And “Magic” reminds me of Liberace’s famous piece!). Can you talk about the pieces, please, including your part in how they were created?

Both pieces are part of Density 2036 – Felipe’s is a very early piece in the cycle (2013-14) and Olga’s is brand new (2019). Felipe wrote his piece in a single 20-minute sitting after a lengthy meditation that was inspired by the Mongolian calligraphy artist G. Mend-ooyo – it’s one of my favorite things to play, because even though it’s very still and scarcely three minutes long, a kind of epic-feeling, almost operatic drama takes place in that short duration. Olga’s piece is, by contrast, a wild, frenzied, action-packed duo for the unlikely combination of flute and typewriter, played here by the brilliant Conor Hannick. It’s a reduction of a concerto that Olga wrote for me and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra based on Brandenburg’s Fourth Concerto. In the flute concerto version, scored for solo- flute, two muted trumpets, string ensemble, keyboard, and typewriter, “Aello” alludes to one the harpies of classical mythology, “someone sent by the gods to restore peace, if necessary with force, and to exact punishment for crimes.” Conor and I will attempt to conjure all of this with our two little instruments!

You are also a panelist at the Clev/Rev conference seminar on
“Owning Your Creative Life and Future: Evolving Musical Communities and New Ensemble Modalities.” What are your thoughts in this area about what needs to change going forward? What do you hope comes out of the discussion?

My hope is that this will be a productive and inspiring conversation around navigating diverse creative paths in music for the 21st century musician. Gone are the days when you “just play the violin.” Our generation of musicians needs to take responsibility for the totality of the ecology we are creating and working inside of, and to do this we need new organizations, new ensembles, new energy, new and alternative economies that give artists more agency. I’m delighted to have two of my favorite people, Jane Saks and Joshua Rubin, join the conversation.

What do you have in store for your masterclass on July 23? Perhaps previews of the works for Thursday? Or?

No idea! But I’ll respond to whatever people bring, whether it’s baroque music or music written yesterday. I love being surprised.

CLEV/REV Claws at the Future

MAW’s third annual Classical Evolution / Revolution Conference features top artists joining media leaders, creators, thinkers and CEOs from Disney, The Kennedy Center, WQXR and elsewhere to communicate and consider the arts as the cultural fabric of society. Conference attendees not only get to hear from distinguished roster of guest panelists and speakers but will also have the opportunity to participate and ask questions to clarify and elucidate the exchanges.

The expertise is apparent right off the bat as the opening day topic, The Artistic Agenda: Serving the Needs of Artists and Audiences, begins at 10 am Monday, July 22, in Lehmann Hall with The Changing Life Experience, featuring Clemency Burton-Hill, Creative Director, Music & Arts, WQXR, moderating a talk between David Devan, President and CEO of Opera Philadelphia, and Deborah Rutter, the President of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, one of this year’s Mosher Guest Artists, reflects on how young artists can prepare for and create a meaningful life in music at 11:30 am in Yzurdiaga Hall, before Burton-Hill returns to run Break Through the Noise: Tools to Create the Career You Want and Deserve, featuring Clive Chang, Director, Strategy & Business Development, Disney Theatrical Group, and Andy Doe, Lecturer in Entrepreneurship, Trinity Laban School, Independent Consultant, at 1:45 in Yzurdiaga.

Owning Your Creative Life and Future is the theme for the single panel on Tuesday, July 23, as Claire Chase (see above) and her former colleague in the International Contemporary Ensemble Joshua Rubin discuss Evolving Musical Communities and New Ensemble Modalities with Jane M. Saks, President and Artistic Director of Project& at 3 pm in Lehmann Hall. Wednesday’s theme of Fame, Fortune and Money! begins with MAW double bassist Nico Abondolo taking on Ready For Your Close Up?: An introduction to an Artist’s Life in Commercial Music with composer Jeff Beal and conductor/orchestrator Larry Blank in Yzurdiaga at 1:45 pm. The conference comes to a close at 7:30 pm with a new event, the Fast Pitch Awards, in Hahn Hall, where faculty, panelists and audience members all get to cast a vote cash awards for the best ideas presented by the fellows.

While the conference is geared toward educating and involving the MAW fellows, all of the events are open to the public, with admission of $10 for each seminar (Fast Pitch is free). 

This Week at the Music Academy of the West 

Thursday, July 18: Aimard attack! Three straight days of events featuring Mosher Guest Artist Pierre-Laurent Aimard get underway with a recital by the internationally celebrated pianist who has been praised as a jaw-dropping virtuoso and auniquely significant interpreter of piano repertoire from every age. Aimard won first prize in the 1973 Messiaen Competition at the age of 16 and 44 years later was awarded the prestigious 2017 International Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in recognition of a life devoted to the service of music, to list just some bookends. Accompanied by Tamara Stefanovich – with whom he worked on the Grammy-nominated recording of Bartók’s Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion and Orchestra – Aimard will perform Bartok’s Seven Pieces from “Mikrokosmos” for two pianos, four hands; Ravel’s Sites Auriculaires; Birtwistle’s Keyboard Engine, construction for two pianos; and Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen (7:30; Hahn Hall; $55). 

Friday, July 19: Barely 15 hours after completing his recital at Hahn Hall, Mosher Guest Artist Pierre-Laurent Aimard returns to Hahn Hall to lead the Solo Piano Masterclass, in which he will lend his years of experience and knowledge following performance opportunities for fellows (1 pm; Hahn Hall; $10)… Perhaps the most exciting Picnic Concert of the summer takes place tonight, as an already exciting program of chamber music performed by the fellows gets topped off by the world premiere of a piece entitled Cocoon by acclaimed Chicago-based composer James Stephenson. A unique septet of instruments will come together for the work, as clarinet, oboe, piano, violin, harp, trombone, and a Persian percussion instrument called the tombak will make up the ensemble. Science and music meet in the Cocoon composition, which is based on Stephenson’s experience as an artist in residence at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), an environmental science research center affiliated with UCSB. The composer – who also recently wrote a new concerto for bass trombone that was premiered by the Chicago Symphony, and is the author of Compose Yourself!, a landmark young-audience work that has been performed over 300 times since its creation in 2002 – is also an alumnus of MAW (‘88 & ‘91 as a trumpet fellow), and he recently joined the faculty for last year’s Summer Festival as a composer-in-residence. Cocoon reflects what Stephenson learned at NCEAS, itself a place where unusual combinations of scientists convene and collaborate on complex questions about the natural world. The composer describes the piece as exploratory, interactive, and communicative, with each instrument offering its own melodies and others commenting in response, and concluding in a melodic synthesis of their contributions. It’s intended to mimic the scientific synthesis that happens at NCEAS, which Stephenson described as “a cocoon of ideas that grow, metamorphose and will eventually change our world.” A moderated discussion between the composer and the executive director of NCEAS, Ben Halpern, who is also a professor at UCSB’s Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, takes place prior to the performance. Meanwhile, assorted fellows will also perform more familiar pieces, including Schubert’s perennially popular Quintet in A Major, D. 667, “The Trout”; Bartok’s thrilling Contrasts; and Strauss/Hasenohrl’s Till Eulenspiegel – einmal anders! (7:30 pm; Hahn Hall; $10-$40). 

Saturday, July 20: Yes, it’s Aimard again, this time starring as the soloist for Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major, the centerpiece of a program performed by the Academy Chamber Orchestra, which is a slimmed down version of the fellows-powered AFO, aligned as a smaller ensemble. The Ravel is sandwiched between Thomas Adès’The Origin of the Harp and Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, featuring a trio of MAW Vocal Institute singers – mezzo-soprano Sun-Ly Pierce, tenor Ryan Hurley and baritone Samuel Kidd. And it turns out the whole concert will be conducted by Adès himself, as the brilliant and prolific composer-conductor steps in for Michael Tilson Thomas, who had to cancel all of his summer appearances due to health concerns. Adès, who was also at MAW last summer to conduct and play one of his works, has written three operas, including The Exterminating Angel, which has been performed at the Met, and Powder Her Face, while his orchestral works include Polaris the Violin Concerto Concentric Paths, and In Seven Days, a piano concerto with moving images. It’s always an extra treat to watch a composer conduct his own work (7:30 pm; Lobero; $46).

Monday, July 22: MAW’s annual PercussionFest – an annual aural and visual feast for lovers of rhythms and beats – finds faculty member Michael Werner both putting the five fellows (Christine Comer, Jake Darnell, Luca Esposito, David Yangsoo Yoon, and 2018 returning alumna Maddi Shake) through their paces on a potpourri of percussion pieces, and also joining in when another pair of hands is needed. The concert will feature a co-commission by Dave Merrick for two marimbas and two vibraphones, in Werner’s words, “a little bit of everything – a big drumming piece and some interesting works you don’t hear very often.” The latter includes Drew Worden’s 2014 “Escape: Sextet for Triangles,” which, as the title indicates, will feature all five fellows plus Werner wielding the three-sided metal ringers (7:30 pm; Hahn Hall; $40).

Tuesday, July 23: The great flutist Claire Chase (see interview above) is the centerpiece for tonight’s second Festival Artists Series concert in four days, featuring mostly winds but winding up with Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major, D. 956. Following Zelenka’s Trio Sonata No. 5 in F Major performed by oboist Cynthia Koledo DeAlmeida, bassoonist Benjamin Kamins, double bassist Nico Abondolo, Chase will perform selections from Destiny 2036, her ambitious project of commissioned flute works, including Felipe Lara’s “Meditation and Calligraphy” (2014) for solo bass flute and Olga Neuwirth’s intriguing “Magic Flu-idity” (2018) for solo flute and typewriter. But there’s no letdown when the Mosher Guest Artist leaves the stage as the Schubert will be performed by the returning resident string quartet The Takács Quartet, plus David Geber on cello (7:30 pm; Lobero; $46). By the way, Chase also conduct the flute masterclass earlier in the day back on campus at Weinmann Hall (1 pm; $10).