For the seventh consecutive year, Fivesparks will sponsor the weeklong Harvard Music Festival; this year it is June 17 to 22. With different sites in town center as venues, six groups of chamber music students and recent graduates will rehearse and take master classes, many of which community members are welcome to attend.
Honing skills
The festival is a unique opportunity for professionally bound musicians to hone their skills, gain knowledge, and engage with an audience; for the audience it is an opportunity to learn more about chamber music and the interactions among the musicians that are so important to its performance. The week will culminate in a celebration concert at the Unitarian Universalist Church Saturday, June 22, at 7:30 p.m., where each group will perform the piece they worked on during the week.
Founder and festival coach Judy Eissenberg, a professional violinist and professor of chamber music at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, is as excited as ever about the festival. She described the groups participating this year: a saxophone and cello duo from Boston Conservatory; two traditional string quartets (two violins, viola, cello), both from Boston Conservatory; a string quartet of two cellos, violin, and viola from Florida; and a string trio of recent graduates of Boston Conservatory. A piano trio (piano, violin, cello) with two students from Boston Conservatory and one from Boston University will have the extra challenge of members getting to know one another, said Eissenberg. She said that it is unusual to have two cellos in a quartet and very unusual to have a saxophone in a chamber music group.
Ana Diaz Asencio. (Courtesy photo)
Saxophone-cello duo
In following up on the rarity of a saxophonist at a chamber music festival, the Press talked to Ana Diaz Asencio, who came to Boston Conservatory from a small town outside of Seville, Spain, two years ago. She has just finished her master’s degree with a concentration in saxophone performance and said she has been “passionate about the saxophone since the age of 8.” No one in her family played a musical instrument, but her mother was always listening to classical and pop music, and she put Ana in music lessons when she was 4 or 5 years old to “play with percussion.” Diaz Asencio is staying on at the conservatory to pursue a doctorate in music. She wants to delve further into musicology, and, while she said she will always love playing, she wants to explore conducting as well.
Diaz Asencio explained that the saxophone is a “young instrument,” not existing until the 1840s, and so classical pieces have no sax parts. It’s hard to find a group with a part for a saxophone, she said, and even harder to find a piece of music for saxophone, a woodwind, and cello, a large string instrument.
But she and her friend Ricardo Sardinas found Sonata for Alto Sax and Cello, written in 1994 by Edison Denisov, who is described as one of the most significant representatives of contemporary Russian music. Of the three movements, she said it is the third that has the rhythm and harmony of jazz, a genre more common for the sax. “Though it doesn’t sound like jazz as we know it,” she added. The sonata is really a “conversation between the two instruments,” said Diaz Asencio. That means, as in all chamber music, the musicians have to know and trust each other especially because there is no conductor.
Diaz Asencio said Sardinas, who is from Cuba, is “one of my best friends and we love playing together.” They have been colleagues at the conservatory where they met two years ago. They immediately bonded, because they both speak Spanish and are “the same age and stage of our lives.” They have performed together but usually in a recital after only two days of practice. Diaz Asencio said she is excited for the festival, where they will have the opportunity to spend a long time practicing and then performing.
Outstanding coaches
And the festival offers the young musicians the benefits of outstanding coaching. Rhonda Rider, professor of cello and chamber music at Boston Conservatory, is coaching along with Eissenberg, as she has for the previous six years; but Judith Gordon, part of the festival since inception, has moved out of state. Joining Eissenberg and Rider is their colleague at Boston Conservatory, Marti Epstein, a pianist and composer. “It will be so interesting to have a composer’s perspective,” said Eissenberg. Also coaching is David Russell, a former student of Rider and Eissenberg who, the latter said, “is now a very sought-after professional cellist.” During the week, the coaches rotate among the groups so that each ensemble has the benefit of learning from different expertises. They also hold coaching sessions for individual musicians.
In addition to the music coaches, students will have a session with Debi Adams, who teaches the Alexander Technique, a psychophysical reeducation method that can help musicians improve their posture, movement, and coordination. In addition, the technique helps a player understand their body’s limits to prevent overuse injuries.
Community involvement
Eissenberg has said that a goal of the festival has always been to involve the community, to have the event be a shared experience of the creative arts. People are encouraged to walk in and out of those rehearsals that are open to the public. One can listen to discussions among the players and their conversations with the coach. And one can ask questions and interact with the group, gaining an understanding of the intention of the composer and the nuances of interpretation that are possible. If one attends a couple of rehearsals of the same group, one can see its growth and further enjoy their final performance because of having seen what went into it.
Community involvement is of even greater value to the musicians. Eissenberg had said about previous festival groups that being mostly conservatory students, either graduate or undergraduate, they are pretty much in an “ivory tower” and have not played much for an audience beyond their peers and teachers. With a wider audience at their rehearsals, they can see what questions a listener has about the way they are playing their chosen piece, making them look more deeply into how they are interpreting a particular section. “A rehearsal is an invitation to the audience and information for the players,” said Eissenberg.
The students are houseguests of members of the community and eat lunch and dinner communally in Fellowship Hall, with arrangements managed by Fivesparks board members. The festival is supported in part by a grant from the Mass. Cultural Council; those who want to donate to Fivesparks can find a donation form on its website.
See a full schedule of rehearsals and master classes open to the public at fivesparks.org.
