New Classical Tracks with Julie Amacher - Minnesota Public Radio

Awadagin Pratt/A Far Cry/Roomful of Teeth – Stillpoint (Art of the Piano)

“When I'm talking to a non-musician, they often say, ‘Oh, you’ve played in Carnegie Hall, sure, that’s great.’ But the only time they say, ‘Oh, well, you must be something!’ is when they find out I’ve been on Sesame Street,” says pianist Awadagin Pratt. “It was fun. I did a skit with Big Bird about sharing the piano. He was pecking away at the instrument, and then I entered the room and he said, ‘Do you play the piano?’ And I said, ‘Sure, I do.’ And he said, ‘Well, why don't you play a little something?’ The lesson was about sharing and turn-giving, so we took turns playing.”

In the world of classical music, Awadagin Pratt has shared the stage as a pianist, a conductor and, on occasion, as a violinist. He grew up in Pittsburgh, lives in Cincinnati, and now commutes to San Francisco in his new role as a professor at the San Francisco Conservatory.

Recently, he also shared the studio with two incredible ensembles, including the string orchestra A Far Cry and the vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth. Together, they bring to life six newly commissioned works which appear on his latest release, Stillpoint.

“ I was thinking two things. One, we have to have African-American composers. The second thing, in terms of the unifying element was the poem The Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot, which I love. So I decided to fight. I decided we would look at The Four Quartets and see if the composers could take inspiration from some of the lines as a unifying element.

“The five lines that I chose are the lines that I love, and they seem to be the right ones:

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. ”

— T.S. Eliot

Time Past Time Future is the piece that Alvin Singleton wrote for you. He's an American composer who always hoped that one day he would hear you play his music. What was that experience like for both of you when you were playing his music?

“It was great. I had met Alvin decades before and he has such a lovely personality, but he was also so generous. He liked what we were doing. The sound, it was demanding because of the dynamic range of four or five keys to the extreme of four or five fortes . It's challenging because of the stillness, but he loved it, which was really nice. It's always great when a composer is smiling when you finish playing, like, okay, that's pretty good!”

The piece that Pēteris Vasks wrote for you is a solo piano work titled Castillo Interior , and it focuses on the past and future gathered. Can you explain what that means and how we hear that in the music?

He wrote a piece for violin and cello called Castillo Interior, as well. And that's the piece that he transcribed for me with changes, and the title of the piece references Saint Teresa of Avila who has these seven castles built on the pathway to understanding God.

You have, within religion, those opposites of ascetic and ecstatic, and maybe they're not exactly opposites, but there's sort of two opposing energies kind of working together as one. And so the piece is really compelling, people absolutely love it.”

Listen on YouTube

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Awadagin Pratt/A Far Cry/Roomful of Teeth – Stillpoint (Amazon)

Awadagin Pratt/A Far Cry/Roomful of Teeth – Stillpoint (Art of the Piano)

Awadagin Pratt (official site)

A Far Cry (official site)

Roomful of Teeth (official site)

Plinio Fernandes - Bacheando (Decca)

“For me, playing the guitar gives me a sense of identity, because it's something that I have been doing since I was very, very young,” guitarist Plinio Fernandes says. “I don't really remember my life that well before I was 6 or 7, which is when I started to play. Like brushing my teeth, drinking water, showering and breathing, I just have to play a couple of notes and feel like that grounds me.”

Fernandes is a Brazilian guitarist who grew up surrounded by music. As his father’s guitar rested on the sofa, Fernandes would pluck a few strings. Before he knew it, he was headed to London to study at the Royal Academy of Music. That’s where he met his roommate, friend and musical colleague, cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason. Fernandes and Kanneh-Mason recently completed a tour in support of Fernandes’ second recording, Bacheando .

Fernandes says the album’s name is just a made-up word inspired by the title of Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras and as an homage to the great German master Johannes Sebastian Bach.

How does the music of Bach and the rich culture of Brazil come together on this recording?

“Villa-Lobos, our greatest composer of all time, who really reshaped Brazilian culture, was massively influenced by Bach. His contemporaries were massively influenced by that connection between Villa-Lobos and Baroque music. In addition to taking the pieces that already existed, Sergio Assad was one of the arrangers and composer on the album. He wrote a piece inspired by that concept to pair with the Prelude, Fugue and Vivace.”

One of your favorite pieces by Bach, the Prelude, Fugue and Allegro, is at the heart of this recording. Why is this one of your favorite pieces?

“Very simply, it’s one of the most beautiful pieces of music I’ve ever heard. And I grew up listening to it. The three movements represent to me what perfection is.”

How did the piece that Assad created for you come about?

“I came to him and we were discussing the repertoire for the album and said, ‘Sergio, I would love to have you writing something specifically for that.’ And then he was very keen on doing something that he first wrote, the Prelude and Fugues. It's the first fugue that he has ever written, which is quite something and a privilege to have that. And then it just kept on growing until it became this little suite of three movements.”

Can you talk about what it means when you're describing colors in playing the guitar?

“I was basically trying to use everything that the instrument has to offer. I think it is a very specific thing to the guitar. One can talk about the colors that you create with the piano, but with the guitar … you use both of your fingertips to produce the sound, so it's a very personal thing. Depending on the size of your fingers or the length of the nails, each person will have a very particular and unique sound.”

Listen on YouTube

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Plinio Fernandes - Bacheando (Amazon)

Plinio Fernandes - Bacheando (Decca)

Plinio Fernandes (official site)

Simone Menezes, Camila Provenzale and Philharmonic Zurich – Amazônia: Villa-Lobos - Glass (Alpha Classics)

“I think it's very funny that people think I am creative,” conductor Simone Menezes says. “I just I feel like the ideas are in the air and I just take them.”

Menezes is a Brazilian conductor who is known for her creative approach. With her new recording, Amazônia , she says it was just “so obvious” that this project should focus on the Amazonian rainforest. Her goal was to make an important point with no speech, just music. In other words, it’s art that goes straight to the heart.

The centerpiece of the recording is a suite by Heitor Villa-Lobos, Floresta do Amazonas . It’s a work that Menezes believes should be part of the standard repertoire.

“My opinion is that this music has some very strong points,” she says. “The first one: It's an epic. It sounds somehow like Carmina Burana . It has this large aspect and sounds like monumental music. The second, because of Villa-Lobos’ lyricism, is very touching. Sometimes we think about Latin American music as happy music. But in this case, it's deep music and the melodies come from the influence of fado, which is a deep Portuguese song.”

Why did you want to bring the rainforest to the forefront through this music?

“ For me, the Amazonia is one of the biggest treasures of humanity. We should consider that we are in a beautiful garden that is this Earth, and we have our job as guardians of this garden. This project aims to make people see how touching and beautiful this place is.

“And it's very funny that Villa-Lobos, when he wrote many pieces at the end of his life, he wrote, ‘Maybe my music is our letters from the posterity.’ And I think this is the case with this piece now.”

As you are leading this piece of music with the orchestra, is there a part of it that you really enjoy?

“The most touching is the ending of the speech. It's called the ‘Epilogue,’ or the very last movement, because it sums up everything. And the melody is sung by soprano Camila Provenzale, but she did not sing with lyrics. It's just a kind of vocalese with the orchestra. I have conducted this piece maybe 11 or 12 times recently, and this was the first time that I saw musicians crying during the concert.”

Listen on YouTube

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Simone Menezes, Camila Provenzale and Philharmonic Zurich – Amazônia: Villa-Lobos - Glass (Amazon)

Simone Menezes, Camila Provenzale and Philharmonic Zurich – Amazônia: Villa-Lobos - Glass (Alpha Classics)

Simone Menezes (official site)

Camila Provenzale (official site)

Philharmonic Zurich (official site)

Ronn McFarlane and Carolyn Surrick: And So Flows the River (Flowerpot Productions)

“The music that we're doing is music that's really a part of us,” viola da gamba player Carolyn Surrick says. “It's like music inside of us, the way that the deciduous forest is inside of us, because this is where we're from.”

Surrick and Ronn McFarlane have both lived in Maryland for most of their lives. Their careers have run somewhat parallel, with Surrick playing viola da gamba in the Ensemble Galilei, which she founded in 1990, and McFarlane playing lute with the Baltimore Consort and the folk trio Ayreheart, the ensemble he founded. Three years ago, when touring came to a halt during the global pandemic, they finally had the time to make music together, and they’ve been doing so ever since. They’ve just released their third recording, And So Flows the River.

Surrick: “This is the music of our lives. We're both over 60, and we’ve had a lot of time to incorporate music into our lives, to have music become central to our being. And so I wanted to bring the idea that as our lives are flowing along, we're accumulating music, we're accumulating things that we love along the way and bringing them to this project.”

How did you decide on the title And So Flows the River ? How does it reflect what we're hearing on the recording?

McFarlane: “In terms of flowing, the repertory itself was a real flow state for each of us. It brought music that each of us loved, regardless of the genre that it came from. So I think we kind of get into a flow state when we're deciding what to play, bringing up pieces from any memory, any part of our lives, anything we might have heard of, or maybe we're just discovering something for the first time.”

The album features Erik Satie’s Gymnopedies . What is your relationship to the pieces?

Surrick: “I think we both remember hearing them for the first time in the 1970s and thinking this music is so special. I mean, so simple and so beautiful. It has so much in it. So when we were casting about for what to put on this new recording, I said, ‘what about the Gymnopedies ?’ And it was kind of like, ‘Well, why not?’”

McFarlane: “My first experience of them was in the 1970s, but I didn't hear it on the piano at first. I heard it live in a guitar recital played by Christopher Parkening, who made some excellent arrangements of them. But I was so captivated hearing the first Gymnopedie for the first time that I really fell in love with it.”

You both also heard about Bach’s Sinfonia in the 1970s. What is your relationship with that piece?

McFarlane: “Yes, I first heard it when I went to a record store. That was back when they had records around 1968 or ‘69. I got the first Led Zeppelin album and the Walter Carlos, now Wendy Carlos, album Switched-On Bach . So I first heard this on a synthesizer with all its boops and beeps and whistles. So I think my idea of how it ought to sound was permanently skewed by hearing it that way. And it just sounded so fresh and great.”

And now you have added your own arrangement of the piece, which you described as a revelation. Why did you describe it that way?

Surrick: “We sat down to play it, and there was so much happening. You almost can't imagine that these two instruments could be doing all of this at the same time.”

And you have a percussionist on the recording?

Surrick: “Yes. Yousif Sheronick. He's fabulous. And so I call him up out of the blue, and he's like, ‘Yeah, cool. I'm free.’”

Give me an example of his playing in this recording that you want to make sure we don't miss.

McFarlane: “Well, I think the very first piece, W. Lee’s Reel , where Yusif is playing an ocean drum, is a great one.

“This piece has kind of a Scotch-Irish flavor to it, which reflects my dad's background. It's a sort of adventurous piece because it has something in the flute part that sounds like a propulsive fiddle tune in the Scotch-Irish tradition. And yet that's not the lead voice. You would think so because of the beginning. But as it goes along, the gamba comes in and actually has the melody as the slower moving part. Somehow, it seemed to fit the personality of my dad.”

W. Lee's Reel

Resources

Ronn McFarlane and Carolyn Surrick - And So Flows the River (Amazon)

Carolyn Surrick - official website

Ronn McFarlane - official website