Volume 34, No. 1, Fall 2008

Non Profit Org.
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PAID
Randolph, MA
Permit No. 300
290 Huntington Avenue
Boston MA 02115-5018
www.newenglandconservatory.edu
Ken Schaphorst conducts
the debut concert of the
NEC Youth Jazz Orchestra
Thursday, December 18, 8pm
NEC’s Jordan Hall
Helen Carter
Ken Schaphorst coaches and conducts this
brand new group of NEC Preparatory School
students who promise to light up the night
with their big band might.
Don’t miss this FREE treat!
PLUS
Catching up on Venezuela
Meet Stephen Friedlaender
NEC partner profile: BMOP
concerts.newenglandconservatory.edu
In fall 2008, New England
Conservatory celebrates the culmination of the extraordinary 100th
birthday year of legendary living—
and still working—composer Elliott
Carter. NEC and local partners—
the Longy School of Music, Isabella
Stewart Gardner Museum, and
Harvard University—will present
all five string quartets, as well as
other works from the entire span of
Carter’s transformational journey.
NEC’s John Heiss has curated these
concerts to dovetail with the
Boston Symphony Orchestra’s premiere of Carter’s Interventions for
piano and orchestra.
Jeff Thiebauth
The Pulitzer Prize first went to
Carter in 1960 in recognition of his
works for string quartet. Elliott
Carter visited NEC in 1993, as a
young man of 85, for a residency
that transformed all who participated. Now, in his 100th birthday
year, he is handing out presents to
the musicians of the world in the
form of new compositions. NEC is
honored to present the premiere of
Tintinnabulation, a new work for
percussion ensemble (December 2).
Double bassist Donald Palma will
perform the solo work Figment #3,
written for him earlier this year
(December 3).
f
Je
carter
visit
www.newenglandconservatory.edu/
Pianist Stephen Drury (first from
left, seated) worked with Carter
at Tanglewood in the 1970s. He
and his wife, Yukiko Takagi, are
soloists in the Double Concerto
(December 3).
The Carter concerts
begin at NEC October 1 and extend through December
The complete quartets
November 11, Ariel String Quartet @ NEC, String Quartet No. 2
November 17, Pacifica Quartet @ Longy, String Quartet No. 3
November 30, Laurel Quartet @ ISGM, String Quartet No. 5
December 1, Borromeo String Quartet @ NEC, String Quartet No. 1
December 3, Chiara String Quartet @ NEC, String Quartet No. 4
Whitestone Photo
for full details of NEC’s Carter celebration,
extending from October 1 through December 3
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hi
Conductor and double bassist
Donald Palma (behind Carter)
is the premiere performer of
Figment #3 (December 3).
Elliott Carter’s 100th birthday is
December 11, 2008, at the conclusion of these Boston musical celebrations. In all, listeners will have
the opportunity to experience
Carter’s life works, with music from
every one of eight decades in which
Carter has been productive. For
new music lovers, this is truly a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
“ Our time is so much more
awesome, frightening and, certainly,
energetic. Therefore, its greatest
music must be and is more powerful
than the classical masterpieces.”
—Elliott Carter
NEC Preparatory and
Continuing Education
Dean Mark Churchill
with fellow cellists.
catching up on
“The orchestra
is a gang full
of heroes.”
NEC President
Tony Woodcock—
a violinist—makes
a beeline for the
string section.
— NEC President
Tony Woodcock
“There are
things more
important than
technique.
A child has to
fall in love
with the
instrument
and music.”
— Valdemar Rodriguéz,
director of Simón
Bolívar Conservatory
NEC’s Venezuela delegation
NEC President Tony Woodcock
and his wife, Virginia
Mark Churchill, NEC Dean of Preparatory and Continuing Education
Suki De Bragança, NEC Trustee, and her husband, Miguel
Marvin Gilmore '51 DP, NEC Overseer and CEO of the Community Development Corp. of Boston
Daphne Griffin, Executive Director, Boston Centers for Youth and Families
Randy Hiller, President, Board of Directors, Project STEP
Greg Holt, Music Director, Boston Arts Academy
Susan Jarvis, NEC Preparatory Violin Faculty and head of Academy Strings at BAA
David Lapin, Executive Director, Community Music Center of Boston
Elizabeth Leatherman, NEC Overseer
Linda Nathan, Co-Headmaster, Boston Arts Academy, representing
Dr. Carol Johnson, Superintendent, Boston Public Schools
Kitty Pell, NEC Life Trustee and Founding Board Chair of Conservatory Lab Charter School
Ellen Pfeifer, NEC Public Relations Manager
Ann Ellen Rutherford, NEC Overseer, and her husband, John
Anita Walker, Executive Director, Massachusetts Cultural Council
Joan Yogg, NEC Trustee
“Have every child play an
instrument. It reprograms you”
— Linda Nathan, co-headmaster,
Boston Arts Academy
At the end of June, NEC President Tony
Woodcock led a delegation of Boston educators
and community leaders to Venezuela. The group
spent a week catching up on work done by El
Sistema, the much-admired musical education
system that has lifted thousands of children out of
poverty and despair. The Simón Bolívar Youth
Orchestra and conductor Gustavo Dudamel, born
out of El Sistema, took the U.S. by storm last year
and left many asking the question, “Could the U.S.
benefit from these ideas?” The time was ripe for
this visit.
The group went to several nucleos (music centers)
and one visitor, NEC’s Ellen Pfeifer, took note of
everything, from the youngest students to veteran
teachers, from instrument making to innovative
spaces for study and performance. The result: a
detailed blog of the trip published at MySpace.
www.
visit
Churchill, Woodcock,
and El Sistema founder
Dr. José Antonio Abreu
renew the friendship
agreement between
NEC and El Sistema.
myspace.com/violadamore
Three generations of luthiers
hope to produce one luthier for
every music center.
for Ellen Pfeifer’s blog of the Venezuela trip
VENEZUELA
“I think there is
a good deal to
be done.”
—Stephen Friedlaender
Trustees go forward with
Friedlaender
A decade ago, at the end of a planning presentation to NEC’s
Board of Trustees by Stephen Friedlaender (at the time, an
overseer), Joe Bower asked: “So where do we go from here?”
It’s a question that hasn’t gone away. This year, as the Trustees’
new chair, Friedlaender will review a new Strategic Plan for
NEC. As the year goes on, “planning” will need to be Friedlaender’s favorite verb as NEC prepares to fundraise in support
of campus planning needs.
But the need to look at buildings is not what originally brought
Stephen Friedlaender to NEC.
Friedlaender is a music lover to the core, one who has just
returned from a Wagnerian vacation at Bayreuth, and who as a
child saw his parents cofound the local Chamber Music Society
in Greensboro, North Carolina. There, Stephen took in music
from all directions—as a concertgoer, and as a performer in his
school orchestra.
for NEC board rosters
visit
www.newenglandconservatory.edu/
leadership
While NEC’s new Board chair has never actually been a city
planner, he has created a city’s worth of buildings as a principal
at the Cambridge-based HMFH architectural firm. The awardwinning schools and adaptive reuse projects that distinguish
the firm’s portfolio are particularly germane to a school that is
a National Historic Landmark.
The formidable Clara May Friedlaender, Stephen’s late mother,
was one of the bastions of NEC’s support—whether as a board
member, a donor, or an ambassador. And she encouraged her
son to become involved as she had. This parental tradition of
service took hold.
As a respected architect who has seen, envisioned, or assessed
every conceivable idea concerning NEC’s campus, Stephen
Friedlaender is unquestionably an asset. Over the next five
years he and his fellow Board members will work alongside
President Tony Woodcock and his management team to capitalize on NEC’s recent growth—and design a new Strategic
Plan for NEC’s future development.
Paul Foley
N
ot so long ago, a Boston concertgoer who loves
large-scale music by living composers didn’t have a lot of
options. They could look for freak occurrences on the
schedules of local orchestras. Or they could Amtrak to
New York to hear the American Composers Orchestra.
for more on BMOP and other NEC partnerships
visit
www.newenglandconservatory.edu/
partnerships
LOCALBAND
MAKESGOOD
BMOP @ NEC’s Jordan Hall
The centerpiece of BMOP’s
Jordan Hall season is the
January 17 concert devoted to
the NEC connection. You’ll hear
an NEC student composer and
soloist, as well as music by
Kati Agócs, who has just joined
NEC’s composition faculty.
Other Jordan Hall concerts are
on November 14, March 20,
May 22.
Conservatory graduates trained to sightread literally anything—remember those crazy Solfège parties?—would
start to wonder what it was all for, if their true destiny was
to sleepwalk through the cello line in the Candide overture
until Social Security kicked in.
This all changed in 1996, when a brash young conductor
named Gil Rose hired a bunch of crackerjack local players
with the mission of “reuniting composers and audiences in
a shared concert experience.” Boston Modern
Orchestra Project, he called it. The “Project” implied
an admission that the idea might be short-lived—but 12
years later, BMOP continues to offer an ever-more-ambitious concert series, and, starting this year, one of the
most aggressive CD releasing programs in its field.
This success comes in part from Rose’s having found a
willing and well-matched partner for his Project in New
England Conservatory. Jordan Hall has been the home for
its main concert series from the very beginning, and
BMOP is contractually established as “NEC’s affiliate
orchestra for new music.” In some ways it’s NEC’s community orchestra, as students past and present have
joined BMOP for love of performing new music. At the
same time, NEC students in the audience enjoy a listening
experience they would never be able to recreate on their
iPods, since much of BMOP’s repertoire has never been
recorded.
This latter deficit has been attacked over the years with a vigorous series of BMOP recordings for such labels as Naxos
and New World. But the recording project took on a whole
new dimension this year with the launch of BMOP/sound, the
orchestra’s own label, with each month bringing a new
release. The first batch included generous representation of
NEC composers—and here we see BMOP’s other innovation. Boston is full of composers scribbling away at their
pianos and laptops, in their offices and on their back porches
—yet few of them ever get to hear their music performed here
at home, much less released on a Boston label.
Each January, BMOP rings in the new year with a concert
explicitly devoted to the NEC connection. Rose says that
“the experience of collaborating with NEC composers and
performers has been one of the high points of BMOP’s brief
history. I have found our NEC performances and recordings
to be among the most artistically rewarding of the last ten
years. In particular, I am always impressed by the quality of
the students, many of whom are now core members of the
orchestra.”
As the BMOP/NEC partnership matures, expect to see an
increasing number of BMOP/sound recordings recorded
here in Jordan Hall. NEC Head of Operations and Institutional Planning Hilary Field has been close to the BMOP
relationship both at its formation and now again as it moves
forward. She says that BMOP, with an acoustically impeccable base of operations in Jordan Hall, is poised to be
“the destination for new music recording in this country.
If you want it done right, you go to BMOP.”
NEC President Tony Woodcock is delighted to see NEC
students exposed to BMOP’s entrepreneurial model, and is
exploring ways to make this educational value-add more
explicit. Look for more dimensions to the NEC/BMOP
partnerships on the horizon—or just sit back and continue
to enjoy one of the best concert series in town.
These BMOP/sound releases of
music by NEC’s composition
chair Michael Gandolfi, alumnus
and former faculty Lee Hyla, and
former president Gunther
Schuller are representative of
the more than 100 new works
that BMOP has commissioned,
premiered, or recorded in a little
over a decade.
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©Helen Alva Makadia/courtesy Longwood S.O.
Those who know and love New England
Conservatory know that NEC’s Jordan Hall is
the dream environment for hearing music performed. But many Bostonians don’t even know
that NEC exists. And that’s why we sometimes
take the music—and the name of the school
itself—outside our walls, where new audiences
can be exposed to the musical values that
NEC represents.
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NEC went out to many fabled Boston venues
these past few months, including some that
are literally out of doors. Melanie Campbell ’08
M.M. sang the National Anthem at Fenway
Park the day after her graduation. Moments
later, President Tony Woodcock donned the
Red Sox colors and threw out the first ball!
Also in May, NEC’s Millennium Gospel Choir
sang at the recently restored Strand Theatre,
and flutist Bianca Garcia ’08 M.M. performed
with the Boston Pops in Symphony Hall. At the
end of the summer, NEC musicians were a
constant at the legendary Hatch Shell, including music by Preparatory School composer
Jeremiah Klarman with Jonathan McPhee and
the Longwood Symphony Orchestra. And all
year long, our Community Performances and
Partnerships Program took music to nursing
homes, libraries, and museums.
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Beth
for NEC concerts—both within and outside our walls
Tim Morse
visit
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concerts.newenglandconservatory.edu
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Nic Muni, former Artistic Director of Cincinnati
Opera Association, will direct NEC’s production
of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, December
5–7, at Boston’s Cutler Majestic Theatre.
Here’s what he has to say about the dark heart
of this opera.
Soprano Karen Holvik’s 1993
recording (with baritone William Sharp
and pianist Stephen Blier) of such Marc
Blitzstein gems as “Croon-Spoon” and “The
Cradle Will Rock” is precious to collectors—out of print, with an online search
quickly hitting a three-figure pricetag. This
sterling singer is new to NEC’s faculty this
year. And yes, she also does Mozart.
(In photo: as Constanze in
Abduction from the Seraglio.)
“Mozart’s opera is inextricably linked to
the period of its composition (1786),
because the central point upon which the
entire plot turns has to do with the droit
du Seigneur, the right of the Lord of the
estate to spend the wedding night with
the bride of any servant in his domain.
However, we in present-day America have
no emotional or visceral connection to this
critical point, and therefore we do not possess the emotional shorthand that Mozart
and the audiences of his day would have
had.
WE LCOM E
The NEC faculty is continually refreshed. Along with Holvik, the
voice faculty also welcomed baritone
Michael Meraw. Hugh Wolff became
NEC’s Stanford and Norma Jean
Calderwood Director of Orchestras. The
academic departments are enriched by
Rebecca Cypess (Music History), Jill
Gatlin (Liberal Arts), and Efstratios
Minakakis (Music Theory). Kati Agócs
joins the Composition faculty, and Boston
Modern Orchestra Project will offer a taste
of her music in Jordan Hall on January 17.
NEC’s Boston Symphony Orchestra connection is asserted by the addition of new
BSO second clarinet Michael Wayne to
the faculty. Ruth Harcovitz ’72 is the new
chair of NEC’s Alumni Council, following a
long term of dedicated service by her
classmate Robert Farrell.
“In our NEC production we are seeking a
way to visually provide that context and
make clear the extent to which the behavior of the characters is absolutely shocking and outrageous.”
“shocking and
outrageous”
—director Nic Muni
Michael Meraw
Michael Wayne
Kati Agócs
Goldovsky Centennial
NEC celebrates the centennial of another great Mozartean, Boris
Goldovsky, October 24–27, with masterclasses by Sherrill Milnes
and Justino Diaz ’63, a roundtable with opera notables who worked
with Goldovsky, and opera scenes with current NEC students. Visit
www.newenglandconservatory.edu/alumni/events.
Paul Foley
Eve Sussman
N E X T S T E P S Jazz and
Contemporary Improvisation teacher
Allan Chase ’80, who has chaired
both those departments, left to head
the ear training program at Berklee.
Opera stage director Marc Astafan
has gone on to expand his involvement
with professional productions. Horn
faculty Daniel Katzen retired from
the BSO and relocated to the
Southwest. Several longtime staff members
retired: School of Continuing Education
founder and director Samuel Adams ’67,
Director of Community Collaborations
Calvin Hicks, former presidential
Executive Assistant Anne Quinn, and
Concert Halls Assistant Carol
Woodworth, a 40-year veteran of NEC.
Adams will stay on at NEC as chair of the
SCE piano department.
telecharge.com
DROIT DU SEIGNEUR
www.
croon
spoon
something
like a state
of grace”
Two-CD set compiles
hard-to-find recordings
for the Vanguard label,
dating from the early
1970s to the ’90s, by
Paula Robison, who
occupies NEC’s Donna
Hieken Flute Chair.
Violinist Monica Germino
’90 works closely with composer Louis Andriessen in
Amsterdam, where both are
based. Her all-woman
chamber ensemble Electra
includes music of
Andriessen on a new
CD/DVD (a popular
European format).
Jazz faculty member John
McNeil plays on the debut
CD by Noah Preminger ’08.
Overheard in the hallway—
McNeil: “What are you
doing here? Teaching a
masterclass?” Preminger:
“Dude, I go to school here!”
Jazz drummer George
Schuller ’82 and his band
reinvent Keith Jarrett.
“tribute album
that exceeds its
goals because it
isn’t satisfied
with a simple
tip of the hat”
—Jazz Times
obituaries
NEC quartet-in-residence
the Borromeo String
Quartet performs Ars
Moriendi, about the death
of composer Steven
Mackey’s father, and joins
the Brentano String
Quartet on Gaggle and
Flock for double quartet.
Stephen Friedlaender
Chair, Board of Trustees
Tony Woodcock
President
Magyarkuti Barna
—The Guardian on
Danilo Pérez’s collaboration with legendary
orchestrator Claus
Ogerman
—Allmusic.com
Helen Hodam
New England Conservatory Notes
Volume 34, Number 1, Fall 2008
Rob Schmieder
Managing Editor
Director of Communications
rschmieder@newenglandconservatory.edu
Andrew Hurlbut
Production Manager
Design: Priscilla Serafin, Serafin Design
Cover design: Greg Gonyea
Printing: Universal Millennium
© 2008 by the Trustees of New England
Conservatory, 290 Huntington Avenue,
Boston MA 02115
www.newenglandconservatory.edu
NOTES is published for alumni, parents,
and other friends of the Conservatory.
We invite your comments, write to
notes@newenglandconservatory.edu
next issue / spring 2009 It’s true
that NEC is a magnet for piano students. Enough of
them to perform every single one of Haydn’s piano
sonatas during 2009, the 200th anniversary of the
composer’s death. With energy to spare—since some
of the performances will take place in Los Angeles.
Start marking the dates for both the Boston and LA
concerts: www.newenglandconservatory.edu/haydn
obituary texts and links to guestbooks will remain online for at least one year after initial Web posting date
“achieves
“from subdued
sublimity to
raucous rage”
visit
Bruce D. McClung ’83
received the Special
Jury Prize from the
Theatre Library
Association’s George
Freedley Memorial
Awards, as well as the
Kurt Weill Prize, for his
“biography” of the
Broadway classic
Lady in the Dark.
Anthony Coleman of NEC’s
jazz, composition, and
Contemporary Improvisation
faculties is joined by alumni on
Lapidation.
Alumni
Mildred B. Cloudman ’28 • Edwin
Pratt ’31 DP, ’32 B.M. • Lucretia
“Lee” B. Scott ’34 B.M. • Mary Tyler
Driver Young ’35 DP, ’38 G.D. •
Harry Joseph Gaumond Jr. ’36 DP •
Erma (Erickson) Carter ’40 DP •
Fern (Drumheller) Nye ’40 • Mary
Ellen (Nichols) Clark ’41 DP •
Elizabeth Lessen ’44 • Donald
Jimmy Giuffre
Sutcliffe Young ’47 • Louise Apostol
Joseph ’48 • Lorraine Keane ’48 •
Richard C. Gerstenberger ’48, ’52
M.M. • Jeannice Marston ’49 •
Samuel P. Simpson ’49 • Lorne A.
Ford ’51 • Richard Reyolds ’52 •
Leonard E. Bearse Sr. ’57, ’62 M.M. •
Daniel Collins ’67, ’69 M.M. • Albert
Williams ’74 • Elizabeth L. Meehan
’82 M.M. • Elizabeth Midgley ’87
M.M. Faculty Jimmy Giuffre •
Victoria Glaser • Helen Hodam •
Patricia Zander
Patricia Zander
www.newenglandconservatory.edu/
e-news
Pianist Zhu Xiao-Mei
’83 M.M., who now
teaches at the Paris
Conservatoire, writes
about her chilling experiences during the
Cultural Revolution in
China, when her “decadent” instrument was
off-limits—and happier
days in Gabriel
Chodos’s NEC studio.
IN MEMORIAM
Steve Dahlgren
www.newenglandconservatory.edu, select
© NEC
Miro Vintoniv
Pianist Russell
Sherman, NEC
Distinguished
Artist-in-Residence,
performs Liszt’s
Transcendental
Etudes at New
York’s Angel
Orensanz Center
for the Arts on
this DVD.