Greg Stepanich

Roumain disc explores genre game

Daniel Bernard Roumain is a Broward County native (Margate, Dillard High) who has made a name for himself already as a New York-based violinist and composer with his genre-fusing music. (Here's an NPR piece about his work.)

Courtesy of his publicist, I’ve got an advance copy of his new album, etudes4violin&electronix, due out June 15. The music is indicative of the kind of thing I’ve been hearing more of as I browse the Web, in that it is polystylistic — part classical, part electronica, part house — and that it speaks through all these genres with equal confidence.

I’ve listened to this disc a couple times now, and I’ll write a print review about it when I’ve listened a couple more times, but for now I’ll say that Roumain is clearly a talented violinist, with an intense but loose, warm sound at his best that I find very attractive, and that reminds me of Papa John Creach, of all people.

Of the nine tracks, so far the most musically substantive for me are the two selections Roumain plays with the Japanese pianist and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto — The Need to Be and The Need to Follow — both of which sound deeply sad and forlorn, but that also have moments of sheer loveliness. The Need to Be, at 10 minutes, is too long; there’s a better, shorter piece in there, and The Need to Follow is a little too hermetically sealed inside a small melodic and harmonic compass, but they’re both interesting pieces at first and second ear-blush.

Roumain also does pay tribute to the idea of the etude by setting himself some difficult technical hurdles (such as in the moody Divergence) and making sure they dazzle appropriately. I like his eclecticism and seriousness of purpose in making a musical statement with today’s material; I’ll know better after a few more listens how successful I think it is.

The thing that occurs to me as I listen, and the reason I wanted to mention this album before I’m ready to write a full review, is that a lot of new classical music I’ve heard seems to be less about a composer malking a statement than it is about a composer taking an auditory sample of his time. In other words, while we could expect composers of an earlier era to make something highly personal out of the music that was around them in their time, perhaps we are living in a time that engenders more anonymity.

It could be that all the technological resources at our disposal are simply moving composers into coming up with things that are mood-making and clever, but perhaps not very distinctive. How are you supposed to make your own personality felt through all the wealth of sounds an average person can hear at any time? Almost anything that’s been recorded before can be instantly found, and even the sounds available on a cheap electric keyboard can offer far more possibilities than a composer can get to in a reasonable time if he or she is trying to fill an assignment.

I still think composers need to create something original to be worthy of the highest respect, but there’s a great deal of sonic wallpaper out there that is often quite pleasant to listen to. It might be that the world’s standards have changed and no one needs a composer to make much of a statement anymore. It might be that all he or she needs to do is create something listenable that will set the appropriate background; perhaps this is where the dominance of our visual popular culture has come to.

I don’t know where Daniel Bernard Roumain’s new disc fits into all this — I’ll write something more substantial when I’ve listened to it some more — but I find myself thinking after only two go-rounds about what today’s musicians can do with all those sound resources at their disposal and what it is they need to do with them in order to make lasting art.

Anybody else have any thoughts on this issue? Post away.

Digitally speaking, classical growing fastest

An interesting news release is out this week from a file-sharing company called Grooveshark, which says it has signed a deal with Naxos for classical downloads.

Grooveshark will let members of its file-sharing community download selections for no more than 99 cents apiece and then take commissions from those transactions to pay copyright holders. I've never heard of this company before, and judging from its site it looks as though it's still being developed, but I'm happy to see classical included as part of the peer-to-peer business.

But the best part of this release was this factoid, which came out at the beginning of this year courtesy of a report by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (which you can see here):

Classical music is the fastest-growing music genre in the United States, with growth of 23 percent last year in digital downloads.

As I've pointed out before, technology is doing away with the genteel-culture accouterments that have previously put off music fans who might have wanted to explore classical but didn't want to don formalwear every time to check it out. And here's good statistical data to back that up.

In one way, we're seeing a repeat of the classical growth that followed the introduction of the compact disc in 1982, when everybody with a big chunk of classical vinyl replaced their collections with disc equivalents. What's different this time is the sheer vastness of the music available to people who like classical music.

Naxos, despite the contumely about how it floods the market with cheap releases by obscure performers, has literally saved the day for classical simply by focusing on repertoire rather than artist. No other company I can think of offers anywhere near the range of music Naxos does, and in that way they are ideally suited for the digital age.

If you're wandering the Web, and you hear something you like, it doesn't matter where it comes from or who recorded it, you just want to hear it. If that means you've discovered a passion for the operas of Antonio Sacchini (pictured above) — Naxos is offering Oedipe a Colone on its Web site — then so much the better.

A file-sharing network that respects copyright and also knows where to go to find a huge repository of classical music might be a good way for devotees and newbies to explore all that human creativity.

But right now, I'm basking in the glow of a little piece of data that demonstrates to me what I've believed for a long time: Classical music is alive and well, and in better shape than it has been in many a year. And it has technology to thank.

Book seeks 'culture of listening'

Lawrence Kramer is a professor of English and music at Fordham whose new book, Why Classical Music Still Matters, is out this month from the University of California Press.

I’m about halfway through the book, and Kramer makes good points, though at times he provides just the kind of woolly philosophizing that will turn off general readers who might be interested in the music but are too intimidated by its cultural trappings.

I’ll discuss those things when I write a review for the paper of the book, but in the meantime this particular passage gave me pause for thought about how classical goes about reaching people:

The energies of this music are still vital; its value is still inestimable. The trick is to unlock the energies and recover the value. What’s needed for that is a way to refresh listening: to reconnect the listener with a community and culture of listening, and to do so as far as possible without anxiety or defensiveness.

It’s hard to disagree with that, and I like the idea of a “culture of listening.” Anything that can be done to let people get immediately involved with the music and less involved with the ceremony that attends many concerts is praiseworthy. I think food does a lot to help, frankly, and the events that offer a little nosh along with the Nielsen encourage socializing, and that’s where the culture of listening gets going.

How many of us have pursued a particular composer’s work, or a performer’s recordings, because of a discussion we’ve had after a concert? It’s happened to me many times; you always seem to meet an enthusiast of one kind or another who can lead you on to different paths, or you can lead them yourselves.

I remember distinctly the offhand remark after one such concert, as I held a Pepperidge Farm cookie in one hand and some punch in the other, that led me to examine French organ music of the 19th century, which I found very rewarding and that deepened my cultural life.

Technology has made all music available to all of us in a way that wasn't possible before, but in order to know what to listen for, you’ve got to get people talking. That can happen on the Net, of course, but in our communities, concert promoters who encourage all of us to talk to each other afterward are advancing the cause of this music just as much as they advance their own.

Anyone else have suggestions for fostering a “culture of listening”? Post your comments below.

Notable this weekend: Seraphic Fire offers performances tonight and Sunday of Missa Criolla, a folk mass written in 1964 by the Argentine composer Ariel Ramirez, along with the premiere of a new work by Sydney Guillaume, a Haitian-American composer who studied at the University of Miami; St. Paul’s in Delray has an afternoon of clarinet trios on Sunday, including Contrasts, which Bela Bartok wrote for swing king Benny Goodman and violinist Joseph Szigeti (the three are pictured at the top of this entry in a photo from 1940); and the rising pianist Chu-Fang Huang gives a recital Sunday afternoon at Gusman Hall in Miami.

Review: 'Anna Karenina,' opera

It is unfortunate that the Florida Grand Opera is scaling back next year’s season to five productions instead of six, particularly because the sixth production of this year was nothing less than a triumph, and a milestone for this company.

Sunday afternoon marked the last performance of Anna Karenina, an opera composed for Florida Grand by David Carlson, and given its world premiere at the new Ziff Opera House in Miami on April 28. Carlson, working from a libretto by the late Colin Graham (who originally proposed the same subject for Benjamin Britten) that cannily adapts Tolstoy’s magnificent 1877 novel, has composed a richly tonal, well-crafted score whose mood of unrest and passion perfectly underlines and amplifies the turmoil on stage.

It is an eminently theatrical score, too, in that it doesn’t unnecessarily stretch out the action in trying to make musical points: the music drives the opera, but it also serves it, and that makes it compelling. Carlson gives his singers plenty to do, and makes sure that the points of greater display are well-integrated into the action and not random. He writes well for the voice and for the orchestra, for whom he scores with a good ear for color and instrumental variety.

The only thing the score of this opera lacks is strong melodies, though several passages came close. Not every opera needs to have memorable tunes, it’s true, and the bulk of the operas written during the last century are focused on almost everything but melody. But this particular treatment of Anna Karenina cried out for some great melody writing that it didn’t get — which only goes to show that the writing of a beautiful tune is one of the hardest things in all of composition.

Nonetheless, this is a good opera with a fine libretto, and troupes looking for a contemporary piece that will bring in the audiences and freshen the repertoire at the same time would be well-advised to investigate Anna.

Each of the principal singers sang well and persuasively. Soprano Kelly Kaduce’s Anna was sympathetic and touching, particularly during the scene after her miscarriage of Vronsky’s baby. Soprano Sarah Coburn was equally good as Kitty, as was mezzo Christine Abraham as Dolly. The veteran mezzo Rosalind Elias also was compelling in the minor role of the servant Agafia.

The male roles were just as strong, with baritone Robert Gierlach a believable Vronsky, tenor William Joyner solid as Stiva, and tenor Brandon Jovanovich lending a powerful voice to his portrayal of Levin. Perhaps the best of the men was bass-baritone Christian van Horn as Karenin. He had the closest thing to a clearly defined aria in the opera with his monologue (“She is so strange tonight”) after Anna’s flirtation with Vronsky at the New Year’s ball, and Van Horn received some well-deserved applause after it.

Neil Patel’s sets were simple and very effective, with handwriting on banners framing each scene, and simple elements — trees in spring, garden statuary — giving the right suggestion without weighing down the focal melodrama. Stage director Mark Streshinsky kept things moving and had his performers acting naturally and believably.

Robert Perdziola’s costumes were attractive and accurate, and lighting designer Mark McCullough kept the spots on the principals in crowd scenes and had the audience gasping as the lights of the fatal train neared closer to Anna — and seemingly everyone in the house — in the penultimate scene.

The Florida Classical Orchestra played beautifully under conductor Stewart Roberston, a masterful director who knows how to accompany singers and at the same time make certain that the orchestra has an independent life of its own. It’s hard to see how Carlson’s music could have been much better realized than it was here.

Anna Karenina is headed to other houses, beginning with St. Louis, now that it has finished its initial run in Miami. It should be a matter of real civic pride that a Miami opera company was able to bring off a brand-new work this well and send it on its way. In every important respect, this was a great achievement for this company and it says good things about the area that Sunday afternoon’s final performance played to such a large, enthusiastic house.

Anna Karenina is not likely to occupy the highest tiers of opera because of its paucity of memorable melodies, but it can certainly stand in a place of honor not far below. It should have a good future in regional companies that can get their hands on some good young voices and want to add some contemporary music to their repertoire.

Review: Misha Dacic, pianist

The Serbian-born pianist Misha Dacic has made a name for himself in South Florida over the past four years, and for good reasons.

He’s a formidable player, with impressive technique that he put to use earlier this month in the service of Romantic display pieces of tremendous difficulty and extravagant emotionalism.

For the first half of a recital program Sunday at the Steinway Gallery in Boca Raton, Dacic performed 12 short works by Sergei Rachmaninov, including arrangements of songs and a movement from the Cello Sonata.

Most of the dozen pieces were redolent with Rachmaninov’s melancholy melodic gift, in evidence already in a tender Melodie from 1888, when the composer was 15. In this little albumleaf Dacic demonstrated that he also possesses a strong sense of how to paint a simpler emotional canvas, utiltizing a lovely singing tone and making the most of its modest structure.

In the more substantial works such as the Prelude in E (Op. 32, No. 3), and the Etude-Tableau in C minor (Op. 33, No. 3), Dacic showed that he makes a good Rachmaninov interpreter. The busy sixteenth notes, martial rhythms and big bell-like motifs were appropriately clangorous in the Prelude, and he opened up huge, yearning vistas in the second half of the Etude-Tableau, which he took at a very slow but persuasive tempo.

There was plenty of excitement, too, in the closing work, the Italian Polka, played here in a wild arrangement by Arcadi Volodos filled with extra harmonic bite absent from the relatively conservative piano-duet original.

The second half continued in much the same vein, with three Earl Wild arrangements of songs by Gershwin (The Man I Love, Fascinatin’ Rhythm, I Got Rhythm) calculated to raise the roof, and they did, Fascinatin’ Rhythm in particular.

The Gershwin was followed by the deathless Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 of Liszt, in a rewrite by Vladimir Horowitz that Dacic apparently learned by ear, since Horowitz never could be bothered to write these things down. Dacic played this in high style, bringing out the bigger fireworks the Russian pianist added with aplomb and little evidence of struggle.

Dacic clearly admires Horowitz and the tradition of pianism that he came from, which was far freer than today’s, with its emphasis on faithfulness to the score. In linking himself to this past, Dacic does a good service for piano-playing in general; concertgoers can always use some risk-taking in the program.

But Dacic has missed one of Horowitz’s most important contributions to his art: The older pianist was obsessed with providing contrast on his recital programs. He was never happy until he could get just the right balance of pieces, ones that would be deeply serious, and others that would be entertaining.

A whole half of Rachmaninov, however, does not make for much contrast. As much as I like Rachmaninov (Dacic plays the First Concerto on Sunday night in Miami), he’s not a composer that offers much substance, no matter how lovely his tunes and harmonies are. And the Liszt and Gershwin the second half have much the same problem, though both these composers are wonderful writers in their own way.

It was the piece that opened the second half that offered the only real difference: the Arabesque, Op. 18, of Robert Schumann. All developing pianists play this 1839 work as students, not only because it’s a good thumb exercise but also because it’s beautiful and makes a great impression without being too difficult.

Fortunately, Dacic played this piece with high poetry, bringing out Schumann’s various moods nicely. He didn’t make as much as he could have of the closing coda; I could have used an even more deliberate approach, stressing each chord change and suspending time to the point of heartbreak.

Still, the Schumann proved that Dacic has the potential to be a complete pianist if he spends some more time with deeper, richer repertoire. It’s likely that there are few technical barriers that are off limits to him; now let’s see what he can make of the challenges of profundity.

Remembering Christine Nield

On April 26, flutist Christine Nield-Capote, who'd been principal flutist of the Florida Philharmonic and then the Boca Raton Philharmonic Symphonia, died at 56 of a brain tumor.

At a concert that month by the Symphonia in Mizner Park, trumpeter Jeffrey Kaye dedicated his performance of a movement from the Haydn concerto to his colleague (pictured at right), as my colleague Sharon McDaniel reported.

I heard her play dozens of times over the years, though I never met her. I missed a chance to hear her at the beginning of the year in a Mozart flute quartet with the Delray String Quartet, and I don't know how many other performances she gave after that.

Her death has occasioned real grief among her friends, one of whom has asked me to offer up some blog space for a tribute, and I'm happy to do so.

I talked this morning to Gary Green, director of instrumental music at the University of Miami, where Nield, a Boca resident, was a flute professor. He said her death came as a real shock to the UM community, and he had high praise for her work as a musician and pedagogue.

"Christine was relentless in her teaching, and it was teaching of the highest standard, of the highest qualities of professionalism,” Green said. "You knew you were in the presence of greatness with Christine.”

Green said Nield's students are playing in orchestras throughout the world, and teaching other flute students all across the country.

"Her students loved her,” he said, and many will be returning to the area for a memorial service sometime this month.

Green said he worked with Nield on a large piece by David Maslanka called Song Book for Flute and Wind Ensemble (her recording of the work with Green conducting the UM Wind Ensemble is available for download here at this site), and that she always played it to perfection. "She was a consummate musician,” he said.

Green said he "missed her terribly,” and had just remembered the last time he had seen her.

"It was in my office here and we were talking about something, and as she left, I hugged her,” he said. "I'll remember that for the rest of my life.”

If you've got some memories of Christine Nield, please go ahead and post them below — I'd be particularly interested in hearing from her flute students.

Nield might not have been well-known to the public at large, but it's musicians like her that keep classical music alive and flourishing through the daily excellence they bring to their craft in universities, chamber groups, opera companies, wind ensembles and orchestras across the country.

And that's worth celebrating, even at a sad time like this.

Brahms 'Requiem' shows off chorale well

Thanks to the good offices of Nancy Gates at the Master Chorale of South Florida, I've gotten a recording of the group's recent performance of the Brahms German Requiem at the Second Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale.

This is the former chorus of the Florida Philharmonic, and I’ve recently heard them do the choral part for the Beethoven Ninth with the Cleveland Orchestra and, last year, the Robert Levin completion of the Mozart C minor Mass. This is a big group, and when all of the singers are going all out, they can make quite an effect.

Conductor Jo-Michael Scheibe chose good, logical tempi for the various sections of this work (first performed in 1868 at Bremen Cathedral, pictured above) and he paid careful attention to dynamics, which of course is not just good musicianship but a fulfilling of Brahms’ intent: The composer himself assembled this highly personal series of texts from the Lutheran Bible, and the emphasis is on acceptance and comfort rather than fear and trembling in the hands of an angry God.

And this was a fine performance overall, with strong playing from the Boca Raton Philharmonic Symphonia. The chorale’s men were a bit underpowered, which was particularly evident in the second-movement fugue at the words Die Erloseten des Herrn werden wiederkommen (And the ransomed of the Lord shall return). This is a big moment for the men, who have to pound out the subject against an aggressive orchestra. But the music didn’t have the necessary vocal heft to provide the contrast needed between that section and the Den Alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras (For all flesh is as grass).

The soloists also did well in general. Baritone Keith Spencer has a tenor-ish cast to his voice, and that gave his reading of Herr, lehre doch mich (Lord, make me to know) a more urgent, pleading quality. Soprano Joyce Guyer sang Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit (And ye now therefore have sorrow) with more vibrato than I’m usually comfortable with, but the warm quality of her voice compensated for that and worked nicely with the reassuring character of the texts.

It’s good to see that the Master Chorale is still around years after the demise of the Florida Philharmonic, and that it still can mount can still mount satisfying programs with excellent local musicians. While non-professional choirs hold an honorable place in the local musical establishment, it’s good to know that there are professional groups such as the Master Chorale enriching our musical life.

The chorale could use some more strong male voices, and it would be nice to see it do some smaller concerts of other works. In the same week that the Brahms is done, for instance, you could have small concerts of the Liebeslieder Waltzes, for instance, or maybe some of this composer’s other shamefully neglected vocal music, such as the motets.

Just a thought, and it’s offered without any consideration for raising money or even whether anyone would want to do it. I suggest it because I think the chorale deserves a higher local profile, and something like this might help it get there.

Blogs take me back to conservatory days

My roommate in music school was a violinist, and many's the time I listened to him talk about his nervousness as he tried out for various orchestral jobs, even if it was just auditioning for a space in the unversity orchestra.

He's a session man in L.A. these days, but something I've been reading reminded me of the special vibe of orchestral auditioning. A New World Symphony bassist named Matt Heller, who recently was profiled in the New York Times, just won a gig in the bass section of the Calgary Philharmonic, and he writes about it on his blog, which you can read here.

Matt also mentions other inside-the-orchestra blogs such as one from Chicago Symphony bassist Michael Hovnanian, and another from a student oboist named Gabrielle, who writes about her life as a musician in Los Angeles.

There are other blogs out there that I've mentioned before about the musician's life, but I wanted to mention Matt's because it's an interesting look at life from the perspective of an orchestral musician, and he also weaves in other things he's interested in, such as the poems of Rilke.

One of the good things I get out of these blogs is a glimpse into the very interested, committed people who are busily working away in classical music and don't often seem to be overwhelmed with doomsaying about the direction of this particular art form. All I have to do is call up one of these dairies and I'm back in music school all of a sudden, debating performance markings, getting ready for lessons, writing music for counterpoint class — back in the swim of all of it, in other words.

And it makes me happy to read about all these fascinating people, and realize that classical music is in very good hands these days, and like as not we're going to see some tremendously interesting things happen in the near future with younger musicians like these in charge.

By the way: Cellist Ian Maksin posted a very good comment about what Mstislav Rostropovich meant to him on my Rostropovich entry; check it out if you haven't done so already. And this weekend, there are concerts on Sunday afternoon by the South Beach Chamber Ensemble down at Barry University (music by Schumann, Bloch and Ignaz Pleyel); violinist Carla Trynchuk and pianist Yoko Sata Kothari at the Maltz in Jupiter (music by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Franck, etc.); and pianist Misha Dacic at the Steinway Gallery in Boca (Rachmaninov and Liszt.)