Chamber Music

Chautauqua School of Music’s Alexander Gavrylyuk, Heintzelman Family Artistic Adviser of the Piano Program, and Aaron Berofsky, violin faculty and chair of strings, will perform together at 4 p.m. Saturday, June 29 in Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall, in the first recital of the 2019 Chautauqua Chamber Music Resident Artist Series.

Gavrylyuk and Berofsky will play three pieces: Johannes Brahms’ Sonata No. 2 in A major, Robert Schumann’s Sonata No. 1 in A minor and Sergei Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 2 in D major.

“They’re such introspective, beautiful pieces, and in a way they have that in common with each other,” Berofsky said. “At the same time, they’re stylistically very different.”

Gavrylyuk said the pieces are some of the most well-known violin and piano sonatas; both artists are familiar with them and have played them many times before.

“It’s like a friend you keep revisiting,” Berofsky said.

Brahms’ piece is about 20 minutes long, Berofsky said, and is probably the gentlest of the three pieces.

“It is a very philosophical work,” Gavrylyuk said. “It’s structured very much like a baroque building … with a very solid foundation but with a very delicate structure above the foundation. It is quite humorous at times; at other times it is very romantic and very lyrical. I think one hears the songs of love there, as well as prayers (and) intimate moments.”

The piece begins with the marking Allegro amabile, which essentially translates to “fast and friendly,” evoking a mood that continues throughout the piece.

“It’s very kind and open-hearted, so I feel very close to that piece,” Berofsky said.

The Schumann piece is a bit shorter, around 17 to 18 minutes long. It is an unusual choice for violin, Berofsky said, and the violinist must be flexible with the pianist while playing.

“Schumann has led a very tormented life, and one can hear it in his music,” Gavrylyuk said. “It’s kind of a bittersweet first movement, followed by a very elegant and very tender kind of second movement, and the third movement is very dramatic and determined.”

The Schumann piece is an interesting companion to the Brahms, Berofsky said, because both pieces have thematic elements of love — and both men loved the same woman: Clara, Schumann’s wife. He described the piece as “crazed and kind of hyper” at times, but also as “a love theme.”

“It’s very tender,” Berofsky said. “The emotions go from zero to 60, really quickly.”

The Prokofiev piece is a bit longer than the others, clocking in around 25 minutes — standard timing of a sonata from the late Romantic-period, Berofsky said.

This piece is markedly different from the others in its overall tone.

“Prokofiev was a master in creating this kind of very sarcastic reflection of reality,” Gavrylyuk said. “This sonata is definitely not an exception to that. It’s a very ironic sort of piece.”

However, the piece fits well with the others in that it contains both the intimacy of Brahms and the storminess of Schumann.

“Each piece has its own moments of repose and then moments of wildness,” Berofsky said.

This is the second year for the Chautauqua Chamber Music Resident Artist Series, which gives music faculty a chance to perform in a smaller setting, not just in concerts accompanied by an orchestra.

“Chamber music is just the most intimate and deep way of communicating through music,” Berofsky said. “It’s very personal. There’s no hiding. … (It’s) about communicating the deepest emotions and making people come together through music.”

Unlike solo recitals where the artist is alone with the audience, and concertos where the whole orchestra shares the music, chamber music is like a conversation between just a few musicians.

“What happens often, without any discussion, is that you start finding a common language and start playing on the same radio wave,” Gavrylyuk said. “In fact, I find that the less discussion the better, because then you have to use your intuitive abilities to find each other and then merge together.”

Cristina Pato has many different roles: New York University educator, composer, pianist and writer. But at Chautauqua Institution, she is best known for one role in particular: Galician bagpipe master.

Pato, who first visited Chautauqua in 2018 as part of Silkroad Ensemble, will perform with her quartet today and Tuesday with two programs based around intercultural conversations.

The Cristina Pato Quartet will perform “Migrations” at 4 p.m. Monday, June 24, in Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall as part of the Chautauqua Chamber Music Guest Artist Series. Seats are first come and require a free ticket, which can be picked up starting at 7 a.m. today at the Welcome Center Ticket Office. The quartet will perform “Latina” at 8:15 p.m. Tuesday in the Amphitheater.

Pato is one of the world’s most renowned  gaita players. In 1999, she became the first female gaita player to release a solo album, and she has continued developing her art as both a soloist and an ensemble member ever since.

While the gaita is a traditional instrument of her home region in Galicia, Spain, Pato’s performances incorporate elements from folk to jazz. Pato said her music begins with Galicia but incorporates elements from vastly different cultures.

“It will be a combination between Galician mediums and jazz mediums — a conversation of many different places,” Pato said. “Although I was trained in the Galician tradition, what I do onstage is now connected to my multi-cultural journey.”

That journey includes three other quartet members with their own voices, instruments and backgrounds: accordionist Julien Labro, bassist Edward Perez and drummer Mauricio Zottarelli.

The quartet members’ voices blend together in “Migrations” — an examination of how their individual journeys collide, Pato said.

“The four of us are coming from different backgrounds and different migratory journeys to meet in New York,” Pato said. “The program will travel the different ways of understanding the music of each of my quartet players.”

The members are trained in separate traditions, and Pato aims to bridge the unique musical languages. Together, she said, the whole music experience is greater than the sum of its parts.

“I am the one making the bridge between the other languages that I speak, from classical to folkloric music to their language,” Pato said. “And somehow we tried to create something that is unique, but is also connected to all the places that we come from.”

Last season, Pato performed both as part of the Silkroad Ensemble and as a soloist with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra. Silkroad, which was founded in 2000 by renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, is a music group that promotes collaboration among diverse musicians. This year, she returns as part of her quartet to share a program of their own making — a narrowing-in of storytelling, from a full ensemble to just the four members of Pato’s quartet.

To Deborah Sunya Moore, vice president of performing and visual arts, Pato exemplifies Silkroad’s message.

“This woman who plays Galician bagpipes, who plays piano, who is a jazz musician, who is a classical musician, who is lifting up and sharing music from her own culture — I thought that’s truly what Silkroad is about,” Moore said.

But, Moore added, Pato’s strong individual voice helped bring her back to Chautauqua for another two performances.

“She was such an engaging artist and person that I wanted to bring her back this year to focus on a program that she wanted to present,” Moore said.

Amid the hustle of Chautauquans scurrying to get ready for the season, the Chautauqua Opera Company rolls out its program for the summer and its 90th anniversary.

With this celebration comes certain changes to the original structure of the season, bringing more opera productions as well as modern twists to classic stories.

The mainstage productions this season are a take on the Beaumarchais Trilogy, written by Pierre Beaumarchais in the mid-1700s. The play trilogy, consisting of The Barber of Seville, The Marriage of Figaro and The Guilty Mother, are the basis for the operas. Each story follows the Count Almaviva, Countess Almaviva, Figaro and Susanne as they confront love, loss and the social attitudes during the French Revolution. 

Chautauqua Opera will perform Vid Guerrerio’s ¡Figaro! (90210), an adaptation of The Marriage of Figaro, on June 28, 30, and July 7, 14 and 26. On July 5, 8 and 25, Chautauqua Opera will perform Gioachino Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia. The last opera in the trilogy, John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles, a take on Beaumarchais’s The Guilty Mother, will be performed on July 27.

¡Figaro! (90210) follows undocumented workers Figaro and Susanna in Beverly Hills.

The twist on the opera classic brings to the surface issues from 200 years ago that are still relevant today.

Deborah Sunya Moore, vice president of performing and visual arts, said Chautauqua Opera is trying to demonstrate that opera isn’t simply an old art form with no room for modern change.

“What we are trying to focus on is relevant current work for all generations,” Moore said. “I think there is a prevalent feeling that opera is something that is steeped in tradition and something that is old.”

Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia is to be performed traditionally, while The Ghosts of Versailles is a more deconstructed adaptation of the original score. Moore said the mainstage operas are a form of entertainment for all types of Chautauqua audience members.

“While it is certainly steeped in tradition, it’s intergenerational, alive and current,” Moore said. “What I love about this season is that we have masterworks in all of these categories.”

Steve Osgood, general and artistic director of Chautauqua Opera, knew this 90th anniversary season needed to be special.

“Ninety is a pretty big number,” Osgood said. “It was important to market somehow, to do something unique and special.”

Osgood revamped the entire season from the structure of past summers.

Audiences now have the opportunity to see more opera during their stay, with more than one opera being offered every week.

This season, four guest artists and 24 young artists in Chautauqua Opera are set to perform the different productions every week.

The artists, who are young professionals, are on their way to finishing master’s programs in opera or have just finished their higher education.   

To make the rigorous performance schedule a reality, the four guest artists have a prolonged stay at the Institution.

During Week Five on July 25, 26 and 27, Chautauqua Opera will perform the whole Beaumarchais Trilogy in story order for their very own opera festival.

Audiences can see three operas of the Beaumarchais Trilogy in three consecutive days, something that has not been done before, ever, according to Osgood.

Osgood and Moore hope to attract people to Chautauqua specifically for opera.

“One of the big things that we are hoping opera will do for Chautauqua is that we can attract new people to Chautauqua that have come just for the opera,” Moore said.

The weekly Opera Invasions are a piece of the opera puzzle here on the grounds, giving opera a platform to engage with audiences on a personal level.

Each week, the young artists who choose to participate, get off the stage and travel the grounds where they perform different musical pieces for less than an hour, with little to no rehearsal.

The first of these Opera Invasions, which will take place Sunday, celebrates the 90th anniversary of Chautauqua Opera and Norton Hall, by immersing audiences in the vast repertoire performed since 1929.

From the Beaumarchais Trilogy to the Opera Invasions, Moore said this is a more diverse opera season with much more to offer Chautauquans.

“I think we have an opera season that will be a springboard for thought and discussion, and I think that is what Chautauqua is all about,” Moore said.

It’s difficult to over-emphasize the impact that Sharon Isbin has had on the classical guitar. She has all of the accolades of a top-shelf musician: Grammy Awards, plenty of studio albums, appearances in major motion picture soundtracks and praise from luminaries like Martina Navratilova and Michelle Obama.

But Isbin’s legacy as an educator might go even further than her personal achievements. She’s director of The Juilliard School’s classical guitar program, which she founded in 1989, and since then has trained many of the world’s most successful guitarists.

For example, Isbin’s student Bokyung Byun won the nearby Buffalo Philharmonic’s JoAnn Falletta International Guitar Concerto Competition this past June, and Tengyue Zhang — another student of Isbin’s — was runner-up. Last year at another prestigious international guitar competition, Zhang won first prize, and Byun took second.

At 4 p.m. Mon., Aug. 20, in Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall, Isbin will give a concert of Latin-American music in the final Chamber Music Guest Artist Series of the season.

The performance requires a complimentary ticket, which can be obtained on a first-come basis at the Main Gate Welcome Center Ticket Office, which opens at 7 a.m. If available, tickets can also be obtained at the Visitors Center, which opens at 9:30 a.m. Seats are held until 15 minutes before the start of the performance.

This afternoon, Isbin will be joined by another former student, Colin Davin, a successful guitar soloist in his own right.

“It’s always a great source of pride for me when they launch and they end up establishing their own very prestigious careers,” Isbin said. “(Davin) is teaching on the faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music and is a beautiful player, and it’s really fun for me to be able to do duets with him because we’ve worked together for so long in one context or another that there’s a real symbiosis.

The two met when Davin was just 15 years old at a master class in Buffalo, and then a year later as student and teacher at the Aspen Music Festival and School. Eventually, Davin would go on to earn his master’s degree studying with Isbin at Juilliard.

When Davin got to Juilliard, he was already playing professionally and entering guitar competitions, so he was already at a high level of performance. But while studying at Juilliard, Isbin’s extreme attention to detail pushed him to the next level, Davin said.

“I recall in particular a lesson we had on a slow movement from a Bach sonata,” Davin said. “Technically speaking, it was the easiest movement of the piece, but that was one of the hardest lessons I ever had because she was so zoomed-in on in the exact shaping of every little micro phrase and how it might fit into the larger phrase.”

The concert will feature solos and duos from composers such as Isaac Albéniz, Leo Brouwer, Enrique Granados and Francisco Tárrega. For Isbin, one of the highlights will be Brouwer’s “El decameron negro” (“The Black Decameron”), a work for solo guitar that she said has quickly taken a central place in the solo guitar repertoire since its composition in 1981.

“It’s inspired by love songs collected from Africa in the 19th century by a German anthropologist, and there are three different ballads in this set,” Isbin said. “One is about lovers fleeing through the ‘Valley of the Echoes,’ another about a warrior who is much beloved by his tribe but is then banished because he plays the harp —  a good metaphor for many things —  and then, about a maiden in love.”

Davin will join Isbin to perform Howard Shore’s “The Departed Tango,” written for the Martin Scorsese’s Oscar Award-winning movie, “The Departed.” The piece was written for Isbin, and she recorded it as a duo with herself for the movie.

“When Howard Shore and Scorsese began to discuss music for the film, they landed on the idea of the tango, which would be evocative of the dance of death between the Bostonian police officer and the Irish mafioso figures in the film,” Isbin said. “The tango, I think, fits in nicely with the South and Latin American flavor of this program.”

Caitlyn Kamminga’s bio begins as many do, with degrees from a prestigious music school. The next few items reveal her eclectic career as an international orchestral musician, with positions in the United States, Hong Kong, Wales and London — but the current item is probably the most surprising.

In 2009, Kamminga — a member of the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra —  left her life as an orchestral player and moved to Trinidad to be on the faculty of the then-new Academy for the Performing Arts at The University of Trinidad and Tobago.

At 4 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 18, in Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall, Kamminga will share a slice of Trinidad with Chautauquans in a performance of “River of Freedom: The Journey of Black Freedom Fighters in the War of 1812,” a work with music by composer Adam Walters and words by Kamminga.

This concert will be the final installment of the Resident Artist Series, a chamber music concert series featuring CSO musicians and School of Music instructors.

When Kamminga and her family moved to Trinidad, they were only planning on staying for a few years. It was difficult to raise a family in the hard-working classical music scene in London, so they jumped at the opportunity for a change of pace — nine years later, they’re still there.

“It was just an opportunity to bring the family together,” Kamminga said. “We thought that even if we only had a couple of years there, it would be an amazing cultural experience. Then, we just started planting seeds, and those seeds started to grow, and now we’re just ensconced in the tapestry of Trinidad.”

As Kamminga became more entrenched in Trinidad, she also began to learn more about the culture and history of the island nation. In 2012, Kamminga and Walters came across the story of the Merikins, black Americans who fought for Britain in the War of 1812 in exchange for their freedom.

After the war, the British army gave some of those soldiers and their families land in southern Trinidad. “River of Freedom” is a interdisciplinary work of music and poetry that tells their story.

The “River of Freedom” story involves several different nations: the United States as the place where the black soldiers came from, Britain as the nation that offered them freedom, and Trinidad as the place where they would go. Because of that, Walters has included snippets of the national anthems of all those countries in the music, in addition to a variety of different hymns that one would hear in the spiritual baptist churches of Trinidad.

The land those soldiers received, according to Kamminga, was the heart of the Trinidadian jungle — not exactly habitable territory. But the soldiers persisted: their settlements survive, and are still named according to where each company settled (First Company Village, Second Company Village, et cetera). 

“River of Freedom” was premiered by Kamminga and others in those company villages.

“It was both scary and exciting,” Kamminga said, “because when you create a piece of art, then it goes out into the world and people get to have their own reaction to it. But we were delighted that the Merikin population loved it.”

This performance of the piece will be its American premiere and will feature CSO musicians, Kamminga, her husband, Aidan Chamberlain (trombone), steelpan player Mia Gormandy, and Chautauqua Theater Company conservatory actor Elijah Jones as narrator.

The premiere also featured projections of artwork done for the project by Trinidadian artist Che Lovelace, but Kamminga said that this rendition of “River of Freedom” will not include those projections.

“I decided that this would be a great opportunity to make sure that the piece stands on its own as a narrated piece of music, and we know it does.”

This project is the next in a streak of interdisciplinary collaborations that Kamminga has been a part of. Some of that is due to her nature — Kamminga said she has always been interested in the intersections of the arts, reading Goethe alongside Beethoven and studying Manet while learning Debussy.

But another part of it, Kamminga said, is the culture on the island of Trinidad.

“Trinidad kind of reminds me of Paris in the Toulouse-Lautrec times, when you had all of these artists and musicians and actors and choreographers just in this little pool of artistic work. Because it’s so small, people do a lot of different things.”

-Caitlyn Kamminga, Co-creator, “River of Freedom”

Like many people, John and Margaret Wilbur first heard about Chautauqua Institution through word of mouth.

“We came and we started to figure out what it really was,” John Wilbur said, “just like everybody else who has some sort of brief description that never is quite adequate to what the whole place is about.”

One of the many facets of the Institution they discovered and grew to love was the Chautauqua Chamber Music Series. They began to look forward to the performances every season, and their years of enjoyment led them to underwrite a show in the series for the 2018 season.

They were especially motivated to sponsor a performance when they heard the series might have been discontinued following the passing of its former namesake patron, Kay Logan.

The Wilburs’ donation is underwriting the performance of guest artist Nicholas Phan at 4 p.m. Monday, July 23, in Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall. Phan has performed with San Francisco Symphony, Toronto Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

The Wilburs’ interest in music goes back to their early adulthood. They enjoy many genres of music, including classical music, jazz and rock.

“My mother was very musical,” Margaret Wilbur said.

Growing up, her mother was a music teacher and played many instruments. Yet Margaret Wilbur was not very interested in music as a child.

“I had never heard an orchestra play until I was in college,” she said. “The first time I heard the orchestra was in Cleveland when I was in college. And, of course, we went to a lot of rock concerts in the ’70s.”

John Wilbur also discovered classical music in college.

“I got introduced to classical music mostly when I went to school at Case (Western University),” he said.

As a native of Cleveland, Ohio, he also enjoyed the Cleveland Orchestra, which he said ranks as one of the best orchestras in the world.

Although the music programs at the Institution stand out to the Wilburs, they also explore a variety of events — from lectures to the swan races during the CHQ Olympics. Their philanthropic investment expands beyond the Chautauqua Chamber Music Series, as they also have created a garden endowment in memory of John Wilbur’s mother.

Some of the couple’s most cherished memories at the Institution are the times spent with their families. For them, endowing a garden represents that the Institution is a gathering place for their family.

“Everybody does gather here at least once a year,” John Wilbur said. “That’s why we made the memorial gift. … As (our family) keeps coming and their children come, it becomes part of the family, and the family has a relationship to the space.”

Few things remain as constant throughout the ages as love — and the fact that people write songs about it. When tenor Nicholas Phan was learning Baroque love songs, he was surprised by how relatable they were given that they’re around 400 years old.

“The experience of falling in love with somebody is not really that different than it was 500 years ago,” he said. “As a teenager, I’m sure I could relate to the angst of it all, too.”

Phan will perform a selection of those songs in a program called “A Painted Tale” at 4 p.m. Monday, July 23, in Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall. He will be joined by flutist Michael Leopold and violist da gamba Ann Marie Morgan as part of the Chautauqua Chamber Music Guest Artist Series.

The trio recorded “A Painted Tale” for album release in 2015. The album received outstanding reviews and earned accolades from the Chicago Tribune and Gramophone Magazine. In addition to collaborating with renowned chamber musicians, Phan has performed and recorded with the world’s foremost orchestras and opera companies.

Today’s program consists of just under 20 songs from Baroque composers that Phan has selected and arranged to form a narrative about two young lovers. It begins with the song from which the program’s name is derived — “A Painted Tale” by Thomas Morley, which serves as an introduction to the story.

The tale then winds through a tale of unrequited (but consummated) love, complete with eroticism, longing, triumph, jealousy and ultimately, rejection. Phan modeled the program after Franz Schubert’s famous song cycle, Die schöne Müllerin, which explores similar themes. But composers in the Baroque era (which came before Schubert, a Romantic) didn’t weave their songs into 20-part cycles, so Phan researched the repertoire and put together his own cycle.

Phan said he discovered his love for Baroque songs when he was a student at Interlochen Center for the Arts. He was taking a class on early music and his teacher — Morgan, who will join him on stage today — had him learn a song by John Dowland, whose music will also be heard this afternoon.

“The first thing that grabbed me about it was the sheer beauty of the song,” Phan said. “I was fascinated.”

Those songs stuck with him, so when Carnegie Hall requested that Phan perform a concert of early music in the prestigious Weill Recital Hall, Phan put together “A Painted Tale.” Phan did many hours of research for the project, but he said the narrative that binds the songs together came to him naturally.

“This (program) is something that’s revealed itself to me through the song texts,” Phan said. “We tend to look at this music as if it were in a museum, when actually the reason we keep coming back to this stuff is because it still holds relevance today. There’s nothing timeless like a love story.”

For Chautauquans, this weekend’s chamber music concert will be an eclectic mix of familiar and foreign repertoire presented by members of the School of Music faculty. But for the performers, it will also be a miniature family reunion.

“It’s really fun to play with your family because you get to see each other,” said violinist Almita Vamos. “We don’t always get to see each other because we’re all so busy.”

At 4 p.m. Saturday, July 14, in Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall, Vamos will be joined by her sister, Eugenia Monacelli, daughter-in-law, Nurit Pacht, and son, Rami Vamos, for the latest installment in Chautauqua Chamber Music’s Resident Artist Series.

For Vamos, music and the arts are at the center of the family. The extended family includes actors, a painter, and classical musicians; each of the four performers in Saturday’s concert hold impressive resumes, as well.

Pacht, a concert violinist, has given recitals and concerts all over the world, including a U.S. State Department funded tour of Ukraine with Monacelli, a pianist. In her own career, Monacelli has performed as soloist with orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra.

Guitarist Rami Vamos has a multifaceted career as an educator, composer, and performer in New York City. He teaches at all levels, coordinating the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s children’s concert series while also serving on faculty at Concordia University.

Violinist Almita Vamos, the coordinator of Saturday’s concert, is one half of the teaching duo affectionately referred to as the “Famous Vamoses.” In addition to leading performance careers, Roland and Almita Vamos have taught many most prominent violinists, including Rachel Barton Pine and Jennifer Koh.

Pacht was also a student of the Vamoses. In 10th grade, she left her home in Texas for Minnesota, where she moved in with the Vamos family to study with the couple. She lived in the room next to her future husband, Rami Vamos — but they didn’t immediately hit it off.

“We didn’t really get along — we didn’t even like each other too much,” Pacht said. “It was when we met at a party of musicians many, many years later that we became friends, and then more.”

Now, they’re married with three children. Saturday they will perform “Two Pieces for Violin and Guitar,” which they composed together. Pacht said that the couple enjoys writing and performing their own music because it allows them to write for their own instruments in the way that they want to play them — so it ends up being more fun.

The program will also feature Almita Vamos performing music of Respighi and Schnittke with Monacelli accompanying her on piano. Vamos is particularly excited for those two pieces, she said, because they will likely be new to audience ears but are extremely interesting and enjoyable pieces.

Vamos said the Respighi is rarely performed because it’s difficult to put the violin and piano parts together due to their rhythmic complexity. But she’s not worried — performing with her sister is easy, she said.

“(When we were young), we had lessons and coachings together many times, even though we play different instruments,” Vamos said. “So we think of music similarly.”

Some of those lessons and coachings took place at Chautauqua Institution. While in school, Vamos and Monacelli came to the Institution in the summer to study with Mischa Mischakoff, then concertmaster of the CSO.

That’s part of the reason why Vamos chose to organize this concert — she said that she only gives performances at special times, and her time at the Institution this week is certainly that.