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EXPANDING HORIZONSNEw FRONTIERS IN MUSIC

Die Soldaten, Artists’ Roundtable, and the New Museum: PMP’s trip to the 2008 Lincoln Center Festival

On July 9th and 10th, 27 members of Philadelphia’s arts community joined PMP, PCAH, and Pew Trusts staff for a one-night trip to New York City to attend a performance of Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s iconic opera Die Soldaten, presented as part of the 2008 Lincoln Center Festival. Steven Sloane conducted the 110-piece Bochumer Symphoniker and its extensive percussion section, along with a jazz combo and 40 singers, actors and dancers. This spectacular production, directed by David Pountney, sent the audience literally traveling on train-like tracks along the length of a narrow, 220-foot long stage, achieving a sense of intimacy and immersion inside the cavernous Park Avenue Armory.

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The next morning, trip participants gathered to share their thoughts in a discussion moderated by Marc Scorca, president and CEO of OPERA America. The conversation touched on many topics, and, as might be expected, PMP attendees voiced a broad range of responses to Die Soldaten, which recounts the ruination of a young woman at the hands of several soldiers during World War II. “For me there was this dialectic between the large and the very peninsular,” mused composer Andrea Clearfield. “But, I wonder if the music loses anything by being in that big space? I wanted to understand more of the subtleties of the music, what the subtexts are in those rare tender moments—when you have a mother’s love, and you have it for a split second… It went for the archetypal, but I lost that intimacy.” Blanka Zizka, the Wilma Theatre’s co-artistic director, observed that, “You cannot ask for an emotional dose out of it, because that was not the intention.”

“I loved the music. I’m disturbed by it at the same time be-cause I felt there was this block of sound that was continuous, that ended just as it began,” recalled Karl Middleman, artistic director of the Philadelphia Classical Symphony. “But just as soon as I might begin to tire of it, something fascinating would change the texture.”

Everyone seemed in agreement that the piece was chal-lenging, and that this particular production gave the viewer lots to digest. “I left [Christopher Keane’s 1991 City Opera] production much more satisfied. But I left last night fascinat-ed, and it was the same kind of fascination as when I was 18 and saw Aida,” remarked Robert Driver, general and artistic director of the Opera Company of Philadelphia.

Steering the conversation toward the difficulties inher-ent in mounting an opera of this scale, and particularly in Philadelphia, Scorca wondered, “Is it a fair reference point to come to the premiere event of the premiere summer festival in the largest city in the Western hemisphere and say, ‘Oh, what can we learn from that?’”

Warren Oree, music producer of the West Oak Lane Jazz & Arts Festival, responded optimistically, saying, “I think it’s valid, because if you are going to present any type of arts program, I think you need courage. So, why not come to the place where they are taking chances, where they are on top of the heap, so to speak, where they are trying some things? You might realize that you’re closer than you think.”

Gene Coleman, artistic director of Soundfield, an organi-zation that presents experimental music, pointed out that the Lincoln Center Festival needed to pool its resources in order to mount this production to scale, partnering with the Ruhr Festival in Germany—a strategy that perhaps Philadelphia organizations could adapt. “[T]his program actually was made possible by a very robust collaboration between different arts institutions. That’s certainly an idea that Philadelphia could take as a model, because you could scale that down. It’s not just a question of doing it on a mas-sive scale…”

After a quick break, participants were treated to a round-table with three New York-based artists, moderated by John Schaefer, Host of New Sounds™, Soundcheck, and New Sounds Live™ on WNYC Public Radio. Schaefer was joined by David Krakauer, a clarinetist who performs a variety of

Left: A scene from Die Soldaten, photo by Stephanie Berger,

www.stephaniebergerphoto.com

This page, from top: David Krakauer, photo by Jean Marc Lubrano; T.S. Monk

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genres, from classical to klezmer; T.S. Monk, drummer, bandleader, composer, and vocalist; and Susan Botti, composer and soprano. Schaefer introduced his guests as artists who share “the idea of breaking expectations, both within the music industry, and out there in the real world audiences.” As the three discussed their lives and influences, it became apparent that they are constantly establishing, reestablishing, and breaking down their expectations of themselves and their relationships with various musical lineages, in the process creating new works. “I think we’re kind of like snakes, and we shed everything...” Susan Botti mused. “Part of your craft is to embrace the tradition, and then kind of move through it, not around it… these traditions, you can’t deny them, you have to find a way to coexist.”

T.S. Monk, an artist who has always had to think about how his work relates to his father’s, suggested that this tension between the individual artist and the musical tradition in which he exists was as real for his father as it is for him. “The ‘you’ of it, the individual com-ponent, is really a driving force. My father did not start out to change music in the 20th century, that wasn’t his goal. I don’t think that was his goal the day he died. The goal was ‘Let me do my thing.’ And then you turn around and say ‘That’s what happened? Whoa!’” This focus on individual artistry has become T.S.’s philosophy: “What I think about is how I can be more myself today…if you garner the courage to be yourself, you’re very likely to do something different.”

All three shared doubts they encountered along their journeys, fueled by others’ ideas of how (or whether) they “should” be per-forming certain genres of music. “I began to have this sort of crisis of confidence myself about playing jazz, again about individuality,” remembers David Krakauer. “At a certain point, some thread started bringing me toward klezmer music. It was music that, when I would hear it, I would say, ‘Oh, it sounds like how my jazz would speak with a very heavy Yiddish accent.’ And it felt like roots music for me; it felt like something that was a part of me.”

But just because an artist finds personal meaning and connec-tion with a tradition doesn’t mean that the tradition greets the artist with open arms—far from it. “I have a drawer full of hate mail saying ‘What are you doing? This is not klezmer!’” David laughed. Every tradition has its stakeholders (T.S. called the most rigid of these the “Jazz Police,” or “all these people who don’t know and they don’t know it, but they got a lot to say about it.”). But it’s the artist’s purpose to internalize and manipulate seemingly unyielding genres, revealing their porousness and malleability. Of course, there are those who would set rigid boundaries, but this has never made sense to T.S., who remembers that, “My dad’s crew, him, and Dizzy, and Miles, and Coltrane, those guys were not into locking onto any-thing. Actually, most of them died in the process.… It’s our obligation to those artisans who inspired us to keep pushing the ball, because the only reason they stopped was that they died.”

The panelists again echoed this idea that innovation is sparked by meaningful engagement with tradition, as new forms emerge through conversations within and across musical lineages. “This, to me, is the world’s gift, to be able to have collaborations like this. It’s a state of mind, and it’s an openness, and it’s a beautiful thing,” said David. And yet, for these artists, personal engagement is chal-lenged in the age of corporate-driven pop fabrication. “I think often

“My father did not start out to change music

in the 20th century, that wasn’t his goal. I

don’t think that was his goal the day he died.

The goal was ‘Let me do my thing.’ And then

you turn around and say ‘That’s what hap-

pened? Whoa!’”—T.S. Monk

“My dad’s crew, him, and Dizzy, and Miles,

and Coltrane, those guys were not into lock-

ing onto anything. Actually, most of them

died in the process. …It’s our obligation to

those artisans who inspired us to keep push-

ing the ball, because the only reason they

stopped was that they died.” —T.S. Monk

DIE SOLDATEN, ARTISTS’ ROUNDTABLE, AND THE NEw MUSEUM: PMP’S TRIP TO THE 2008 LINCOLN CENTER FESTIvAL

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pop culture removes the human element, and the human element is what is so critical to the communicative elements of music. …If you can define who you are the way Hendrix could bend one note… just move it and do your thing with it, it brings the human thing into it. The human element is just the bottom line in all of our music.”

To put a finer point on it, each individual human’s element is the bot-tom line, with life’s experiences miraculously bleeding into the music, as noted by David: “When you hear a composition of yours, nobody else could have written that music. It’s your music. And that’s a very important thing. Whereas I have heard some younger musicians, and the technique of their instrument is so advanced, but they sound generic. I can’t tell one saxophonist from another. If I were their teacher, I would say ‘Get back to a thing where you create a sound that is absolutely your own.’” As T.S. put it, “You have all these kids with all these degrees behind their names, in composition and orchestration, and this, that, and the other, and I’m listening to it, and it just sounds like the answers to tests.”

This panel of musicians gave an affecting call to look within for the courage to create, to trust that one’s individual experience has value in inspiring art.

That afternoon before returning to Philadelphia, the group made one last stop at the New Museum in its new location at 235 Bowery in the Lower East Side. Designed by Tokyo-based architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa (their collaboration is called SANAA) with Gensler, New York, serving as Executive Architect, the white seven-story building looks to be made of paper or plastic, lending it an otherworldly quality amidst storefronts and houses half its height. The group visited an exhibition called “After Nature,” which featured works by 27 artists, depicting “a universe in which humankind is being eclipsed and new ecological sys-tems struggle to find a precarious balance.” The works touched upon

“truth liberated from fact,” as described by artist and filmmaker Werner Herzog. One had a sense of examining relics from a world parallel to our own—but an extinct one.—E.S.

Unacabine by Robert Kusmirowski, part of the New Museum’s

“After Nature” exhibition. Photo by Benoit Pailley