Sat 6/28 @ 8pm
By Elsa Johnson & Victor Lucas
Chamberfest Cleveland performs this Saturday with GroundWorks DanceTheater in the first-ever choreographed version of Tan Dun’s Ghost Opera.
Tan Dun is probably best known for his film scores, especially Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but that film score with its lush string arrangements is not at all typical of Dun’s work. Besides, Dun hates kung fu movies.
Much more typical of Dun’s compositions is Ghost Opera. Written on a commission from Kronos Quartet, Ghost Opera harkens back to the shamanic rituals Dun knew from his childhood in Hunan, rituals of divination and exorcism in which voices of future, past, and present spoke to one another. See Kronos Quartet perform Ghost Opera in its entirety here.
Quite a story, how the composer Tan Dun came of age during China’s tumultuous Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. That was a difficult time, we suspect, especially for a young fiddler like Dun who had been shipped off to the countryside like other “educated youth” to learn from the peasants. But by the time the Cultural Revolution was actually over, Dun had been the musical director of the little village he was assigned to, had lucked into a job as a musical arranger for a Beijing Opera troupe, and had gone on to begin an 8 year course of study at the Central Music Conservatory in Beijing where his compositions soon won recognition from guest composers from Asia and the West.
“I never tried to be something,” said Dun in an interview, “just going with the wind.”
We asked the co-founder of Chamberfest, Diana Cohen, how Chamberfest came to be. Unlike Dun, Cohen admits to trying, but like Dun her story goes back to her childhood.
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Cool Cleveland: How did Chamberfest originate?
Diana Cohen: It has been a long time dream of mine to have a chamber music festival. When I was growing up, my parents, who were both musicians, took us to a lot of their own festivals, and so even though I went to hear the Cleveland Orchestra a lot as a kid, it was these chamber music festivals that made me fall in love with music; the close proximity to the musicians, the parties afterwards, the camaraderie in chamber music in particular.
When I was in my early 20’s I spent time at the Marlboro Music Festival — which is a festival that my parents had both been to — sort of the preeminent chamber music festival in the world. It’s a place where many, many serious musicians young and old come together to dedicate their entire summer.
The companionship and the communal feeling that’s been built in that festival is what appeals to me so much. When I was at Marlboro I decided that was something I wanted to create for my home city.
So, I guess it was 3 years ago I asked my dad (Franklin Cohen, co-founder of Chamberfest.), “Any interest in being my partner in crime?”
He said, “Absolutely,” so from that moment on we just really drove the project. We met with everyone we knew in Cleveland, supporters and musicians, and gradually pulled the pieces together. At first we didn’t have a real budget to work with so we hired — if that’s the word because we had no money to pay them — interns who worked with us. That first year we put together a shortened season of only 5 days to test the waters.
How did you find your musicians? Were they people you knew from Cleveland Institute of Music?
Some of them are, but a lot of them are people we’ve met along the way at festivals, namely Marlboro. At a music festival like Chamberfest Cleveland where the musicians are really at the highest, highest level you find there’s a lot of overlap so almost everyone knows each other or has many, many mutual friends.
I’m picturing long plane flights in order for the musicians to get together to rehearse and perform. Can you perform with as little as one rehearsal like Cleveland Orchestra?
For chamber music you don’t have a conductor so it’s up to the group to come up with an interpretation. Every musician needs to prepare at home and the notes are the notes, but the difference between a good performance and a great performance is mostly interpretation and in chamber music the musical decisions about interpretation are being made in rehearsal, largely in the way you play off your fellow musicians.
So a lot has to happen in chamber music rehearsals. How many rehearsals do you get before a performance?
It depends on the piece. We generally have at least 3 rehearsals plus a dress rehearsal.
So in chamber music it has to be that way, because there’s no conductor imposing his interpretation?
Right, and that’s the beauty of chamber music and why most musicians will say their true passion is chamber music, because that’s where they have artistic autonomy. It’s nice to have that autonomy when you’ve worked your whole life to become a wonderful musician.
What should our readers expect from Ghost Opera?
Like all of Tan Dun’s music, it is very much influenced by his Chinese background. Even without dance, Ghost Opera is very atmospheric, evocative, and theatric. It includes a bit of staging in that the musicians are called upon to move from place to place. There’s lighting. The musicians double up on instruments like amplified water bowls, stones, paper, and Chinese instruments like gongs and cymbals. Ghost Opera also includes vocalizations — yao yao — and there’s a pipa player, which is a very unusual instrument in a chamber ensemble. There are excerpts of Bach and Shakespeare, and Tibetan folk tunes.
This particular performance is in collaboration with GroundWorks DanceTheater, and I’m really excited to work with David Shimotakahara, their Artistic Director. For a long time we’ve wanted to do something with him and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. He fell in love with the piece and I just think that with dancers it will be a very rich tapestry.
Talk about little cabbage song, the traditional Chinese song that appears in Ghost Opera.
Little cabbage song is just a very simple folk tune that’s sung by the pipa player; a very sweet, funny lyric.
What is the order of the evening’s program?
The program begins with 3 trios scored for percussionists; all 3 pieces together will only be about 6 or 8 minutes long. Then when we finish those pieces rather than having applause and the usual concert format we’re going to go straight into the Shostakovich (Trio for Piano & Strings in E minor No. 2, Op. 67 by Dmitri Shostakovich; hear it performed on YouTube HERE.) so the percussion sounds sort of morph into the Shostakovich, which starts with a really eerie passage of harmonics from the cello.
We understand from our reading that this Shostakovich trio was intended as a lament looking back on World War II and especially the Holocaust.
The Shostakovich develops into something wild and raw. Then we have an intermission to cleanse the palate and finish with Ghost Opera.
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Attend the concert Sat 6/28/2014 at 8pm @ Kulas Hall at Cleveland Institute of Music. Tickets $40 General and limited supplies of $25 Young Professional and $10 Student. To purchase or to see the entire Chamberfest calendar go to http://chamberfestcleveland.com or phone 216-785-9977.
From Cool Cleveland contributors Elsa Johnson and Victor Lucas. Elsa and Vic are both longtime Clevelanders. Elsa is a landscape designer. She studied ballet as an avocation for 2 decades. Vic has been a dancer and dance teacher for most of his working life, performing in a number of dance companies in NYC and Cleveland. They write about dance as a way to learn more and keep in touch with the dance community. E-mail them at vicnelsaATearthlink.net.
Cleveland, OH 44106