Brentano Quartet violist Misha Amory guides (from left) Margaret Shiu ’06,
Albert Lee ’05, Alexander Tew ’07 and Miwa Kiemiya ’06 during
a Music Department master class. |
Making music together
One of the most powerful experiences for any music student is
the opportunity to work with a professional musician, and Professor of Music
Jenny Kallick is making the most of that idea with a new program that aims to
break down any barriers between student and professional. To initiate the program,
Kallick set up
a residency for two internationally acclaimed ensembles: the Peabody Trio
and the Brentano Quartet. As in a typical residency program, both ensembles
gave concerts: The Peabody performed Beethoven’s Triple
Concerto with the
Amherst College Orchestra, and the Brentano premièred and discussed String
Quartet Number Four by Assistant Professor of Music Eric Sawyer in a composer’s
workshop. But Kallick and Director of
Instrumental Music Mark Swanson asked the artists to go beyond concerts and lectures,
to become active members of the students’ chamber-music groups, not as
teachers, but as equals. “If you were a tennis player,” Kallick says, “and
you could get on a tennis court and play with Andre Agassi, and it was a real
partnership, both talking about it and playing together, that’s what this
would be like. Before this, it was hard to have a ‘game on’ feeling
around here if you were a musician, and that’s what we have now.”
Although this level of involvement is new at Amherst, the Music Department has
long emphasized contact between
professional musicians and students. The artists who perform in the Music at
Amherst series often visit classrooms or give master classes. “We really
try to balance bringing in great performers and great teachers,” Kallick
says. “We want to be a department that offers all kinds of opportunities
to all the students who might like to do music on any level. That can be someone
who is very ambitious about their music or someone who is just curious about
what it is to be a professional musician. We want visiting artists who will not
just be seen and heard but who are engaged with students.”
In February, baritone Nathan Gunn
followed his Music at Amherst concert with a daylong master class for voice
students. Rather than focusing on vocal technique, however, he emphasized
feeling and emotion. After Julia Fox ’07 sang a selection from Aaron Copland’s
The Tender Land, Gunn talked with her
at length about incidents in her own life
that might help her understand what
Copland’s character was feeling, so that Fox might bring more genuine emotion
to the song. And after Jarrad Mills ’04 sang Stephen Sondheim’s “Johanna,” Gunn
helped him achieve a less deliberate approach by having him pantomime a tennis
game while he sang. “Don’t listen to yourself when you’re singing,” Gunn
said. “Just sing. If you think about ‘What do I sound like now?’ you
communicate nothing.” Holding up a piece of staff paper, he said to the
students in the audience, “This isn’t music…you are the music.”
Next: Careers
in service >>
Photo: Frank Ward
|
