Susan Lewis

Philadelphia’s All-City Orchestra has brought together talented music students from city high schools for over 60 years,. Its alumni include musicians in orchestras around the country. Students are learning from some of the best in the business, starting with their director, Philadelphia Orchestra Principal Timpani Don Liuzzi.

The annual All-Philadelphia High School Music Festival takes place on Monday March 4th at the Kimmel Center. The Philadelphia Orchestra performs the Shostakovich 5th Symphony on March 1st. 

Band music includes marches, pop songs, and transcriptions of orchestral works. But over the last century more composers have written explicitly for winds. The Philadelphia Wind Symphony was founded, in part, to explore the variety and richness of the repertoire.

The Philadelphia Wind Symphony performs this Sunday afternoon, March 3rd, at the University of the Arts, in Center City, Philadelphia.  

While many people still attend concerts in traditional halls, classical music is also being played in more informal settings - and in combination with different types of music. WRTI’s Susan Lewis investigates LiveConnections, which conducts programs at World Café Live in Philadelphia and Wilmington.

LEWIS: Hearing great music performed up close can be a life-changing experience. That’s the premise of LiveConnections, where Melinda Steffy is general manager.

STEFFY:  We focus a lot on collaborations with musicians across genres and try to push the boundaries of music, so it's both very compelling and very accessible for a diverse range of people.

A Bach prelude, for example, might be played straight, then again in a jazz style.

LEWIS: This philosophy drives three programs: Bridge Sessions, in partnership with other organizations,  presents interactive performances for adults with special needs and groups of students.  ClassicAlive is a concert series for the general public with classical music performed with other genres in an intimate setting. Curator Mary Javian says the concerts expand the boundaries of repertoire, collaboration, and atmosphere.

JAVIAN: We’re bringing classical musicians of a very high level into a club. Asking them to perform while  people might have a drink, or might have a meal. But what we find is that the audiences are extremely engaged, because they’re getting an experience they wouldn’t have otherwise.

LEWIS: A third program, Live Studio, aims to use state-of-the-art video technology to connect underserved populations who cannot make it to the venue.

Coming up on February 24th: ClassicAlive presents Project Trio - a trio of bass, cello, and flute influenced by classical music, hip hop, and jazz, along with musicians from Friends Select School. 

Today, orchestra audiences know the concertmaster as the violinist who precedes the conductor onstage, and helps the orchestra tune – a sign that the concert is about to begin.  WRTI’s Susan Lewis discovered that the position carried duties both onstage and off.

LEWIS: The concertmaster is foremost the first chair of the first violins, a section that often carries the melody.  Philadelphia Orchestra Concertmaster David Kim says his musical duties include setting bowing patterns for the strings.

KIM: Let me use the slow movement of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusic. First I’m going to use a long bow  and try to capture as many notes as I can without changing the bow. If I decided, okay, well, I think we need more bow so I’m going to have us change bow - the direction that we change the bow -  many times. Then suddenly it will sound like I’m singer. Here’s one that I’m breaking the bow as it were.

LEWIS:  There are plenty of nonmusical duties as well.  On  a typical day, Kim checks in with the conductor before they start rehearsal.

KIM:  If it’s Yannick, go in and say hello, anything Maestro, last second, that you need to talk about? If it's a guest conductor, welcome them to town; do they need a restaurant recommendation? Do they need to know where to buy concert socks? Just anything, please depend on their concertmaster.

LEWIS:  Kim serves as liason between the conductor and members of the Orchestra.  He makes public appearances on behalf of the Orchestra, and the music director, if he is not available.

It’s not settled whether 19th-century pianist and composer Frederic Chopin was born on February 22nd, or March 1st, 1810.  But as Susan Lewis reports, one thing that’s clear is that he made a significant mark on music in his short life of just under 40 years.    

LEWIS:  Born in Poland and raised in Warsaw, Frederic Chopin’s virtuosity was recognized early. As a young man, he went to Paris and joined a community of like-minded performers and artists, including the female writer who took the name George Sand, with whom he had an extended love affair. University of Pennsylvania Music Professor Jeffrey Kallberg  says Paris was a mecca for pianists who typically performed their own music.

KALLBERG: Liszt being one, but people like Frederick Kaltbrenner, Theodore Durler, people we tend to forget these days.  Chopin fit in with these, but what really set him apart was the extraordinary quality of what he composed.

LEWIS: Kallberg says Chopin preferred the craft and counterpoint of Bach and Mozart to the styles of his musical contemporaries, many of whom were writing program music that followed a story line.  Instead of writing for the piano as a pure melodic instrument, Chopin, would allow it to blur sounds together.

KALLBERG: ...and to produce a sort of sonic haze that looks forward to a composer like Debussy, for example. I’m thinking of  in a work like  the Nocturne in c sharp minor , which is a work unlike most nocturnes seems not to have a lyrical melody at the beginning, what you have is a melody that moves scarcely at all. 

What you hear is just chords undulating and a mood being set without any melody to hang onto.. so he was rethinking what forms and genres were about by putting emphasis on new kinds of sounds.

LEWIS: Kallberg is author of Chopin at the Boundaries: Sex, History and Musical Genre.

For decades, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, or PCMS, has been feeding the region's growing musical appetite  with increasing numbers of concerts.   As WRTI’s Susan Lewis reports, PCMS grew out of the celebrated Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont, where gifted classical musicians have been playing chamber music since 1951.

Lewis:  Building on the success of the summer programs, in 1965, Marlboro leaders established concert series in New York, Boston, Princeton and Philadelphia, where the primary office was located.  Longtime Marlboro co-administrator and PCMS founder Tony Checchia:

Checchia: For those concerts to have more exposure and for the young artists to have an opportunity to have the experience of touring, they would form what  they called Music from Marlboro.

Lewis: For two decades,  Music from Marlboro presented four or five concerts a year in various venues around the city, including Moore College, the Walnut Street Theater and the Seaport Museum.   But  PCMS Executive Director Philip Maneval says Philadelphians wanted more:

Maneval:  Groups like the Juilliard quartet and Beaux Arts trio. There was a small group of very devoted music lovers who were regularly traveling to up to New York, or on their way down to Washington to hear these wonderful ensembles.

Lewis:  And so,  in 1986, The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society was born.

Checchia:  There are wonderful artists who would never have appeared in Philadelphia if a series like this hadn't been developed.   For instance, Horshevsky, who was a great artist, his last concert was for us at the Seaport Museum.

PCMS is presenting 64 concerts this season.

The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society is presenting concerts in center city next Monday and Wednesday at the Kimmel Center,  and Friday at the American Philosophical Society.

Music lives in West Philadelphia, home of Play on Philly, a program modeled after Venezuela’s El Sistema, in which under-served children are taught to play classical music.  As WRTI’s Susan Lewis reports, the program is as much about social change as it is about music. 

Lewis:  Pictures at an Exhibition was the music behind a life-changing moment for trumpet player Stanford Thompson, who was a student at Curtis rehearsing the Mussorgsky  work with visiting conductor Simon Rattle:

Thompson:  He finally stopped the orchestra and he said, you guys sound like robots. Everything’s perfect, mechanical, in tune. He said, there’s a group of students in Venezuela who could outplay you all any day.

Lewis: After graduating from Curtis, Thompson went to Venezuela to study El Sistema.  He returned to  Philadelphia, and founded Play on Philly, which he describes as a social program:

Thompson: I think putting kids in an orchestra, having them play with one another, is one of the best ways for them to co-exist in the same space. For them all to have a voice, but not be a jumble of noise. I also think it can build a lot of pride within each child, within their families, and within the community. That’s the main goal of what we do.

Lewis: Music, says Thompson, is an ideal vehicle to teach the kind of responsibility that can change lives:

Thompson: It’s the only art form that I know that you can put 100 – 200 – 300 people in a room with a common goal. Even on a spiritual level, there are things you can’t really express in words, and I think that emotion can come out of these instruments.  That’s why I think music is unique.

Lewis: Play on Philly currently has 27 teaching artists, working with 225 students at 2 schools.

Let us know Where Music Lives in your community! Add your ideas in the comments section here and check out our other Where Music Lives posts.

The Philadelphia-based chamber group Dolce Suono is known for exploring historical connections while pushing its art form into the future. As WRTI’s Susan Lewis reports, Dolce Suono Founder Mimi Stillman believes that music is an integral part of life.

Lewis: In 2005, Stillman founded Dolce Suono, which she likens it to a repertory company.

Stillman: We form into different ensemble configurations, combinations, depending upon the repertoire we’re playing. One of our main ensembles is our trio of flute, cello, and piano with Yumi Kendall and Charlie Abramovic. We do music with flute, strings, and harp...we’ve been very active commissioning work for peirrot ensemble, which is a mixed grouping of flute, clarinet, violin, cello and percussion.

Lewis: To Stillman, who is also a music historian, music is more than notes and dynamic notations, however beautifully, or provocatively, arranged. It reflects a history – and history informs her performance.  

Stillman:  I think it's part of an approach to the world - not seeing every piece of music or every composer, every musical style in a vacuum.  It's part of a rich tapestry of music, visual art, culture, the world of ideas.

Lewis: This year, Stillman and her ensemble are exploring the music of Debussy.

Stillman: It always enhances our performance to be approaching music from the most micro – what am I going to do with that note, that phrase? – to the most grand, sweeping –what is the context of Debussy and what do we want to say about that?

Lewis: Stilllman herself is in the midst of her year-long commitment to play Debussy’s short piece Syrinx, each day in different circumstances and venues, which she documents in videos online.

Coming up...Dolce Suono in concert at the Trinity Center for Urban life in Center City, Philadelphia, joined by Anthony McGill, principal clarinet of the Metropolitan Opera, on Sunday, February 17 at 3 pm.

LFC:   For more on how history can inform innovative music making, listen to Susan’s interview with Mimi Stillman at WRTI.org.

The early 19th-century Italian composer Giochino Rossini composed nearly 40 operas before he turned 40.  Later in life, he turned to other forms. And near the end of his life, he wrote  a solemn mass for the dedication of a private chapel.  As two local ensembles prepare performances, WRTI’s Susan Lewis explores Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle.

Lewis:  In some ways, the work summarizes Rossini’s entire art, says Matthew Glandorf, artistic director of Choral Arts Philadelphia.

Glandorf : You get these beautiful, lovely, soaring, natural melodies that you would know from his operas, but you also see somebody who has an absolute mastery of interesting harmonies.

Lewis:  Glandorf says you can see that Rossini  was studying the music of his contemporaries.

Glandorf: Or shall we even say possibly the next generation.  You really find that he's saying, hey look, I can also compose a fugue like the best of them....

Lewis:  Choral Arts will perform the work on Saturday, February 9th and is engaging soloists who specialize in period vocal performance, among them Julianne Baird. 

Lewis:  Another interpretation will be offered  later this month by the Philadelphia Singers, which Glandorf welcomes.

Glandorf: I’m hoping that that might open up a dialogue to say there are infinite number of possibilities to approach the interpretation of music, and actually that its radical to approach music differently. 

Choral Arts Philadelphia performs Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle on Saturday, February 9 at 7 pm, at  St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Center City, Philadelphia. 

The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society presents the Philadelphia Singers performing the work on Monday, February 18th at the Kimmel Center's Perelman Theater.

German composer, performer, and conductor Felix Mendelssohn would have turned 204 on February 3rd.   While he was acclaimed during his short life of 38 years, only a fraction of his works continued to be performed after his death. WRTI’s Susan Lewis looks at Mendelssohn and his musical impact.

Lewis: His violin concerto is one of the works that survived the centuries.  Yet his contributions to music, says Mendelssohn biographer R. Larry Todd, were much more significant than many people realize: 

Todd: He was, of course, one of  the great pianists of his age, arguably the leading organist of the entire century.  He was also – it’s not well known - a violinist and violist. He could pick up a part in his own octet and play that, and of course he was one of the seminal conductors of the 19th century. He was one of the first conductors to conduct using a baton. 

Lewis:  Mendelssohn’s performance of the St. Matthew Passion at its 100th anniversary in 1827 helped spark the 20th-century Bach revival, says Philadelphia Singers Music Director David Hayes.

Hayes:  Most people thought Bach was a composer you studied – he was an intellectual composer. The idea of performing Bach, was, sort of, you know, crazy.  Why would you perform Bach?  But Mendelssohn was the first to really turn around and say, hey, these great works of Bach  - the St. Matthew Passion –we should perform these works.

Lewis:  Mendelssohn’s own compositions included symphonies, concert overtures, concertos, chamber music, choral works, piano and organ music, and songs.  But Todd says that after Mendelssohn died, much of this music was not performed due to anti-Semitism and changing musical tastes.  

R. Larry Todd is  author of Mendelssohn: A Life in Music.