Delores Stevens, artistic director of the 45-year-old Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society (MVCMS), has a mission: “We’re trying to enlarge our repertoire so that we can introduce new composers, and also show people what chamber musicians can do when they play jazz. Chamber music is becoming not so isolated. We’re doing a lot of new music that is reachable to the general public.”
To that end, the MVCMS is starting off their 2015 season with two performances by the Harlem Quartet, a group that covers a wide range of music and is as well respected in the jazz world as it is in the classical world. The Grammy Award-winning Harlem Quartet’s versatility was in evidence from the very beginning when, in 2006, they made their debut at both Carnegie Hall and the legendary Apollo Theater in Harlem.
The Harlem Quartet was founded in 2006 by the Sphinx Organization, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting cultural diversity among performers and audience members of classical music. The formation of the Harlem Quartet was intended to achieve the overall mission of bringing classical music to inner-city schoolchildren.
While the quartet began with that initiative in mind, they soon earned a name for themselves in the jazz world. According to their website, “We were conceived as an instrument to realize a much bigger goal than ourselves: to diversify and create new audiences for classical music. We found that including jazz repertoire made our concerts more appealing for a younger audience, and we enjoyed presenting both genres. What started as a tool to be more accessible to the kids developed to a true affinity for jazz. Subsequently we started incorporating more jazz repertoire to our regular concerts, to the point that it shaped our artistic identity as a group.”
In 2013, the quartet was awarded a Grammy for its recording with jazz legends Chick Corea and Gary Burton.
The concerts they’ll perform on the Island will start off with work by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and 20th century composer Joaquin Turina; then the group will transition to a set of songs by the Buena Vista Social Club.
The quartet’s story was the inspiration for a documentary that will be screened for the first time at the upcoming 13th annual Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival in August. “This is a wonderful opportunity for people to experience the quartet live before they see the film,” says Ms. Stevens.
The remainder of the MVCMS’s summer season will also incorporate new music, classic works, and jazz. Two free concerts (underwritten by a supporter of the organization) on July 20 and 21 will feature the world premiere of a new work by Stephen Hartke. Mr. Hartke, who won the Grammy award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition in 2013, counts among his influences a wide range of genres including Stravinsky, medieval music, Tudor church music, bebop, gagaku, gamelan, and other non-Western musics.
The following weekend the MVCMS will host acclaimed pianist Billy Childs who, along with Ms. Stevens and cellist Maksim Velichkin, will present a program of his own compositions preceded by a performance of Beethoven’s Sonata in F Major. Mr. Childs has won been nominated for 13 Grammy awards, and has won four. He is equally esteemed as a jazz pianist and as a composer. His musical range is evident from the variety of artists that he has performed with, from Yo-Yo Ma and the Los Angeles Philharmonic to Chick Corea and Wynton Marsalis to Sting.
For the way he has managed to draw on his influences from jazz, classical, and popular music, Mr. Childs has been called “the most distinctly American composer since Aaron Copeland.”
On August 3 and 4, Infinity Brass Quartet will present a program made up primarily of contemporary music, including arrangements of Gershwin’s Summertime and Edith Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose.”
The season will conclude with two somewhat more transitional sets of concerts, from the Weiss Kaplan Stumpf Trio and a group made up of famed clarinetist Franklin Cohen, his daughter pianist Diana Cohen, and pianist Roman Rabinovich.
Every concert will incorporate both standards of the classical literature as well as music from newer composers who stretch the boundaries of chamber music.
“We’re not locked musicians,” says Ms. Stevens, who, as a pianist will perform in all but one of the 2015 set of concerts. “We’re not going in that direction. The Harlem Quartet is a great example of new musicians being able to express themselves in the music of today. People are letting down their hair, and it’s not long hair, in the traditional sense, anymore.”
The Harlem Quartet: July 13 at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown and July 14 at the Chilmark Community Center.
Billy Childs, Maksim Velichkin, & Delores Stevens: July 27 at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown and July 28 at the Chilmark Community Center.
Infinity Brass Quartet: August 3 at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown and August 4 at the Chilmark Community Center.
All concerts start at 8 pm. Admission is $35 ($30 with Island Club Card). Students attend all concerts free. Free concerts on July 20 and 22.
For additional dates and information, visit mvcms.org.
