Mixing it up

The Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society (MVCMS) has a robust four-concert summer festival, running from June 24 to August 16. Board member David Snead remarks, “I think one particularly interesting thing is that the Chamber Music Society has really focused on bringing in young artists, who have this real passion and fire. Also, every concert is this very interesting creative blend of standard classical rep and music you might not normally define as chamber music, which makes for exciting performances.”
The Rasa String Quartet opens the season on Wednesday, June 24, at 7 pm at Stillpoint. Rasa explores the connection between music and storytelling, delivering performances that blend classical elegance with folk whimsy. Violinist and violist Emma Powell says, “We love the feel of a folk concert and incorporating it into the classical music concerts. Hopefully everybody in the audience will hear something familiar to them, and also something new.”

At Stillpoint, Rasa will perform a program titled “Songs that Raised Me,” connecting Antonio Vivaldi’s “La Folia,” Antonín Dvorák’s “String Quartet No. 13 in G major,” and Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” with a jazz tango, a traditional Korean lullaby, and more. The musicians have a strong connection to the pieces in “Songs that Raised Me,” all of which they grew up listening to and playing. They will share these stories throughout the performance. As an example, Powell speaks about Alberto Ginastera’s “String Quartet No. 1, Op. 20,” which she first performed in high school. “That was the first time I was onstage, and I was like, ‘Wow, this is something that maybe I could do for a long time.”

She continues, “We want audiences to have a cohesive experience from start to finish, and the chance to get to know us a little bit. I think the program leans into the personal connections between us as musicians and the music they will hear.” Whether classical or pop, Powell believes, “It’s about creating a playlist you wouldn’t always think of as going together, but we’ve always found so many similarities in the different styles because it’s all music.”

Flutist Emi Ferguson performs at the Old Whaling Church on Sunday, July 26, at 4 pm.

“I’m on a mission to shake up classical music,” she explains. “I’m really excited about finding different pathways for people to experience and appreciate music of all kinds. These days, I’m working across genres, playing music from many different places and times. That is normal, and also a radical act at the same time.”

Ferguson has selected an eclectic but linked set of composers including, for example, Schubert, Lead Belly, and Harry Burleigh, an eminent African American composer and arranger who famously introduced the world to spirituals and was a dedicated summer resident of Martha’s Vineyard. He spent his summers in Oak Bluffs as a guest at the historic Shearer Cottage, which became a haven for renowned Black artists, including Paul Robeson and Ethel Waters. “I’ve fallen deeply in love with his music and arrangements,” Ferguson says. “At the heart of this program are all of these arrangements of songs that were originally for other instruments.”

She continues, “This program originated from my interest in bringing together two musical storytellers, which has now expanded to quite a few more. It started with the confluence of Franz Schubert and Woody Guthrie. He has a beautiful 1941 song, ‘Pastures of Plenty,’ chronicling migrant workers in the Pacific Northwest. When I heard it, I couldn’t help but think about Franz Schubert and how these two incredible, iconic songwriters often bring people, nature, and places together in ways I found really complementary. All the composers are such incredible communicators through words and music, whether that’s 19th century Germany or 20th century Oregon or Mississippi.”

About her concert, Ferguson says, “I want people to have opinions. For it to inspire ongoing discussion and discovery afterward. My hope is that people are introduced to composers and musicians they may not have known before, and that they become lifelong fans.”

The Katarina String Quartet performs on Sunday, August 9, at 4 pm at First Congregational Church. Violinist Jeanel Liang says the group formed at McGill University in Montreal, brought together by a shared passion for string quartet music: “Then two years later, we moved to New York City together to be the graduate quartet in residence at the Juilliard School of Music. As much as we love playing the standard repertoire, we also love working on contemporary pieces.” The group also does a lot of teaching and community engagement. Liang says, “Our mission centers on the people we touch with our music. We believe we can’t make art alone, whether that means each other, the audience, the people in our lives who support us, or the countless people behind the scenes who make it possible for us to be onstage and perform this beautiful music. We value a blended, cohesive group sound that reflects this connection, and we think of the string quartet as a collective instrument that allows four different voices to speak as one.” 

The quartet’s name refers to Katarina Guarneri, who was married to Giuseppe Guarneri (1698–1744), an elite Italian luthier. Liang explains, “She worked in his shop, and when he became ill, she finished a lot of his violins. We wanted to celebrate her by naming our quartet Katarina, because we thought that it highlighted that there are so many people behind the scenes who contribute to this art who we don’t necessarily see.”

​The first piece they will perform is Florence Price’s “Adoration.” Liang says about this tender, meditative short piece, “I think she had something special to say, and I love that the Americana shows through her works.”

​Violinist Jérôme Chiasson says that the Haydn “String Quartet Op. 50, No. 2,” “ties into our group identity. [Haydn] was the first composer we ever worked on. He allows us to be free in our playing. There’s a lot of humor in it, and a lot of flexibility to do anything with the timing, dynamics, and tempo. We feel like we have something to say when we play Haydn.”

​For Schumann’s “String Quartet No. 1,” Liang says, “It’s really exciting, because Schumann was a pianist, and notorious for writing difficult-to-play string music that is meant to sound simple, lyrical, and easy. He wrote a set of string quartets as a birthday gift for his wife Clara, so you can hear the romanticism.”

​Liang continued, “The Beethoven “String Quartet No. 13” is one of my personal favorite pieces for string quartet ever. He wrote it when he was fully deaf, which is a wonder, given all the harmonies he heard in his head or through vibrations from his piano. One of the reasons I pursued the string quartet was so I could play this piece.”

The Harlem Quartet will perform on Sunday, August 16, at 5 pm at the Old Whaling Church. Their website describes the quartet’s mission: “The group was conceived as an instrument to realize a much bigger goal than ourselves — to diversify and create new audiences, including inner-city schoolchildren, for classical music, as well as to commission and perform works by contemporary composers. We found that this cross-pollination of classical, contemporary, jazz, and Latin-infused repertoire makes our concerts more appealing to a younger audience. What started as a tool to make it more accessible to kids developed into a true affinity for all these genres.”

Their performance includes Beethoven’s “String Quartet No. 6” and Britten’s “String Quartet No. 2,” alongside “Entr’acte” by multi–Grammy and Pulitzer prizewinning American composer Caroline Shaw, plus a virtuosic setting of the children’s song “Frère Jacques” by Cuban composer Aldo López-Gavilán. First violinist Ilmar Gavilán says, “This repertoire seems full of things that are seemingly opposite, but they were all great improvisers. For instance, Shaw’s ‘Entr’acte’ is based on a Haydn quartet, and Haydn was a phenomenal improviser and the inspiration for all the quartets written after him. Beethoven was also heavily influenced by Haydn. And López-Gavilán is influenced by taking the roots of classical music and then improvising on them. But music is music. The goal is to present wonderfully executed music. It’s important to play with the same commitment and attention to all styles and genres.” 

Ultimately, Gavilán hopes audiences “are inspired to perhaps travel into the zones of the imagination that take them away from daily life. Not that daily life is bad, but I want them to feel similar to when they watch a beautiful sunset that is always changing slightly, and you’re mesmerized by the beauty and the dynamic of it.”

Tickets for all MVCMS concerts are on sale at mvcms.org; $40 for adults, with children and students admitted free of charge.