Columbia music lovers have an opportunity this coming Thursday evening to hear a wonderful cellist (and an "MVP" of musical life in the Carolinas) in recital. Alan Black, principal cellist of the Charlotte Symphony for 21 years, will be performing at the University of South Carolina School of Music Recital Hall on Thursday, Sept. 28, at 7:30 PM. Dana Protopopescu, acclaimed pianist who is now based in Brussels, will join Black in a program that includes the powerhouse cello-piano sonatas of Samuel Barber and Sergei Rachmaninoff. It's a great program that should display in spades Black's fiery intensity and lyrical gifts.

Aside from his long-term service to the CSO, Alan is the Artistic Director of the Chamber Music at St. Peter's series in Charlotte, which I've played on a number of times and have written about elsewhere. His work with that series, which is now in its remarkable 11th year, has been tremendously important in enhancing the musical life of that city. He's brought in world-class artists like Lynn Harrell and Jon Nakamatsu for the series, but primarily has tapped the talents of the rapidly-growing pool of wonderful musicians in the Carolinas; by doing so, he's single-handedly made the Carolinas, and Charlotte especially, a better place to be a working musician.

Music students at universities and conservatories would be better served by being spared at least  50% of the stuff they are currently taught, thus having more time to sit down for beers and conversation with the likes of Alan Black or Paul Rosenthal (with whom I've just been making music for 2 weeks in Alaska). These are the kind of artists that newly minted graduates of music school should emulate...musicians who did not just wait for performance opportunities to magically come their way, but who decided to personally create new opportunities not just for themselves, but for other musicians as well. These are musicians who took it upon themselves to enhance the musical life of their communities. The survival of classical music in America depends upon this kind of entrepreneurial spirit. Fortunately, I'm seeing signs of this movement growing across the country.

The first of two consecutive weekends of concerts of the Sitka Festival Autumn Classics series in Anchorage concluded yesterday afternoon. I've got about a day's breather before launching into rehearsals for next weekend's concerts...nine different works in three concerts for me. Can't gripe, though...I had it easy last weekend compared to my string-playing colleagues, who covered five Mozart string quintets, the Taneyev string quintet and piano quintet, Arensky piano quintet, and Schumann piano quartet (I "just" played the Taneyev and Arensky quintets and the Schumann..."just" is in quotations because the Taneyev piano score is 101 pages long!).

Anchorage itself is unremarkable as a city (at ground level anyway), a sprawling jumble of drive-thru coffee shops and all the usual chain stores of middle America, but you only need to look up at the horizon to realize with amazement where you are on the planet. Even better, as Anchorage-ers(?) like to say, "Drive a half-hour north or south of the city and you are truly 'in Alaska' ". It's absolutely true. Driving south for that amount of time along the Turnagain Arm, you've left behind the McDonald's and shopping malls, and the road narrows to two lanes, following the narrow strip of flat surface wedged between steep mountainsides and the waters of the Arm itself. You can park at certain points and, if the moment is right, see beluga whales swimming up the Arm. Dall sheep dot the hillsides. The views are such as to make a human being feel very tiny and insignificant. In fact, writing about all this is getting me anxious to go have a good walk. Just gotta remember, especially walking alone on trails outside the city, to jangle my keys a bit as I walk (locals' advice for avoiding encounters with bears). One of these days I hope to come back to Alaska strictly as a tourist (this is my third trip here, but all for work). At least on Thursday we have a concert in Cordova, will fly there that same afternoon and return the next morning, but it will be an opportunity to see a little bit more of this gigantic state.

When I say that the city itself is nothing special, that does not refer to the locals. Everybody I've met who lives here has a fascinating "back-story" as to how they ended up here, how they came for a specific one or two year job or project but were captivated by the grandeur of the land and never left. I've been talking to a couple of folks who are involved with state politics here; Alaska state politics has got to be the most interesting and unique of any state in our country, what with factors like Big Oil vs. environmental concerns, and the complex intertwined history here between whites and Native Americans. Some legislative districts are larger in physical size here than some entire states in the Lower 48.

I remember playing some concerts in Hawaii in the early 90's, and how enthusiastic the audiences were, how deeply appreciative they were for visiting artists. Much the same atmosphere exists here at these chamber concerts, which we play at the campus of Alaska Pacific University. And, since we're back on the topic of music...Paul Rosenthal, who founded the Sitka Festival 35 years ago, has been touting Sergei Taneyev's Piano Quintet as the greatest in the genre for years. He introduced me to the piece several years ago, as he has done for many others. I know he turned Martin Beaver onto the piece also a few years back, and now I recently read that the Tokyo Quartet just did the work with Lydia Artimiw. Maybe its day has come. This was my fourth time playing the work and, you know, I'm starting to think maybe it IS the greatest piano quintet ever. Taneyev is so unusual among Russian composers of his time, in that he was not much of a tunesmith and not particularly nationalistic in his writing, but he was a master of counterpoint and motivic construction. The huge opening movement of the Quintet is an astounding piece of architecture; virtually nothing exists in it that is not somehow derived from the very simple opening motive in the piano. The slow movement is one of the most original I've ever encountered, dramatically unusual for its time and place: a passacaglia with nothing more than a slightly varied descending C major scale for its "ground bass." The coda of the finale is akin to the end of a Bruckner symphony coming out of just these five instruments; it's giddily over the top. There is a good new recording of this work, from Mikhael Pletnev, Lynn Harrell and others, available here. Some call Taneyev a "Russian Brahms," but he is so much more than that. Hear for yourself. [photo credit: Wayland Baptist University]

Last Saturday night I was in Milwaukee taking part in the opening concert of Present Music's 25th anniversary season. It's a remarkable accomplishment to keep any classical music venture going 25 years, and to do so with a group performing contemporary music is even more astounding. Maybe the following opening to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's review of the concert will give you a hint as to at least part of Present Music's formula for longevity:

"Present Music opened its 25th season Saturday with a carnival of a concert. But let's put the belly dancers, tango dancers, fire dancers and the robot aside for a moment, and focus on three world premieres...."

For all the years that I've been associated with the group, one thing you could say for sure is that Artistic Director Kevin Stalheim has always sought to make a Present Music concert an event, a show. Many performing arts organizations are trying to find new ways to build audiences, to get away from the staid manner of traditional concert presenting; Stalheim was innovating on this score years ago. Sometimes that's come at the expense of presenting more substantial, challenging fare; but to his credit, Stalheim has a definite aesthetic point of view to which he has stayed committed. A point of view is a good thing for an artistic director to have. And there has been a lot of intriguing music presented, successful pieces of music. The two things (giving a good show and playing good music) are of course not necessarily mutually exclusive.There have been some duds, musically speaking, but that comes with the territory.  And I doubt I'll be successful at getting Kevin to include some Carter for the 2008 100th birthday celebrations, though I'll try. The audiences have been generally larger than any I've encountered for new music concerts, New York included. The biggest part of Present Music's success, though, is the high level of the musicians involved. It's been a pleasure and an honor for me to be a part of this band for the last dozen years or so.

So happy birthday Present Music and here's to 25 more years. It's another example that important and good work is going on in many places in the country, deserving of more attention in the arts media than these ventures outside of the major artistic centers (NY, Boston, LA, Chicago) usually get.

The season is on in Columbia and the days ahead are filled with some enticing programs of stimulating and thought-provoking music. Columbia did its duty by Mozart earlier in the year with the Mozart Festival, but the 100th anniversary of Dmitri Shostakovich's birth has gone mostly unnoticed here. (Not a single Shostakovich work graces USC's September Concerts series). However, one of the greatest and certainly most popular and accessible of his works can be heard this Thursday evening, Sept. 14. The USC Symphony will be doing the Symphony No. 5 that night, along with Philadelphia Orchestra concertmaster David Kim as soloist in Bruch's "Scottish Fantasy."

Speaking of the September Concerts at the University of South Carolina School of Music, they continue for the next three Sunday afternoons. The works that catch my eye on the programs ahead? I would check out the premiere of John Fitz Rogers' "Sonata Lunaris" for violin and piano this coming Sunday, Sept. 17, played by William Terwilliger and Andrew Cooperstock; the Ruth Crawford Seeger Wind Quintet, and Rebecca Clarke's Viola Sonata, both being performed on the Sept. 24 concert. More details on the series here. 

I recently finished the delightful autobiography of Nicholas Slonimsky which I heartily recommend, especially to anybody with an interest in the history of twentieth-century music. A letter from the composer Henry Cowell to Slonimsky particularly caught my eye. It's dated August 14, 1936 and was written from San Quentin Prison, where Cowell was just beginning to serve a four-year sentence on a trumped-up morals charge:

"It will interest you to know that there is contact here with the State Library of Sacramento and prisoners may order books from it. I discovered that my book, 'American Composers on American Music,' has been here twelve times, ordered by different men. The bandleader here, a prisoner, has fully digested all the details of your article on me."

Boy, if there really was a time in this country when even the prison population had a little bit of knowledge and interest in contemporary music and art, then the condition of our national culture today is more degraded than I thought.