NEW HAVEN — Contrary to what some people might think about the younger generation, composer Mark Kuss says, “They don’t say ‘classical music sucks.’”
Saturday at 8 p.m. at Battell Chapel, Kuss is banking on that generation to turn out for an evening of that un-sucky music that features one of their peers, cellist Mihai Marica, 25, who will premiere the Cello Concerto Kuss wrote for him as composer-in-residence with Orchestra New England.
Kuss is reaching out to them by using social networking sites, such as ONE’s Facebook site.
The Southern Connecticut State University music professor is a more than casual observer of many musical scenes, enjoying the multi-perspective of a musician who plays a variety of genres here and in New York, a composer who’s worked with people like Branford Marsalis and New Haven experimental band Goose Lane, and a teacher of college students.
“I find that young audiences are interested in all kinds of music. They have an open sensibility, but you have to figure out how to engage them, and social networking sites are the way to do it,” Kuss says, sitting with Marica in a SCSU rehearsal room.
He likes what he’s observed in the noise music scene — where musicians build their own electronic instruments, make music with them and then disassemble them, so the concert is truly a one-time, unreplicated experience.
“They set up a general buzz about the event on a MySpace or Facebook site, then disassemble it, rather than have something that sits on the site to be viewed over and over.”
ONE announced the concert on its Facebook site, which Kuss says received 70 hits within an hour of set-up. He’s been wall-posting updates as the date nears, and there’s also an ONE Twitter account. Consider it a carrot dangled to entice, because once the event happens, it will be snatched away.
“Instead of having a subscription series to concerts, (young people) go online and see what’s happening in town, maybe see one event. I call it the iPod, iTunes syndrome: Instead of buying albums, they download a tune they like best. But that kind of mobility hasn’t happened in the classical music tradition.”
Kuss’ other “weapon” is the acclaimed cellist Marica, who studied with Kuss in 2007 when he was obtaining both his undergraduate degree and his master’s with Aldo Parisot at the Yale School of Music at the same time.
Marica heard Kuss’ Violin Concerto at an ONE concert last year and both were anxious to work together.
“I think we had a very nice relationship as student and teacher, and I was very happy to continue that past graduation,” says Marica, who is interim principal cellist with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra this season.
A member of Parisot’s Yale Cellos, the Romanian has studied with the cello master for seven years “and will as long as I live,” crediting Parisot with making his Carnegie Hall debut a reality last spring.
A reviewer of that debut said Marica was “... a virtuoso of technical brilliance and suavity ... with that hard to define bit of extra paprika that gave his charismatic style a keen emotional and intellectual bite.”
“When Mihai came here, I was like, ‘whoa,’” says Kuss. “My sense was his skill set was as good as you’re going to find. He’s the total package. He has this incredible musicianship and technical facility ... .
“I wanted to do something that would emphasize the skills and interest him. A lot of contemporary music is offputting. This piece is very idiomatic, which means he can engage in it.”
“From a performer’s point of view, it has been a great experience going through the process together,” says Marica.
Marica and Kuss play the second of the five movements for a visitor, a joyous, lilting piece with a carousel sound, that Kuss says comes from his love of Russian and Jewish music, an influence he’s used as subtext.
The concerto, he says, “has a mix of Russian and Broadway. The last movement is like manic Broadway style.”
Marica adds with relish, “The last movement really flies.”
It’s not the first time the award-winning cellist has had works composed for him, but, those collaborations “were never quite as close or as productive as this. I really enjoyed working on it a lot, and playing it. ... I think it’s eloquent. It speaks for itself.”
Kuss has high praise for the relationship that ONE has with SCSU as well. ONE founder and conductor Jim Sinclair visits SCSU to work with student musicians, with Kuss, as he puts it with a laugh, “pushing my music at him. ... We are amazingly lucky to have him in this town.”
With the unveiling of the new concerto and the ONE performance of Beethoven’s “Eroica” tomorrow night, all are hoping a whole new audience will see that fly means fingers across a cello, as well as urban speak for cool.
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