Barnes, Brooklyn Rider record CD featuring the chamber music of Philip Glass
calendar icon23 Jan 2019 user iconBy Kathe C. Andersen
Lincoln, Neb.--Marguerite Scribante Professor of Piano Paul Barnes traveled to New York City over the winter break to record a new CD featuring the chamber music of Philip Glass for Orange Mountain Music with the quartet Brooklyn Rider that includes Glass’s newest Piano Quintet, “Annunciation.”
Last April, the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts and Lied Center for Performing Arts partnered to present “A Celebration of Philip Glass” at the Lied Center, which featured the world premiere of Glass’s new piano quintet, “Annunciation.” The quintet is based on a Greek Orthodox communion hymn for the Feast of the Annunciation and was performed by Barnes and the Chiara String Quartet with Glass in attendance for the concert.
“Annunciation” was originally commission by the Pearle Francis Finigan Foundation, Mike and Amber Kutayli, Rhonda Seacrest, and the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts.
Glass, who received a Kennedy Center Honor in December, has composed more than 20 operas, large and small; 12 symphonies; three piano concertos and concertos for violin, piano, timpani and saxophone quartet and orchestra; soundtracks to films; string quartets; a growing body of work for solo piano and organ.
Barnes has been collaborating with Glass since they first met in 1995. They also collaborated on Glass’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (After Lewis and Clark), which had its premiere at the Lied Center in 2004 as part of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Celebration. It was also performed again at the concert in April.
The Chiara String Quartet concluded its tenure as Hixson-Lied Artists-in-Residence at the Glenn Korff School of Music last May and ended full-time work performing together last September. Barnes needed to find a new quartet to record the CD with him and chose Brooklyn Rider.
Brooklyn Rider, which includes Johnny Gandelsman, violin; Colin Jacobsen, violin; Nicholas Cords, viola; and Michael Nicolas, cello, has previously recorded all of Glass’s string quartets.
“It was the perfect choice,” Barnes said. “And they are so crazy busy that it’s a miracle everything worked out to create this one little window of time. We hit it off so well, I can’t wait to play with them next year.”
Barnes had one day of rehearsal with Brooklyn Rider before they recorded “Annunciation.”
“That was the most fun I’ve ever had in my life at a rehearsal because these guys were so good,” Barnes said. “They had everything nailed and so right off the bat, we were talking at a high level about interesting musical details that make the piece even better.”
The Pearle Francis Finigan Foundation also supported the recording of the CD and President Liana Sandin traveled to New York City to observe the recording.
“It was really kind of amazing,” Sandin said. “I was very pleased to be invited to come watch them record. I had never been to a recording session before.”
She said the Pearle Francis Finigan Foundation was happy to be a part of these projects.
“Philip Glass is such an important composer, arguably the most important contemporary composer still composing in America today,” she said. “The chance to be a part of something like that and get our name on the music was just very intriguing. I felt like there was no way we could pass up the chance to do that.”
Barnes said he had fun recording the CD with Brooklyn Rider.
“Recording can be the worst thing in the world because it’s such an artificial musical environment. You don’t have the natural energy of a live performance. You don’t have natural human beings that you’re playing for, so it’s awkward,” Barnes said. “But this was so much fun. And the engineer was so inspiring, and he pulled out the absolute best in all of us.”
The CD was recorded at Oktaven Audio in Mount Vernon, New York, with head engineer Ryan Streber.
“The guys that had the studio were just so nice,” Sandin said. “They could not have been more pleasant and welcoming. I sat behind them in the booth where they had all of their equipment to record, and they were doing adjustments and things. I was really impressed with the professionalism and ability of the engineers, especially the leader. What an ear that guy has! He could pick out this particular note in this particular chord that didn’t quite match everybody else, and let’s do that one again. That’s what you need, of course. I’m pleased to have been there and to meet the quartet. I can’t wait for them to be here again in October.”
On Oct. 3, 2019, Paul Barnes and Brooklyn Rider will perform a CD release recital in Kimball Recital Hall and perform everything on the CD, which includes the Quintet, as well as “Pendulum” for violin and piano (featuring Barnes and Brooklyn Rider’s Colin Jacobsen), String Quartet No. 8 and “Quartetsatz.” Brooklyn Rider will also participate in a convocation at the Glenn Korff School of Music.
The CD release recital is sponsored by the Pearle Francis Finigan Foundation, the Lincoln Friends of Chamber Music, the Glenn Korff School of Music and the Lied Center for Performing Arts.
Barnes and Brooklyn Rider hope to perform on several other occasions in October.
“We’re still trying to work out an Omaha performance, and then we’re more than likely to play it at Big Sur [California] at Philip’s Days and Nights Festival on Oct. 6,” Barnes said.
While Barnes was in New York, he also met with Glass to discuss their next project, Piano Concerto No. 4.
“He wants to write another big piece, and we tentatively selected three chants, one chant for each movement, that has this phenomenal emotional and spiritual progression throughout the piece,” Barnes said. “I am very excited about it. We’ll meet again when I’m in New York in February. We’ll see if we can fit it in his schedule.”
He also met with composer Victoria Bond in New York. Barnes will be performing the world premiere of her “Simeron Kremate” at his recital in Lincoln on March 3. Bond will be in Lincoln for the performance.
“Simeron Kremate,” which means “today is suspended,” is based on a Greek Orthodox crucifixion chant.
“Victoria is Jewish, so she inserted a Passover chant because the melodic material is so similar to the Greek Orthodox chant,” Barnes said. “It is this interesting melodic connection between the two of them, and then, of course, the idea of Christ being the Passover lamb.”
Prior to the premiere in Lincoln on March 3, the piece will be performed by Barnes at Symphony Space in New York City on Feb. 18.
The commission is sponsored by the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts and SDG Music Foundation of Chicago. The piece will also be performed in Chicago on March 10 in the historic Nichols Concert Hall at the Music Institute of Chicago.
In December, Barnes traveled to China with Glenn Korff School of Music Director Sergio Ruiz and Professor of Composition and Conducting and Director of Orchestras Tyler White to perform the Chinese premieres of Glass’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and the “Annunciation” Piano Quintet at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China.
Barnes performed the quintet with a quartet from the Sichuan Conservatory. White conducted a faculty orchestra from the conservatory in the performance of the concerto. Also performed were White’s orchestral piece “A Brand New Summer” (2006) and the chamber work “Wind and Sky: Symphony for Six” (2014).
“The interesting thing about the concerto performance in China is they used a native Chinese flute instead of a Native American flute,” Barnes said. “When I do this with Native American Flute, you may have remembered that Ron [Warren] had to switch flutes halfway through. But the Chinese flute is chromatic, so it doesn’t need to change at all.”
Barnes said it was the first time the music of Philip Glass had been performed at the Sichuan Conservatory.
“Can you believe that?” he asked. “It was wonderful introducing them to this great American composer. They absolutely loved him, and I loved collaborating with them. I told them I would be more than happy to go back if they want to play the Quintet again.”
Sandin said events like last April’s premiere of “Annunciation” and the upcoming CD release concert in October are important for Lincoln.
“I think a lot of people in Lincoln probably do not realize what a very vibrant, live music community we have here,” Sandin said. “A lot of that, is of course, due to the University of Nebraska, Nebraska Wesleyan, Union College, and all the different groups like Abendmusik, Lincoln Friends of Chamber Music, the Nebraska Jazz Orchestra. I’ve heard people say, and I believe it, that you could go to a really great musical performance every day of the year in Lincoln, and you’d miss a lot because you couldn’t go to all of them. And that is absolutely true. People from outside of Lincoln really don’t know what we have here. To bring people from all over the world, as we did for the Glass premiere, was a wonderful thing for Lincoln, but it was also a wonderful showcase for Lincoln and for the university, just to let people know what we have here. Because we have something pretty special.”
Sandin gives credit to Barnes for his vision on projects like these.
“He’s got the drive to do it, and he gets very excited about his projects, and he makes other people get excited about them,” Sandin said. “And that’s what you need to do or nothing is going to happen. I give him a lot of credit for making things happen, and it’s been fun to kind of tag along. I’m hoping we will be able to do things in the future, if he comes up with some other great idea, which I have no doubt that he will. And of course, he’s a wonderful pianist. It is great to hear him play any time.”
Barnes’ Lecture/Recital titled “Love, Death, and Resurrection in the Musical Vision of Glass, Bond, Liszt and Byzantine Chant” will take place at 3 p.m. on Sunday, March 3 in Kimball Recital Hall. The concert is free and open to the public. It will also be live webcast. Visit http://music.unl.edu the day of the performance for the link.