Fountain of Youth: The New Ensemble Citywater Directs a Torrent of Energy Toward the Work of Living Composers
By Edward Ortiz, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.
Apr. 13–The city’s newest chamber ensemble wants nothing more than to turn the classical chamber music concert on its head.
That new ensemble is the year-old Citywater. And one of the most distinctive things about the six-member group is its fresh-faced enthusiasm for new music. All but two of the ensemble’s members are 20-somethings.
And all of them believe that staying within established musical boundaries is far less interesting than playing music with a sense of adventure — such as the work of composer Steven Mackey, who often includes electric guitar and unconventional tunings in his chamber works.
The ensemble is made up of cellist Tim Stanley, flutist Cathie Apple, percussionist Ben Prima, clarinetist Milun Doskovic, violinist Charles Spruill IV and pianist Jennifer Reason.
The six musicians believe there is an audience out there waiting to hear unconventional chamber music. “I think Sacramento is hungry for this,” says Stanley.
He says audiences, especially people new to classical music, are eager for the kind of repertoire that Citywater will play in its recital at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church downtown on Saturday evening as part of the church’s Emerging Artist Series. That performance will be a split concert with cellist Elizabeth Gruinn. She will play more traditional classical works for cello.
The Citywater program includes “Indigenous Instruments” by the Princeton University-based Mackey. That work was inspired by a transcription of an African thumb piano, with the music written for instruments tuned to unconventional pitches. The program also includes the hyper-rhythmic “Zaka” by Jennifer Higdon, one of the most provocative and popular composers in classical music today. The third piece to be performed will be a world premiere of “Cubist Staircase” by David Evan Jones.
Getting six musicians to agree on a repertoire might seem like the biggest challenge in establishing an ensemble like Citywater. But the logistical issues are the most vexing, says flutist Apple.
“The biggest challenge is getting six musicians to rehearsal on time,” she says.
Finding times to rehearse is like cobbling together a constantly changing jigsaw puzzle. Each musician plays in other ensembles, and most hold down day jobs to help pay the rent. Clarinetist Doskovic works as a tennis pro, percussionist Prima works in cabinetry, and Apple is a fitness trainer.
Their work schedules demand rehearsals that kick off at the caffeine-hungry hour of 7 a.m. The ensemble typically rehearses at least three times a week between 7 and 8:30 a.m., with members rushing out the door, instrument in tow, at 8:31.
“I think every one of us has been at least half an hour late to at least one rehearsal,” says Apple.
One morning, cellist Stanley was so sleep-fogged that he walked into rehearsal only to realize he had left his cello at home.
Those challenges are a small price to pay to get to play the new music that fires the group’s enthusiasm, says Stanley. That music serves as an excellent entry point into the traditional classical music repertoire.
“Young people are gravitating more to chamber music today because of how new music allows itself to be pollinated by popular music,” he says.
That pollination comes by way of new-music composers’ willingness to infuse their works with popular music while using instruments such as electric guitars and computers. Some think this may be a saving grace for the future of classical music.
“Chamber music is enjoying a certain renaissance right now,” says Margaret Lioi, chief executive officer of Chamber Music America. The 8,000-member organization is the primary advocacy group for chamber music and its practitioners.
Chamber music is one of the most pliable and democratic forms of classical music. Typically, it is music for a small ensemble with one musician per part, and it is generally performed without a conductor. It can be as intimate as a duo concert, or it can have 10 or more instruments. The music can range from the traditional — such as the Juilliard String Quartet playing a work by Mozart — to the avant garde, such as what is offered by ensembles like the percussion chamber group So Percussion, which is keen on using flower pots, pipes, cactuses and toy pianos to compose chamber works.
Unlike orchestra concerts and operas, chamber music can be presented in myriad venues, sometimes on the fly, such as those that are performed under the concrete shroud of freeways or in the sonic sanctity of small churches.
Lioi believes that the renaissance in chamber music is due to young audiences attending them. And she says these audiences are approaching classical music from a different viewpoint.
“Younger audiences don’t care that they’re listening to classical, jazz or pop,” she says. “They’re not coming to concerts with preconceived notions about what something should sound like. They only care if they’re enjoying the music.”
Stanley believes that such musical curiosity is the basis for building an audience for the chamber music of Mozart and Beethoven.
“I think the music will sell you on this kind of concert,” says Stanley, “because the music being written today is so fresh and great, yet it’s also part of a 400-year history of classical music.”
All six members of Citywater are classically trained musicians. All but three are either students or graduates of the music department of California State University, Sacramento.
If there is a core of this ensemble, it would be Stanley and his wife, Apple, who may already be known to local audiences through her leadership of the Vapor Wind Quintet.
“We saw that there was not a new-music chamber ensemble here that we could get into,” says Apple. “So we figured we’d start an ensemble of our own.”
The group has lived a charmed existence since it was formed a year ago during Prima’s senior recital concert at CSUS. That concert, which involved another Mackey work — “Micro-concerto” — went so well that the members decided it was time to commit to founding a new chamber group.
“I feel that this year was about as good a freshman year as we could’ve ever hoped for,” says Stanley.
That year has included playing at last year’s venerable Festival of New American Music and the New Millennium Festival at CSUS.
The ensemble also recently spread its wings by playing at UC Berkeley’s Hertz Hall, where it solidified its relationship with Mackey, who joined in on electric guitar for the work “Heavy Light.”
One defining facet of Citywater is its focus on removing all barriers to the enjoyment of new music, says Stanley.
“The younger generation — the people we really want to get into the concert hall — are not connecting with the people that are making the music,” he says.
Stanley believes that classical music, and chamber music in particular, often seems standoffish.
“I think some people won’t go to such a concert because they don’t think they will ‘get it,’ ” he says.
To bond with its audiences, Stanley says, Citywater is committed to talking to and with its audiences before concerts and in between pieces.
“So, one of the main goals for Citywater is to make ourselves available to the most sophisticated question we can get, and also to the least sophisticated question,” Stanley says.
“I want to share and not be teaching. We’re always trying to communicate on that level, and I think we’re making musical friends as opposed to building an audience.”
The ensemble is also toying with the idea of inviting audience members up on the stage in the future, when it intends to play Terry Riley’s minimalist classic “In C.” Stanley believes that having the audience members walk around the musicians during the performance will give them a visceral insight into what a musician is doing during a performance of minimalist music.
The appearance of Citywater is a welcome one in the developing classical music scene in Sacramento. But it also begs the question as to whether such a group can survive or whether its members will step up to a larger, more thriving musical environment such as the Bay Area.
“I think I’d rather make Sacramento happen than go to the Bay Area,” says Stanley. “Besides, the Bay Area does not need us.”
“It would be great if musicians could feel like they could make a living here,” he says. “I’d like to see people in Sacramento thinking they don’t have to trek all the way to Mondavi to hear something special.”
And to that end, Stanley believes that Citywater can add a much-needed new-music luster to the chamber music scene here.
“If we build an audience here, then maybe new-music groups from the East Coast or the Midwest would consider stopping in Sacramento to play when on tour.”
And hopefully for Citywater, that’s a door that will someday start swinging in both directions.
Citywater
Sound samples: www.myspace.com/citywater6
Formed: 2007
Debut: Festival of New American Music, CSUS, 2007
Motto: “Performance without boundaries, and education without alienation.”
The players
Tim Stanley cello
Cathie Apple, flute
Milun Doskovic, clarinet
Jennifer Reason, piano
Charles Spruill IV,violin
Ben Prima, percussion
Influences
Eighth Blackbird
Bang on a Can
Steve Mackey
Jennifer Higdon
So Percussion
California Ear Unit
Elliott Carter
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Copyright (c) 2008, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.
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