Melodic Master
Meet composer-in-residence Paul Schoenfield.
SUZANNE CHESSLER
Special to the Jewish News
T
he music of former Detroiter
Paul Schoenfield will be played
by an array of instrumentalists at
this year's Great Lakes Chamber Music
Festival.
The Temple Beth El Chapel, on June
25, will be the setting for an all-
Schoenfield concert featuring pianist
James Tocco, violinist Juliette Kang, cel-
lists Nathaniel RoSen and Debra
Fayroian, clarinetist Laurence Liberson
and the Claremont Trio.
This year's composer-in-residence's
pieces also will be played at five other fes-
tival venues (see accompanying schedule).
"Most of the pieces that will be played
are older works," says Schoenfield, 54,
who spends part of the year in the
United States and part of the year in
Israel. "Except for Sparks of Glory, they
are heavily rooted in folk music and do
not give the full range of my work."
"The Trio for Clarinet, Violin and
Piano is kind of a klezmer piece, while
Carolina Reveille was written for some-
one who wanted music based on the
song 'Carolina in the Morning,' " says
Schoenfield, who writes when he is
commissioned to do a piece.
"Three Country Fiddle Pieces for
Violin and Piano is very fast and diffi-
cult to play [in comparison to] Cafe
Music for Violin, Cello and Piano,
which is based on jazz in the 1920s.
British Folk Songs for Cello and Piano
was written in memory of a teacher,
and Sparks of Glory comes from the title
of a book by Moshe Prager, a World
War II European journalist who moved
to Israel and wrote stories of heroism
from the concentration camps.
Schoenfield began musical training at
the age of 6, eventually studying piano
with Julius Chajes, Ozan Marsh and
Rudolf Serkin. With enough credits and
high SAT scores, he left Detroit's Cass
Technical High School a year early and
earned bachelor's and master's degrees in
music from Carnegie Mellon University.
He went on to earn a doctorate in music
from the University of Arizona.
"Most kids take some kind of musical
instrument, so I took piano," Schoenfield
says about his entry into music. "We had
a piano in the house and I took to it. I
really was torn between mathematics and
music and actually I still am. I keep up
with math as much as I have time for."
Schoenfield's early work was accompa-
nying people in Detroit, and then he
moved on to other performances, more
writing and teaching at the University of
Toledo. For a time, he lived on a kib-
butz, which, he says, suited his personal-
ity as a strong socialist.
"As a full-time composer, I take the
orders that come in the order that they
come," says Schoenfield, who is married
to a physician and has three children who
all have studied music. "I've only turned
down a few things. I work all day and do
a lot of my writing just going for walks
and hearing things. I work out the
[melodies] sitting at the piano."
Among those who have commis-
sioned his work or awarded grants to
him are Chamber Music America, the
Classical Conductor
Philip Greenberg brings his baton home.
SUZANNE CHESSLER
Special to the Jewish News
ED
hilip Greenberg, music director
and conductor of the Savannah
Symphony in Georgia, returns
home for two engagements important
to him — the Great Lakes Chamber
Music Festival and the Michael
Bistritzky Memorial Concert.
Greenberg, who grew up in
Michigan and served as assistant con-
ductor of the Detroit Symphony
Orchestra from 1974-1978, is debut-
ing with Great Lakes for two programs
and saluting an influential person in
his career for the another.
One of Greenberg's Great Lakes con-
ducting performances, June 23 at the
Seligman Performing Arts Center at
Detroit Country Day School, will be
with Detroit Chamber Winds &
Strings, violinists Ida and Ani Kavafian
and pianists James Tocco, Ruth Laredo
and Seymour Lipkin, and include
works by Nielsen, Schoenfield, Bach
and Mozart.
At 3 and 4:40 p.m. Sunday, June 24,
he'll conduct Detroit Chamber Winds
& Strings in family concerts at the
Wildlife Interpretive Gallery at the
Detroit Zoo, where zoo director Dr.
Ron Kagan will narrate the piece
Tyrannosaurus Sue, a Cretaceous
Concerto, written by Bruce Adolphe.
To these summer programs,
Greenberg brings experience as music
director-conductor of the Royal Music
Festival in Cahors, France, and artistic
director-conductor of the Crested Butte
(Colorado) Summer Music Festival.
On June 18 at the Birmingham
Unitarian Church for the Bistritzky con-
cert, Greenberg will conduct 50 musi-
cians from major orchestras around the
country, including Cleveland Orchestra
violinist Judy Berman Fried, Dallas
Symphony cellist Daniel Levine, and
Toledo Symphony cellist Loraine Messick
Rockefeller Fund, American
Composers Forum, Soli Deo Gloria of
Chicago and the Opera Theatre of St.
Louis, which asked for a full-length
folk opera, The Merchant and the
Pauper, to a libretto by Maggie Stearns.
The composer, who keeps the Sabbath
and studies Talmud with a learning part-
ner, has done only a few pieces- related to
Judaism. His current workload includes a
cello concerto and string quartet.
"My most recent recording came
out last January," Schoenfield says. "It
has a number of chamber pieces and
was a joint project with Decca and
Innova Recordings." ❑
As part of the Great Lakes
Chamber Music Festival, an all-
Schoenfield concert will take place
8 p.m. (7 p.m. preview) Monday,
June 25, at Temple Beth El.
Schoenfield pieces also will be
played 8 p.m. (7 p.m. preview)
Thursday and Friday, June 21 22,
at St. Hugo's Chapel; 8 p.m. (7 •
p.m. preview) Saturday, June 23, at
Seligman Performing Arts Center
at Detroit Country Day School;
7:30 p.m. Thursday, June 21, at St.
Thomas Aquinas Church in East
Lansing; 8 p.m. Friday, June 22, at
Kerrytown Concert House in Ann
Arbor; and 11:30 a.m. Sunday,
June 24, at the Detroit Institute of
Arts. (248) 559-2097.
tk
-
Schoenfield. He'll feature works by
Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and Vivaldi.
"Michael Bistritzky, who recently
passed away, was the conductor of the
youth orchestra out of which almost
every professional Detroit musician
came for 30 or 40 years, and many
musicians in town for the festival will
be soloing for the memorial," says
Greenberg, 54, who played violin with
the Mumford High School Orchestra,
Detroit High Schools Honors
Orchestra and the All-City Orchestra
conducted by Bistritzky.
"The memorial concert reads like a
Who's Who of the orchestra world. I've
conducted the Moscow Philharmonic,
Danish Radio Orchestra and famous
orchestras all over the world, but I
don't know of any orchestra that's been
put together that's this illustrious as far
as orchestras represented."
Greenberg, who earned a bachelor's
degree in violin performance at Indiana
University and the first master's degree in
conducting granted by the University of
Michigan, served as concertmaster and
CONDUCTOR on page 78
jfi
6/8
2001