Arts & Entertainment
Celebrating Diversity
The Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, sponsored by local churches
and a synagogue, brings together musicians and audiences of all stripes.
SUZANNE CHESSLER
Special to the Jewish News
A
n Israeli-born violinist is
among the instrumentalists
debuting this year with the
Great Lakes Chamber
Music Festival.
Shmuel Ashkenasi, first violinist with
the Vermeer Quartet and artist-in-resi-
dence at Northern Illinois University,
will be part of four out of 20 concerts
scheduled for the festival's ninth year.
The performance event, which runs
June 15-30 at several venues, is a secu-
lar program sponsored by a coalition
of Jewish, Catholic and Protestant
congregations — Temple Beth El, St.
Hugo of the Hills and Kirk in the
Hills. Detroit Chamber Winds &
Strings is the host ensemble.
"We're combining classics with
modern pieces and old-guard perform-
ers with young ensembles at each con-
cert, and I think that makes for very
powerful artistic statements," says
Maury Okun, executive director of the
Great Lakes Festival. "I think that
great diversity adds to the interest."
Musical Academy of Tel Aviv, came to
the United States to study at the
Curtis Institute. He spent six years at
the American school, liked the coun-
try and developed professional and
social connections.
"When I started dreaming in
English, I knew the United States
would be my home," says the violinist,
who will appear in one concert that
also features eighth blackbird, a sextet
that had a strong professional push in
the early years of the Great Lakes
Festival.
The ensemble, which prefers the
lower-case spelling, originally appeared
as part of the festival's Shouse Institute
training program, which hosts cham-
ber groups for two weeks of perform-
ing and coaching in a time they are
moving into professional status. This
year's participants include the Biava
String Quartet, Jupiter String Quartet,
Lee-Zhu Duo and Zoroastran Trio.
Michigan Native
Lisa Kaplan, who lived in Michigan
through her 4th birthday, plays piano
for eighth blackbird.
"Our appearance at the Great Lakes
Festival in 1997 was in the first sum-
mer we were a group," says Kaplan,
27, who also will be performing this
season at festivals in Cincinnati,
Norfolk and Woodstock, in addition
to recording two CDs celebrating the
modern chamber repertoire.
"We made connections with James
Tocco and Henry Meyer and got addi-
tional work through them."
Kaplan and the other members of
eighth blackbird met while they were
students at Oberlin Conservatory. A
professor suggested they perform
together, and the instrumentalists
liked the results. They took their name
from the eighth stanza of the Wallace
Stevens poem "Thirteen Ways of
Looking at a Blackbird."
"The pieces we're performing in
Michigan are intimate and great
chamber music," says Kaplan, whose
group will be playing Albert's Thirteen
Ways Suite and Rzewski's Pocket
Symphony on June 18, 19 and 21 and
Etezady's Damaged Goods on June 22.
Kaplan also will be performing
Harbison's Variations for Violin,
Clarinet and Piano with Ida Kavafian
and Michael Maccaferri on June 22.
Kaplan, the daughter of Lorraine
(Tannenbaum) and Ken Kaplan now
living in Connecticut, has studied the
violin as well as the piano and knew
very early that she wanted to perform.
Although she enjoyed the Jewish tradi-
Far left: Israeli-born
violinist Shmuel
Ashkenasi: "When I
started dreaming in
English, I knew the
United States would
be my home."
Left: Pianist and
former Michigander
Lisa Kaplan, bottom
row center, of eighth
blackbird: "The
pieces we're perfiming
in Michigan are
intimate and great
chamber music."
Israeli-Born Performer
Ashkenasi, who has appeared at
Orchestra Hall and many other presti-
gious venues around the state, will be
applying his talents to the diversity by
playing both contemporary and classical
works: Harbison's November 19, 1828
and Schumann's Quartetfor Piano and
Strings on June 19, 20 and 21, as well as
Brahms's Sextet No. 1 and Dvorak's Four
Romantic Pieces on June 23.
"I am happy with all the pieces, and
I'm happy to be appearing with people
I've performed with in the past," says
Ashkenasi, 61, who also will be traveling
to summer festivals in Illinois, Maine,
Germany, the Netherlands and Austria.
"Ruth Laredo was a schoolmate of
mine, and I've performed with her as
well as Ani and Ida Kayak-Ian and
James Tocco (pianist and artistic direc-
tor of the festival). When I'm working
with them, I know what to expect. I'm
familiar with their idiosyncrasies and
rehearsal habits."
Ashkenasi, who attended the
6/7
2002
74
Festival Schedule
A variety of programs will be featured at this year's Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, and the composers represented are
listed below. Complete information, including performers and individual and subscription ticket prices, is available at
www.greadakeschambermusic.com or at (248) 559-2097 (except where noted).
SUBSCRIPTION
CONCERTS
June 15
Seligman Performing Arts
Center — 8 p.m.
(Beethoven,Mendelssohn/
Mirapaul,
Rachmaninoff/Mirapaul,
Glazounov, Zorn, Taylor,
Dvorak)
June 18, 19
St. Hugo of the Hills —
8 p.m. (Albert, Ravel,
Mozart, Rzewski)
June 20, 21
Kirk in the Hills —
8 p.m. (Dvorak, Harbison,
Barber, Schumann)
June 22
Seligman Performing Arts
Center — 8 p.m. (Etezady,
Ravel, Harbison, Brahms)
June 25, 26
Temple Beth El — 8 p.m.
(Beethoven, Poulenc,
Dvorak)
June 27
St. Hugo of the Hills —
8 p.m. (Schubert, Grieg,
Brahms)
June 28
St. Hugo of the Hills —
8 p.m. (Boccherini,
Beethoven, Mendelssohn)
June 29
Seligman Performing Arts
Center — 8 p.m. (Bach,
Beethoven, Wiren, Mozart)