Arts & Entertainment
Introducing Elliott Carter
Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival includes works
of musical icon as well as standard repertoire.
DIANA LIEBERMAN
Piano. These two concerts also feature
works of two of the "Three B's" —
Bach's Goldberg Variations arranged for
violin, viola and cello by Dimitri
Sitkovetsy and Beethoven's Sonata No.
Special to the Jewish News
C
ellist Fred Sherry is bullish
about American composer
Elliott Carter.
"Carter is arguably the world's most
accomplished composer," said Sherry,
who teaches both cello and chamber
music at New York's Juilliard School.
"In person he's awe-inspiring — he
quite literally inspires a sense of awe.
He's deeply intelligent, deeply sensitive.
"I consider him my musical father."
Sherry will perform three works by
his friend and mentor as part of the
2005 Great Lakes Chamber Music
Festival, which takes place June 11-
26. An institution in Metro Detroit
for the past 12 years, GLCMF high-
lights a different contemporary corn-
poser every summer, featuring that
composer's music alongside more tra- -
ditional chamber music repertoire.
Carter, who celebrated his 96th
birthday in December, is the winner
of two Pulitzer Prizes and a Grammy
Award. He has received the Gold
Medal for Music awarded by the
National Institute of Arts and Letters,
the National Medal of Arts and many
other awards and honorary degrees.
The composer defines his music as
intrinsically American, Sherry said. This
is not because of any programmatic or
thematic material — concert-goers who
expect to hear echoes of cowboy songs
and spirituals will be disappointed.
Instead, Carter feels his music "embod-
ies the spirit of America," Sherry said.
lust as in America itself, where you
can chime in with your voice, loud
and clear, and it only adds to the value
of the whole," he said, "Elliott Carter
uses disparate voices that lend them-
selves to an overall harmony."
David Lebenbom, a member of the
GLCMF board and a former local presi-
dent of the Jewish Community Council
and Hillel, said Carter has been "an icon
of modern music for almost 70 years."
"Carter is still working with what
you'd call dissonance, but within his
conceptual idea of the piece," said
Lebenbom, a chamber music aficiona-
do who attends concerts and festivals
throughout the world. "It's not gratu-
itous or for the sake of shocking."
"Although," he continued, "disco-
6/ 2
2005
68
Fred Sherry: "I consider him my
musicalfitther," the cellist says of
composer Elliott Carter.
nance doesn't shock people so much
any more. Even in background music
in movies and television, we hear it —
or don't hear it, as the case may be."
The festival has programmed music
from throughout Carter's career,
Lebenbom pointed out, to enable
audiences to trace the course of the
composer's development through the
history of 20th century music.
"With Carter, you're not going to
hear traditional melodic lines," he
said. "What you will hear is conflict
and resolution."
Carter And More
Of the festival's 20 scheduled concerts,
only the Monday, June 20, concert is
entirely devoted to Carter's music.
At this concert, which takes place at
the chapel of Temple Beth El in
Bloomfield Township, Sherry will per-
form Carter's Two Figments for Solo
Cello. The concert also includes
Carter's acclaimed String Quartet No. 5
and other works.
Sherry returns to Beth El on Tuesday
and Wednesday, June 21-22, to per-
form Carter's Sonata for Cello and
4 for Piano and Violin in A Minor.
In addition to the three Carter
works, Sherry performs Thursday,
June 23, in a concert featuring works
of Mozart, Prokofiev and Dvorak.
This 8 p.m. program takes place at the
chapel of St. Hugo of the Hills, in
Bloomfield Hills.
Sherry, who is married to pianist
Carol Archer, makes his first GLCMF
appearance this summer. He was invited
expressly because of his familiarity with,
and appreciation for, Carter's music.
The Carter cello sonata was written
in 1948, "the year I was born," Sherry
said. "Along with his 1946 piano
sonata, the cello sonata represents a
critical changing point in his work.
Before then, he was an American har-
monist. Then he became a creator,
gradually becoming more complex,
sometimes dauntingly so."
The two unaccompanied Figments are
among the composer's more recent
works, dating from 1994 and 2001. The
second was written expressly for Sherry.
"Since the 1990s, [Carter] has
become less complex, more simple,
but still compelling," the cellist said.
A founding member of the New York-
based ensembles Speculum Musicae and
Tashi, Sherry has performed with the
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln
Center since the 1970s and served as its
artistic director from 1988-92.
Ninety-six-year-old composer Elliott
Carter considers his music to be "intrin-
sically American."
Although he has what he calls "an
Irish name" and was born in
Peekskill, N.Y., Sherry is, in fact,
Jewish. "Both of my parents were
born in Brooklyn, N.Y., of Russian
Jewish heritage," he said.
Neither parent was a musician, but his
father was an avid music collector. Some
of Sherry's earliest memories are of the
pieces he heard on his father's record
player. "I told him I wanted to play an
instrument and he said, 'Go to school
and see what they've got,' " Sherry said.
"What they had was a cello."
Sherry first began playing Carter's
music when he was about 17 years
old. He met the composer soon after,
performing and recording his Sonata
for Flute, Oboe, Cello and Harpsichord
The 1968 recording, on the Nonesuch
label, is still in print, Sherry said.
The two meet often, discussing
poetry, music, art and other shared
interests.
"Sometimes, when people get older,
they get less flexible, but that's not the
case with him," Sherry said. "He's viscer-
ally involved in every aspect of life." ❑
Inside The Festival
The 2005 Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival takes place June 11-26.
The festival began 12 years ago as a joint project of Temple Beth El, St. Hugo's
and Kirk in the Hills, all located in Bloomfield Hills or Bloomfield Township.
This year, venues also include sites in Grosse Pointe, Ann Arbor and East
Lansing, as well as Detroit Country Day School, in Beverly Hills, and the
Detroit Institute of Arts.
In addition to the concerts themselves, the festival includes master classes,
two full-day discussions and complimentary pre-concert conversations.
Subscription tickets may be purchased at $125 for five concerts or $160 for
seven concerts. Individual tickets for these concerts range in price from $22-
$35; $10 for those ages 25 and younger.
Non-subscription concerts include piano recitals by James Tocco, 2:30 • p.m.
Sunday, June 12; and Ursula Oppens, 7 p.m. Sunday, June 19; as well as the
all-Elliott Carter concert, 8 p.m. Monday, June 20. Tickets for these concerts
are $22; $10 for those ages 25 and younger.
For more information and to purchase tickets, call (248) 559-2097 or go to
www.greatlakeschambermusic.com .
❑