Arts & Entertainment Mendelssohn And More Detroit-born Lisa Kaplan is one of many classical artists in this year's Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival. Diana Lieberman Special to the Jewish News E very year, Beverly Baker schedules her summer around the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival. In addition to attending most of the per- formances, artistic encounters and other events, Baker sponsors one of the concerts. And, for many years, she has hosted a performer or ensemble at her Bloomfield Township home. "In the past, I used to go on music cruis- es for this kind of experience," Baker said. "You have to pack, bring your passport, take a plane, get on a boat — and then, when you come back, you have jet lag. "But here, for two weeks, we have a music festival right in our own back yard." Now in its 16th year, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, which runs through June 21, brings highly esteemed performers, up-and-coming ensembles and intriguing guest composers to Southeast Michigan. The festival's mission has been to explore both the great composers of the past as well as the cutting-edge music being written today. In the words of pianist James Tocco, GLCMF artistic director, the 2009 festival has two pillars. The first, described by the festival subtitle," Mendelssohn and the Dawn of Romanticism," continues the inter- national celebration of Felix Mendelssohn's 200th birthday. The second introduces Detroit-area audiences to three contempo- rary American composers: Kati Agocs, Ken Ueno and Stephen Hartke. The opening concert of the festival on Sunday, June 6, included a duo piano arrangement of Mendelssohn's lively "Overture" to A Midsummer Night's Dream, a perfect introduction to the theme of Romanticism in music, said ToCco. Written when the composer was only 17 years old, the piece is in the loosely structured form now known as a tone poem. In the early 19th century, this was a startling innova- tion, a real break with tradition. Other GLCMF concerts include music by Mendelssohn and composers who either Lisa Kaplan and fellow performers in the sextet eighth blackbird influenced him or were influenced by him. And, in addition to the printed program, each of the subscription concerts will be introduced by one of Mendelssohn's "Songs Without Words," Tocco said. "These short piano pieces also are per- fect analogies to the spirit of Romanticism," he said, "the idea of music as narration, poetry, storytelling:' The 2009 Great Lakes Festival also gives a snapshot view of the works of three com- posers who continue the tradition of inno- vation in chamber music: Kati Agocs, Ken Ueno and, in more depth, Stephen Hartke. "They all have in common that they have been chosen by various festival artists who have worked with them in the past or who will be collaborating with them in new works to be introduced at the festival," Tocco said. The 2009 Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, which runs through June 21, began 16 years ago as a joint project of three religious institutions, all in either Bloomfield Hills or Bloomfield Township: Temple Beth El, St. Hugo of the Hills and Kirk in the Hills. This year, Detroit Country Day School's Seligman Performing Arts Center in Beverly Hills, Grosse Pointe Memorial Church, the Detroit Institute of Arts and Ann Arbor's Kerrytown Concert House join the founding institutions in hosting concerts. Music of Hartke, the festival's senior composer, will be performed throughout the festival, including one concert, Monday, June 15, at Temple Beth El, devoted entirely to his works. All three composers have been sched- uled to introduce and discuss their music. "The idea of a senior and one or more junior composers interacting with and com- plementing one another is the brainchild of one of our board members, Gwen Weiner, who, together with her sisters, has endowed the festival with the Stone Composers' Forum, named after their parents, Eunice and Joshua (Jim) Stone," Tocco said. "This is shaping up to be one of the most exciting developments in the festi- val's history." This year, the festival invites back the six- member ensemble eighth blackbird, which performs in concerts taking place June 16-17 and 19-21. Described by the New Yorker as "friendly, unpretentious, idealistic and highly skilled," the group first charmed GLCMF patrons in 2005 with a multime- dia performance of Arnold Schoenberg's 20th-century masterpiece Pierrot Lunaire — complete with puppets. "We definitely have a tendency toward the dramatic and theatrical," said pianist Lisa Kaplan, who has been with the group since its inception in 1996. Among the works they'll perform this year is Hartke's Meanwhile, incidental music to imaginary puppet plays. The musicians perform the piece from memory, moving around the stage to visually highlight what is happening aurally in the music. Written specifically for eighth blackbird in November 2007, Meanwhile was a finalist for that year's Pulitzer Prize in music. The ensemble also will introduce com- poser Kati Agocs to festival audiences, including the premiere of the Boston-based composer's Pygmalion, another work writ- ten for eighth blackbird. Kaplan, who spent the first four years of her life in Detroit, grew up in Connecticut, graduating from Oberlin College with both a bachelor of music in piano performance and a bachelor of arts in art history. She went on to earn a master's degree in music from Northwestern University, where she studied with Ursula Oppens. The ensemble also received artist diplomas in chamber music from the Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati. This summer, Kaplan also appears with Detroit favorite Jeremy Denk on Thursday, June 18, in the Mozart Sonata for Piano, Four Hands, along with her numerous per- formances as pianist for eighth blackbird. "I love Mozart, so I'm really excited," Kaplan said. "I think that sometimes ini- tially there can be different skill sets needed when learning a piece of contemporary music, as opposed to a piece from the tradi- tional canon. "That being said, I think I generally end up using everything from my background to play any piece of music. In the end, music is music." The festival includes daytime artistic encounters and concert preludes. Preludes generally begin 45 minutes before the main performance and are free to ticket hold- ers. See the festival Web site for details. Individual tickets range in price from $32- $35, $10 for those ages 25 and younger. Tickets purchased at the door cost an extra $5. For more information and to purchase tickets, call (248) 559-2097 or go to greatlakeschambermusic.org . June 11 • 2009 B11