arts & life

mu s i c

Energy,
Excitement,
Emotion

Jon Krosnick performs with the Lunar Octet.

Suzanne Chessler | Contributing Writer

The 11 members

of the Lunar Octet

reunite in Ann Arbor

for a tour de force

revue of their

32 years.

The original Lunar Glee Club, with
Krosnick kneeling in front, c. 1984

details

The Lunar Octet will perform at
7:30 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 14, at the
Ark in Ann Arbor. $20.
(734) 761-1800; theark.org.

T

he Lunar Octet appears to
promise eight performers,
but there will be 11 when
the band appears Aug. 14 at the
Ark in Ann Arbor.
That’s because the show serves
as a reunion and will include some
of the entertainers who joined and
left the ensemble over the 32 years
since it was formed. The group
played regularly into the late ’90s
and started working again in 2014.
Jon Krosnick will be there for
sure. The percussionist, who
earned his doctoral degree in social
psychology from the University of
Michigan, will be on break from
teaching communications, political
science and psychology at Stanford
University in California.
“The perfor-
mance is really
going to be a tour
de force revue
of the history
of our original
music,” Krosnick,
57, explains.
“We have com-
posed in various
styles, inspired
by sounds from
highly classical to
African highlife
and everything in between.
“The music stands the test of
time, we know, because we had a
sold-out show in Michigan for our
30th reunion. When we play our
music today, we are interpreting
it and expressing styles of the 21st
century. We are all active play-
ers involved in the interim years,

sometimes as composers.”
Krosnick explains that the
instrumentalists are aiming to
bring back a live expression and
contemporary sentiment of the
“energy, excitement, musical com-
plexity and raw-fun emotion” that
were at the core of the band in the
1980s. The mix of players ranges
from those who fall into the cat-
egory of professional musicians to
those with instrumental music as a
second career.
The musical group started out
with another misleading name
that might be remembered by
early fans — the Lunar Glee Club.
The name was intended to suggest
singing through instruments, not
vocalizing.
“It was a marketing tactic but
not a smart move,” says Krosnick,
who counts 25 instrumentalists
participating in the ensemble at
one point or another. “Many of the
members are still in the Ann Arbor
area. Jazz pianist Mark Kieswetter,
coming in from Toronto, is among
the travelers.”
Krosnick, raised outside
Philadelphia where he took piano
lessons, developed and changed his
musical priorities during summers
at Interlochen. His mother, opera
singer Evelyn Rieber, decided on
the camp, and his father, a music
enthusiast, drove his son there for
nine summers.
“At Interlochen, there was a
program called Talent Exploration,”
Krosnick recalls. “Each day, camp-
ers would try different instruments
to find what they liked. As a result

of that experience, I loved drum-
ming, and that became my interest
for life.
“I played percussion in the sym-
phony orchestra, concert bands
and jazz ensembles at Interlochen,
and I became part of a tremendous
culture there.
“The peak of my classical career
was when I won the Philadelphia
Orchestra Student Concerto
Competition and performed with
those musicians. I knew I loved
classical music and jazz so when
the Stan Kenton Orchestra played
at Interlochen, Peter Erskine
became my inspirational drum-
mer.”
At Harvard, where Krosnick
decided his interest in psychology
would form the core of his under-
grad studies, he played with the
university orchestra. He also par-
ticipated with the MIT Symphony
and area jazz groups. While playing
with a big band organized at the
University of Michigan, the drum-
mer met a musician forming the
Lunar Glee Club and joined.
“After I finished my studies, I
became part of the faculty at Ohio
State University for 18 years and
drove back to Ann Arbor for Lunar
gigs,” Krosnick says.
In 1992, the group Charged
Particles was created in Columbus,
and it has become Krosnick’s pri-
mary jazz outlet. That group, play-
ing about 100 performances a year,
is celebrating its 25th anniversary.
Charged Particles is reminding
Krosnick of his Jewish background,
which settled into cultural identity

since his bar mitzvah at Har Sinai
Temple in Trenton, N.J. The group
is playing a circuit of venues at
Jewish centers, most recently at
the Peninsula Jewish Community
Center outside San Francisco.
“I’m a composer in a tiny, tiny
way,” he says, thinking back to that
experience while living in Ann
Arbor. “When I was working regu-
larly with the Lunar Octet, we real-
ized that the shows we were doing
were high-energy and loud volume
all the time, and we needed to cre-
ate some diversity in our offerings.
“One night, I was sitting at a
Mexican restaurant waiting for my
later-to-become wife [Catherine
Heaney, a public health special-
ist] for dinner and thinking about
how we could solve this problem.
Thinking about her, I grabbed a
napkin and pen and wrote a song,
‘A Smile of Love.’
“It has become the anthem of
our relationship, and the ensemble
is going to perform that piece at the
Ark. It’s a fun song and captures
the gentle romance of our mar-
riage. Charged Particles plays it at
almost every show.”
While the Lunar Octet has not
recorded in many years, members
are thinking about going into a stu-
dio while in Michigan or bringing
the necessary technology into the
Ann Arbor venue.
“We’ll have a few days of
rehearsal in Ann Arbor,” Krosnick
says. “We’re working on creating
new approaches to the music and
making this ensemble strong for
today.”

*

August 11 • 2016

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