arts&life

music

FIT Siegel

Keeping The Faith

The Great Lakes

Chamber Music

Festival celebrates

25 years of uniting

three distinct religious

organizations with

pieces ranging from

traditional to techno.

SUZANNE CHESSLER
CONTRIBUTING WRITER

details

The Great Lakes Chamber
Music Festival runs
June 9-24 at various
venues. For complete
festival information
and scheduling, go to
greatlakeschambermusic.
org or call (248) 559-2097.
Some concerts are free.

36

May 31 • 2018

T

hree congregations — represent-
ing three different faiths — are
celebrating 25 years of making
beautiful music together.
The Great Lakes Chamber Music
Festival — an initiative sponsored by
Temple Beth El, St. Hugo of the Hills
Catholic Church and Kirk in the Hills —
has established some special program-
ming for this milestone anniversary.
The annual event, planned as secular,
runs June 9-24 at venues that include and
go beyond the sponsoring religious cen-
ters and spotlights returning and debut-
ing performers fulfilling the theme “Rise
to the Occasion.”
While pianist James Tocco, first artistic
director, returns and certainly rises to the
occasion with some 10 performances,
there is long-term perspective by Maury
Okun, chief executive of the event since
the beginning.
“It’s been an incredible experience for
me to share in the festival’s growth,” says
Okun, president of the Detroit Chamber
Winds & Strings and recipient of the
Benard L. Maas Prize for Achievement
David Shifrin
in Jewish Culture and Continuity. “From
our birth, we were able to offer really fine
concerts, and we’ve grown in so many respects.
“Our first year, we had six concerts and 10 musicians. This year,
we’ll have more than 20 concerts and around 50 musicians. And while
size doesn’t matter much, keeping the artistic level very high while
reaching more people is certainly a real accomplishment.
“I’m so grateful for the way the festival has brought together people
of different faiths. For many of our Jewish patrons, regular attendance
at performances at Kirk in the Hills or St. Hugo’s was unheard of
when we started. Likewise, many of our non-Jewish audience mem-
bers had never even been in a synagogue before they started attend-
ing our programs at Temple Beth El. Now everyone goes back and
forth without giving it a second thought.”
As the festival marks its 25th year with a range of works that

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include traditional repertoire, it also
marks the 100th anniversary of the
birth of composer, conductor and musi-
cian Leonard Bernstein. Opening night
includes a presentation of his one-act
chamber opera Trouble in Tahiti as well
as George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”
People who have regularly attended
the festival will recognize violinists Ani
and Ida Kavafian as well as Philip Setzer;
cellist Robert deMaine, violist Kim
Kashkashian, baritone and (Adat Shalom
cantor) Daniel Gross and soprano Lauren
Skuce Gross. New to the event are clari-
netist David Shifrin and electronic music
presenter FIT Siegel.
Shifrin, artistic director of Chamber
Music Northwest in Oregon and a pro-
fessor at Yale University, appears in four
programs. The most storied piece in his
schedule is “Quartet for the End of Time,”
a work by French composer Olivier
Messiaen, who worked while incarcer-
ated in a German prisoner-of-war camp.
“The ‘Quartet’ is one of the unique
works in the chamber music literature
for so many reasons, including the
circumstances under which it was writ-
ten,” says Shifrin, who this summer
also appears with the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival and
the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, where he will be celebrating
Bernstein on Bernstein’s birthday (Aug. 25).
“Guards who knew Messiaen was a great musician made it possible
for him to have an old beat-up piano, music paper and writing imple-
ments so he could compose. Messiaen found a fellow prisoner, an old
friend and clarinetist [Henri Akoka, who was Jewish as is Shifrin] and
identified a violinist and cellist also interred in the camp. He proceed-
ed to write this monumental work for the four of them. It premiered
in the mess hall for prisoners, guards and townspeople.”
Shifrin, who points out that these prisoners were treated very dif-
ferently from prisoners in concentration camps, explains that each
instrument is given a solo turn. The movements range from being