More about the 2011 Eastman Rochester Organ Initiative Festival...

[KB7DQH]

In the "organ courses" board I posted an article about this event... Follows is another article, describing in considerably more detail the credentials of the participating organists, and what they have planned for the public concerts... and the concert schedule...

http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/music/articles/2011/11/CLASSICAL-PREVIEW-2011-Eastman-Rochester-Organ-Initiative-Festival/

CLASSICAL PREVIEW: 2011 Eastman Rochester Organ Initiative Festival

By Paloma Capanna on November 9, 2011

(The Wurlitzer at the Auditorium Theatre is just one of the local organs that will be featured in this weekend's EROI Festival.)

When you're brought up playing classical music out of a book, you probably cringe when someone asks you, "Can't you just sit down and play something?" For some students of classical, this often-heard phrase is as good as being asked to play ragtime or jazz, genres that evoke that notion of complete abandon from what's on the page. So imagine what happens when 200-plus international organists descend upon Rochester to spend several days talking about and performing improvisations on classical themes from the great J.S. Bach to holy music of the Renaissance to Wurlitzer theater songs.

You might have the impression that chaos is about to burst through the pipes of the organs of Rochester - an idea quickly put aside by two masters in the field, William Porter and David Higgs, who are among the hosts for the conference.

"Improvisation is a method," says Porter, "there are techniques and methods that you practice. You do not just sit down and play whatever comes into your head."

Higgs says, "Improvisation is not where you sit down and the muse comes to you and you're the vehicle for some kind of cosmic music. Improvisation follows a form and a harmonic language."

Porter is a professor of organ and historical keyboards at the Eastman School of Music. He is all about the "recovery" of an historical approach to organ performance. Higgs, chair of the department, inaugurates organs in the United States and Europe, engages in regular concert tours and master classes, and speaks passionately about the capabilities of and sounds of these instruments. Higgs is after the organs that will provide the best sound for improvisations.

Porter chanced onto improvisation while he was attending graduate school at Yale University and working as a church organist with an instrument he hated. "I was getting discouraged," says Porter, "so I started examining the organ for which notes sounded OK and which ones did not, and I started selecting which notes to play. This gave me an incentive to start making things up."

The congregation noticed what Porter was doing, and gave him positive reinforcement. That was when Porter realized that improvisation was "not a scary thing."

From that simple beginning, Porter went on to spend decades improving his craft and learning the methods of the past. He has taught at Oberlin College (his undergraduate alma mater), New England Conservatory, and Yale Divinity School. He has been music director at the Church of St. John the Evangelist and artist-in-residence at First Lutheran Church, both in Boston. He is currently on faculty at ESM and McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

During our interview Porter offered his narrative of the 700-year history of organ repertoire and improvisation, a history filled with the likes of Frenchman like Marcel Dupre. "Dupre," says Porter, "created an improvisation course with complex chordal progressions in all keys, keyboard harmony, and counter-point." Dupre's improvisations also evolved into published compositions, as with his "Symphonie - Passion," which he first performed in a Wanamaker Department Store on a Wanamaker Organ in Philadelphia in the 1920's.

Students of improvisation are taught to transcribe improvisations as a method of learning the progressions of themes undertaken by the masters. It turns out that when an organist lists "composer" as a credential, it could also mean the virtually unheard-of title in the American halls of classical music, "improviser." "So much of the music you hear today had its origins in improvisation," says Porter. "Once you write down an improvisation and time goes by, it becomes repertoire."

Higgs is on a quest for "authentic sound." His goal is to make Rochester a global center for organ performance, research, building, and preservation. He's in the right place for that lofty goal. When Eastman School of Music opened its doors in 1921, it housed the largest organ collection in the nation. Higgs's list of organ projects in Rochester is an unbeatable resume.

The Eastman Rochester Organ Initiative started in 2001 "because at Eastman we had one of the greatest schools for learning to play the organ in the world," says Higgs. "Since 1921, the organ department has been at the top of the heap worldwide. Students come from all over the world to study here."

For Higgs, the styles of organ improvisation are as diverse as the organs, themselves, and he wants to create opportunities for organists and audiences to hear the actual sounds of the different styles. Higgs explains that churches would select a certain kind of organ to have their musical offerings meet the edicts of the particular church. Organists would then be expected to perform "in the style of" their employer church for the liturgy, hymns, preludes, postludes and the like.

"Everybody improvised in the church," says Higgs WHAT TIME PERIOD ARE WE TALKING ABOUT HERE?. "They didn't write it down - paper was quite a thing, to have printed things was a big deal. They would write down particularly good ones. Otherwise music was sorted in the finger memory, so-called 'muscle memory,' and that was how people learned."

When Higgs takes to the organ to improvise, he will be performing at Christ Church on the Craighead-Saunders organ, unveiled in 2008 as a reconstruction of the largest and best-preserved late Baroque organ, built by Adam Gottlob Casparini in 1776 in Lithuania. "I will take inspiration from the instrument, a central German-style organ that Bach would have known," says Higgs. "My improvisations will resemble something that would have been heard in the churches of the late 18th century in Germany."

Higgs credentials are likewise lengthy and distinguished, starting with bachelors and masters degrees from the Manhattan School of Music. Higgs has been music and choir director and/or organist at St. Mark's Episcopal Church (Berkeley, CA), Temple Emanu-El (San Francisco, CA), and New York City's Riverside Church and Park Avenue Christian Church. And Higgs lists extensive performance credentials, including the inaugural concerts of organs from St. Stephen's Cathedral (Vienna) to St. Ignatius Loyola (NYC).

Higgs admits that he also plays R&B. "Any form that you might find written out in music can be improvised," he says. "You take a tune you know and put it with material you don't. It's the expected versus the unexpected."

Joining Porter and Higgs for EROI's improvisation festival will be other world-renowned organists, including Hans Davidsson, Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra, Rudolf Lutz, David Peckham, Jeffrey Brillhart, Sophie-Veronique Cauchefer-Choplin, and Bruce Neswick.

Brillhart is director of music and fine arts at Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church in Pennsylvania, and is a lecturer in organ improvisation at Yale University. Brillhart will perform in two different concerts on Saturday, November 12.

Cauchefer-Choplin is currently on faculty at the Royal College of Music in London, and has served as the organist at St. Sulpice in Paris. The French liturgical tradition includes huge, full improvisations after the service. Cauchefer-Choplin will perform in two different concerts on Saturday, November 12.

Davidsson teaches organ at the Eastman School of Music and is project director of EROI. He also established the organ research center at G�teborg Organ Art Center in Sweden. In 2004, Davidsson was awarded H.M. The King's Medal from the King of Sweden for "significant accomplishments in musicology and music, primarily in the fields of organ research and organ education." Davidsson will perform in a concert on Thursday, November 10.

Lutz is a Swiss organist at Church of St. Lawrence, and is director of the St. Gallen Chamber Ensemble and the St. Galen Bach Choir. Lutz will perform in a concert on Friday, November 11.

Neswick uses the word "improvisateur" in his biography, along with prizes from the San Anselmo Organ Festival, the Boston American Guild of Organists's National Convention, and the Rochette Concours. He previously served as music director at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. Neswick will perform in a concert on Sunday, November 13.

Peckham can be found at the First United Methodist Church in Horseheads, and has been associated with L.A. Peckham & Son Pipe Organ Service since 1983. Peckham's bent pulls him toward theater-organ music, which is where you will find him during the festival, at the Auditorium Theatre's four-tier Wurlitzer organ. (The Rochester Theater Organ Society has approximately 1,000 members.) Peckham will perform in a concert on Friday, November 11.

Ruiter-Feenstra, in addition to being an organist, is the author of books on improvisation pedagogy, namely, "Bach and the Art of Improvisation" and "Improvisation Encounters." Ruiter-Feenstra will perform in a concert on Friday, November 11.

2011 EROI concert schedule

Thursday, November 10, 8 p.m.: Improvisations by ESM organ faculty w/Hans Davidsson, David Higgs, William Porter, on the Craighead-Saunders Organ at Christ Church, 141 East Ave.

Friday, November 11, 1 p.m.: Improvisations in the musical language of J.S. Bach w/Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra, Rudolf Lutz, William Porter, on the Craighead-Saunders Organ at Christ Church, 141 East Ave.

Friday, November 11, 8 p.m.: Evening of music for the theater organ w/David Peckham, William Porter on the Wurlitzer Organ at the Auditorium Theatre, 885 E. Main St.

Saturday, November 12, 10:45 a.m.: Music in the style of Paris in 1900 w/William Porter, Jeffrey Brillhart, Sophie-Veronique Cauchefer-Choplin on the Fritts Organ at Sacred Heart Cathedral, 296 Flower City Park.

Saturday, November 12, 8 p.m.: Performances by Jeffrey Brillhart, Sophie-Veronique Cauchefer-Choplin on the Austin Organ at Third Presbyterian Church, 4 Meigs St.

Sunday, November 13, 2 p.m.: Rochester Celebrity Organ Recital by Bruce Neswick on the Halloran-All Saints Organ DIFFERENT ORGAN NAME THAN BEFORE at Sacred Heart Cathedral, 296 Flower City Park. WEBSITE SAYS THIS IS $10.

Sunday, November 13, 9 p.m.: Renaissance motets, chants, and choral improvisations by candlelight feat. Compline with Schola Cantorum, Stephen Kennedy, director (note: concert is free). Christ Church, 141 East Ave.

NOTE: All concerts cost $15, unless otherwise noted. For more information call 454-2100 or visit esm.rochester.edu/eroi.

2011 Eastman Rochester Organ Initiative Festival

Thursday, November 10-Sunday, November 13

Eric
KB7DQH