15/05: The Other Reason
Our musicians have worked hard to be here today. They drive faithfully from Traverse City, Alpena, even Detour in the UP, and of course from Petoskey, Harbor Springs, Cross Village, and other more local towns. Four evening practices (at least) before the concert, and then the concert itself. They have chosen to do this, and are paid a small sum to cover their costs. But down deep, these people are here because they cannot go long periods without being a part of this powerful energy, the artistic drive they feel they must answer. They are accountants, doctors, carpenters, and more than a few are music teachers both retired and active, but all are come for this other reason.
Recently, Nina Totenberg’s (from NPR) father, Roman Totenberg died at age 101. He had been a great musician, touring widely throughout Europe and the United States. But originally, he came from impoverished circumstances in Russia to live in New York City and teach the violin. When word went out that he was dying, his friends and students gathered in his apartment and some played for him again. He was still teaching until just an hour before his last breath: “Da D iss flat!” he whispered. One student told Nina, “my mother and father gave me life, but your dad taught me how to live.”
For each of us, there is this other reason to be really alive. More than any other accomplishment in our work, home, church, sports or social setting, we have at our core something that makes us want to sing or dance, paint, even just appreciate someone else’s work. If you are here because you love to see the faces of the orchestra members as they look up to the conductor in anticipation of the first note, or the emotive quality you feel when the young pianist reaches from left to right and somehow hits all the notes! If you are here because you too pretend you are living in Mozart’s time and imagine all the orchestra members in wigs, tights and waist-coats, even your husband! That is one way of learning how to live for the other reason.
Please help us find a way to keep this priceless art alive. Money, of course helps. But if you cannot contribute in this way, what about contacting the orchestra at www.glcorchestra.org or calling 231 487-0010? Help with fundraisers, ticket concession, treats that follow, the taking down and setting up of the risers and chairs, become involved. What if we somehow lost these impossibly wonderful concerts? Please help the Great Lakes Orchestra to continue to be our teacher.
Written by Katie MacInnis, avid listener, wife of clarinet player, Charlie MacInnis
Recently, Nina Totenberg’s (from NPR) father, Roman Totenberg died at age 101. He had been a great musician, touring widely throughout Europe and the United States. But originally, he came from impoverished circumstances in Russia to live in New York City and teach the violin. When word went out that he was dying, his friends and students gathered in his apartment and some played for him again. He was still teaching until just an hour before his last breath: “Da D iss flat!” he whispered. One student told Nina, “my mother and father gave me life, but your dad taught me how to live.”
For each of us, there is this other reason to be really alive. More than any other accomplishment in our work, home, church, sports or social setting, we have at our core something that makes us want to sing or dance, paint, even just appreciate someone else’s work. If you are here because you love to see the faces of the orchestra members as they look up to the conductor in anticipation of the first note, or the emotive quality you feel when the young pianist reaches from left to right and somehow hits all the notes! If you are here because you too pretend you are living in Mozart’s time and imagine all the orchestra members in wigs, tights and waist-coats, even your husband! That is one way of learning how to live for the other reason.
Please help us find a way to keep this priceless art alive. Money, of course helps. But if you cannot contribute in this way, what about contacting the orchestra at www.glcorchestra.org or calling 231 487-0010? Help with fundraisers, ticket concession, treats that follow, the taking down and setting up of the risers and chairs, become involved. What if we somehow lost these impossibly wonderful concerts? Please help the Great Lakes Orchestra to continue to be our teacher.
Written by Katie MacInnis, avid listener, wife of clarinet player, Charlie MacInnis
Dear Editor:
I grew up attending performances of Handel’s Messiah in Ann Arbor’s Hill Auditorium every December. Even as a child I knew Messiah to be a very special family tradition. Now I’m grown. The experience is still special but in very different ways. Today I am a violinist with the Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra.
Over the years I have played my violin in Handel’s Messiah more times than I can count in more places than I can remember. I have been a part of amateur orchestras across the State, put together by choral conductors in need of accompanists for their choirs. I played in those performances, but I missed the thrill I experienced as a child.
In 2006, the thrill came back. For the first time, the GLCO and its thirty-member Choir performed Handel’s Messiah at the St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Petoskey. That first performance was so well received the ushers had to turn people away. Since then, the GLCO has scheduled two performances every December and each is virtually a sell-out. The quality of the experience is that extraordinary.
Last year I was unable to play in the Orchestra, so I simply attended the concert and was “blown away” by my fellow musicians. That performance rivaled anything I ever heard at Hill Auditorium. I was a child again.
I came to last night’s first rehearsal for this year’s performance with a high level of anticipation. Once again Maestro Matthew Hazelwood has decided to add subtle changes to how we perform Handel’s music. The audience may not be able to identify what specific changes have been made, but everyone, including children, will feel this year’s performance to be an even more memorable experience than last.
I urge you not to miss this extraordinary event. Bring a child.
Maggie Poxson
I grew up attending performances of Handel’s Messiah in Ann Arbor’s Hill Auditorium every December. Even as a child I knew Messiah to be a very special family tradition. Now I’m grown. The experience is still special but in very different ways. Today I am a violinist with the Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra.
Over the years I have played my violin in Handel’s Messiah more times than I can count in more places than I can remember. I have been a part of amateur orchestras across the State, put together by choral conductors in need of accompanists for their choirs. I played in those performances, but I missed the thrill I experienced as a child.
In 2006, the thrill came back. For the first time, the GLCO and its thirty-member Choir performed Handel’s Messiah at the St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Petoskey. That first performance was so well received the ushers had to turn people away. Since then, the GLCO has scheduled two performances every December and each is virtually a sell-out. The quality of the experience is that extraordinary.
Last year I was unable to play in the Orchestra, so I simply attended the concert and was “blown away” by my fellow musicians. That performance rivaled anything I ever heard at Hill Auditorium. I was a child again.
I came to last night’s first rehearsal for this year’s performance with a high level of anticipation. Once again Maestro Matthew Hazelwood has decided to add subtle changes to how we perform Handel’s music. The audience may not be able to identify what specific changes have been made, but everyone, including children, will feel this year’s performance to be an even more memorable experience than last.
I urge you not to miss this extraordinary event. Bring a child.
Maggie Poxson
Dear Editor:
Last Sunday’s Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra concert, Beethoven’s Friend, was an extraordinary experience for those of us who happened to attend this nearly sold out performance. Concert Master, Paul Sonner, dazzled the audience with his violin virtuosity (and stamina) as he played the newly re-discovered Violin Concerto in D Major, by Franz Clement…himself an extraordinary violinist who composed this particular piece in 1805.
Because Beethoven was so impressed with Clement’s musicianship, the two became fast friends. While Clement himself was an outstanding violinist, he spent more of his time playing Beethoven’s concerti than his own. So his Concerto in D Major was stowed away and nearly forgotten. How fortunate that this piece has been rediscovered and published so that once again his work can be heard. We who sat in the sanctuary of the First Presbyterian Church of Harbor Springs last Sunday were among the first to enjoy it, live, in our century.
My wife and I have enjoyed the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for over three decades. When we moved to Northern Michigan in 2009, we wondered how we would fill the musical void in our lives. We were delighted to discover the GLCO!
Congratulations to the entire orchestra! This should be an outstanding season.
David Kendall
Last Sunday’s Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra concert, Beethoven’s Friend, was an extraordinary experience for those of us who happened to attend this nearly sold out performance. Concert Master, Paul Sonner, dazzled the audience with his violin virtuosity (and stamina) as he played the newly re-discovered Violin Concerto in D Major, by Franz Clement…himself an extraordinary violinist who composed this particular piece in 1805.
Because Beethoven was so impressed with Clement’s musicianship, the two became fast friends. While Clement himself was an outstanding violinist, he spent more of his time playing Beethoven’s concerti than his own. So his Concerto in D Major was stowed away and nearly forgotten. How fortunate that this piece has been rediscovered and published so that once again his work can be heard. We who sat in the sanctuary of the First Presbyterian Church of Harbor Springs last Sunday were among the first to enjoy it, live, in our century.
My wife and I have enjoyed the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for over three decades. When we moved to Northern Michigan in 2009, we wondered how we would fill the musical void in our lives. We were delighted to discover the GLCO!
Congratulations to the entire orchestra! This should be an outstanding season.
David Kendall
27/09: Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Good arguments are made by community minded patrons, especially in times like these, during relatively long periods of economic uncertainty, that local philanthropic organizations and community-minded donors need to concentrate their collective funding capacity in support of social programs that satisfy the basic needs of our community like health care, good nutrition, and sound educational programs focused on the fundamentals --the latter phrase a code for “education without frills like art and music.”
Last month that argument was set aside for two hours as several hundred of us attended A Premiere Evening of Ballet, a performance produced and performed by the Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Maestro Matthew Hazelwood, and in partnership with Heather Raue and her pre-professional ballet dancers who train at the Crooked Tree Arts Center in Petoskey. The concert/dance event took place on the stage of John Hall Auditorium in Bay View before literally hundreds of stunned audience members. The orchestra members and young, extraordinarily well trained dancers took the stage with a level of grace, power, and charm that rivals anything one would expect to see and hear in one of America’s most sophisticated metropolitan centers.
Four of the dancers who performed for us are now in fact in residence in some of America’s most sophisticated metropolitan centers: Esmea Gold is at Gelsey Kirkland Academy of Classical Ballet (NYC), Claire Millard is at School of American Ballet (NYC), Ellie Conners is at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre (Pittsburgh) and Hannah Bianchi has a contract with Deeply Rooted Dance Theatre (Chicago). For good reasons, Heather Raue was named Ballet Teacher of the Year by Dance Magazine in October of 2010.
Our own Artistic Director and Conductor, Maestro Matthew Hazelwood has developed an international reputation providing directorial leadership for the Batuta program in the country of Colombia, South America. Batuta is the second largest music program for young people in the world. We have great leadership in the arts here.
Over the past ten years, with the dedicated support of local philanthropic organizations and individual donors and members, the Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra has commissioned two new “classical” music compositions and now three completely new ballets. At a time when orchestras all over the country are struggling at the brink of collapse, or have already experienced collapse, our own local Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra is thriving. We are fortunate to live right here at this particular time.
The orchestra’s success is inspirational. Its impact on our population cannot be measured in empirical terms; It can be properly measured only by looking at the long-term affective impact it will have on our collective character. One left John Hall Auditorium last August 27, knowing that people, especially the young, are beautiful creatures deserving of our love, admiration, respect, and dedicated efforts toward making the quality of life we enjoy in northern Michigan the norm for them and eventually for their own children.
We must once again add the arts to the list of social programs that satisfy our collective, basic needs. Experiences in the arts make the life made possible, worth living.
-Dale Hull, Board Trustee
Last month that argument was set aside for two hours as several hundred of us attended A Premiere Evening of Ballet, a performance produced and performed by the Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Maestro Matthew Hazelwood, and in partnership with Heather Raue and her pre-professional ballet dancers who train at the Crooked Tree Arts Center in Petoskey. The concert/dance event took place on the stage of John Hall Auditorium in Bay View before literally hundreds of stunned audience members. The orchestra members and young, extraordinarily well trained dancers took the stage with a level of grace, power, and charm that rivals anything one would expect to see and hear in one of America’s most sophisticated metropolitan centers.
Four of the dancers who performed for us are now in fact in residence in some of America’s most sophisticated metropolitan centers: Esmea Gold is at Gelsey Kirkland Academy of Classical Ballet (NYC), Claire Millard is at School of American Ballet (NYC), Ellie Conners is at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre (Pittsburgh) and Hannah Bianchi has a contract with Deeply Rooted Dance Theatre (Chicago). For good reasons, Heather Raue was named Ballet Teacher of the Year by Dance Magazine in October of 2010.
Our own Artistic Director and Conductor, Maestro Matthew Hazelwood has developed an international reputation providing directorial leadership for the Batuta program in the country of Colombia, South America. Batuta is the second largest music program for young people in the world. We have great leadership in the arts here.
Over the past ten years, with the dedicated support of local philanthropic organizations and individual donors and members, the Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra has commissioned two new “classical” music compositions and now three completely new ballets. At a time when orchestras all over the country are struggling at the brink of collapse, or have already experienced collapse, our own local Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra is thriving. We are fortunate to live right here at this particular time.
The orchestra’s success is inspirational. Its impact on our population cannot be measured in empirical terms; It can be properly measured only by looking at the long-term affective impact it will have on our collective character. One left John Hall Auditorium last August 27, knowing that people, especially the young, are beautiful creatures deserving of our love, admiration, respect, and dedicated efforts toward making the quality of life we enjoy in northern Michigan the norm for them and eventually for their own children.
We must once again add the arts to the list of social programs that satisfy our collective, basic needs. Experiences in the arts make the life made possible, worth living.
-Dale Hull, Board Trustee
