Memphis Classical Music – Memphis Flyer

Iris Orchestra, that unique hybrid organization headquartered at the Germantown Performing Arts Center (GPAC), yet made up of stellar classical players from across the country and the world, continues apace as one of the most relevant and innovative classical organizations of our time. With the pandemic curtailing any live performances, Iris, helmed by conductor Michael Stern, carries on its multi-dimensional work in other media.

Courtesy Iris Orchestra

Michael Stern

As we saw last fall, the facilities at GPAC, coupled with the recording know-how of engineer Jamey Lamar, who captures all of their performances, the orchestra has adapted to a COVID-afflicted world by presenting freshly-recorded performances online in lieu of their regular concert season. Tomorrow and Sunday, their February performances will go live online, featuring performances recorded last weekend, even as Memphis suffered its first wave of February ice and snow.

Beyond that, this month has also witnessed the release of an album boasting the world premiere of a concerto by composer Bruce Adolphe, recorded at GPAC when it was performed by Iris in 2015. Earlier this week, I spoke with Stern about both the album and the online concerts. By the end of our conversation, I was more convinced than ever of our good fortune in hosting this committed group of players.

Memphis Flyer: How did Iris Orchestra come to be involved in this premiere of Bruce Adlophe’s work, I Will Not Remain Silent?

Michael Stern: This is all a happy confluence of events. Sharon Roffman, the featured soloist, is an incredible force. Her mother’s very involved in education and the violin. Sharon had known Bruce Adolphe since she was a kid. He had this idea to write this piece about Joachim Prinz, who was of course so closely aligned with Martin Luther King, Jr., and as it turns out, Prinz married Sharon’s parents.
Allen Cohen

Sharon Roffman

But above and beyond that, they were both interested in this project which was, first and foremost, a piece of wonderful new music. Secondly, a way to raise awareness about Rabbi Joachim Prinz and Martin Luther King, and to have that connection in terms of civil rights and social justice. But the other thing is, Sharon is passionately committed to education and engagement, especially with young people. Not only were we able to organize the premiere, by rehearsing and recording and performing it, but she, largely, along with Iris Orchestra, organized this community-wide education and engagement project embedded in the curriculum that she distributed to schools and churches and synagogues. We did something at the Jewish Community Center, as I recall, as well as the Civil Rights Museum and Houston High School. We had a writing project associated with it. We had an art project associated with it. And for kids across all lines to learn about the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King, and to learn about 1930’s in Germany and Joachim Prinz and Nazism, was a wonderful experience. So, all the way around it was a really rewarding moment.

The piece itself is so wonderful. I’ve done it with her since our premiere, and it holds up great. It’s just a really terrific composition, which really speaks to the fundamental subject matter and its importance.

I’ve see the curriculum. It’s really impressive. And it seems the piece itself addresses the subject matter thematically, with orchestral hits battling, so to speak, with this solitary, soaring voice of Sharon’s violin. It’s a striking contrast, and captures the power of a solitary voice speaking truth to power.

I agree. I will say that he’s got a program to it. The first movement is Joachim Prinz in Europe, and the second movement is Joachim Prinz in America. But it doesn’t sound manipulative at all. It doesn’t sound arch. It sounds very authentic and sincere and organic, and the entire piece, just from a musical point of view, works really well.

The second movement really does evoke a new time, a new atmosphere.

It also just underlines the idea that challenge, struggle and eventually overcoming and coming to a place of peace and triumph really transcends color, it transcends religion, it transcends geography. It just is what it is in terms of the human experience and the human condition. I appreciated Bruce’s intent from the beginning. The way he wrote the piece. Sharon was unbelievably devoted to the project, and in it 150 percent. It was inspiring to work on.

So the educational outreach happened around the time of the premiere and the recording in 2015?

Yes, but don’t say the word outreach. It sounds like that’s a one way thing. I prefer the word engagement. My mindset in doing something like this is not to deliver information, it’s to engage young people in this conversation. And I think Sharon especially, and all of us, tried to do that and I think we did do that. And one thing Bruce did, which was fantastic, was, he created a chamber version of the piece. So when we did go around, notably to the high school, we were able to talk about the story and to play some of the concerto without requiring the full orchestra to come. Instead, we could use a chamber ensemble and it made it much more mobile. And then of course, the fact that it was picked up by the Milken Archive of Jewish Music is meaningful, because the music stands as an American concerto, but beyond that, it also has these extra-musical, historical echoes which fit that series absolutely perfectly. I’m proud that our contribution to that series came out so well.

Tell me about the February and March Iris concerts.

What we did for those concerts was just a string orchestra. Not the largest, not the smallest, somewhere in the middle. But nothing we played was an adaptation of anything. We played the pieces the way they were meant to be played.

I would say that COVID interrupted everybody’s plans for a lot of reasons. We can’t be too close to one another on stage, so that puts a cap on the number of players you can have onstage or in the hall at one time. Everybody has to be masked. There are all sorts of precautions and protocols. Beyond that, you can’t have wind players on the stage. The conventional wisdom is that wind players expel more droplets and more of a risk in terms of transmission, than strings or harp or piano would be. So we made the decision that we would just play whatever music we could play. And right now that’s music for strings only. But we present these programs without any sense of compromise. Would we like to get 40-60 more players onstage? Sure. Just not right now. We have to take safety first.

We had the cancellation of our soloist in the February slot. He couldn’t travel because of COVID concerns. He’s healthy, but just due to an abundance of caution he cancelled. Similarly our guest soloist and conductor, Jeffrey Kahane, who was going to play and conduct the March concert, also cancelled. And then we were faced with what do we do? We had already changed those programs, to piece for string orchestra only, now we had to change them again to accommodate those cancellations. And we just made the decision on the fly that we would overload the week and put more performance capture in the can, so we would have performances for February and March without imposing a second trip for all the musicians or for me or the engineers, because we didn’t know, and frankly still don’t know, even though vaccines are rolling out slowly, we still don’t know what the numbers are going to look like in early February and March. So we thought, let’s get as much music recorded as possible, and we’ll broadcast that for our February and March offerings, and keep our fingers crossed for May.

What we did was we took some really great music for strings alone. For February, we have this wonderful piece, a young, extraordinarily talented American composer, Jessie Montgomery, whose music is not only terrific, but also informed by her sense of activism and social justice, and is one of the brightest lights in American music right now. She wrote a piece called ‘Banner,’ which celebrates the 150th Anniversary of the writing of the Star Spangled Banner. But in her piece, built into this celebration, is also the awareness that the Star Spangled Banner should, but doesn’t actually, speak for everybody in this country. And to make those voices, who might be marginalized by the Banner or who have not been as included, historically, she wrote a piece which really reflected on the Pledge of Allegiance and the Star Spangled Banner in a really beautiful way. And we go through that piece… For the February presentation, I was able to sit down with Jessie and we had a conversation about the piece. And that’s a really incredible addition to the program.

On New Album and in Virtual Concerts, Iris Orchestra is Undaunted (2)

We also did this incredibly beautiful, heartrendingly beautiful piece by Puccini, called the Chrysanthemums, which he wrote as a memorial to a great friend of his who passed away. And then we finish with one of the great pieces in the string repertoire, the Dvořák String Serenade. And then in March, we have two other masterpieces, in terms of string repertoire. Mozart’s F major Divertimento for Strings, K138, and the great Tchaikovsky String Serenade. So in these two programs, we’ve got Dvořák and Tchaikovsky and Puccini and Montgomery, and the interview with Jessie. I think it’s a really great overview of some terrific music, and it lets us keep our contact with our public without needing to stop the music because of COVID. So that made us all very happy.

It’s a wonderfully diverse collection. Contrasting the cutting edge, Jessie Montgomery, with Mozart…

Well, we try! We try. Many of us hadn’t seen each other for almost a year. The October recording was a very small group of musicians. It was a chamber ensemble. So it was wonderful to be together.

Were there any special arrangements with the host families?

We spared the host families. We could not, and we would not, put that imposition on them. This is not the time to invite other people to your house, even cherished friends. So we put everybody up in a hotel.

Jessie didn’t perform with Iris, but Jessie Montgomery is a force of nature. She’s a wonderful violinist. She was composing a lot of music while she was still an active member of a regular string quartet, and she’s doing her doctorate at Princeton University. She is a very busy, very talented, very accomplished woman.

We’ve had this tradition of having chamber concerts at Brooks Museum. Of course we could not do that, but we didn’t want to deprive our audience of anything, so three of our musicians stayed an extra day. Jamey stayed the extra day, and they got that filmed and it was a great success.

I think there are some silver linings to COVID. Not many. It’s been a terrible time. And hopefully now, with a new feeling in the country, we can maybe start to address some of the divisiveness and some of the rancor. But I do think you need to try to see some good in everything. COVID has taken its toll, and yet in the process of going through it, the fact that we were isolated, but also technically involved with the regular routine of everything, meant that people could actually consider what was happening.

And then you had the issues that were in front of all of us, and rightly so, with long overdue conversations, and I think people considering the real meaning, whether it’s Black Lives Matter or the environmental issues before us, or the terrible political divisiveness, we were able to process that with a little less knee jerk reaction and a little more thoughtfulness. And I do think, and I’m very encouraged by the fact that the reaction to those things did not simply become a flash point for a few weeks and then fade. I think the awareness that we are going to do better, and the awareness that the world is a little closer to real justice, is here to stay. And I think that is a really healthy thing. I can’t help but think that maybe that in and of itself is worth celebrating, and that’s a good thing.

Watch Bruce Adophe discuss “I Will Not Remain Silent” below.

On New Album and in Virtual Concerts, Iris Orchestra is Undaunted

Michael Allen

Michael Stern

In an era of shoestring budgets for municipal orchestras, too often at the mercy of the national economy’s roller coaster, seeing a local orchestra built on novel principles succeed for twenty years is remarkable. And that’s exactly what will be championed as the twentieth season of the Iris Orchestra begins tomorrow.

Iris features musicians who assemble for each concert from some of the country’s best orchestras, universities, and chamber groups, to perform as the resident orchestra of Germantown Performance Arts Center and, more recently, in chamber concerts at the Brooks Museum. Conductor Michael Stern, son of the legendary violinist Isaac Stern, is the music director of Iris, and also conducts the Grammy Award-winning Kansas City Symphony. I spoke to him recently about the significance of Iris turning 20, and what makes this orchestra special.

Memphis Flyer: Iris’ 20th season looks impressive, with programming that echoes the worldwide celebrations of Beethoven happening this year and next.

Michael Stern: We have a rather happy confluence of anniversaries. It’s the 20th anniversary of Iris, and that’s pretty amazing to me. And we’re celebrating 250 years of Beethoven. Nobody needs to rescue him from obscurity, but he is arguably one of the titanic figures in music. And the entire known musical universe is celebrating him in 2020. Aside from our anniversary, there’s also the anniversary of my father, Isaac Stern, who would have been 100.

courtesy Iris Orchestra

Iris Orchestra

And what we were trying to do is salute, in our twentieth year, the various ways we have been meaningful to the community. Remembering the great music — that is where Beethoven comes in. And we made him the theme of our chamber series at the Brooks. And we’re also celebrating Memphis. We’re remembering the elements of Iris that made forming this orchestra special to us right from the beginning, and that we’ve been able to continue to do all these seasons. The Beethoven thing is very appropriate, and we’ve decided to ask all of our soloists to curate a chamber concert that included at least one Beethoven work. Which is why you see him on the program every Sunday.

We asked the Trio with Pinchas Zukerman, Amanda Forsythe & Angela Cheng to play the Beethoven Triple. We also asked Garrick Ohlsson to play Beethoven in the first concert, and the layer of meaning with Garrick goes even further, because we were looking back to our very first season. And all three pieces on that program were played then. Garrick was the second soloist that we ever had. The piece that he played was Beathoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2. And we haven’t done it since. So we are looking back 20 years to recreate Garrick’s performance that launched our existence.

Given the struggle of traditional orchestras to survive recently, has this been an “against all odds” kind of project?

“Against all odds” sounds a little desperate and improbable. I think we worked hard. I think there were challenges. There were some years in the middle where the economy crashed and everybody had to retrench. But we survived, maintaining the level of excellence that we have always striven for. And keeping true to our mission, re-thinking how an orchestra could be and how we could re-engage with the community. Certainly over the years, with all the outreach engagement that we’ve done in the community, the number of master classes, the level of soloists that we brought, and now of course our Iris Artist Fellows program, we just wanted to make the case for music and the arts, especially for young people, in Germantown and the Mid South.

In a nutshell, how would you say Iris is unique in its mission?

Organizationally there’s really no orchestra like it. We started as the only municipally funded orchestra in the United States. That was already groundbreaking. And I give huge credit to the Board of Aldermen and GPAC and Patrick Lawton, for having taken a chance on starting such a thing and maintaining it. When we evolved into our own 501(c)(3), we continued that idea, by serving the community in a unique way.

We are tied to this place, but our membership is from all over the United States. And some people who have been playing with us for 15 or 20 years, and are now professionally living in Europe, will time their vacations so that they’ll be free to come back and play with us. That kind of loyalty and dedication is pretty impressive, and it shows.

Phillip Van Zandt

Iris Orchestra

Also, it’s a completely democratic experience. The person playing concertmaster in one concert might play in the back of the second violin in the next. The person playing second oboe on the first half will play first oboe on the second half, and so forth. So there’s no competitiveness. There’s just this feeling of coming together and making the best music possible — very quickly. We gather on Thursday and Saturday we give the first concert.

So there’s a camaraderie among the players that’s unusual. Yes, we fly them in from all over, but it’s not a pick up group. It’s a central family, a pool of players, from which we continually draw, all of whom have established ties to the community.

How specifically are Iris’ players tied to the community?

The idea that the musicians should not just stay at a hotel, but be embedded in the community with their host families, was part of Iris from the beginning. It was not done as a cost saving measure, but rather as a way of immediately embedding the orchestra into the daily fabric of the community. And what’s been amazing is that a lot of musicians have been “adopted” by their host families to the point where they’ll go to weddings and graduations and, sadly, funerals, and happy life events of all kinds, so they really have become part of the family. And that’s a really lovely thing. And one of the reasons we’re still here after twenty years.

Do you feel that Iris’ programming makes it unique?

Over the years we’ve played literally everything, from pre-Baroque music to pieces that we’ve commissioned. We’ve commissioned a lot of pieces, and we’ve recorded pieces. A lot of American composers have written for us really successfully. Adam Schoenberg and Jonathan Leshnoff, for example. We’ve played Ellen Zwilich and Phillip Glass. It’s really gratifying to look back and see how many contemporary composers we’ve either commissioned or programmed. And, I have to say, our list of soloists is surpassed by nobody. I would put the list of soloists that we’ve invited over the years over any performing arts organization anywhere.

Conrad Tao is one of the hottest names on the scene right now. He’s writing a piece for us, ‘cos he’s got great composing chops, and he’s playing the Brahms First Piano Concerto. Nancy Zhou is a nod to my father’s centenary. There’s an international violin competition in Shanghai, China, and she is the latest winner. She’s coming to play with us. Anne-Akiko Meyers is playing a fairly new work by Adam Schoenberg and we’ve had a fifteen year relationship with Adam. So it’s really very nice to have a season which looks forward and looks back, celebrating the milestones of the last two decades and looking forward to the next two decades.

Isaac Stern

How does your father’s legacy inform Iris?

I think he was one of the most important musical figures of his time. He was among the greatest violinists of the 20th Century. And he was a towering figure in American musical and cultural life. I like the idea of being a good son and honoring my dad, but it’s not about that. It goes beyond that. I think especially in this day and age, more and more we need to be advocates for those things that we believe we are important, and for arts and music there has never been a more urgent time when advocacy and activism on all levels is important. Certainly for education.

And he, with his bully pulpit, really put his money where his mouth was, and stood up for music and for the arts in a very effective way. Aside from saving Carnegie Hall, which he’s very well known for, he sat in the Oval Office and helped convince the powers that be, or that were, to form the National Endowment for the Arts. He advocated for music in public school systems all the time. He tirelessly worked for higher music education across the board, not just specialized professional education. He mentored some of the greatest young players of his time. And he was always advocating the idea of the primacy of art and music in our lives as Americans. I think that legacy is real and important and deserves to be remembered.

So, Iris carries on that tradition of advocacy. We celebrate the other arts institutions in town. So we’re not competitive with others. On the contrary, I think, more and more, Memphis is exhibiting a really robust and vibrant cultural and musical scene, and that we’ve had the privilege to be a part of it for 20 years is pretty special.

Iris Season Launch: “Jupiter & Ohlsson” at the Germantown Performing Arts Center, Saturday, Oct. 12. Garrick Ohlsson, piano, performs Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2; the orchestra will also perform Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony and Giacomo Puccini’s “Chrysanthemums.”

IRIS at the Brooks: Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Sunday, Oct. 13. Garrick Ohlsson, piano, joins IRIS Orchestra musicians for an afternoon of intimate chamber music featuring music by Beethoven.