Imani Winds prove they do it all by Deseret News
In their 14-year existence, the Imani Winds have turned the woodwind quintet genre on its head. They've expanded the horizons and repertoire well beyond the strictly classical. But they're not really a crossover group. They're all classically trained musicians who also happen to be well versed in other styles of playing. They quite simply can do it all and they do it well and with an enthusiasm that is infectious.

The Imani Winds were in Utah this week, their second trip to the Beehive State in six months. Last March they performed at BYU and Thursday, playing basically the same program, they were in St. Mary's Church in Park City as part of the Utah Symphony's Dear Valley Music Festival. And they gave the audience a good idea of what they are all about.

They didn't play any works from the classical repertoire. Instead, they played pieces by composers who are either jazz musicians or who have been influenced by jazz. And surprisingly this kind of music works well when played by a combo consisting of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn. The five made the music swing and come alive.

The concert opened with two works by members of the ensemble.

Flutist Valerie Coleman's 2009 piece "Red Clay and Mississippi Delta" started things off. The work is biographical since it's a musical portrait of Coleman's family. Written in the style of a scherzo, the piece is light and airy, and the five captured its playful nature easily.

Next came hornist Jeff Scott's "Homage to Duke," a tribute to Duke Ellington that was inspired by the great jazz legend's sacred music. Scott created a very soulful and tender piece that the ensemble played with feeling and nuanced expressions.

Closing out the first half was jazz pianist Jason Moran's four-movement "Cane," a work written for the Imani Winds as part of their ongoing commissioning project.

As with Coleman's "Red Clay and Mississippi Delta," Moran's piece is also biographical, detailing as it does his ancestral connection to northern Louisiana. It's a colorful work that runs the range of expressions. It's in turn serious and earnest and also humorous and light hearted.

"Cane" is a richly textured piece that has a lot of character. The quintet gave a vibrant reading that brought out the nuances of the score compellingly.

The group started the second half of the concert with Paquito D'Rivera's "Kites Over Havana." Originally written for woodwind quintet with solo clarinet and piano, Coleman arranged it for quintet. It's a bright, light and whimsical piece that they played with lyricism and fluid lines.

Daniel Schnyder's Woodwind Quintet followed next. An eclecic piece, it seems to go in all directions in each of its four movements, yet the ensemble brought cohesiveness to the piece as a whole.

The concert ended with two exuberant klezmer dances.

Traditional They Ain't: Imani Winds at Rockport by Fred Bouchard
Wind quintets are a relative newcomer to chamber music literature; they date from the German court era and were championed initially by composers Anton Reicha (1770-1836) and Franz Danzi (1763-1826). Strong contributions in the last century came from notable exponents like Carl Nielsen, Samuel Barber, Irving Fine, Elliott Carter, Alec Wilder, and Ingolf Dahl.

The Imani Winds - flautist Valerie Coleman, oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz, clarinetist Mariam Adam, French hornist Jeff Scott, and bassoonist Monica Ellis - played a lively and cheerful, yet consistently challenging contemporary program to an enthusiastic full house in a Sunday matinee on June 27 at Rockport. It's their third Rockport visit, and they feel like family.

The group's overall sound is smooth and suave, conceptually rich, with spiky attacks, spicy flavors, and a perpetually sinuous rhythmic momentum. Formed in 1997 by graduates of Juilliard and Mannes, Imani has honed a fresh, iconoclastic edge for their quintet. Working, touring, and teaching full-time, their attitude of loose, cheery professionalism is more in tune with jazz groups or rock bands than 'chamber ensembles.' Imani's obvious delight in exploring the intention of each composer commits them to a sense of ownership and exhibits a collective energy smacking of rock and pop groups. Traditional they ain't: among other gigs, Imani toured European festivals in 2009 with premier jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter. "Imani" ("faith" in Swahili) reflects both the members' African-American heritage and their innovative leap in launching an on-going venture that commissions new works from a multi-cultural coterie: Cuban clarinettist Paquito D'Rivera, Shorter, Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez, Thelonious Monk shoulder-stander Jason Moran, and Palestinian oudist Simon Shaheen.

The Imani players set a genially familiar tone in the handsome Liu Hall by taking turns announcing the music. (Architectural highlights of the space include a glass wall backdrop (a la Brooklyn's Bargemusic), patch-worked Asian (not Rockport quarry) limestone, slats of Douglas fir woven with wrought iron, teardrop and egg-case light sconces, and stretches of sea-foam green paint. For thorough analysis of the exquisite acoustics, read David Griesinger's June 15 column here.

Imani boldly programmed works by living composers, the first by their own flautist. Coleman (b. Louisville, 1970) wrote Red Clay: Mississippi Delta as a bravura blues piece, crisply ornamented, demanding much from Ellis and trumpet-like calls from Adam, with finger-snaps for all. It had the earmarks of an exhilarating showstopper in the manner of pianist/composer James P. Johnson. (Coleman and Scott as composers lean markedly into jazz's syncopated rhythms, improvisatory gestures, and crossbred Hispanic dance forms. Their completely original concept album - one of four Koch International releases - on the life of American-born Parisian danseuse and entrepreneur Josephine Baker works jazz singer Rene Marie and percussionist Joseph Tompkins into their merry troupe.)

Arturo Marquez (b. Mexico, 1950) whisked a fluid continuum of summer and river in his Danza de Mediodia that linked languid and hectic pacing and contrasted a warm inviting rumba melody line shared by Diaz and Ellis with more blustery, fluttery comments and raggedy staccatos by Scott and Ellis. Danza suited the contrast of dark skins in white outfits, silhouetted against a blue harbor with flitting gulls and sails.

Five Poems of Karel Husa (b. Prague, 1921) portrayed stark, quixotic imaginings of bird-life from 'unwritten' poems: walking (bustling Ellis), happy (exuberant Adam), lamenting (piquant, plaintive Diaz), fighting (wildly peculiar sonorities). The last, "Bird Flying High Above," pitted Scott, mightily striving for lift against the deep, gravity-bound chorale of his colleagues, for all the world like a loon or swan, paddling hell-for-leather and bell-beating to rise from a pond.

The Elliott Carter (b. New York, 1908) selection was the short, spiffy Woodwind Quintet (1948), not the brittle centenarian's better-known Eight Etudes and a Fantasy (1949). Two four-minute movements flitted between lightning shifts - buffo (Ellis strutting) to grazioso (Diaz eyebrow-arching) as quick as a face reflects mood swings. Imani negotiated thorny disputations and easy agreements with a well-oiled familiarity and tight dynamic shading.

Miguel del Aguila (Montevideo, 1957): Woodwind Quintet #2 presented four tableaux that transported the audience in space and time over half a fleeting hour. Unison voices with orotund Scott intonations depicted a rolling vessel; tapping keys gave shape to a lively danzon where over-the-top fortissimos, Diaz smears cutting Scott howls and Adam wailing over all threatened chaos before a woozily exaggerated rallentando calmed matters. Offstage Diaz and Coleman conjured dark shades of the spirit world, while Scott and Ellis chugged along in a limbo of Hallowe'en haunts. The finale, a swirl of turbans and robes, evoked the Arabian Nights, with Diaz mimicking a Turkish duduk and Scott wielding a tambour. Scott's dashing, dancing take on late Argentine bandoneon guru Astor Piazzola's Libertango brought down the house, but neither the glass curtain nor the glass ceiling on Imani Winds.

20 new and recent jazz albums definitely worth checking out by Richard Scheinin
Ravi Shankar. "Nine Decades: Vol. 1, 1967-68" (East Meets West). The legend has gone into his private archives, and the first disc in a projected series is mostly given over to a 48-minute raga. Recorded live on the banks of the Ganges River in 1968 - with Alla Rakha on tablas and Kamala Chakravarty on tamboura - the improvisations rise to a boil with their ancient newness. You can hear why Coltrane got hooked.

The Real Ravi Shankar by TJNelson
Ravi Shankar - Nine Decades Vol. 1 167-1968 (East Meets West Music, 2010)

Okay, if you were Ravi Shankar and you, family and friends started up a record label what would be your first release? Ravi Shankar, of course. Being the first name you think of when discussing Indian music or sitar virtuosos, and you can ask any of the hippy dippy stoner folks or the pretzel formed yoga friends in your life, Ravi Shankar is almost a genre to himself and for many of first real exposure to world music. So, why not go back and find the essence of the musician?

In the liner notes of Nine Decades Mr. Shankar writes, "Our motivation was simple: In the last few decades I've seen various recording companies releasing my music with little or no imput from me - repackaging releases with new art work and new titles and effectively misusing the public's trust." He goes on to add, "...my ragas have been sold as generic 'new age' mental and physical well-being potions, a tactic that ignores the classical musical form in which these ragas were composed and erases the history that live in each."

Now, Nine Decades is the real deal. Pulling from a 1968 live performance on the banks of the Ganges River and a live recording from 1968 in Allahabad, India, Nine Decades unravels Mr. Shankar's original ragas. One cannot help but be stunned by the power these recordings evoke. Being live recordings from the late 60s, some sections are a little sketchy, but you also get a little scene setting with the opening track "Raga Gangeshwari" with the opening notes provided by a couple of local birds. The mastery that lives in this track simply exudes Mr. Shankar's musical force.

Interestingly enough this recording possesses that mysterious mystical quality of the raga that made every hippy, new age guru or soul searching, disillusioned musician think that he or she had had their first mind expanding experience. And, this is where the second track of Nine Decades comes in. The second track of the CD is a compilation of responses from audience members after a 1967 Ravi Shankar performance. The responses are indeed precious. Oh, if we'd only could be that innocent and not so jaded again.

My favorite track of this CD is the last track, "Durga Suktam and Mahishasura Mardini Stotram," recorded in 1968 with the temple priests in Allahabad, India. This is where music meets devotion. There is a raw, precious quality to this recording, something that is beyond our high-speed networks, our jet-setting pace and media hungry lives. This track is a group of monks in this particular place and at this particular time in history. This is where music has no other time or place - it is simply for the now. Of course, the irony that this is coming at me from a recording is not completely lost on me, but I still can't help but find it hypnotic.

Ravi Shankar - Nine Decades Vol. 1 167-1968 is a wonderful start to a life's retrospective. All I can hope is the Mr. Shankar keeps them coming.

On Jazz and Immigration by Neanda Salvaterra

Nine Decades, Vol. 1: 1967-1968 by Rick Anderson
Ravi Shankar fans will be ecstatic to see this release of a previously unissued live recording from 1968. Recorded at an open-air concert on a hand-held microphone, its sound quality isn't stellar, but the playing is. The disc also includes--somewhat strangely--interviews with audience members, and some fascinating examples of Vedic liturgical chant. This is the first in a new series of archival Shankar recordings.

Ravi Shankar Nine Decades: Vol. 1 (1967-1968) by Jerry A. Ozipko
I first heard sitar master Ravi Shankar live at the Jubilee Auditorium in 1973. The music was hypnotic and the performance electrifying. This recording is the first in a projected multi-volume series of rare and previously unreleased recordings selected by Shankar from his massive performance archive. The major work on this disk readily transports the listener back to Shankar's early days. "Raga Gangeshwari" (essentially three fourths of the duration of the album) was recorded live at an outdoor concert in a temple on the banks of the River Ganges outside Allahabad, India in 1968. Although recorded on primitive equipment, it still has presence and character not unlike Shankar's 1973 concert. The brief liner notes are by Shankar himself, allowing him to express his artistic and musical philosophies as well as general aspects of his compositional process. This is a MUST for Shankar aficionados.

Ravi Shankar: Nine Decades Vol. 1, 1967-1968 (East Meets West Music) by David Luhrssen
The first in an ambitious, projected series of albums culled from the personal archives of Ravi Shankar focuses on the two-year period when the sitar master found himself at the center of Western counterculture. One of the tracks is actually a sequence of cassette-recorded responses to Shankar's music by a young American concert audience. The mini-interviews mingle fascination with an awareness that the classical music of India existed in modes beyond their experience. The other tracks were recorded in India, including a 48-minute raga taped along the banks of the sacred Ganges and another piece recorded with the chanting of Hindu temple priests. It's not a CD for beginners, but rather for aficionados interested in the context of Shankar's music and its reception in the West during the 1960s.

Quintet is buoyed by spirit of joy by David Weininger
Oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz remembers getting the phone call from Valerie Coleman in 1997. Both were New York-based graduate students in music, and Coleman, a flutist, was looking to put together a wind quintet. To Spellman-Diaz, it sounded promising, a helpful step on her way to a career as an orchestra musician.

But Coleman had bigger ideas. She wanted to assemble of group of musicians of color who could not only play the standard wind quintet repertoire but open that tradition to new voices and influences.

"She thought, I'm going to put these people together, and we are going to start a quintet that's going to change the way chamber music is put together,'' Spellman-Diaz recalls. "What I thought was, it's something fun to do on the weekends.''

The group, Imani Winds, makes its second visit to Jordan Hall tonight as part of the Celebrity Series of Boston. After 13 years, it has evolved from being a side project into a thriving, full-time ensemble, one whose work ranges from the greatest hits of the wind repertoire to arrangements of songs by jazz singer Josephine Baker to music by Coleman and French horn player Jeff Scott. Its five members - all African-American or Latino - have taken one of the squarest ensembles in chamber music and made it into something vibrant, accessible, and fun.

"We all thought, we'll get out of school, we'll take auditions, and hopefully we'll land somewhere in an orchestra in a nice city,'' says Spellman-Diaz. "But it just worked out that this group caught on, and we worked really hard to make it something that could last and stand on its own. We're extremely proud to be a part of it. It's much bigger than the five of us - this is an entity unto itself now.''

From the group's inception, they've focused on the importance of serving as role models, particularly for other musicians of color. Spellman-Diaz explains that one thing they try to embody is sacrifice: a selfless attitude that places the group's priorities front and center, over individual desires.

"You have to give up your sense of self in order to make the group function at its top level,'' she says. "We're always working with kids, from preschool all the way up to college, because everyone needs to see a group with this level of commitment.''

And when it comes to music, she continues, that kind of sacrifice ceases to be a matter of duty and becomes a thing of joy. That word comes up repeatedly as Spellman-Diaz talks about the animating spirit of Imani Winds, which she illustrates not in the language of race but in a more universal way.

"Whatever this performance technique is, the number one thing it has in it is joy. We're practically laughing with each other as we play on stage. That might look to some people like a farce, but it's really based on genuine respect and love.''

That joyous engagement is something that every musician starts out with, but it's often wrung out during the trials of classes, competitions, and endless practice. "It's not automatic,'' says Spellman-Diaz of the fulfillment part. "You have to look for your connection to the music.''

One of the ways Imani nurtures that sense of connection is by collaborating with performers and composers outside of classical music.

At tonight's concert Imani will be playing with vibraphonist and composer Stefon Harris in his "The Anatomy of a Box.'' The piece, one of 10 Imani began commissioning in 2007 to mark its 10th anniversary, mixes written-out music with blocks of improvisation, something that the Imanis are still trying to get comfortable with. Harris, who trained as a classical musician but went into jazz, has developed a method for teaching classical musicians to improvise, so the piece "was a real serious school time for us,'' says Spellman-Diaz. "And that kind of learning takes place every time we play it.''

Also on the bill are pieces by Coleman and Scott, as well as traditional wind quintet works - in this case, music by Villa-Lobos and Elliott Carter. While the group loves to stretch its boundaries, the oboist says, they always make sure to stay in contact with their roots.

"That is the grounding,'' Spellman-Diaz says. "And so all that stretching the boundaries is all about coming home, too. You stretch so that when you come back to the original stuff you have something new to say.''

Legendary sitarist Ravi Shankar turns 90

Ravi Shankar At 90: The Man And His Music

In review--Pandit Ravi Shankar Celebrates 9 Decades by Patty-Lynne Herlevi
On the second track of Nine Decades, Vol. I, a reporter interviews American concert goers about the Pandit Ravi Shankar performance they witnessed. The interviews took place in 1967 and many of the responses appeared astute, especially by the third person interviewed, a man who reflected about exposure to music from other countries, leading to exposure to global art and cultures. And indeed, traditional musicians such as Ravi Shankar certainly paved the way for global cultural exchange. I doubt there is a household in the US or any European countries that has not heard of Ravi Shankar. They might not have heard his ragas, but the name has grown synonymous with classical Indian music and for some folks, the master sitarist comes up in conjunction with The Beatles, especially George Harrison.

I'm excited about East Meets West Records, spearheaded by Ravi and Anoushka Shankar. The label has archival recordings, film footage, etc and some of this will be released in this 9 volume series of hand selected ragas, interviews and other material. Volume 1 provides listeners with a 48 minute raga Pandit Ravi Shankar and Pandit Allah Rakha (tabla) performed live and outdoors near the Ganges River in 1968. Though the recording devices of that time seem primitive by today's standards, the musicians rise beyond the occasion.

Raga Gangeshwari (morning raga), starts out slow and dreamy then rapidly increases in speed, dexterity and grace. The sitar and tabla join in oneness, separate, go their own way, and then reunite. Shankar, in 1968, a mid-career musician was already enjoying international recognition, but even had I not known what year the raga was recorded, I would still experience the bliss and exhilaration of the musicians. I felt breathless by the final notes of the raga. And while 50 minutes might seem like a long time to listen to one piece of music (unless you listen to classical music), my response was to play-it-again Sam. I rolled out a yoga and meditation mat in honor of the raga.

Track 2 features 12 minutes of a reporter interviewing concert goers. It sounds like a mini-radio documentary with people from various walks of life discussing a new type of music that had arrived in the US, though by Indian standards, ragas go back thousands of years. Prior to the 1960s though, many Americans would not have been exposed to much global music, unless they traveled or they were immigrants that brought their music traditions with them. It's hard for me to imagine the musical environment in the US in the 1960s. But I think including the interview segment on the recording gives off a nice nostalgic touch and also acts as a testament to Shankar's talent as a musician and cultural bridge builder.

Track 3, a Vedic chant running just over 4 minutes, (Durga Suktam & Mahishasura Mardini Stotram), was also recorded live, this time at a temple in Allahabad, India. The 1968 recording predates the Kirtan chant craze of the new age and yoga markets in the US. It sounds more authentic to me hailing from India and performed by actual Indian temple priests, than the new age musician du jour. It also offers a spiritual closing to the recording. Shankar also provides insightful liner notes about East Meets West Records and his decision to release his historical recordings in this format.

Ravi Shankar Debuts First Album on New Label by Derek Beres
After announcing plans for his new record label, East Meets West Music, sitar great Ravi Shankar is releasing the first album in his 'Nine Decades' series: 'Nine Decades: Volume 1 (1967-68)' on April 13. The series is planned to include never-before released and rare selections from his 70+ years of performance; 'Nine Decades' refers to the sitarist's age, who recently turned 90.

"What can East Meets West Music do that the other labels have not?" Shankar ponders in the liner notes for this first release. "It is a simple question that my family and I answered with a resounding, 'Everything!' Our motivation was simple: In the last few decades I've seen various recording companies releasing my music with little or no input from me--repackaging releases with new art work and new titles and effectively misusing the public's trust. In the worst instances, my ragas have been sold as generic 'new age' mental and physical well-being potions, a tactic that ignores the classical musical form in which these ragas were composed and erases the history that lives in each...With this label we can continue to bring you my music and introduce to you the work of young musicians who share with me a philosophical respect for this spiritual mode of musical composition."

'Nine Decades: Vol 1' will include 'Raga Gangeshwari,' performed live at an outdoor concert on the banks of the Ganges River in 1968. This version features tabla player Ustad Alla Rakha and tanpura player Kamala Chakravarty. The record also includes temple priests chanting Vedic hymns, and audience reactions to one of Shankar's first performances in the West.

Imani Winds is a breath of fresh air by Kristin Shafel
The New York City woodwind quintet Imani Winds was featured on the UMKC Conservatory's Signature Series this past Saturday night. With a variety of styles of music all from living composers, the program was a veritable contemporary delight. The musicians were personable and lighthearted, relaying humorous anecdotes and introductions to the works which eased the common stuffy atmosphere of "serious" concerts. It was also enjoyable to watch how much genuine fun they were having on stage playing together and presenting this music.

The very definition of "short and sweet," Red Clay and Mississippi Delta, composed by flutist Valerie Coleman, was rooted in southern soul and an excellent opening piece for the evening. The work was tailored perfectly to the ensemble: exhibiting the nimble playing of all the players through sprightly, flowing passages and featuring jazzy solos for clarinetist Mariam Adam and bassoonist Monica Ellis. It even introduced the easy-going attitude of the group, with a section where they engaged the whole audience in snapping their fingers in time with the music.

Another short and pleasant work, Danza de Mediodia by Arturo Marquez included lively syncopated dance rhythms and lyrical, seductive melodies for all the instruments, with particularly expressive solos played by substitute oboist James Roe and French horn player Jeff Scott. The tempo shifts were superbly controlled and the players were well-balanced with spotless intonation.

The programmatic Five Poems by Karel Husa was one of the stronger pieces on the program. Each part was idiomatic and executed well. The first movement's strong accents and active upward-sweeping lines suggested images of birds pecking and scattering around and displayed the group's skillful rhythmic control. Lively cawing was clearly depicted in the clarinet part of the second movement, and the horn's focused, melancholy solo over dissonant sustained chords aptly represented the third movement's title, "...With a Dead Bird". The flute had a small solo in the fourth movement, "Fighting Birds", but it was overshadowed by the action in the other parts such as fast runs and tremolos. Despite a few ever so slightly iffy entrances in the final movement, "Bird Flying High Above", the group moved from one rich complex harmony to another, reaching the high register together at the end.

Easily the best composition of the night, Imani Winds performed the contemporary woodwind quintet standard Woodwind Quintet (1948) by living master Elliot Carter with accuracy and emotion. Both movements contain interconnected contrasting musical elements, making each instrument's part and the piece as a whole harmonically and melodically compelling, playful, and complicated all at once. It is utterly complete: removing one instrument would diminish the work's effectiveness and depth as each part enhances all the others. This work showcased the rapport and impeccable communication among the musicians.

The first movement of Miguel del Aguila's Wind Quintet No. 2, "Back in Time," began with an andante folk-like melody played by the flute and hummed in unison by the rest of the musicians. The movement's basic yet lovely tune, serene mood, and major tonal center evoked nostalgic feelings for simpler times: a similar effect Norman Rockwell paintings perhaps achieve. The rest of the movements did not live up to the expectations set by the first movement. Including some interesting techniques in theory, such as playing without mouthpieces, percussive use of the instruments, playing from off-stage, and dimming the lights, the results were less effective and felt gimmicky. Musically the movements were unrelated and some were a bit too blatantly programmatic. This is no fault of the ensemble however: they played the work with the same expertise, enthusiasm and sensitivity shown during the entire concert.

Imani Winds' perfect blend of their individual personalities, accomplishments, and sheer talent make them a very solid and charming group. It was wonderful to see a traditional chamber ensemble express such encouragement and exuberance for new music. I look forward to hearing the results of their commissioning projects in the future, which no doubt will be masterfully played.

 by Alysia Gray Painter
Medieval music gets a lot of play in movies -- think men in armor on steeds -- but few people hear it live. And hear it live in a place like Walt Disney Concert Hall. This famous quartet will be lending their voices to old songs that summon mistier times. The program is varied, and isn't strictly tuned to St. Patrick's Day, but this would be a lovely way to celebrate. 8 p.m.

Keep It Simple by Brian Holt
The Los Angeles Philhramonic's Baroque music-oriented concert series, "Baroque Variations", often leans more toward the "variations" than the "Baroque" part of this union. It's not at all out of the ordinary for Mozart or Beethoven to creep in with the Handel, Vivaldi, and Telemann that one might normally expect on any given performance in the long running series. Yet, while fudging on the more recent end of the "Baroque" era is common, incorporating works that push the beginning edge of the time period is quite rare. But Wednesday was one of those evenings where the "variations" varied all the way into the Middle Ages and the beginning of polyphony. The occasion was a visit from one of the perennial favorites when it comes to early music, Anonymous 4.

I'll admit that Anonymous 4 is one of those groups that has existed on the outskirts of my full attention for many years. Their reputation for unique and beautiful performances certainly preceded them, but actually seeing them live made me sit up and take notice. They are fairly unique in the musical world and their scholarship and devotion to performing music that turns off many ears accustomed to the conventions of the last 500 years or so is remarkable. The group has had some minor changes in its line-up over the last two decades, and does not perform and record on the same scale as they did nearly a decade ago. They have taken long breaks for side projects over the years, but when they do come back together it generates a lot of excitement. But none of that changes the absolutely unique beauty of what they do.

Wednesday's program was entitled "A Medieval Ladymass", an evening designed to accompany perhaps their most famous recording, An English Ladymass of 1993. The 90-minute compilation includes fragments of many different masses devoted to the Virgin Mary, a common figure of devotion in masses of the time period. And while the fragments vary in their source and content, they work together to form a mass in a practice that was common in the Middle Ages. The four vocalists, Marsha Genensky, Susan Hellauer, Jaqueline Horner-Kwiatek and Ruth Cunningham, rearrange themselves into trios and duos throughout, presenting an extended performance with no break for intermission. The experience of the vocalists in their long history singing with one another is apparent throughout. The beauty they derive from music as technically straightforward as these chants and motets is a wonder. Some in the audience clearly struggled with the lack of nary even a lute on stage, but for those willing to engage the music on its own terms, it was a very good evening.

The women of Anonymous 4 will drop by the studios of Classical KUSC tonight to speak with Jim Svejda. This renowned vocal ensemble is best known for their unmatched medieval repertoire, but they have often reached out into the realm of contemporary music as well, premiering works by Peter Maxwell Davies, John Tavener, Steve Reich, and Richard Einhorn. The group has most recently expanded their repertoire to include traditional music of the British Isles and America.

Anonymous 4 will perform their program A Medieval Ladymass Wednesday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles.

Imani Winds comes to Sacramento State by Hanan Salem
Legendary for their high-energy performances, Imani Winds has been named the country's best wind quintet, by Sacramento State's Music Department.

As part of their New Millennium Series, this Grammy-nominated ensemble will bring their talent to campus on Tuesday.

The Millennium Series, hosted by the music department, presents world class music and cross-over artists from around the world to Sacramento at an affordable price, said music professor Andrew Luchansky.

"Imani Winds is a contrast to some of our artists on the series," Luchansky said. "They'll appeal to a wider audience. They do crossover, contemporary classical music, jazz and improv; they've even had collaborations with Wayne Shorter - a legend in the jazz world."

Noted for their ethnic diversity, the wind quintet includes flutist Valerie Coleman, oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz, clarinetist Mariam Adam, french hornist Jeff Scott and bassoonist Monica Ellis.

Imani Winds, whose name means "faith" in Swahili, draws influences from Latin, Caribbean, Jazz, African and American spiritual music, Luchansky and Adam said.

"Not only do they bring world class technical and musical ability - which is the case of many of the groups in the Millennium series, they also bring a real commitment and a real personal involvement to conveying that music to the audience," said Hans Hoff, Luchansky's student assistant.

The concert will open with Coleman's Red Clay Mississippi Delta a fast-paced jazz schizo followed by Joseph-Maurice Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin - a lush French Neo-romantic piece, Adam said.

Adam calls Red Clay Mississippi Delta "a riotous experience," as it manifests the affairs of Coleman's family.

"That's Valerie writing about her family that comes up for Mississippi to her mom's house in Kentucky and the characters that are there. They bring moonshine with them. They have a whole type of personality," Adam said.

Full of a "youthful excitement and passion," Luchansky said, Imani Winds is interactive and will attract even the younger crowds.

"Imani Winds is actually famous for their really high-energy performing style and they are also tremendous at engaging the audience," Hoff said. "They'll talk from the stage, they'll talk about their personal relationships with the pieces, many of which were written for them."

Adam said each piece strikes a personal chord because they carry a specific "soundscape."

Jason Moran will perform his piece Cane which reflects his family's journey from Africa to New York, a story he thinks will leave a lasting impression on the audience.

"It's kind of neat to hear how he interprets the sound of the wind quintet and more specifically what Imani Winds embodies which is the ability to play the Jazz style, but also have a very classical bend." Adams said. "I think that people usually come away from his piece feeling the emotional aspect of it and the rhythm - that it's a finger-snapping rhythm. But it also has some movements that are very emotional as what they represent - the slave history of his family. It's really deep."

Hoff said Imani Winds' voice has set them apart and allowed for more individuality in the chamber music world - Imani Winds feels more at home than other locations outside the traditional Western world.

He said their two composers, who draw from emotive experiences to write music, enliven the group's personality.

"The biggest trump card for us is having two-composers who write original music. We create our own voice," Adam said. "In classic music, you don't often have performers who are also composers. So that has allowed us to have a unique voice and also to just expand in the wind quintet repertoire."

Adam said the audience will enjoy layers of sounds at the concert and some funny Charleston jazz segments as well.

At certain moments, they'll hear singing overlap riotously, come together, and then branch off - it takes active listening on the crowd's part, she said.

"I think they are going to be pleasantly surprised at how much fun they'll have. People will enjoy our group just because we have a lot of communication between us and we have fun on stage," Adam said. "So it's not just this stiff experience with a wall between the audience and the performers. We are very much engaging with the audience so that they feel comfortable with what they're about to experience."

Luchansky said he is excited to have Imani Winds at Sac State because of their high artistic caliber, and simply because it's about time the "best, young, crossover ensemble in the world" came to Sacramento.

Adam said when onstage, the ensemble often feels limitless and loose amongst each other.

What's more, they purposefully perform in equally loud, innovative dress.

She said Imani Winds plans to offer Sacramento music to reflect upon after the concert.

"I think everybody comes away from our concerts loving or liking it at least one piece, and they'll remember it," Adam said. "It's a new era in classical music and people just have to be lured in to believe it."

Imani Winds at the NewMusic @ ECU Festival '10 by Judith N. Barber
February 25, 2010, Greenville, NC: The Imani Winds swept through the NewMusic@ECU Festival on February 24 and 25, capturing the respect and affection of students and faculty during master classes and student composition readings, and displaying warmth and virtuosity at their concert at the A.J. Fletcher Recital Hall on Thursday night, February 25.

The first work on the program, "Red Clay and Mississippi Delta" (2009), composed by group founder and flautist Valerie Coleman, showcased the good humor, camaraderie, and considerable abilities of the group. The audience snapped their fingers to a New Orleans jazz-inspired theme led by clarinetist Mariam Adam while Monica Ellis, bassoonist and daughter of late jazz saxophonist Clarence Oden, navigated brilliant scalar passages, all of which elicited enthusiastic applause.

"Homage to Duke" (2002), a work spun from Ellington's "Come Sunday," was written by horn player Jeff Scott. Throughout the evening he leaped technicalities at a single bound, but in this work he showed a lyrical side, presenting the melody with beauty and sensitivity. Scott artfully set Duke's motives in varied contexts, polyphonically and over chord clusters, yielding a fresh approach that was thoughtfully interpreted by the ensemble.

Oboist James Roe, although appearing only temporarily with Imani while Toyin Spellman-Diaz is on maternity leave, is an ideal match for the group's generous spirit and talents. Roe introduced Karel Husa's Five Poems (1994), a charming work that revolves around the life of birds, whose outer movements frame inner sections that highlight clarinet, oboe, and horn.

The audience returned from intermission to Elliott Carter's Woodwind Quintet (1948), and surely the elder statesman of present day composers would have approved of the spirited and impeccable performance of his work.

The final work, Wind Quintet No. 2 (1994) by Miguel del Aguila, calls for extended techniques such as oboe and flute off-stage and the pairing of instruments with textless voice. Taken as a whole these procedures were effective, with a few possible exceptions. The A.J. Fletcher Hall did not yield a markedly altered sound for the off-stage oboe. And while the vocalizing was performed in good faith and with impeccable intonation, the effect that Aguila aims for may not be completely achieved by this particular procedure. On the other hand, the somewhat burlesque "In Heaven" was the most aurally novel of the movements, and perhaps the most enjoyable for that reason. By unique and various means each instrument begins as a source of percussive rhythmic sound, and only slowly does pitch emerge to eventually overtake the texture.

Imani Winds gave a spectacular performance, and the audience responded with enthusiasm. The standing ovation was rewarded with a fun and fleeting klezmer postscript featuring clarinetist Mariam Adam, and the evening closed with a convivial reception.

The Imani Winds give a remarkable concert at Kaul Auditorium by Lorin Wilkerson
Occasionally one attends a performance where the the musicianship is of such high caliber, the selections are so varied and engrossing, and the personality of the performers is so engaging that the feeling of it lingers long afterward, like the faint ghost of a warmly remembered dream. The concert by the acclaimed Imani Winds on Saturday night, February 20th in the Kaul Auditorium at Portland's Reed College, was just such an event.

The performance marked the end of the Imani Winds' residency at Reed, and was part of Chamber Music Northwest's '09-'10 Encore series. All of the music presented was from the 20th and 21st centuries, and three of the night's offerings were composed by the group's flutist Valerie Coleman, as well as two with arrangements by the horn player Jeff Scott. 'Personality' was a watchword of the evening, referenced by several of the group as each of the five performers stood, one before each work, to speak about the piece to follow.

The only un-introduced work of the evening was the opener, Coleman's Afro Blue, which began with oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz wandering nonchalantly onto the stage to begin singing a loud, exuberant melody, rough edges gloriously exposed, based (as was later explained) on the Afro-Cuban religion Santeria. One by one the rest of the group filed out and they began playing their instruments in a wild aural jumble, seemingly heedless of each other. Eventually the work developed into a series of arguments, first clarinet vs. oboe, then those two against the flute with bassoon and horn rumbling in the background as if egging on the row. Towards the end the composer invited the audience to join in a call-and-response, which was enthusiastically picked up.

The next work was by Czech composer Karel Husa, a programmatic piece called Five Poems, each of which was based on something to do with the life of birds. It was more than a recitation of bird song notation, though the composer wrote that he used that effect. Put simply, the work presented the spiritual and emotional life of birds. Rapt silence greeted the first poem, Walking Bird, an abstract yet easily idiomatic rendering of birds strolling down the beach-jerky, alien yet humorous. In Interlude: Lamenting Bird and its companion With a Dead Bird, the music turned intensely atmospheric and spooky, a weird, muted wailing emanating from the horn. Fighting Birds was a cacophony of toots, whistles, squawks, shrieks and burps, as well as incredible delicacy from the horn. The group closed the half with a piece commissioned early in their career, Aires Tropicales by Paquito D'Rivera, a piece redolent with Latin American rhythms and themes such as Habanera and Vals Venezolano.

The second half opened with a brutally difficult work by Gyorgi Ligeti, Ten Pieces for Wind Quintet. A bewildering forest of rasping dissonances, penetrating unisons, sonic experiments and textural adventures, the movements rarely lasted more than a minute or so but were more intense and memorable for their brevity. Forget about tonality; only occasionally did the listener glimpse brief snatches of what could even be called melody. Bassoonist Monica Ellis was intriguing all throughout the evening, bringing forth sounds from her instrument that were nothing short of amazing: angry exclamations, aspirant chuffs, and a muffled tootling enabled by a cloth stuffed into the end of her instrument were just a few of the skills she brought to the Ligeti. The last movement ended with a joke played on the audience. The music came to a pause and the performers all leaned forward, brows furrowed, eyes locked, bodies tensed in preparation for what must surely be a simultaneous explosion from the whole group...then they relaxed, and sat back laughing without sounding another note. It was over.

The next work was a composition of Coleman's, adapted from a multimedia presentation about the life of chanteuse, dancer and humanitarian Josephine Baker. It consisted of four movements, each telling the story of a different phase of her life. Ol' St. Louis began with what Coleman described as the music Baker would have heard as a young girl in St. Louis, when street-corner bands were playing the earliest distillations of a new music that would later become jazz. There was great work here for Scott on the horn and Mariam Adam on the clarinet, as they spilled out tune after saucy tune in the old, 'dirty' jazz style. In Paris 1925 Coleman gave a nod not only to Baker's years as Europe's most popular burlesque dancer, but also conveyed the wide-eyed wonder of a young African American woman encountering a place where the rigid cruelty of American segregation did not apply. The evening closed with Scott's dexterous arrangement of Astor Piazzola's popular Libertango.

There was never a doubt that the audience would settle for anything less than an encore, which turned out be another composition by Coleman, an exuberant African-based piece entitled Umojaa, Swahili for 'unity.' The performers spoke about personality, their own and that of the music, several times throughout the night. When it is precisely that personality which stands out in the face of such brilliant, difficult music so expertly and sensitively performed, then it was a memorable concert indeed.

Imani Winds shimmies and sways in Chamber Music Northwest concert by David Stabler
The Imani Winds, a quintet of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and French horn, do things differently. They call it "the Imani way" and it can sound like jazz, Afro-pop, Latin or high modernism.

"The Imani way" can also look different. Saturday's concert at Kaul Auditorium on the Reed College campus began when clarinetist Mariam Adam walked onstage alone and began singing "Afro Blue," a jazz standard recorded by saxophonist John Coltrane. One by one, her colleagues joined her, playing their instruments as they entered the stage. Instead of sitting down, they stood at the front of the stage facing the audience, inviting us to enjoy the sound.

It was a riveting moment and led to a couple of revelations throughout the evening. There's more than one way to start a concert, and the standard repertoire for a wind quintet isn't as limited as you might think.

Presented by Chamber Music Northwest, Imani (their name means "faith" in Swahili), played six works ranging from Pulitzer-prize winner Karel Husa's colorful bird songs, to a sassy habanera, and from terse virtuosity to a sweet tribute to the late singer and actress Josephine Baker. Together for 13 years, Imani has found a formula that engages audiences while advancing the literature for wind quintet. And their playing was superb. Each performer brought distinct personality to his or her instrument.

While Husa's birdsongs were interesting, they didn't transcend Olivier Messiaen's obsessive colorings that came before them. And I enjoyed Gyorgy Ligeti's "Ten Pieces for Wind Quintet" for their density, silences and invitations to reimagine sound combinations, but I found Imani most imaginative and captivating in the not-strictly-classical music.

Paquito D'Rivera's "Aires Tropicales" swayed soulfully. Flutist and composer Valerie Coleman's "Suite: Portraits of Josephine" shimmied nicely, evoking Paris in the 1920s. "Afro Blue" hollered with a keen beat and Astor Piazzolla's famed "Libertango" swept the room with sexy syncopations, even though I missed the reedy voice of the bandoneon.

East Meets West music label launched by Ravi Shankar Foundation
The Ravi Shankar Foundation launches East Meets West Music (EMWMusic) this month to bridge the divide between Ravi Shankar's recorded music and his global audience.

Shankar, a legendary sitarist and composer who pioneered India's classical music fusion with Western culture, has an astonishing archive of thousands of hours of live performance audio, film footage, interviews, and hopes to provide a glimpse into what has most inspired and shaped him in his 70-odd years on stage.

"There is something beautiful about the stage. There is a performer and there is an audience. Nothing is in the way. The sound remains pure and unburdened by things like marketing and distribution. My hope is for this label to be more like a stage and less like the music business as I have experienced it," says Shankar.

The label's debut release is "Nine Decades: Volume One," scheduled for his 90th birthday on April 7 2010. In the fall, EMWMusic will release the George Harrison produced documentary on Ravi, called "Raga" along with the soundtrack to the film.

The newly launched website, EastMeetsWestMusic.com, features release updates and performance information for both Ravi and his daughter Anoushka Shankar who continues his tradition of experimenting musically, taking her sitar into pop, world, rock and even trance music's new territories.

Stefon Harris with Imani Winds by Doug Collette

Grammy-nominated group visits Vermont school

Best bets, Feb. 4 by Brent Hallenbeck
Take a group of wind instruments normally associated with classical music - French horn, bassoon, clarinet, flute and oboe - put them in a jazz context and listen for the unique results: That's the recipe of Imani Winds, who'll be joined by jazz vibraphone player Stefon Harris for a performance at the Flynn Center in Burlington at 8 p.m. Friday. $20-$38. 863-5966, www.flynntix.org.

Pandit Ravi Shankar launches his music label
Feb 4, 2010 (Sampurn Wire): Legendry Sitarist Pandit Ravi Shankar has touched a new horizon as he has launched a music label of his own- 'East meets West music'. With this he joins the league of other musicians like A R Rahman (KM Music), Shubha Mudgal and many others.

Pandit Ravi Shankar's label will be bit different than others as it is said to be carrying the rare archives featuring thousand of live performances, interviews, film footage etc. These features are said to be included as sitar maestro wants to people to have peek into what has inspired and molded him in his long and glittering years on stage. According to the statement given to media, "With the creation of EMW Music,Ravi Shankar bridges any divide between his recorded music and his audience."

This music label will enter the market on 7th April 2010 on Pandit Ravi Shankar's 90th birthday. The series will compile decade by decade performances and rare live performance chosen by Ravi Shankar himself. Not just this, the label is determined to promote new talented and promising artists, meaningful projects and collaborations.

EMW music is also determined to release the documentary named 'Raga' based on Pt. Ravi Shankar's life and performances, it was produced by George Harrison and its soundtrack will also be available.

STAFF REFLECTION: Energetic musicians help overcome challenging music by Brian Miller

Ravi Shankar Foundation launches East Meets West music label
The Ravi Shankar Foundation launches East Meets West Music (EMWMusic) this month to bridge the divide between his recorded music and his global audience.

Shankar, a legendary sitarist and composer who pioneered India's classical music fusion with Western culture, has an astonishing archive of thousands of hours of live performance audio, film footage, interviews, and hopes to provide a glimpse into what has most inspired and shaped him in his 70-odd years on stage.

"There is something beautiful about the stage. There is a performer and there is an audience. Nothing is in the way. The sound remains pure and unburdened by things like marketing and distribution. My hope is for this label to be more like a stage and less like the music business as I have experienced it," says Shankar.

The label's debut release is "Nine Decades: Volume One," scheduled for his 90th birthday on April 7 2010. In the fall, EMWMusic will release the George Harrison produced documentary on Ravi, called "Raga" along with the soundtrack to the film.

The newly launched website, EastMeetsWestMusic.com, features release updates and performance information for both Ravi and his daughter Anoushka Shankar who continues his tradition of experimenting musically, taking her sitar into pop, world, rock and even trance music's new territories.

Pandit Ravi Shankar floats music label by Chirag Sutar
MUMBAI: Legendrary sitarist Pandit Ravi Shankar has become the latest musician to have floated an independent music label, called East Meets West Music (EMWMusic).

In the last couple of years, many prominent Indians musicians have commenced venturing into the music business on their own, mostly due to growing dissatisfaction with the way big music labels in the country function.

In the recent months, musicians like A R Rahman (KM Music), Sivamani (KVKM Records), Shubha Mudgal (Underscore Records), Vishal - Shekhar (VS Music) and Anup Jalota (Shabd and Sur) have ventured into the music label territory.

The name of the New York headquartered label, East Meets West, points to the Shankar philosophy of exploration, experimentation and cross-pollination. The vast archive features performances and appearances by an extraordinarily eclectic cast of musicians from across the globe.

An official statement says, "With the creation of EMWMusic, Ravi Shankar bridges any divide between his recorded music and his audience."

Interestingly, through this music label, listeners will be able to access rare archives featuring thousands of hours of live performance audio, film footage, interviews, and studio masters. Through the label, the legendary sitar player hopes to provide a glimpse into what has most inspired and shaped him in his 70-plus years on stage.

This new label is also aimed at providing platform for new artists, projects, and collaborations.

"There is something beautiful about the stage. There is a performer and there is an audience. Nothing is in the way. The sound remains pure and unburdened by things like marketing and distribution. My hope is for this label to be more like a stage and less like the music business as I have experienced it," Shankar says.

The label's debut release, Nine Decades: Volume One, is scheduled for Pt. Ravi Shankar's 90th birthday on 7 April 2010. The Nine Decades series will feature rare live performances hand-picked by Ravi. The series will focus, decade by decade, on performances that are particularly meaningful to the artist himself. In the fall of 2010, EMWMusic will release the George Harrison produced documentary on Pt. Ravi Shankar, called Raga. The soundtrack to the film will also be available.

The label has also launched its new website, EastMeetsWestMusic.com that features release updates and performance information about Pt. Ravi Shankar and Anoushka Shankar. The website recently announced their plans to issue the movie "Raga," a 1971 documentary about Ravi Shankar that features George Harrison, on both DVD and CD in October. The soundtrack was originally issued on Apple Records.

Ravi Shankar Launches Record Label
The éminence grise of Indian classical music unveils the first release on East Meets West Music this April 7, his 90th birthday. The label will begin with a series of Shankar's own archival concert recordings; future plans include the release of Raga, George Harrison's documentary on Shankar, as well as music of other artists and, eventually, other genres.

Long out-of-print 'Raga' documentary with George Harrison coming out on DVD and CD by Steve Marinucci
East Meets West Music, a new label just launched by the Ravi Shankar Foundation, has announced plans on their website to issue the movie "Raga," a 1971 documentary about Ravi Shankar that also features George Harrison, on both DVD and CD in October. The soundtrack was originally issued on Apple Records.

The inaugural release on the new label, which will feature Shankar's recordings, will be "Nine Decades: Volume 1," the first in a multi-volume series featuring rare and never-released recordings selected by Shankar from his archives. The series will include live performances and studio recordings newly remastered. "Nine Decades: Volume 1" is scheduled for release on April 7th, coinciding with Shankar's 90th birthday. It will be available digitally through all major online retailers on both CD and limited edition vinyl.

"There is something beautiful about the stage. There is a performer and there is an audience. Nothing is in the way. The sound remains pure and unburdened by things like marketing and distribution. My hope is for this label to be more like a stage and less like the music business as I have experienced it," Shankar said in announcing the label.

In addition to issuing Ravi Shankar's recordings exclusively, East Meets West Music will also release work by artists supported by Ravi and Anoushka Shankar that, according to a description on their website, "continues the sitar master's vibrant tradition of exploring new musical terrains."

The Ravi Shankar Foundation start new label
Indian classical music virtuoso Ravi Shankar and the people of the Ravi Shankar Foundation have been doing a lot of research to track down and document his musical legacy. It seems the first fruits of their labor will be seeing the light of day, for all to hear with the creation of East Meets West Music, a label named after the classic Shankar album East Meets West.

# The first project will be the first in a series of albums called Nine Decades, with the first volume to be released on April 7th, Shankar's 90th birthday. The series promises many rare and previously unreleased recordings from the sitar master, so fans of Indian classical music will be anticipating this one. The series will be released on vinyl (yes), CD, and also through digital means.

# The second release will be a completely remastered and restored version of the 1971 documentary film Rage, released by Apple Films in 1971. The soundtrack to the album, also released by Apple, has never been reissued but will finally see its CD debut after many requests from Shankar and Beatles/Apple fans alike. Both the DVD and CD are expected for release in the Fall of 2010.

# Outside of his own works, East Meets West Music will highlight brand new music with approval from Ravi Shankar and daughter Anoushka Shankar. No word on who will be the first artists chosen, but since father and daughter have very diverse tastes and interests in music, it will be very interesting to see what gets the Shankar Foundation seal of approval.

Fans down under will be able to see Ravi & Anoushka Shankar perform live in March as they will be doing a small amount of concerts, you can find confirmed dates here. Anoushka has a concert planned in Italy at the end of March. When she and family will celebrate her father's 90th year, she will then go on her own tour as The Anoushka Shankar Project, doing shows throughout the U.S. before heading to Europe and coming back to the U.S. at the start of June. You can find confirmed tour dates on Anoushka's home page.

Imani Winds blows into Penn State Behrend Tuesday by John Chacona
Imani Winds, the sterling woodwind quintet, makes a welcome return visit to Behrend.

It's an immutable fact of life on the Great Lakes that a January forecast that calls for winds be greeted with a sense of dread.

Exceptions are allowed, of course, and the happiest reason to grant one is about to arrive in the form of Imani Winds, the award-winning chamber ensemble that will pay a return visit to the award-winning Logan Series of free noontime concerts at Penn State Behrend next Tuesday.

The ensemble -- Valerie Coleman, flute; Toyin Spellman-Diaz, oboe; Mariam Adam, clarinet; Jeff Scott, French horn; Monica Ellis, bassoon -- has been frequent and welcome guests in Erie and Meadville since coming together at New York's Juilliard School in 1997.

Virtuosity is always on the program when Imani Winds play, and so is intriguing repertoire. This is the rare chamber ensemble with players who are also composers.

Though their Logan recital will clock in at about an hour, it will include masterpieces by 101-year-old Elliot Carter (the 1948 Wind Quintet) and Heitor Villa-Lobos (the "Quintette en Forme de Choros"), and one composition each by Jeff Scott and Valerie Coleman.

Coleman's piece, "Red Clay Mississippi Delta," has an intriguing title and an even more fascinating back story.

"I wrote it in two weeks in May after a family funeral in Mississippi," she told me by phone from her New York home.

"At the funeral, my Mississippi relatives had a red in their skin tone that reminded me of red clay. I was also reminded of how when relatives come to visit from Mississippi, they bring moonshine.

"When this scherzo came into my head, I wanted it to sound like the juke-joint harmonica sound -- nothing but riffs -- and with a rock and rolling feeling, but in a classical vein. It's a new piece for us, but by the time it gets to you, it'll be good."

Players who compose and composers who play: It sounds like jazz, doesn't it? Though conservatory-trained, the Imanis frequently collaborate with jazz musicians, an experience Coleman finds to be not just musically rewarding but spiritually nourishing, as well.

Speaking of a recent summer tour of European jazz festivals with saxophonist Wayne Shorter, perhaps jazz's pre-eminent living composer, Coleman described the encounter as transformational:

"Wayne took us into his world, and it changed our lives. There is something to Wayne Shorter's writing that translates into hymnals for me. He touches the spirit. Once you play music that has those qualities, you want to re-create that."

In that vein, the ensemble has commissioned Shorter's pianist, Danilo Perez, himself conservatory-trained, to write a piece.

When Imani Winds will find the time in their exhausting schedule to learn it is hard to fathom, but here, too, a lesson from Shorter is appropriate.

"As young bloods, we brought something to his music. In the conservatory, you learn technique, and you learn to play fast," Coleman explained. "But Wayne preaches 'intensity without velocity.'"

Intensity, velocity. When Imani Winds blow into town, you can expect both.

In-studio with Anonymous 4
The women of Anonymous 4 joined PT at the Church of St. Bernard in St. Paul for terrific performances of early English and American carols all written about the Christmas story of the Cherry Tree.

A Quartet a Caroling, as in the 15th Century  by Allan Kozinn
Holiday music in New York is overwhelmingly Baroque, with Handel and Bach - both in sacred works like the "Messiah" and secular ones like the "Brandenburg" Concertos - dominating the programs in concert halls and churches. Occasional outliers bring a new perspective to the Christmas canon, with scores like Britten's "Rejoice in the Lamb," Phil Kline's "Unsilent Night" or John Adams's "Nino" push the contemporary edge of the repertory, and a handful of early-music ensembles are pushing in the other direction, toward the earliest documented Christmas works.

Anonymous 4, the a cappella vocal ensemble, looked mostly at the 15th-century English medieval telling of the Nativity story in "The Cherry Tree," its Sunday afternoon concert in the Music Before 1800 series at Corpus Christi Church in Morningside Heights. But the group brought some unusual trimmings as well. Scattered through the program were a half-dozen American pieces, mostly folk hymns published in the collection "Southern Harmony" (1835).

For sheer peculiarity in a context defined by the modal, early polyphony of the program's main offerings, the American pieces, with their starkly consonant harmonies, seemed particularly inviting. And even among those works, a couple - William Billings's "Bethlehem," a rhythmically vital fuging tune, and an early-20th-century Kentucky edition of "The Cherry Tree Carol" - were odder still.

This version of "The Cherry Tree Carol" particularly stood out. The song was, in a way, a bridge between the American pieces and the medieval ones. Though in the unaccompanied solo version performed by Marsha Genensky the carol had bent notes that made it sound decidedly Appalachian, the piece actually dates to 15th-century England, the same time and place as the program's main offerings.

Mostly, these were polyphonic works, with texts that mixed Latin and medieval English, and which elaborated on themes of the story - the Annunciation, in "Alma redemptoris mater" and "Veni redemptor gencium," and Jesus' birth (and mission) in "Now May We Syngen" and "This Ender Nithgt," for example.

Anonymous 4's trademark vocal blend, with its sparing use of vibrato and its careful dynamic gradations within phrases, suits this music beautifully. And three solo "ballad-carols," along with the Americanized "Cherry Tree Carol," showed that the singers are as powerful and communicative on their own as they are together. Besides Ms. Genensky, the lineup includes Susan Hellauer, Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek and Ruth Cunningham.

Anonymous 4, Minus 1, Still Magical at Early Music by Rick Walters
The old adage "the show must go on" came to mind Saturday evening when one member of the vocal quartet Anonymous 4 was hospitalized not long before the 5 p.m. Early Music Now concert at St. Joseph Center Chapel. If the remaining three members were agitated by circumstances (and who wouldn't be?), it was not apparent. One had to admire their professionalism. Admiration did not end there.

The ensemble's unique magic was undiminished in a program of primarily medieval carols in Latin and Middle English. Many of their custom arrangements are three-part to begin with, but surely the situation required musical adjustments. I kept listening for a missing fourth part; its absence was amazingly inconspicuous.

Anonymous 4's most perfect blend and balance of any vocal ensemble is its calling card, along with unerring taste and creative programming. Easy fluency with varying styles is another strength. In solos the voices of Marsha Genensky, Susan Hellauer and Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek had individual color that disappeared when singing together.

The medieval sounds were spelled with lively and refined arrangements of American folk carols, some of the most memorable selections on the concert. The singers sang with charming style that grew organically from bluegrass roots, more evidence of why Anonymous 4 has sold 1.5 million recordings over its long career.

Anonymous 4 drops to 3, still carols flawlessly by Elaine Schmidt
You know you're a professional when . . .  one member of your quartet has to be hospitalized shortly before a performance and you go on without her.

Anonymous 4, the New York-based female vocal quartet that was presented on the Early Music Now series on Saturday, performed as a trio when one member fell ill shortly before the performance.

Their four-part harmony and blend reduced in that moment to three-part, the women regrouped and sang a remarkable performance, filling the St. Joseph Convent Chapel with their trademark ethereal sound.

Marsha Genensky, Susan Hellauer and Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek sounded as though they had planned this program of 15th-century carols as a trio from the start.

They sang with superb control, an enormous palette of colors and the absolutely seamless blend upon which the quartet has built its significant reputation.

From pure unison sounds to ringing two- and three-part harmonies, the women stripped away the frantic clamor of our contemporary holiday celebrations and replaced it with something earnest and calm.

Sung in Latin and Middle English, many of the texts of the carols share roots with Christmas tunes and readings we know today.

The melodies and their historically informed, largely sans-vibrato deliveries brought another time to life.

In solo selections, one heard just how different their three voices are. Yet together, they became a single, bell-like sound.

The women crafted phrases in perfect concert, beginning and ending them as cleanly as though sung by a single person.

They shaped and colored each line of the music in their thoughtful deliveries with that same flawless sense of ensemble, giving the sound a heartbeat or two to decay before continuing.

The women made just a couple of program alterations to cover for their missing member.

The final number on the program, a fuging tune, was replaced with a gently lilting, delightfully homespun bluegrass carol entitled, "The Beautiful Star of Bethlehem."

The women brought the same crystalline, homogeneous sound to this little gem of a tune that's largely relegated to country music circles these days.

The women answered enthusiastic applause with a brief encore.

Review: Early Music Now presents Anonymous 4 by Ellen Burmeister
Hidden within the fortress-like headquarters of the School Sisters of St. Francis on Layton Boulevard is a small, exquisite chapel that overflows with ecclesiastical architectural ornament. Singers and chamber musicians love its ringing, yet manageable acoustics.

Early Music Now brought Anonymous 4 to the chapel for a concert Saturday. Anonymous 4's unadorned, straight tone rose to its full power and grace in this particularly resonant space, which the three female singers played like an instrument.
Anonymous 4.

Due to a sudden health situation involving member Ruth Cunningham, A4 was reduced to A3. Marsha Genensky, Susan Hellauer and Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek carried on without apparent problems. Despite its seeming simplicity, this singing style and music requires constant, highly focused concentration, as well as unwavering intonation.Their great sense of ensemble and intelligent blending produced their trademark fluid, meditative sound.

They traced Christmas caroling back several centuries. The program focused on the so-very-human Cherry Tree Carol, in which Joseph, whose faith in the divine origins of Mary's pregnancy falters, refuses to pick cherries for her. "Let the father of your baby" pick them, he scoffs. At Jesus' command, the tree bends down and Mary gets her fill, "while Joseph stood around."

Variations on this theme of Mary's goodness and Christ's divinity transcending human fears flowed through music sung in Middle English, Latin and English. The theme persisted through time periods and styles, from the plainsong and polyphony of the middle ages to the spare folk hymns of early America and on through bluegrass interpretations.

The solo and ensemble virtuosity won over an appreciative capacity audience of more than 600. The sound of vocal clarity and intelligent interpretation, hanging in the clear air of an architectural and acoustic masterpiece, delivered power and pleasure seldom encountered in this age of over-amplification, over-singing and auto-tuners. Anonymous 4's singing was rare, real and revelatory.

Anonymous 4: Four Centuries of Chant
In this week's Full Rotation: Album of the Week, the medieval soul sisters Anonymous 4 travel through Four Centuries of Chant.

When Anonymous 4 came along in 1986, medieval chant was something known only to specialists and music majors slogging through the required music-history survey course. Even their name suggested esoteric scholarship: it was taken from the manuscripts of a medieval musicologist known to scholars only as -- yes, "Anonymous 4."

Yet they've remained anything but anonymous. After their debut recording, An English Ladymass, rose to the top of Billboard's classical charts in 1993 they have sold over a million copies of their albums encompassing not only plainchant but also 19th-century American gospel hymns, folk songs and contemporary music. The quartet broke up in 2004, but its members have since reunited for a series of concerts and to put together this "greatest hits" collection of chant from the 12th to the 16th centuries.

Four Centuries of Chant shows that much of this music is incredibly dramatic but not in the way that contemporary ears hear drama. Take the opening of The Lily & the Lamb, a sequence of sung and spoken texts, built around descriptions of the Virgin Mary's agony at the death of Jesus. There's a dark cast to the melodies that depict scenes of crucifixion and martyrdom. Or consider the hymn from A Mass for the End of Time, a vivid recitation of the horrors of the last judgment.

There are also some very complicated vocal textures here, as in three selections from The Miracles of Sant'Iago, based on a 12th century manuscript containing sermons, chants and stories of St. James. Other highlights include the great hymn of thanksgiving, the Te Deum, in a vernacular version from Medieval Hungary and two captivating chants by the medieval visionary, Hildegard von Bingen. Throughout, Anonymous 4 present this material with crystalline, finely meshed singing.

Early Music Now presents Anonymous 4 by Tom Strini
The comeback Cherry Tree Carol tour will land in the splendid chapel of the St. Joseph Center at 5 p.m. Saturday (Dec. , courtesy of Early Music Now. That's fitting, since Early Music Now first brought the quartet to Milwaukee in 1991, before the world had really taken notice. That was just before the release of their first unlikely hit CD, An English Ladymass, a reconstruction of a medieval British liturgy. That disc made them stars of the early music movement and a sellout international attraction.

In 1991, they sang for an audience of about 50 at St. James' Church on Wisconsin Avenue. Saturday, Ruth Cunningham, Marsha Genensky, Susan Hellauer and Jacquelin Horner-Kwiatek will sing for a sold-out house of 600.

"That was our first serious tour," Hellauer said, from Chicago, of the 1991 Milwaukee debut. "We love Milwaukee. It's been very important for us."

Early Music Now brought them back often, with an On Yoolis Night Christmas program at the Basilica of St. Josaphat being especially memorable. On in 2004 did they come to Milwaukee under other sponsorship; Artist Series at the Pabst bagged the farewell tour.

Hellauer said that the semi-retirement in 2004 occurred because all four women wanted to work on their own projects and because one member wanted to live in California rather than New York. Also, Anonymous 4 can't simply buy music off the shelf and sing a concert. They research, transcribe and arrange their music. The process requires library work, skill at reading old notations and getting comfortable with old versions of assorted languages.

"We decided to stop developing concerts," Hellauer said, explaining that they were willing to pull out an old one and work it up under the right circumstances.

They turned out to be victims of their own success. Great offers kept coming up.

"Who's gonna say no to the Edinburgh Festival?" Hellauer asked, rhetorically, of the opportunity that got them to travel once again, in 2007. And then there was American Angels, the album that had been in the pipeline for record label, Harmonia Mundi. This CD of American Southern songs, many in primitive three-part harmonies common in rural hymnals c. 1800, was a big departure for a group known for medieval European music. No one expected much from it. American Angels turned out to be the biggest A4 hit ever.

"We had No. 3 and No. 2 on the charts, but this was our first No. 1," Hellauer said.

The album opened a whole new audience and a new batch of presenters. Tour opportunities were too good to pass up.

The push behind the American repertoire came from Genensky, Hellauer said.

"Marsha went down to Arkansas and spent time with Almeda Riddle, whose knowledge of American southern folk and church music was encyclopedic," Hellauer said. "That music was Marsha's first love. She has that back-porch, high-lonesome sound."

Genensky will apply that sound to The Cherry Tree Carol, her solo on this program. That carol, which relates how a disgruntled Joseph discovers that God, not a competing lover, is responsible for Mary's condition. It dates at least to 15th century England. The program draws lines between old English Christmas songs and their American descendents.

Among those descendents were the "fuguing songs," canons, really, of William Billings and the shape-note books itinerant music teachers sold to backwoods American churches for decades. It was intended to be simple to learn and sing, and it is. The shape-note music is loaded with pedal tones and open fourths and fifths. It has at least that in common with early European medieval organum. But nothing about it is sophisticated.

"It's simple, but I wouldn't call it dumbed down," Hellauer said. "We sing it, we don't parody it. And then we have to think about how we sing. We can't scream and shout, as they might have done in a Southern church; that's just not who we are. Which brings into questions of style and authenticity.

"We always spend time in the library doing all this research and reading this treatise and that one. And then we have to do something that is true and honest for us and communicates with our audience."

Anonymous 4 returns on wings of 'Angels' by Wynne Delacoma
Anonymous 4 didn't intend to become invisible.

By 2004, the female quartet founded in 1986 had reached several professional peaks. They were traveling the world, performing medieval chant for audiences hungry for the haunting sound of a cappella voices in music of centuries past. They spent countless hours in libraries researching new material and had issued a steady stream of well-received CDs whose sales would eventually reach 1.5 million, an unusually high figure for classical music.

It was time to take a breather. But, with a nod to Mark Twain, subsequent reports of group's demise were greatly exaggerated. Fans of Anonymous 4 will be glad to know that the ensemble is alive, well and touring a program that will bring them to Chicago for a concert of Christmas music at 7:30 tonight at Holy Name Cathedral.

"We went down to part-time,'' said Susan Hellauer, a founding member of the group. "We were no longer going to be researching any new programs. If we were specifically requested to repeat a program, we weren't going to say no. But we weren't going to be developing a new program every year."

Fate, however, intervened, in the form of a best-selling CD.

"We had done our last three recordings with the harmonia mundi label,'' Hellauer said. "But the big surprise was that 'American Angels' was the first one of our recordings -- and of theirs, as well -- that went to No. 1 on the Billboard chart and just sat there."

"American Angels,'' an album of songs in a style of traditional music from rural America known as shape-note music, was an unlikely classical best seller.

"We proposed it to [harmonia mundi]" said Hellauer, "and they had said, 'Well, girls, whatever you want. But American shape-note music?'"

Once the CD hit the charts big-time, however, the label wanted more from Anonymous 4.

"They always said yes to us,'' said Hellauer, so the quartet agreed to work on a follow-up album. "When we saw that 'American Angels' was selling and selling and selling," she said, "we did 'Gloryland' [a collection of early American hymns and ballads]. And if you do a recording, you have to tour to support it, unless you're the Beatles. It was a trajectory determined by an unexpected event.''

Anonymous 4 doesn't intend to return to full-time operation, with numerous tours and a new program every year. Its Chicago engagement is part of a seven-city December tour, and there are four concerts scheduled in the spring. Each of the women is working independently of Anonymous 4. But after singing so long together, they have little trouble getting their collective musical chops back in order.

"It's in clumps more,'' said Hellauer of the current schedule, "but a lot of groups work like that. It's like a family band. You know how it is when you haven't seen somebody who was your really good friend in high school in three years or whatever? And you start talking, and it's like no time went by? That's what it's like vocally for us."

The group's Chicago concert is titled "The Cherry Tree.'' It includes 15th and early 16th century British carols combined with 18th and 19th century American Christmas songs that grew out of those British roots. (Tonight's concert also includes traditional Christmas music by the Holy Name Cathedral choirs.)

"That's late for us,'' said Hellauer of the program's British carols, "but we were fascinated by that music."

Working at a slower pace hasn't diminished the group's love of the music it sings.

"The whole process of finding music we haven't seen before, developing it, singing through repertoire -- it's like candy; it's like dark chocolate," Hellauer said. "It's a new world that was there just under your vision. And then you open your eyes and it's like you've just discovered a treasure.

Musical Tidings of Comfort, Joy and Jubilation  by Anne Mancuso

Anonymous 4's thrilling transport to auld England by Rob Hubbard
If you think Latin is a dead language, you've never heard it sung by the women of Anonymous 4.

One of the world's most popular early music ensembles, this four-woman vocal quartet takes the music of the 14th and 15th centuries and suffuses it with shimmering vibrancy. Where one might expect to find cool and somber liturgical texts of the ancient church are instead songs full of heart and disarming honesty. And, yes, they're often sung in Latin.

On Wednesday night, Anonymous 4 brought warmth to a cold night with a sweetly sung concert at Minneapolis' Basilica of St. Mary. Delivering a collection of songs inspired by Christmas, the New York-based foursome used the expansive cathedral's stony sanctuary to inspiring effect, their harmonies hanging in the air resonantly. But the most memorable moments came when one of the four women demonstrated her skills in a solo setting, bringing chills that had nothing to do with the weather.

While the music of the medieval and Renaissance eras is what put Anonymous 4 on the map - and on the top of the classical sales charts - they eclipsed their earlier popularity in recent years by delving into 19th-century American folk hymns. Five of those tunes were sprinkled into Wednesday's 18-song, 65-minute program, and they fit alongside the auld tyme carols quite comfortably.

In one memorable case, a work fit both categories, when Marsha Genensky filled the church with an arresting, sorrowful interpretation of "The Cherry Tree Carol." Her version came from 1917 Kentucky, but the song shared the same source as most of the program, 15th-century England.

The strongest solos came from Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, her powerful soprano bringing a stunning immediacy to ancient material. Be her voice soaring above the harmonizing others or piercing through the ethereal echoes on a haunting solo, the soprano made marvelous use of the Basilica's acoustics.

While most of the pieces were sung in English, it wasn't an English your average American would understand. The texts leaned upon pronunciations straight out of Chaucer, and the brogues the women adopted were probably quite historically accurate, knowing this group's reputation for scholarship. But the words became secondary when their voices wove such an intricate and colorful musical tapestry.

Vocal Quartet Anonymous 4 on WRTI's Crossover
Join Jill Pasternak when she brings you the ethereal sounds of Anonymous 4. Dedicated to the performance of medieval chant and polyphony, the ensemble is renowned for their unearthly vocal blend and virtuosic ensemble singing. Their recordings are a fixture on the shelves of early music collectors. The four women of Anonymous 4 combine musical, literary, and historical scholarship with contemporary performance intuition as they create ingeniously designed programs, interweaving music with poetry and narrative.

Four Centuries of Chant is Anonymous 4's new release, which is a great introduction to the sound of Gregorian chant, including monophonic tracks from ten of the group's earlier recordings.

In addition to their unmatched medieval repertoire, Anonymous 4 has often reached out into the realm of contemporary music, and has premiered works by Peter Maxwell Davies, John Tavener, Steve Reich, and Richard Einhorn. The group has most recently expanded their repertoire to include traditional music of the British Isles and America.

These area performances sure to ring in the season by Jim Higgins
Since 1986, the women of Anonymous 4 have sung medieval chant and polyphony with passion and skill. They've even branched forward into Renaissance and sacred American folk music. The quartet's Christmas-themed program for this Early Music Now concert is built around "The Cherry Tree Carol," a miracle ballad about Mary and Joseph that can be found in 15th-century British carols and in traditional Appalachian music. They also will sing music from their "On Yoolis Night" recording and American music. 5 p.m. Dec. 12, Chapel of St. Joseph Center, 1501 S. Layton Blvd. Tickets: $25-$40, $10-$20 for students. Visit www.earlymusicnow.org or call (414) 225-3113.

Anonymous 4, sounding like a comeback by Charles T. Downey
Anonymous 4, the quartet of women known for singing medieval chant and polyphony with faultless intonation and translucent vocal color, brought its comeback tour to Dumbarton Oaks on Monday night. After almost 20 years of acclaimed work in concert and on disc, the group stopped performing a few years ago, a suspension that has happily proved temporary.

In the new configuration Ruth Cunningham replaces Johanna Maria Rose, returning to sing alongside Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, who replaced Cunningham when she left the group in 1998. Three favorite repertories collide in a new Christmas program, "The Cherry Tree": late medieval chant, 15th-century English polyphony and Anglo-American folk song. The juxtaposition is less jarring than it might seem, underscoring the melodic fluidity, open and modal harmonies, parallelisms and pre-tonal dissonance that these styles share.

Two chant sequences exemplified the group's hallmark sound, four voices blending perfectly in vowel color, tone and intonation, with a rhythmic pulse neither precipitous nor lugubrious. Many of the English Renaissance selections were ingenious examples of vernacular commentaries on liturgical chants, as in "Veni redemptor gentium," in which the text refers to Ambrose, the author of the Gregorian hymn quoted in the refrain. The folk song settings, including carols by William Billings, were sung simply, without exaggerating the strident qualities often found in that style.

One could complain here and there about shortcomings, especially in solo selections (one for each singer), but the good news is that Anonymous 4 appears to be on the way to reclaiming its former glory. Recordings of this program and another concert of music from the Las Huelgas Codex are planned for release by Harmonia Mundi in the coming year.

Anonymous 4 presents The Cherry Tree, an evening of medieval English carols and American Christmas songs. Perhaps the most renowned early music vocal group performing today, the quartet's ethereal voices shine in these renditions of traditional holiday music.

Unpop!: 11/26/09 by Daniel Stephen Johnson
The Imani Winds are probably the best-known ensemble of their kind, but I'd managed to miss hearing them play before last Tuesday. I was a little scared off by their extremely NPR-friendly discography, which includes a tribute to Josephine Baker, a Christmas record and other assortments of classical bonbons.

Now, more than one composer cringes at the thought of writing a piece for woodwind quintet. The Wind Quintet Problem: to create a single coherent texture out of an oboe, a flute, a clarinet, a bassoon and a French horn. These are some of the orchestra's sweetest voices, but in a symphony their function is almost decorative. It's easy for the piece to come out sounding hollow - five soloists in search of an accompanist.

Having braced myself for a rattling junk drawer of mismatched timbres, I felt my body relax the moment the Imanis launched into their first piece on the program, Scherzo for Woodwind Quintet by Eugene Bozza. The piece relays a Flight of the Bumblebee-style melody from each member of the ensemble to the next in turn, but the sounds of the instruments were so well matched that the handoffs were nearly indistinguishable.

Similar handoffs in Gyorgy Ligeti's challenging Six Bagatelles were a little rougher. Challenging for the players, I mean, not for the audience - especially relative to Ligeti's avant-garde oeuvre - and the quintet brought the piece's lyrical qualities to the fore. Heitor Villa-Lobos' Quintette en Forme de Choros, after intermission, seemed strident by comparison.

But the real meat of the program was Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra's Concierto de Camera for winds and string quartet, created by the Imanis as part of their awesome Legacy Commissioning Project for composers of color. (There is not a white face in the Imani Winds. That's a rarity in the classical music world, which raises the question: What in the hell is wrong with the classical music world?) The Jasper Quartet, who opened the program by reprising a Haydn piece from their recent recital, helped solve the Wind Quintet Problem by accompanying the Imanis through a sturdily wrought, player-friendly score sure to enter the mainstream woodwind repertoire.

Classical Music Agenda by Charles Downey
Speaking of Christmas concerts, another one that will have some interesting music is The Cherry Tree, a program presented by the vocal quartet Anonymous 4 on the Friends of Music at Dumbarton Oaks (November 29, 7 p.m., and repeated on November 30, 8 p.m.). This series is normally open to subscribers only, but some unsold tickets may be available for non-subscribers in the days leading up to the concerts.

In Chant, Listening and Singing Become One  by Chloe Veltman
Chant, the practice of intoning sounds or words rhythmically and repetitively, has been a staple of spiritual systems for millenniums. Owing to the popularity of recordings like the 1993 album "Chant" by the Benedictine monks of Santo Domingo de Silos in Spain, and Enigma's 1990 crossover hit, "Sadeness (Part I)," which juxtaposed chant with a dance beat, Westerners have become familiar with Gregorian chant, the early Christian liturgical genre.

But chant exists in many forms - including mantras, hymns, prayers, Shigin (a form of Japanese chanted poetry) and plainsong - and can be found in religions as diverse as Judaism, Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Hinduism.

Perhaps in response to the growing velocity and techno-centricity of daily life, more people have sought out chant. The sounds of "om" and "kyrie" are filling Zen meditation centers, Buddhist retreats, plainsong-infused candlelit church services, and yoga studios around the Bay Area and beyond.

Meanwhile, chant has been on the rise as an artistic pursuit. Vocal ensembles like Anonymous 4, Sequentia and Cappella Romana have garnered critical acclaim for their concerts and recordings. The field is clearly evolving. But is chant as engrossing to hear as it is to sing?

In theory, listening to a chant should be roughly the same as singing it. In practice, however, most of us aren't relaxed, psychologically present or in tune enough with ourselves to be mindful of this effect, which is, after all, quite subtle. As a result, listening to chant, especially without the aid of a religious framework to guide your engagement, can be frustrating.

This was certainly the case last weekend during the Sabbaticus Rex performance at Old First Presbyterian Church in San Francisco. The three-member ensemble, which is based in the Bay Area, lays deep, throat-sung mantras over dense instrumental layers created by a bazantar (a five-string upright bass fitted with 33 extra sympathetic and drone strings), Japanese bamboo flutes and gongs.

The group's anti-melodic, seemingly directionless soundscape drove my guest to the point of distraction. She called the music "primitive" and "annoying."

I didn't entirely share her feelings. Perhaps it's all the yoga I've been doing lately, but by concentrating on my breath and listening for subtle textural and rhythmic changes, like the quiet roar of a gong or the interjection of a rippling flute motif, I was intermittently able to climb inside the ensemble's musical meditation.

The vocalist Cornelius Boots's occasional bouts of chesty, resonant chanting helped immensely by bringing much needed focus to the meandering instrumental lines. Still, my mind wandered often, and it was ultimately quite a relief to leave the church.

The next morning, I visited the Seventh Avenue Presbyterian Church across town, where I participated in the Medieval Sarum Chant workshop led by Susan Hellauer and Marsha Genensky of the New York all-female a cappella quartet Anonymous 4. In contrast to the previous evening's experience, I didn't want to leave.

This all-day class - open to anyone, even those who can't read music, at an affordable rate - was surprising in some ways. From an aesthetic standpoint, our attempt to sing "Ave Maris Stella," an English liturgical chant composed in honor of the Virgin Mary, left much to be desired, even though producing a pitch-perfect performance was not the aim of the day.

We weren't particularly in tune or in step with one another. And learning the chant by rote (as the monks would have done in medieval times), rather than by reading music, added an entirely new level of complexity.

But as we were singing together, time vanished. I had no idea what "Solve vincla reis, profer lumen caecis" meant, but the act of chanting these words en masse had the same effect on my mood as eating good, dark chocolate. (By the way, it means "Dissolve these earthly chains, give light to the blind.")

By relating these contrasting experiences, I don't wish to imply that chant isn't worthy of performance. Listening to Anonymous 4 sing "Ave Maris Stella" on its "Four Centuries of Chant" CD (released this year on Harmonia Mundi) or in concert demonstrates just how sublime chant can sound to the listener's ear when the performers follow the contours of the language, flow through the lines and generally possess what Ms. Hellauer calls a "unity of intent."

Listening to the great Lebanese vocalist Sister Marie Keyrouz intone Middle Eastern Christian chant or Tina Turner sing a Buddhist chant has a comparable effect.

As the Oakland Nada yoga (yoga of sound) expert Ann Dyer put it in a recent phone interview: "Fundamentally, chanting and listening are not that different in terms of how we respond as organisms. Even when you're listening to chant, the whole body is responding, experiencing the vibration, and the vocal cords will vibrate in sympathy if relaxed. It's a very kinesthetic response."

But inasmuch as any activity in life tends to be more meaningful than experiencing it from the sidelines, chant derives much of its power from active participation.

"There is a difference between listening to someone chant and actually making those same sounds in your own body," Ana Hernandez writes in her 2005 book, "The Sacred Art of Chant." "There's a difference in the way the vibrations affect you, depending on whether they come from outside or within you."

Anonymous 4 performs next on Dec. 3 at the Herbst Theater, 401 Van Ness Avenue, at McAllister Street, San Francisco; (415) 392-2545, performances.org.

Middle Ages? Meet Folk Music by Michael Zwiebach
A new Anonymous 4 program is always a bright occasion - and not only for those for whom the group's music represents meditative release. (My wife had Miracles of Sant'Iago on endless loop during her labor with our second child. Maybe that's why he's so mellow.)

No, putting together a concert program of folk music and polyphony from the Middle Ages, and later, requires active research and thought, and few people are as accomplished at those things as Susan Hellauer, Anonymous 4's unofficial medieval music librarian, program annotator, and chief poker-around-in-dark-corners.

Over the years, Hellauer and her friends have illuminated aspects of medieval life and ritual, including three programs of Christmas music, On Yoolis Night (1993), Legends of Saint Nicholas (1996), and Wolcum Yule (2003).

On this last CD, the group sang a number, The Cherry Tree Carol, that became the basis of their latest program of seasonal music, which they premiered in 2008, and which they bring to their San Francisco Performances concert on Dec. 3. In the meantime, however, the group had released two CDs of Anglo-African spiritual music (Marsha Genensky's main area of research), embracing hymns, revival songs, and spiritual as well as gospel numbers. This latest program bridges the two worlds in a concert that will show as many continuities as fault lines.

"When American composers started to write in parts, they tended to use open fifths and octaves," just as medieval musicians did, Genensky said. "When I was younger and heard shape-note singing, it sounded like medieval music to me." (See here for more.)

The Cherry Tree Carol and another medieval carol, Marvel Not, Joseph, tell the story of Jesus' earthly father who, by the intervention of an angel, comes to understand that Mary's child was conceived by a miracle. Anonymous 4 then weave a set of medieval carols and add a second set of American songs ranging from shape-note tunes taken from a 19th-century hymnbook, The Southern Harmony, to William Billings' fuguing tune Bethlehem, to a 1813 carol calledA Virgin Unspotted.

Of course, most of us who attend this concert will have gone to be refreshed and inspired by the group's vocal purity and the energetic, earthy beauty of the music. Yet there's something about the winter-solstice season that always draws us back to lost (or almost lost) folk traditions, something that makes us want to carol or take up crafts, or decorate our houses with symbolic plants and iconography, even if we're not religious. Genensky remarked in an NPR interview that Anonymous 4's audience often embraces a variety of agnostics and what she calls "seekers." She relates her conversation with a young man who told her: "I used to be a Dead-head. Now I'm a '4'-head." And this seems to be the season for seeking.

Those of us who love music have always known that when we participate in carols, whether singing them at church, serenading neighbors with them on winter lawns, or listening to them in a concert setting, we are making an important connection with folk traditions that go back centuries. In combining these two related but divergent musical repertories, Anonymous 4 opens us a fresh window into our medieval inheritance and the history that goes with it.

Holiday spotlight: Anonymous 4 by Larry Fuchsberg
'THE CHERRY TREE'
Dec. 9: Marsha Genensky, Ruth Cunningham, Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek and Susan Hellauer of Anonymous 4 may not have a patent on heavenly vocalism, but their musical scholarship and pitch-perfect sublimity have kept them far from anonymous for nearly two decades. Their holiday touring program mingles two repertoires they've made their own: late-medieval English carols (sung in Middle English, in their original settings) and traditional American shape-note tunes. Highlights include music by pioneering American composer William Billings and 19th-century folk hymns. (7:30 p.m. Dec. 9. $25-$100. Basilica of St. Mary, 16th St. and Hennepin Av. S., Mpls. 612-317-3428 or www.mary.org/anonymous4.)

'Tis the Season to Go Wild With Holiday Music by Michael Zwiebach
Anonymous 4 shows up at San Francisco Performances on Dec. 3. The group will perform a program they're calling "The Cherry Tree," based on an early folk-miracle story about Joseph and Mary. They present a number of medieval and later versions of the story, and then some Anglo-American carols and hymn tunes, of the kind on their recent best-selling albums. Few medieval-music specialists on the planet are as celebrated as Anonymous 4, and there are few better ways to soothe your spirit than listening to these women sing chant and early polyphony.

Virtuosic repertoire unusual, multicultural by Peter Dobrin
With a presence in Philadelphia that has made it seem almost indigenous, Imani Winds has managed the trick of paying homage to its woodwind quintet ancestors, while overhauling its repertoire with genre-bending commissions.

Friday night's visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, hosted by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, was a different matter altogether. The ensemble's adrenaline rush came by way of virtuosity in mid- to late-20th-century works unknown to all but insiders.

Virtuosity wasn't the point, though anyone who has struggled with a balky double-reed or a treacherous high horn passage had to marvel at this group's technique.

When Jeff Scott walked out on stage alone to intone the first notes of Mongo Santamaria's Afro Blue, you might have assumed that bending pitch to an extreme degree and finely modulated vibrato were all in a day's work for a hornist. Or that flutists routinely sing and play simultaneously with the kind of facility shown by Valerie Coleman (who was also responsible for resetting this 1959 work on her group).

The repertoire also challenged assumptions. Elliott Carter's 1948 Woodwind Quintet showed not the dense accretions of dissonance forming Carter's reputation, but a light, scherzolike score drawing from popular music. Pavel Haas, if he is known at all, is usually recalled as a composer who died in Auschwitz. Yet, here he was in a quintet from 1929 that, if it had something in common with Leos Janacek, was still of such originality, it left you once again wondering what might have been.

Innovative as they are, Imani made a gracious nod to their woodwind forefathers by giving credit to the Aspen Wind Quintet as commissioner of Paquito D'Rivera's Aires Tropicales from 1994. (The Aspen group also worked with Frank Zappa, to give you some idea of its bent.) Aires Tropicales could have advocates of no greater alacrity than the Imani players, whose evocations of Cuba, Venezuela, and Africa were dancerly to the point of seeming almost three-dimensional.

Wind Quintet Imani Winds on WRTI's Crossover
Imani Winds is a wind quintet and much more. Since 1997, the Grammy-nominated ensemble has taken a unique path, carving out a distinct presence in the classical music world with its dynamic playing, culturally poignant programming, and genre-blurring collaborations. The ensemble brings color, vivacity and intimacy to every concert with a vastly expanding classical repertoire. African, Asian and Middle Eastern cultures all take shape, as the quintet pushes the boundaries of classical music to fuse jazz with mixed media.

Imani Winds to Reach Schools, Community Through SUNY Oswego Residency

"Secret Voices" was a bonfire for the soul by Gayle G. Hathorne
Last Saturday night, while streets were blocked to crowds watching the bonfires of WaterFire float down Brush Creek, an intimate crowd of ancient music lovers gathered at the Visitation Catholic Church for a journey within. There the serenely scintillating voices of Anonymous 4 imparted the cloistered incantations of 13th century royal Castilian nuns in a bonfire for the soul.

Since its inception 25 years ago, Anonymous 4 has topped the international medieval charts with 18 recordings. The members of the vocal quartet, Ruth Cunningham, Marsha Genensky, Susan Hellauer and Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, have been touring the United States with the Secret Voices: The Sisters of Las Huelgas program the past two months to rave reviews, and will, I am happy to say, record the program for the Harmonia Mundi label in November.

A hallmark of The Friends of Chamber Music presentations is its consistent record of sponsoring artists of the highest standard of excellence who not only deeply satisfy the musical senses but also raise thought-provoking questions that expand beyond the concert experience. This concert soared on both levels.

The music was culled from a 13th century manuscript re-discovered at the convent of Las Huelgas in 1904 by two monks from the nearby Silos monastery, the same order of monks that gained renown in the last decade for their hit chant CDs. Notated in 1325, the Codex Las Huelgas manuscript is an anthology of the most advanced chants and avant-garde polyphony composed from about 1200 to 1325 for women. Its sacred Latin texts belie the international secular sources of much of the music, including solos, duets, trios and quartets set to popular music as diverse as French love songs and instrumental dance tunes, incorporating sound effects of the bagpipe drone and an occasional nasal twang reminiscent of the hurdy gurdy.

Upon hearing flawlessly-crafted unison waves of neumatic chant rise and recede in perfect cadence from this consummate quartet, questions arose as surely as the tingling hairs on the back of my neck in response to the pure clarity of their voices. How had these nuns of ancient Castile accomplished performing such virtuosic polyphonic music when women were permitted to sing only plainchant at that time in the church? And how could one know that the music they were singing was really written for women, not for men, whose chants sound just the same to me? Those initial musings were answered in the course of the evening, via a panel discussion held before the concert and a Q&A session with the members of Anonymous 4, hosted by The Friends President, Cynthia Siebert, afterwards.

The Cistercian convent, Santa Maria Regalis de Las Huelgas, was founded in 1187 at the instigation of Queen Eleanor of England, who, with her husband, Alfonso VIII of Castile, built it with the idea to provide sanctuary for noble women who desired to pursue the spiritual path. It boasted a choir of 100 women in the 13th century, and was run by abbesses who exercised uncommon privileges granted by kings and popes, including hearing confessions and saying mass. It was in that extraordinary liberal convent environment that the head-strong aristocratic daughters of nobility were given refuge and allowed to hone their musical talents to such a sophisticated degree.

Anonymous 4's Susan Hellauer answered the question about discerning whether the music was intended for women or men, since musical notation did not indicate exact pitch or voicing. Women's chants reflected a woman's perspective with texts such as "We are the wise virgins." With that background information in mind, I was able to lose myself in the extraordinarily complex melodies and rhythms heard, and to revel in the sheer artistry with which they performed.

The program was constructed around a fictional day in the musical life of the convent with music in honor of the Virgin Mary that could have been sung in the morning, at the daily Mass, and in the evening. The opening Sequence chant for First Light, Virgines egregie drew the audience immediately in with its precisely shaped unison line that floated gracefully above the nave. Ethereally tapered phrases seemed to evaporate into nothingness - an element of beauty often heard in the program.

Several versions of Benedicamus domino ("Let us bless the Lord") were performed at the end of sections that afforded the artists rich material to demonstrate their impressive range of vocal styles and musical acumen. In the Conductus: Ave maris stella, a fantastic galloping rhythm led straight into the Benedicamus domino: cum cantico sung in a pure timbre without vibrato in the same tonality that was sung in the Conductus, but now in an expansive tempo that opened into one of the many moments of transcendent expression.

Hellauer shared the ensemble's approach to achieving their heavenly blend of voices in an interview before the concert: rather than try to mimic each other's voices to match timbres, each musician sings freely in her own distinct sound, but in exact synch of breath, dynamics and musicality as the others. The result is that amazing blend one perceives in Anonymous 4 as the sound of a single voice magnified to sound as full and resonant as a choir.

About mid-way in the program one of the rarest of events occurred: an audience member in the front row fell ill. The sensitivity of the musicians and the members of the audience was apparent during the brief interlude that the concert was halted. It speaks well of the musicians that they were able to return and continue to make beautiful music.

And a good thing, too, because as the evening wore on, the music just got better and better. The final Night songs were especially noteworthy, each one leading into the next without pause and ending on the serene unison of Omnium in te that brought the audience to its feet with appreciation. The briefest of encores followed, a radiant ending that said it all: Ite missa est. Deo gracias. (Go, the mass is ended. Thanks be to God!)

Anonymous 4 - Four Centuries of Chant
Today we bring you a splendid review of Anonymous 4's Four Centuries of Chant. If you were with us when we reviewed Calling All Dawns, then you'll know I love this group and the great job they did on the Irish lament "Caoineadh". If you don't know who these lovely ladies are, swing by their bio page and start reading before moving on!

Four Centuries of Chant is a compilation album of personal favorites of some of A4's previous works. The album itself is broken down in parts containing one or a group of tracks from each previous album, so we get a good taste of what A4 has to offer, and certainly cover four centuries of chant. Some examples of albums that tracks were taken from are An English Ladymass (tracks 1-3), A Star in the East (track 10), 1000: A Mass for the End of Time (track 16) & The Origin of Fire (track 19-20).

There is plenty of wonder and quality singing found within each track of the album, so to come home and kick off your shoes and relax is definitely optional with this album. Though, it would be a great thing if whoever does pick this album up take into consideration the meaning of each track.

Each track flows into one another seamlessly, like a performance at a concert with no interruptions. It would be no surprise if you went to hear these chants live that they would be performed in this fashion. Chant is usually always associated with a spiritual context, so it would be odd to hear these songs sung and then given a round of applause in between each one.

When I sit down to listen to Four Centuries of Chant and read the booklet and the translated text, I feel very connected to each track as though if each one stood alone as its own. Normally when listening to chant, I usually absorb a group of songs, or album, as one entire being. I don't do this intentionally, but when I don't know what's happening in an album or group of songs, it doesn not feel as alive to me. The second I do read the text, I'm definitely set into a different plain of listening. This is the case here as well. I find myself engrossed into the music while reading the text. Reading also helps out when I'm trying to follow along in the listening because I know I can't stay concentrated on nothing by chant for an extended period of time like and hour or more. I'm sure other musicians feel the same.

I applaud Anonymous 4 for their great performances and their take on chant. It's quite a difficult task to sing music from earlier times solely because we have no recordings or real ideas on how it sounded. It would be a pretty obnoxious if any performer were to claim to sing "real" chant, it's just plain impossible. fortunately, we can enjoy A4's wonderful singing and be enveloped in a sea musical ecstasy. They did a wonderful job on carefully choosing each track and I give them my thanks. I wouldn't want Four Centuries of Chant any other way.

For more information about the discography that was used in this album, head to the album's page here.

Anonymous 4 presents extraordinary concert by Timothy McDonald
There's no doubt that Anonymous 4 are the reigning superstars of the medieval sacred music world. That may be a limited market, but they pack a punch.

Their concert, presented Saturday night at Visitation Church by the Friends of Chamber Music, was an extraordinary musical event.

Composed of 4 vocalists - Ruth Cunningham, Marsha Genensky, Susan Hellauer and Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek - the ensemble displays an uncanny vocal blend.

Their program, entitled "Secret Voices: The Sisters of Las Huelgas," referred to a historic community of nuns living in Burgos, in north-central Spain. The convent was called "Las Huelgas" ("Place of Refuge") and welcomed women from noble families who sought a religious life.

The Codex Las Huelgas was a famous manuscript of medieval music copied in the early 14th century and still studied by serious students of the middle ages. It contained nearly 200 sacred works.

Anonymous 4 postulates that the original singers of the works contained in the manuscript were the nuns from the community. From the sounds the ensemble produced, sisters sing on!

In the opening work, the sequence "Virgines egregie" ("Illustrious virgins,") the quartet's characteristic blend on the unison chant caught the ear; but so did the artful manner in which they negotiated the free rhythms and melodic ornaments.

Anonymous 4 organized their program around music that the nuns might sing throughout their day of prayer and labor. In the "Morning" section they sang "O Maria Virgo/O Maria maris stella/In veritate." (Medieval music often calls for singers to sing different texts simultaneously, so all opening words are included in the title.) Textural expansion from two to four parts and impeccable tuning were highly impressive.

Several excerpts from masses were included, such as the "Gloria: Spiritus et alme." The work offered a juxtaposition of traditional liturgical text sung in plainchant with added texts set polyphonically. The use of added polyphonic sections gave a glimpse into the medieval mind. Confronted with required traditional texts and music, the interpolations offered an opportunity for reverent creativity.

One very noticeable flaw came during "O monialis conscio" ("O assembly of nuns,") a lament on the passing of one of their members. While this featured some of the most moving singing of the evening, the highest note proved a bit too high for one singer.

The most impressive work came near the end - "Mater patris et filia" ("Mother and daughter of the father,") - where fine technique and superb musicality coincided.

Some En-Chanting Evening by Lisa Petrie
It is with great curiosity and a little trepidation that I approach my first "Chant Camp," presented by the singers of Anonymous 4 and Stanford University on, Monday, October 19. After all, although I'm a trained musician, I don't really fit the category of "experienced amateur and professional singers who want to know more about the nuts and bolts of Western plainchant," their announcement asked for.

I enter Stanford's Memorial church and the wonder begins. The ornate church, a stylistic mixture of Romanesque and Mission Revival, is stunning, and the organ sounds of a Bach prelude and fugue add to the ambience. We take seats in the side chapel, and I gaze around at the 50 or so attendees settling in - who are these folks? My neighbor apologizes to me in advance, saying he is not in good voice that evening. I don't bother warning him about me, he'll find out soon enough. I discover he is Richard Jones, who was paid to sing chant in college in Los Angeles many years ago. Since then he, and others in the room, have attended some of the many chant retreats given by guest speaker, Stanford Professor Bill Mahrt. Bill is also the director of Stanford's Early Music Singers and of the Saint Ann Choir.

Now it's our turn. We imitate each line by ear, just as chant was learned in the Middle Ages, we are told. People knew hundreds of chants by memory because most parishioners were illiterate and chant notation was not yet codified. As Dr. Mahrt later says, this "singing by heart" provides a deeper musical and spiritual connection, and I agree. "Protus authenticus" - I can do this! Our smooth and calming sound fills the chapel and the experience feels meditative and unifying.

It's time for a break and I meet two singers from St. Ann's Choir who "can't get enough chant," having sung it for over 35 years. Wow, there has to be someone here who is a neophyte like me. Introducing myself to the youngest set in the crowd, I meet Zach Lott, a freshman Chemistry major, and Colleen Lee, a sophomore who's leaning towards Engineering Physics.

They are from Stanford, in Professor Rodin's Singing Early Music seminar and have little musical background. Aha! Colleen admits she has not learned classical music by ear before, but she's very curious and seems to be enjoying herself. Zach finds it amazing that Anonymous 4 "sounds like one person singing."

Our second session is led by Professor Mahrt, who shows us a fascinating relationship between text and music. He points out how the music "paints" the text through its shape and mode, and that the melody creates an underlying harmony depending on what tones are emphasized. Freshman Music History class is coming back to me now. Susan and gang return to the front and introduce us to responsorial chant. As the music gets a bit more complicated, I feel my confidence waning. I'm not pronouncing the Latin correctly and it's difficult to know how many tones go with each syllable.

When we get to Ad sepulcrum beati iacobi (At the tomb of blessed James), a Vespers chant from the Feast of St. James, I'm happy to rely a bit on modern Western notation to correct my handicaps. Susan still encourages us to do it by ear. "Monkey hear, monkey sing," she says. We are apparently "plotzing" and are admonished to go for the "gestures", putting forward motion in the line. It's sounding better and our mentor is pleased. We work on emphasizing the text to attain "heightened speech." The couple next to me, Catherine Rodriguez and her husband Alcides have actually sung this music from the original manuscript (codex) in the Santiago del Compostela Cathedral in Spain, for this very same feast!

In the end we are all transformed into chant appreciators if not experts. And according to Susan we have succeeded in the most important aspect of chant - we've achieved "unity of intent."

Want to Try It?
Another Chant Camp led by Anonymous 4 members Susan Hellauer and Marsha Genensky and sponsored by San Francisco Renaissance Voices will be held on Saturday, Nov. 14, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Seventh Avenue Presbyterian Church in San Francisco. Click here for more information and to register. (Note that class size is limited and early registration is recommended; preregistration is required.)

'Chant camp' comes to Stanford with early music ensemble Anonymous 4 by Cynthia Haven
We live in an era of literacy, of reliance on the page or screen. So for New York City early music singer Susan Hellauer, the first task is to wean singers from the paper in their hands.

"Tonight's task is not to sing the dots, but to sing the shapes," she told singers at Memorial Church on Monday. "We want you to sing gestures - not dots, lollipops, notes."

Her command for "monkey hear, monkey sing" was more difficult than it might first appear: Hellauer is part of the renowned early music quartet Anonymous 4, a "girl group" that specializes in the mellifluous melodies that date back to fourth century Jerusalem but which came into their own during the Carolingian era.

Wednesday evening, the ensemble performed a program of Secret Voices: The Sisters of Las Huelgas; Music of 13th-Century Spain in Memorial Church.

But first, Hellauer and colleagues Marsha Genensky, Jacqueline Horner and Ruth Cunningham appeared at Stanford to lead a "chant camp," in collaboration with Stanford music faculty William Mahrt and Jesse Rodin and sponsored by Stanford Lively Arts. A rather surprising turnout of about 50 singers reinforced the revival of the ancient tunes.

Hellauer said that the camps, targeted for beginners as well as proficients, combine theory "with a lot of singing." She told the assembled group that she wanted them to "rely more on the ears than on the eyes this evening."

Gregorian chant, named for Pope Gregory I (590-604), who is traditionally credited with gathering and cataloging plainchant, is harder than it looks: "Unison singing is really something we consider less of a big deal, less of an accomplishment in Western music," said Hellauer, contrasting it to the complex harmonies of polyphony. "To sing in unison, where everybody has the same intent, makes the same shape of line, and to stay in tune in unison is much more challenging than you think."

"In Anonymous 4, we discovered that chant singing really honed our ensemble," she added. And for the participants of chant camps Hellauer has been conducting? "That feeling of uniting with everyone around them - it's mystical without being religious."

Within minutes, the side chapel echoed with the haunting, free-rhythm melody that uses only one portable instrument - the singular, fragile, often taken-for-granted sound of double membranes vibrating in the human throat.

"The fact that there's only one melodic line, that is maybe the most exciting, and from the perspective of the performer, the most scary thing. There's nowhere to hide. It's completely naked," said Rodin, an early music specialist. "There is a certain reward in singing a repertory where the melodic lines are so carefully sculpted and crafted and beautifully shaped by themselves, on their own terms.

"I appreciate it for its musical sophistication and subtlety," he said, comparing it to "discovering a new world."

It's a large world, too: Mahrt, an eminent chant expert and director of Stanford's Early Music Singers and of the St. Ann Choir, a Gregorian schola, pointed out that there are 800 to 900 chants of the Mass. "When you look at the repertory, it is staggering how big it is."

In medieval times, the key to mastery was memory. In antiquity and the Middle Ages, memory was a craft, essential to medieval cognitive technique and imagination.

"There's a benefit and value to learning and singing from memory. Then your image of chant is aural. It forces you to respond to the sound more directly," said Mahrt. "It's not an accident that to sing from memory is to sing by heart. It's singing from what you possess," he said. "Then you have it for your entire life."

Early in the four-hour session, one man asked if it was OK to sing an octave lower - the chant can be hard on voices that fall too far away from the median. Hellauer smiled and said, "Nothing I could do about it short of surgery." Clearly, chant is accommodating, though she noted that sometimes "sopranos come and tar and feather me."

The man, Bert Laurence, of the Peninsulaires, a men's barbershop chorus, said he had come to camp because he was attracted to "tonal stuff" and "how close it is to men's four-part harmony - and whether I can even do it."

Jack Owicki, a member of the choir in Palo Alto's Unitarian Universalist Church, came for a slightly different reason: Unitarians, he said, are "pretty eclectic," including chant that is "Tibetan to Slavic to standard Gregorian."

"There is a potential interest in incorporating chanting into our service. Nothing definite. We're looking into whether or not it would be a good idea."

What they likely found is that there are some distinct advantages when singers are supported in a group, all singing the same melodic line. As Hellauer exhorted the group: "Something I'm going to say all evening: Dare to make a mistake. Dare to screw up. You're not so important."

Chant is so central to the medieval tradition that "medieval polyphony" is sometimes considered an oxymoron. Yet Wednesday's program will refute that preconception.

It returns Anonymous 4 to the heart of its favorite century, and to a repertoire that confirms medieval women could - and did - sing the most complex polyphony written in the Gothic era. This varied repertoire of 13th-century polyphony and sacred Latin song was collected for the convent Las Huelgas at Burgos in north central Spain, which was on the road to the famous shrine of Santiago de Compostela.

No one knows if the women sent emissaries to collect sacred music from England, France and Germany, or whether pilgrims who stopped at their convent for rest and refreshment left, as a token of their thanks, copies of songs they may have been carrying. The music includes elegant French love-motets, original conductus, English works and heartfelt laments, and highlights the women who performed the most virtuosic, avant-garde polyphonic music of their time.

Audience experienced a day of devotional song by Jennifer Hambrick
In Early Music in Columbus' 30th anniversary season opener tonight at Mees Hall Auditorium, the off-again-on-again medieval vocal quartet Anonymous 4 was on again. Really on.

The program featured music of the Las Huelgas Codex, a manuscript copied in the early 14th century at the eponymous convent near the Spanish town of Burgos and containing an eclectic mix of sacred musical genres.

It is uncertain who at Las Huelgas actually sang this music, but the members of Anonymous 4 believe the nuns themselves did.

Tonight's program was arranged along the broad outlines of the daily liturgical office, which calls for the singing of devotional music at regular periods around the clock. Thus, the concert cleverly ushered the audience through a hypothetical day in the devotional life of the sisters of Santa Maria la Real de Huelgas.

Anonymous 4 proved they deserve the accolades bestowed upon them (both before their disbanding and after their reunion). The opening plainchant sequence, Virgines egregie, unfolded in vocal balance and with gestural lightness and ease that are extremely difficult to achieve in performances of chant.

In the motet Salve virgo regia/Ave gloriosa mater/[Domino] the tenor voice was resonant and steady and helped direct the musical line. The upper voices were similar enough in tone color and diction to blend, yet distinct enough to bring out the unique intricacies of each of the three simultaneously sung texts.

The program's most moving work was O monialis conscio, a lament for a departed Las Huelgas sister. Anonymous 4 made one feel the loss of this sister, as must have those who mourned her so many centuries ago.

Anonymous 4 sings the way the nuns of Las Huelgas must have prayed: with heart and voice.

"Four Centuries of Chant"
Having discovered Anonymous 4 via Christopher Tin's "Calling All Dawns" album, I picked up the quartet's latest album which is a kind of retrospective over their career taking segments from each of their previous albums.

To review "Four Centuries of Chant" is very difficult as the album is a completely fluid being. One song envelopes you into another and is done so in a way that transitions softly and almost without notice. What I can tell you however is how the experience is quite profound in a way and the vocal talents of these four ladies really touch something that is rarely touched upon.

The open trio of songs is taken from "An English Ladymass" and are 13th and 14th Century chants. They are sparse, elegant and humbling. There is a certain stillness to them almost Buddhist like, in a meditative state of being and just channelling positive energy out. A beautiful start the album.

The next trio is taken from "The Lily & The Lamb" and is a chant from medieval England. The three pieces continue to send you away to another world, particularly the rousing middle section where some higher vocal sections show some fantastic precision and execution by being both powerful and serenely angelic at the same time. Three chants for St. James from the Codex Calixtinus appear next from "Miracles of Sant'lago" and continue to ascend to audio heaven with some beautiful scales and pitch changes.

"Te Deum: Isten, tegad" from "A Star in the East" is from medieval Hungary but continues the same vein of vocal restraint while "Responsory: Spiritui sancto" from "11,000 Virgins" effortlessly spins a yarn of heavenly soars and magical calm sections.

As the album continues through the rest of its 20 tracks, you'll have floated so far away from home you'll almost forget you're listening to four distinct voices travelling with you. The music never really deviates from the first track to the last and there is just one style of chant performed.

Anonymous 4 are fantastic. "Four Centuries of Chant" is perfect for the end of a busy day to relax, as a meditative album to drift off to or even as an album to feel at peace. There is something unique about the quartet's voices that harmonize as one and therefore despite singing in an old tongue, they carry a message all of their own and you'll be captivated until the last breath. Magical.

Female vocal quartet made a name for itself by Bill Mayr
Early Music in Columbus will celebrate the start of its 30th season Friday by hosting Anonymous 4 -- which is better-known than its name implies.

The female a cappella quartet has recorded about 20 albums and toured the world since its founding in 1986.

The nonprofit Early Music in Columbus organizes an annual concert series devoted to medieval, Renaissance and baroque music, with concerts at Capital University in Bexley and the Pontifical College Josephinum.

To kick off the latest season, Early Music reached for Anonymous 4.

"They are well-regarded, not only in the early-music world but outside of it," said Katherine Wolfe, program director.

Based in New York, Anonymous 4 emphasizes medieval music but also embraces contemporary fare.

Susan Hellauer, a co-founder, talked recently about the group.

Q: How did you come up with your name?

A: When we did our first public performance, we had to have a name.

I had, for many years, been studying medieval music. The most important medieval treatise is written by an anonymous writer and gets the designation Anonymous 4 because it's the fourth in a series that was published in the 19th century; the original treatise is from about 1280.

And so I just said, "How about Anonymous 4?" Two people (in the quartet) made an awful face, and the third said, "Oh, not bad." And we hired an artist to create a logo for $150. Once we got the logo, there was no turning back.

Q: You studied trumpet, then voice. Why the switch?

A: I got Bell's palsy toward the end of my college career, and I couldn't play the trumpet, because the side of my face was paralyzed. It was awful.

They stuck me in the vocal chamber ensemble. They were performing medieval music, and my life changed right there on the spot. I heard the medieval music and said, "I've got to know everything about this."

Medieval music covers a long period of time and many repertoires, from about (A.D.) 500 to 600 to 1400. Anonymous 4 tends to focus on the music of the high Middle Ages, from about 1150 to 1350. That's when you have notation that can be deciphered, and polyphonic repertoires come from then. It's almost all sacred music.

Q: And why do audiences enjoy such music?

A: We fell in love with the sound, with making the sound and hearing the sound. No other music is like it harmonically and melodically.

I think audiences hear us singing, and we work very hard to make our ensemble tight, but they really hear how much we love it.

Q: What will you perform in Columbus?

A: "Secret Voices: The Sisters of Las Huelgas" features a manuscript that was written for the nuns of the convent of Las Huelgas in northern Spain. This was a convent where royal and noble women who wanted to be nuns would go. This was a Cistercian convent; under Cistercian rules, they weren't allowed to sing polyphony, only chants.

But there's this manuscript. It's the most avant-garde, advanced polyphony of the 13th century. There were a lot of French love songs given Latin sacred texts so they could sing them. You have solos, duets, trios and quartets.

We've shaped the material into sort of a fictional day at the convent: music for the morning, music for the daily Mass, music for late at night.

Marsha Genesky, a quartet member, has done extensive research in language pronunciation. You're hearing Latin pronounced by Spanish people around the year 1300.

Making medieval music by Rebecca J. Ritzel
Ah, reunion tours. A chance for musical acts to relive the magic, singing their golden oldies before a nostalgic crowd. Saturday night, a reunited classical ensemble performing at Duke University will aim to take listeners back. Way back. All the way to the 13th century.

After a five-year hiatus, the a cappella quartet Anonymous 4 is once again touring the country singing medieval music. Founded by four women in 1986, the group is best known for unearthing and performing sacred music from the Middle Ages.

For two decades, Anonymous 4 remained one of America's most respected early music ensembles. In 2004, an announcement that the group was breaking up was treated like public radio Armageddon. "Pledge now! Get what could be the last Anonymous 4 CD" was the plea from classical music stations.

Turns out, Anonymous 4 wasn't exactly breaking up. They were making some personnel changes and transitioning to what cofounder Marsha Genensky calls "a part-time ensemble." She spoke by phone recently from her home in California, where she teaches at Stanford University.

"I'm the black sheep," Genensky said, laughing. The group's other three members still live in the New York vicinity. As a part-time ensemble, Anonymous 4 has still performed occasionally and continued learning new material, especially early American music. In 2006, they released the critically acclaimed CD "Gloryland," a collaboration with bluegrass musicians Mike Marshall and Darol Anger. Sporadic concerts followed featuring that repertoire of folk songs, hymns and spirituals.

But this fall tour, featuring music mostly from 13th-century Spain, is a milestone.

"This is our first year back touring with medieval music," Genensky said. "It does feel like a big and happy return to what we started out doing."


An amicable split

She's joined on the road by fellow founder Susan Hellauer; Ruth Cunningham, an original member who left Anonymous 4 in 1998 and returned in 2007; and Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, a singer from Northern Ireland who initially came on board to replace Cunningham. As for Johanna Rose, the fourth founding vocalist, she's alive and well and pursuing other early music projects that involve (gasp!) instruments. (The split for this a cappella group was so amicable that there's a "Catching up with Johanna" feature on the Anonymous 4 Web site, plus pictures of her cats.)

On this eight-city tour, Anonymous 4 will perform music drawn from a single volume known to historians as the Las Huelgas Codex, a collection of 195 works that dates to about 1325.

"To us, this is a very important codex," Genensky said. "If you study medieval musicology, it's a big, big fish in a small pond."

The codex represents 140 years of music collected by nuns at a Cistercian convent in northern Spain. It's a significant historical document because it includes early examples of polyphonic Spanish music, that is, songs with multiple lines of melody. Prior to the 13th century, the majority of sacred music would have been chanted in unison.

"[Polyphony] was like this great new technology," Genesky said. "It was like fireworks."

So why were these nuns on the cutting edge? The Las Huelgas monastery was located along the St. James Way, a major pilgrimage route, and the travelers who stopped there brought with them music collected from all over Europe.

Women were prohibited from singing in public at the time, but Genensky has a theory -- though she can't prove it -- that some women took the holy orders at Las Huelgas because they loved music so much, they couldn't imagine their adult lives without it. "Of course, they had to make some sacrifices," she said.


On the menu

The Anonymous 4 concert will chronologically follow the nuns of Las Huelgas through a day at the convent, from morning matins through evening vespers. In between, the quartet will sing movements from a mass, a vocal exercise and French love songs that someone altered so the Latin lyrics reflected devotion to God rather than a man.

"There are quite a variety of sounds and textures within the codex," Genensky said. "We've picked the pieces that we love."

On Sunday, Genensky and her colleagues will remain in Durham to lead a master class organized by Karen M. Cook, a Ph.D. student who directs the Duke Collegium Musicum. In groups of four, 16 pre-selected students, faculty and community members will face the pressure of singing for Anonymous 4.

The master class, set for noon in the Nelson Music Room on East Campus, is open to the public. Saturday's concert will be, appropriately, in Duke's neo-Gothic chapel.

"You shouldn't pass up an opportunity to hear a performance in the chapel," Cook said. "Anonymous 4 is really excellent at what they do, and this is repertory that you can't hear everyday."

Not to mention, music that you might not be able to hear Anonymous 4 sing for another five years.

Free concert by Imani Winds on Thursday
Imani Winds on will perform a free concert at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, October 15th in Mills Hall as part of the Guest Artists Series at the UW-Madison School of Music.

Since its founding in 1997, this woodwind quintet has forged a distinct path in the classical music world, programming repertoire that highlights diverse cultural identities and blurs genres.

The program selection includes "Scherzo" (for woodwind quintet) Op. 48 by Eugene Bozza (1905-1991); "Danza de Mediodia" by Arturo Marquez (b. 1950); "Suite Popular Brasileira" by Julio Medaglia (b. 1938); "La Nouvelle Orleans" by Lalo Schifrin (b. 1932); "Sechs Bagatellen" by Gyorgy Ligeti (1923-2006); "Aires Tropicales" by Paquito D'Rivera (b. 1948); and "'Freyleka' from Klezmer Dances" arranged by Gene Kavadlo.

Mills Hall is located in the Mosse Humanities Building, 455 North Park Street on the UW-Madison campus.

African-American quintet performs for guest artist series by A. David Dahmer
Imani Winds always brings - first and foremost - their hearts to their concerts. What you get is an authentic performing experience and, like all music should be, one that is very personal. "But on top of that, we have all kinds of fun," says Oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz of Imani Winds, an American wind quintet from New York City. "We're always having fun with our music. We laugh a lot when we play, because it's such a delight to play with each other. Even after almost 13 years of playing together."

Imani Winds, who will be performing in Mills Hall in the Humanities Building of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Thursday, Oct. 15, is a woodwind quintet whose members are African-American musicians on flute, oboe, clarinet, French horn, and bassoon. The quintet has forged a distinct path in the classical music world, programming a repertoire that highlights diverse cultural identities. The group received a Grammy nomination in 2006 for "The Classical Underground," one of its four recordings on Koch International Classics. Imani Winds was founded in 1997 by flutist Valerie Coleman, who recruited musicians of Black American and Hispanic heritage, since she felt that they were underrepresented in the classical music world.
"She wanted to put together a wind quartet made up of musicians of color. She had never seen it before, so she thought it would be a nice experiment to see if it works," Spellman-Diaz says. "Also, because she is a composer she wanted to write stuff for us and to experiment for us. She was a dreamer. She always had this huge vision that we were going to be together for a long, long time and that we would win all kinds of accolades. It's really kind of strange because everything she said has come true so far."

The name Imani means "faith" in Swahili, and subtly reflects the African American and Latin American ancestry of the ensemble's five members: flutist Valerie Coleman, oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz, clarinetist Mariam Adam, French hornist Jeff Scott, and bassoonist Monica Ellis. Imani Winds is known for its adventurous programming, which includes newly composed works, as well as compositions featuring African, Latin American, and American influences. They have presented premieres by composers including Paquito D'Rivera, Wayne Shorter, Richard Wernick, Fred Ho, Kenji Bunch, and Bruce Adolphe.

Imani Winds program repertoire highlights diverse cultural identities and blurs genres. "We are of the generation of iPod users, so all of our iPods are filled with music from all parts of the world," Spellman-Diaz says. "It's really easy for our generation to access all kinds of music. So, we have music from the African and Latin diasporas, but we also are doing a concert with a Middle Easter oud player named Simon Shaheen based upon music not played on the Western scales.

"Our music making is built on a certain authenticity," she adds. "We play a lot of music by composers of color. All of the music we play is entertaining."

Spellman-Diaz herself has developed a reputation as a world-class oboist. As an orchestral musician, she has performed in the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Chicago Civic Orchestra, the Milwaukee Symphony, Brooklyn Philharmonic, and Orchestra of St. Lukes and has worked with such conductors as Kurt Masur, Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Christoph Eschenbach, and Mstislav Rostropovitch.

She's also played in Madison before. Spellman-Diaz came and played with the Madison Symphony Orchestra when she was right out of college when she playing with the Chicago Civic Orchestra. "I was lucky enough that they took me because I was so green," she remembers. "And I did one concert with them before I went back to New York to play with Imani Winds again. It was a lot of fun.

"I really loved the downtown. I had a lot of fun wandering around," Spellman-Diaz adds of Madison. "I can't wait to come back."

Spellman-Diaz, whoi is currently on faculty of the Manhattan School of Music, Precollege Division, would like to see her all-Black quintet become more of the norm instead of a novelty. A recent survey by the League of American Orchestras showed that Blacks made up less than two percent of professional American orchestra musicians, while Latinos made up less than three percent. They are similarly underrepresented among chamber musicians and soloists.

"I think there has been a slow increase in the amount of minority musicians in classical music over the last three decades," Spellman-Diaz says. "I think it's based on education in the public schools and community music programs in the '70s and '80s that trained a whole bunch of people who in turn went on to train a whole bunch of people."

While in Madison, Imani Winds will participate in two educational activities during their two-day residency. They will be guests on Friday morning, Oct. 16, for the course "Art as Business as Art" co-taught by Stephanie Jutt, professor of flute, and Andrew Taylor, director of the Bolz Center for Arts Administration. Later that day, they will lead a master class for woodwind students at the School of Music, which will be held in Morphy Hall and open to the public. Outreach work is a major component of Imani Winds' activities.

"That's a very big part of what we do - almost every visit we try to go into schools - especially schools that are underserved by classical musical fields," Spellman-Diaz says. "We see all kinds of kids who have never seen a violin, let alone an oboe or a bassoon. When they see us having fun, they realize that playing classical music can be just as fun as anything else."

The children also can realize the music can be a way to see the world. Imani Winds' extensive touring schedule has brought them to the Herbst Theater for San Francisco Performances, Seattle's Meany Hall, University of Illinois' Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, Ensemble Music Society of Indianapolis, La Jolla Music Society, and the Virginia Arts Festival.

Additionally, they have performed at Atlanta's National Black Arts Festival, Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, Chicago Symphony Musicians Residency Program, the Ravinia Festival, the Kennedy Center, and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society.

Imani Winds is in the midst of a five-year Legacy Commissioning Project, during which it will commission, premiere, and tour 10 new works for woodwind quintet from both established and emerging composers. The composers write in a variety of musical styles that include classical, jazz, Middle Eastern, and Latin American.

"At our 10-year anniversary we decided that we wanted to make a serious impact on the repertoire of the woodwind quintet," Spellman-Diaz says. "We wanted to make it even more diverse than we had before - to kind of up the ante. So, we decided to commission 10 composers of color to write for the woodwind quintet."

They are already on their fifth composer. "Every piece that we have commissioned has opened us up in a new way musically whether its by improvising or learning different types of scales from different parts of the world and so we're hoping that all of these pieces that we are commissioning will change the sound of the woodwind quintet permanently," she says.

What does the future hold for Imani Winds?
"We're brainstorming on all sorts of things," Spellman-Diaz says. "Now that we've had this Legacy Project and we've upped our playing and these sounds of the group a little more, we want to bring these new sounds that we're able to do to even larger composers. So, we're talking to the management of Phillip Glass and other enormous names. If you check in with us in another five years and there will be some major stuff going on."

Seasons Fall Festival lineup is rich with talent by Pat Muir
YAKIMA, Wash. -- Financial woes notwithstanding, the Seasons Fall Festival lineup is as star-studded as ever, featuring nine days of Grammy winners and jazz luminaries, plus music workshops.

Starting tonight with a performance by the Brubeck Brothers and Imani Winds, the fifth annual festival is notable for its wide range of acts. Imani Winds, a wind quintet that will play Saturday as well as its Friday collaboration, is a Grammy-winning wind group known for its genre bending and its members' classical music chops.

"Our approach is more of a crossover style," said the group's clarinet player, Mariam Adams. "For some people, it brings the fun back to chamber music."

Indeed, Imani Winds' infusion of jazz, world music, soul and gospel into the classical quintet format creates a sort of playful intensity that is high-minded without being esoteric.

"It's not passive listening," Adams said. "It's active listening, but in a very accessible way."

The same could be said of the Matt Wilson Quartet, which plays Thursday. Wilson, among the most prominent band-leading drummers in contemporary jazz, is known for his theatrical panache along with his musicianship. His performances generally feature humor alongside fiery playing.

"It helps reinforce all the emotions," Wilson said. "If you can make them laugh, you can make them cry even more."

But Wilson, whose drumming earned him a spot on the cover of October's Downbeat Magazine, is no novelty act. He and his band are renowned players who take the music seriously.

"I would never do any of this (theatrical) stuff unless I knew the music is at the highest level possible," he said.

Wilson will play again on the festival's final day, Oct. 17, as accompaniment to jazz vocalist Dena DeRose. Other acts include The Kairos Quartet and The Finisterra Trio.

It's an ambitious lineup for an organization that in its fifth year has yet to become financially self-sustaining. Festival board members debated whether to tone down the festival this year, given the economic climate and the well-publicized financial issues it's faced over the past two years.

Ultimately they decided to take the risk.

"Business as usual," chuckled Pat Strosahl, the nonprofit festival's board chairman. "Struggling to get enough funding to pull off something that is remarkable."

Earlier this year, Strosahl turned the performance hall over to the nonprofit Seasons Music Festival, making the entire enterprise nonprofit. He made the move so the hall could be eligible for Yakima County tourism tax funding, which it received to the tune of $333,650.

Even with that money, the organization has struggled to break even. It has yet to repay a $200,000 city of Yakima bridge loan it needed to get its sprinklers up to code.

And even if all of the shows at this year's festival sell out, the proceeds won't fully cover the $78,000 in performer fees it took to put it on.

But Strosahl knew the venture wouldn't make money right away when he started it. Given enough time, he insists it can become a regional gem, something that will draw folks from throughout the Northwest on the weekends while providing smaller shows midweek for the locals.

"Everyone is going into it with the notion that the audience is infinitely expandable if we play our cards right," Strosahl said.

The Seasons' new managing director, Tor Blaisdell, an opera singer who spent two weeks on Broadway in "The Phantom of the Opera," has become a spirited ambassador for the hall. His open letter to Yakima residents, published last week in the Herald-Republic, was a call to arms for arts lovers.

"Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated!" the letter began. "As it was with Mark Twain all those years ago, so it is today with The Seasons Performance Hall here in Yakima; nothing could be further from the truth."

Part of the reason for maintaining the Fall Music Festival's high level of performers, even given the financial challenge, was to showcase the organization's health and to maintain its momentum, Strosahl said.

"That's kind of part of the pressure on us, too. You don't want to go backward."

Adventurous, Grammy-Nominated Classical Quintet at Cal State Northridge
Imani Winds perform at Cal State Northridge. The Grammy-nominated wind quintet has been performing together for over a decade, pursuing a fusion of traditional classical sounds with European, American, African and Latin American traditions. They're great champions of modern-day composers, and have commissioned many new works.

Imani Winds to play at Lawrence
APPLETON - The Grammy-nominated quintet Imani Winds brings its eclectic repertoire to the Lawrence Memorial Chapel Saturday, Oct. 17 at 8 p.m. in the opening concert of the 2009-10 Lawrence University Artist Series, the school announced.

Founded in New York in 1997, Imani Winds has carved out a distinct presence in the classical music world with its dynamic playing, culturally poignant programming and genre-blurring collaborations. With two member composers and a commitment to commissioning new work, the group is enriching the traditional wind quintet repertoire while bridging American, African, European and Latin American traditions.

They collaborate frequently with a variety of other artists, including Rene Marie, Yo-Yo Ma and Wayne Shorter to expand the wind quartet repertoire and diversify sources of new music.

Their discography includes their debut CD "Umoja," which received the CMA/WQXR Award, 2005's "The Classical Underground," which earned a Grammy Award nomination in the Best Classical Crossover Album category and "Josephine Baker: A Life of Le Jazz Hot!," released in 2007.

Tickets, at $22-20 for adults, $19-17 for seniors and $15-17 for students, are available through the Lawrence Box Office in the Music-Drama Center, 420 E. College Ave., Appleton or by calling 920-832-6749.

Anonymous 4 Reveals Sacred Secrets by Lisa Petrie
If vocal chant is the most pure, devotional form of music (as was thought in the Middle Ages), then Anonymous 4 is its guardian angel. This female group of four a cappella singers has done much to preserve and expose this form of music through live performance and more than 20 recordings, even offering "Chant Camp" for those who want a deeper experience. The group performs its new program, "Secret Voices: Music From Las Huelgas, ca. 1300," at Stanford Lively Arts on Oct. 21; Chant Camp is Oct. 19.

Based in New York, Anonymous 4 consists of Marsha Genensky, Susan Hellauer, Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, and Ruth Cunningham. California native Genensky, originally a traditional folksinger, resides in Menlo Park and has been a visiting assistant professor at Stanford University. The group is known for its unearthly tonal blend and technical virtuosity, and possesses the necessary historical scholarship required for bringing this fascinating music to life. It has been a frequent guest at major festivals worldwide, has been featured on radio and TV programs such as A Prairie Home Companion and NPR's Weekend Edition, and has sold some two million records on the Harmonia Mundi label.

Its new program comprises music from the Codex Las Huelgas, an extensive collection of polyphonic and monophonic music from the 13th and early 14th centuries. A listener coming for the first time to this music should realize that the education of women in that era was limited. Few were taught Latin or singing, or were even allowed to take part in worship, with the exception of women entering certain convents. Depending on the establishment, religious women were more or less simply given the skills and freedom to perform the Divine Office and to sing plainchant. Las Huelgas, or "the refuge," was a Spanish nunnery founded for women of noble birth who wanted to pursue a spiritual life. Yet their strict Cistercian order forbade the singing of polyphony in most convents.

These headstrong royal nuns were having none of it. Says Susan Hellauer, "While there is some controversy about whether this wonderful 13th-century repertoire was sung by the nuns of the royal monastery of Las Huelgas or by their hired singers, [sources indicate] we're following in the footsteps of our much older sisters, who collected and sang the greatest music of their time."

The "Secret Voices" program is structured like a day of music devoted to the Virgin Mary, including a few songs with texts dealing with the daily lives of the nuns themselves. Among the pieces are elegant French love motets like Claustrum pudicicie/Virgo viget/Flos Filius, about pastoral love in the springtime. There are conductus with unpredictable rhythms and lively hockets. A playful Benedicamus Domino à 3 is written in rondellus fashion, like a catch or round typical of 13th-century British polyphony. Also to be sung are heartfelt laments, like the monophonic song O monialis conscio, written on the death of a beloved member of the sisterhood, and elegant duos with intertwining lines, like the sequences Verbum bonum et suave and In virgulto gracie.

But how, you might wonder, was this music notated? And exactly what is a "psalm tone"? And can plainchant really feel like a religious experience? For those who want to learn more and try this music first-hand, Anonymous 4 and Stanford Professors William Mahrt and Jesse Rodin will lead an evening "Chant Camp" on Monday, Oct. 19. For the curious and the aficionado alike, "Secret Voices" will provide a tantalizing glimpse into medieval history and the heart of the Western spiritual tradition, and sounds simply divine.

The Anatomy of Cultural Diversity, With Imani Winds and Stefon Harris by Kwami Coleman
Imani Winds, a wind quintet whose stylish grace and charm match the high quality of sound produced from their instruments, hold a substantial pedigree among fellow artists, audiences, and critics alike.

These are musicians for whom artistic risks are to be taken cautiously and, once taken, followed through with abandon. At the very least, this type of conviction garners respect, but being in top form while you do it is special stuff. Add to this ensemble the collaboration of Stefon Harris - one of the world's premier vibraphonists, known for his deft musicianship and his engaging performances - and this pedigree increases fourfold, one for each mallet Harris wields.

Sunday's concert at Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, featuring the Winds, who were joined by Harris in the second half, had a warmth and ebullient charm that made clear how much these musicians loved playing with each other, and how much they loved performing for their audience. The quintet, always decked in elegant dress and infectious smiles, is something of a living, breathing example of the cultural diversity that is American music, which they champion. Harris, a previous member of the SFJAZZ Collective and formerly a five-year artist in residence for San Francisco Performances, complements the Winds in this regard; equally trained in classical music and jazz as a student at the Manhattan School of Music in the 1990s, he himself makes a strong case for what American music both looks and sounds like.

In fact, the only composition on display that was not penned by an American composer - specifically, an American composer present on stage that evening - was the Quintette by the 20th-century French composer Jean Francaix, which paled in comparison to the other three pieces on the program. This is not to slight Francaix' writing, which has its own charm and was executed flawlessly by the quintet, but rather to speak of the special quality of music written specifically for Imani Winds.

The first two such pieces were composed by members of the quintet: Red Clay and Mississippi Delta and Homage to Duke by flautist Valerie Coleman and hornist Jeff Scott, respectively. Coleman's work is a whimsical toe-tapper (or finger-snapper, as Coleman herself demonstrated) that showcases the clarinet, played by Mariam Adam, brilliantly. Scott's piece pays deference to Duke Ellington's profoundly beautiful Come Sunday with savory clustered dissonances, bassoon ostinatos (carried expertly by Monica Ellis), and contrapuntal moments that crystallized the already heightened sense of group interaction.

Defiantly Out of the Box
The centerpiece of this concert, which came in the second half along with Harris, was actually a box - literally and metaphorically. Harris explained that though he usually does not take commissions, the opportunity to write for Imani Winds was one he couldn't pass up, and how to write for such a unique ensemble was, interestingly, both the initial challenge and, ultimately, what generated the content for his original Anatomy of a Box (A Sonic Painting in Wood, Metal, and Wind).

The box in question is an eight-tone log drum: a wooden box with slits carved into one of its sides, forming tongues of different pitches that when struck resonate within the body of the box. Harris turned to this instrument in a moment of compositional exasperation away from the piano, where he composes. The warm resonance of those eight pitches provided for Harris a way of thinking, well, outside the box and, as his piece developed further, also a way of coming up with the elementary pitch material for an impressive array of chordal harmonies.

Anatomy of a Box oscillates between improvised and prewritten sections (sometimes occurring simultaneously), tension and release, imitative propulsion and choralelike restraint, chaos and organization. Harris, a preeminent improviser, created space for members of Imani Winds to spontaneously create melody, as well. The piece may be thought of as being divided into three sections: one where the ensemble players play off each other, the second where they play on top of an electronic drone (introduced and controlled by Harris), and the final where the eight notes of the log drum are looped electronically, which serves as a foundation for captivating ensemble playing and the most interesting and fulfilling moments of the composition.

Harris was right when he told the audience that what he set out to create with Anatomy of a Box was "American chamber music," which is not necessarily classical or jazz but certainly a mix of both. Except what Harris said really applied to the entire concert: a testament that, after it was all said and done, was like preaching to the choir.

Anonymous 4 – Tour Dates
Anonymous 4, who did vocal work for Christopher Tin's latest album on the track "Caoineadh" have announced their latest tour. The vocal ensemble's tour dates are listed on their website. We will be reviewing their latest compilation CD "Four Centuries of Chant" shortly.

Imani Winds blow into town by Andrew Gilbert
There's a bracing breeze blowing through an oft-overlooked corner of the world of chamber music, a creative gust emanating directly from the Imani Winds.

Founded in 1997 by flutist-composer Valerie Coleman, Imani has swept away old notions about wind quintet repertoire, which is often seen as an afterthought in chamber music. By forging relationships with contemporary composers and arranging material by an international array of artists, the New York ensemble has put the wind quintet in the center of the action. And by focusing on African-American and Latin American composers, the Imani musicians have bonded with a sense of mission, giving the group the staying power to establish an enviable body of original material.

"It was a long time dream I had to be in a wind quintet," says Coleman, who brings Imani to the Bay Area for performances at Le Petit Trianon on Saturday and Herbst Theatre on Sunday. "But the idea of bringing together African-American and Latino musicians and using our backgrounds to interpret music popped into my head in grad school.

"Everyone's really bought into the idea," she continues. "It's easy to sit down and play at a concert and then leave. But talking about the future and working toward a long-term goal is very rare, and that's what I think keeps us together."

Saturday's Trianon program gives a good sense the group's range (Imani means "faith" in Swahili). The concert includes "La Nouvelle Orleans," a Lalo Schifrin piece that evokes a New Orleans funeral procession, Gyorgy's playful "Sechs Bagatellen," and Cuban reed master Paquito D'Rivera's "Aires Tropicales." The concert closes with "Freyleka," a klezmer dance arranged by Gene Kavadlo. Each piece offers its own particular challenges, often pushing the musicians out of the conservatory-trained comfort zone.

"We're always trying to do more sound-wise than what seems possible, and on 'La Nouvelle Orleans' Schifrin transforms the wind quintet into a jazz big band, starting with a New Orleans funeral march that goes to cemetery wailing and comes back celebrating," Coleman says. "The last piece, 'Freyleka,' is a chance for our clarinetist Mariam Adam to shine. She's been studying with David Krakauer," reigning master of klezmer clarinet.

In addition to Adam, who was the first musician Coleman approached about creating Imani, the group features Toyin Spellman-Diaz on oboe, Jeff Scott on French horn and Monica Ellis on bassoon. The group often generates its own arrangements and compositions, supplied mostly by Scott and Coleman, whose piece "Umoja" was named by Chamber Music America as one of the "Top 101 Great American Works."

"My group is very picky about repertoire," Coleman says. "We don't want to play things that are light and fluffy."

The group isn't sitting around and waiting for heavyweight material to drop onto their music stands. Two years ago, Imani created the Legacy Commissioning Project, which has already borne some delectable fruit. Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra wrote a nonet for quintet and string quartet, and jazz pianist Jason Moran composed a piece for Imani celebrating his family's Louisiana bayou roots.

The group is working on a new commission by Palestinian oud master and violin virtuoso Simon Shaheen. And on Sunday, Imani presents the premiere of an ambitious new composition by vibraphonist Stefon Harris, "Anatomy of a Box (A Sonic Painting in Wood, Metal and Wind)." Rather than simply presenting the group with a finished work, Harris undertook an extended collaboration that involved intensive workshops on improvisational techniques.

"Stefon's piece is a journey, a soundscape that reflects his influences and what he loves about music," says Adam, 33, who grew up in Monterey and participated in many of the area's musical institutions, from playing clarinet with Youth Music Monterey to drums at Monterey Jazz Festival student clinics. "He's kind of given us the Rosetta Stone for the jazz vocabulary, breaking it down in a way we can understand. It's something he's developing as an educator, and we're his guinea pigs."

For Harris, who joins the quintet for the "Anatomy of a Box" world premiere at Herbst Theatre, the piece is a direct result of the Imani collaboration. As an SF Performances artist-in-residence from 2001-2005 and SFJazz Collective member, he's performed extensively in the Bay Area, but lately he's been focusing most of his attention on his band Blackout, which is featured on his recent CD "Urbanus" (Concord Jazz). Imani coaxed him into the project with a dogged work ethic and passion for exploring realms where few classical ensembles venture.

"This is the hardest thing I've ever worked on," Harris says. "We got through it because there was a really a smart process. We got together first and talked about where Imani was. They were interested in improvisation and exploring various timbres and textures and group improvisation, not just solos. So we set up a series of seminars and worked on different techniques.

"I would not do this for anyone else. If you took a woodwind quintet of different players, it would never work, but they are an amazing group of musicians."

Imani Winds blow change by Jim Lundstrom
The little wind quintet that could.

That's how clarinetist Mariam Adam thinks of Imani Winds, the Grammy-nominated wind quintet that returns to Appleton Oct 17 to open the 101st Artist Series season at Lawrence University. The New York-based Imani Winds first appeared as part of the Artist Series in January 2003.

Since its start in 1997, Imani Winds - which includes arranger/composer/flutist Valeria Coleman, oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz, arranger/composer/French hornist Jeff Scott and bassoonist Monica Ellis - has been about expanding the repertoire and exploring new musical territory as a wind quintet.

"For me in particular, this is one of my own personal platforms in the group, the woodwind quintet gets a bad rap because of the limited repertoire. So the byproduct of that is people think a particular soundscape when they think of wind quintets," Adam said recently by telephone.

"We're just constantly trying to grow. There are lots of quintets out there but you don't hear from most of them because they kind of sound the same. So we're trying to create a repertoire that has staying power and that's going to be played years and years from now."

With two arrangers/composers in the group, Imani Winds has been able to expand traditional wind quintet repertoire with explorations in gospel, jazz and even holiday music (last year's CD release This Christmas).

Along with several high profile collaborations, Imani Winds began the start of its second decade as an ensemble by launching the Legacy Commissioning Project, a five-year project to commission and premiere 10 new works by composers of different musical backgrounds from different points of the globe.

"In our commissioning process, it's a hit or miss," Adam said. "It's part of this discovery and part of the evolution of chamber music that has to happen. That's what the effect of what we're doing is going to be, reminding people that wind instruments can be just as interesting as a string quartet. And that the repertoire is different but can be just as interesting and just as engaging. That's our constant struggle."

The group has also had some high-profile gigs that have expanded everyone's horizons to the possibilities of where Imani Winds can blow. Since 2007 Imani Winds has worked in collaboration with jazz legend Wayne Shorter and his virtuosic band - pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade - mostly touring the European jazz festival circuit.

"The whole band - not just Wayne Short - these guys are forces of nature. They were like the four forces of nature. They were morphing every night. It was really crazy," Adam said. "Just being able to be close to them and watch them perform night after night, I felt like I was in on a secret, a very deep, musical secret."

Adam said Imani Winds were given free reign in interpreting Shorter's music, which is sometimes an uncomfortable place for classical musicians.

"We always say that was a slippery slope, but it ended up being extremely liberating for those of us who don't compose, and even for the composers in the group," she said. "He gave us the green light to interpret what he wrote however we wanted. So the piece changes every time we perform it, which makes recoding it an interesting task."

Even though the collaboration has come to an end, at least for now, Adam said the journey continues.

"It's an ongoing journey," she said. "After we're done working with him for now, he put us on a spaceship that we really haven't gotten off of. Even now we're still shocked we were able to work with him as long as we did. We're going to record our own version of it, but we're also going to be recording, hopefully, with him."

The group has also been working with Chris Brubeck, son of jazz legend Dave Brubeck. Fox Valley audiences got to know Chris when he was commissioned by the Fox Valley Symphony to compose a work that was premiered in Appleton on March 31, 2007, called Quiet Heroes: A Symphonic Salute to the Flagraisers at Iwo Jima. On Oct. 9 Imani Winds joins the Brubeck Brothers Quartet in performance in Yakima, Wash.

"I met Chris years and years ago because his father graduated from where I went as an undergrad, the University of the Pacific, where Dave has set up a jazz institute. So I got to meet them 15, 17 years ago," Adam said. "To be able to really work with him later on at this level is just so great."

Even better, Chris Brubeck knows how to write for a wind quintet.

"What he wrote is ingenious," Adam said. "He wrote for jazz quartet plus wind quintet (Vignettes), but not in a way where we're going to sound like a little backup orchestra, very integrated, equal footing for everybody. Everybody has their moment to shine. It's funky, but there's also these orchestral gems that come out of the music that make it go beyond just a backup band kind of thing. It's a beautiful piece, cool melodies that branch into these very sympathetic phrases. It's a nice camaraderie with his band, too. We're excited to be able to play with him again.

"It's a shame we're not doing our collaboration with him there," she said upon learning of Brubeck's musical connection to the area.

Next on the group's commissioning project is classically trained vibraphonist Stefon Harris and his commissioned work, Anatomy of a Box: A Sonic Painting in Wood, Metal and Wind.

"He is an amazing musician," Adam said. "He has a classical background, so working with him on our end was really gratifying. He could pay attention to detail. He knew that to breathe and to come in together and that we're neurotic about attack and note length and accent types, these are things classical musicians thrive on and jazz musicians don't. To have him understand that and heed that was a wonderful thing."

The 25-minute work premiered last month in Iowa City, and once again Imani Winds found itself on the slippery slope of improvisation, but Harris also provided the musicians with a "decoder."

"He's developed this language tool to help us improvise in a jazz setting," Adam said. "We're not playing any changes, but it's a lot more improvising than we've ever got to do before. We got to do some with Wayne Shorter, but that was more of a free environment. We had a color palette to stay within the confines of. It's an epic piece that goes through many moods and feels. He's playing with us, so to have the vibraphone and marimba, it's whole new sound for us. It's really beautiful. I'm really enjoying. That for sure is getting to get recorded after the touring season."

So, it really is the little wind quintet that could.

"I'm shocked we've been able to work with so many people I'm hungry to work with more and more and more," Adam said. "This is the year we are all going back to school We are going to be playing with a Palestinian oud player (Simone Shareen) for our next project and he has us leaning microtones, things that we have no ear for, but we're going to have to develop an ear for. There's all kinds of new tasks coming our way. If you're going to be an evolving group, you have to be willing to jump off the edge."

A 'tapas' program planned for LU

The eclectic spirit of Imani Winds is represented in the program the ensemble will presented at Lawrence University on Oct. 17.

"This is what I like to call kind of a tapas mixture, really a little bit of everything. I'm sure everyone will walk away with a favorite piece," said clarinetist Mariam Adam.

"We have a traditional scherzo by Eugene Bozza, a quick virtuosic piece as an opener. That moves to Arturo Marquez, a Mexican composer who wrote this piece (Danza de Mediodia) that really feels like you are in the countryside in Mexico and it's a lazy afternoon with flourishes of activity that go by. It's very beautiful and his sense of melody is just incredible.

"We also have a Brazilian piece that is also on the tropical side (Suite Popular Brasileira by Julio Medaglia). It makes you feel like you're going through the regions and hearing a song from each, Bahia and Sao Paulo and Rio.

"And then we move to New Orleans with Lalo Schiffrin's piece (La Nouvelle Oreleans), and that is his take on the Second Line, the bands that accompany the funeral marches, with a kind of dirge on the way there and then upbeat, more straight ahead Dixieland style. Lalo Schiffrin is eclectic in his own way, so he definitely gives it a different spin.

"And then we have Ligeti's Bagatelle, which is about as standard as the repertoire gets for the night. Even that is eccentric, but it really makes your ears do funny things. Ligeti is genius when it comes to making woodwind sounds and tricking the ear. You don't know who's playing and who's blending and how many instruments exactly are playing, creating sound effects without any extended technique, just in the use of his sonorities and scoring. But that ends up being a piece that people are surprised to enjoy. They're short and sweet and each one's a little bit of a journey.

"Then we have Aires Tropicales by Paquito D'Rivera, which is a collection of pieces from around the Caribbean and Latin America, and his take on everything from Venezuela waltz to Cuban son. And then we bring it right back to New York with Klezmer music. It's a fun program."

Legacy in progress by Steve Layton
Imani Winds decided some time ago to make their tenth anniversary special, by commissioning ten new works from ten very different composers of color. Titled the Legacy Project, each new work not only gets premiered, but added to Imani's rolling repertory as they perform across the country and beyond. So far they've taken on pieces by Wayne Shorter, Roberto Sierra, Alvin Singleton, Daniel Bernard Roumain, and Jason Moran; Danilo Perez, Jeff Scott and Simon Shaheen (and I suppose a mystery 10th composer) are in the wings.

But just now the latest offering is stellar jazz vibraphonist Stefon Harris' Anatomy of a Box (A Sonic Painting in Wood, Metal and Wind). Imani already showed it off this past week at Iowa State and Penn State; now they're about to give the West Coast their chance, with concerts Oct. 2, 8:00PM at Cal Poly Arts (Spanos Theatre) in San Luis Obispo, CA; and Oct. 4, 7:00PM at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. Imani Winds has always put their impressive chops at the service not only of the 'official' canon, but also pieces that reach out to someplace in the wider world beyond the typical classical concert stage. Hey California, come and hear for yourself.

Classical moves by Michael S. Gant
For its opening concert of the season, the San Jose Chamber Music Society welcomes the Imani Winds to town. For more than a decade, the Grammy-winning quintet has pushed past the usual classical categories with unusual collaborations and an invigorating mix of familiar and cutting-edge works. For this program, the group will perform selections by Medaglia (Suite Popular Brasileira), Lalo Schifrin (La Nouvelle Orleans), Ligeti and D'Rivera-and a klezmer dance for good measure. Saturday (Oct. 3) at 8pm; Le Petit Trianon, 72 N. Fifth St., San Jose; $28-$40; 408.286.5111.

A masterful blend of classic and jazz by John Kenyon
It's a good thing when you leave a performance wanting to hear it all over again. Friday night, many likely left the Imani Winds' concert with Stefon Harris needing to hear it again.

The concert at City High's Opstad Auditorium in Iowa City opened with three pieces by the wind quintet. The New York-based group selected a program that fit well with the piece it played later with jazz star Harris. It began with a composition by its flautist, Valerie Coleman, titled "Red Clay Mississippi Delta." This world premiere piece hewed to the expectations of a classical music crowd while spicing things up with the low moan of the blues and the sprightly swing of jazz.

"I had in mind the juke joints, casinos, the blues sounds I grew up with courtesy of my Mom," Coleman said last week in advance of the show. "Don't be fooled, though. The piece is classical music."

The piece delivered on that promise. The performance of oboe player Toyin Spellman-Diaz was particularly notable, her supple lines bridging the gap between classical and jazz to give the song its most swinging tones.

The second composition was by French horn player Jeff Scott. "Homage to Duke" is a tribute to the later-period sacred music of Duke Ellington. Introducing the piece, Spellman-Diaz said Scott originally sought to write an arrangement for Ellington's "Come Sunday." He so reinterpreted the piece, however, that it became an original composition.

It was a quieter, more solemn piece, though the performers showed flashes of fire as they channeled the ecstacy of both Ellington and Scott's compositions with a swinging tempo.

The third piece in the first part of the show was "Quintette," a multi-section piece by Jean Francaix. This was more fitting with traditional notions of chamber music; you would be hard pressed to find a beat to tap your foot along to, but that by no means suggests this was any less satisfying than the two pieces that preceded it. Coleman's flute and Mariam Adam's clarinet hit playful high notes, while Monica Ellis' bassoon seemed to play in every register, most notably holding down the bottom end with rumbling notes.

As good as the quintet was on its own, the real draw was its collaboration with Harris. The quintet is in the midst of what it calls the Legacy Commissioning Project, a five-year effort to celebrate its 10th anniversary with commissioned works from 10 composers of diverse backgrounds. Friday's concert with Harris marked the debut of his commissioned piece, "The Anatomy of a Box: a sonic painting in wood, metal and wind."

The vibraphonist, who has performed often in the Corridor in the past few years, said he was inspired to create the piece by a log drum, a wooden box with slits cut in it to create different tones depending on where it is struck. After playing it for a while, he hit upon the idea for his piece (co-commissioned by Hancher Auditorium).

He sought to create chaos, which represented what goes on in the box, through the somewhat discordant but never uncontrolled playing of the quintent. After that opening, he wanted to explode the box, in a manner of speaking, to reveal its inner workings. This was represented in the piece by longer, more contemplative sections that highlighted each of the instruments. That was followed by a closing section that returned to the chaotic cacophony of the opening.

It was a challenging composition that clearly allowed the woodwind players to stretch beyond their comfort zones, introducing improvisation to a group less familiar with its deployment. Before the show, Coleman said the group's work with jazz composers has made its members "think about it. They've made us hungry for it. As a group, we have talked about it all the time. One by one, we each came aboard with the desire to improvise."

That was obvious Friday as smiles broke out on Coleman's and Adam's faces as Scott gave a solo worthy of a tight jazz combo toward the conclusion of the piece.

Through all of this, Harris was a dervish, bouncing from the vibraphone to the marimba and back, the mallets in his hands a blur as he showered a cascade of notes on the audience.

Good as the piece was, it makes one long for a recorded version. Short of following Imani Winds and Harris on the road over the next few days as they bring the piece to other cities, that will offer the only way to fully absorb and understand this complex piece. It was superficially rewarding on Friday, but it was clear there is enough lurking in its depths to satisfy for some time.

The Price of Freedom
The Imani Winds is commissioning ten new works to celebrate their ten years together. On today's show, we'll hear the world premiere of Jason Moran's "Cane," written for the Imani Winds. In it, Moran tells his own family history, centered near Louisiana's Cane River. Moran traces his ancestry through a slave woman named Coin-Coin. She won own freedom, and then became a successful plantation owner, earning money to purchase her own children's freedom. "Cane" is our weekly 21st-century feature.

Imani Winds bridge many forms of music by TPR Staff
The Grammy-nominated Imani Winds will be joined by jazz vibraphonist Stefon Harris for a concert at 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 2, in the Alex and Faye Spanos Theatre at Cal Poly.

The wide range of programs offered by the Imani Winds demonstrates their mission to expand the wind quintet repertoire and diversify sources of new music, said a spokesman for Cal Poly Arts, which is presenting the show.

Their repertoire ranges from Mendelssohn, Francaix, Ligeti and Luciano Berio to Astor Piazzolla, Elliott Carter, John Harbison, Paquito D'Rivera and Wayne Shorter.

Currently, the group is in the midst of its Legacy Commissioning Project, commissioning, premiering and touring 10 new works for woodwind quintet written by established and emerging composers of various musical backgrounds, bringing experience not only in classical music but also jazz, Middle Eastern, Latin and harder-to-define sounds.

As part of the Spanos Theatre program, the quintet will perform vibraphonist and marimbist Stefon Harris' "Anatomy of a Box (A Sonic Painting in Wood, Metal and Wind)."

Harris' musical influences include gospel, R&B, go-go, hip-hop, soul and rap while following artists as diverse as Radiohead, Stravinksy and Stevie Wonder.

Student and adult tickets for the performance range from $30 to $38 and may be purchased at the Performing Arts Center Ticket Office from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays.

Voices along the Hudson: Anonymous 4 coming to Nyack
Anonymous 4, the female vocal quartet that has long been at the forefront of modern interpretation of medieval music chant and polyphonic music is coming to the Nyack next month.

The concert will kick off the 40th season of GraceMusic on Saturday, Oct. 10, in the Gothic-style nave of Grace Episcopal Church in the village on the banks of the Hudson River at the western end of the Tappan Zee bridge. It's an intimate room with a bright, lively acoustic. The concert is a benefit for the parish's Second Mile fund-raising campaign.

The internationally known a cappella quartet will perform a program called Secret Voices: The Sisters of Las Huelgas. It features 13th-century polyphony and sacred Latin song from the Spanish Las Huelgas Codex, collected for a convent of aristocratic women. They defied a rule that forbade them to sing polyphony and produced the most beautiful and demanding music in Europe at that time.

Anonymous 4 performs at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 10. A meet-the-artists reception follows the concert. Free child care available. Grace Episcopal Church, 130 First Avenue, Nyack, NY. (845) 358-1297. $20 at the door.

World premiere concert takes Iowa City stage by Sarah Larson
The piece starts with a box.

As composer and vibraphonist Stefon Harris was sitting at his piano, trying to compose, he became frustrated. He looked up and spotted his log drum - a small box with several slits notched along the top. When hit, the slits elicit a variety of pitches. The sound of that log drum became an inspiration.

"I'm looking at this box, and I'm trying to discover what this box is made of," Harris said. "It's like what holds the music in this box together. And I discovered that all music has something that holds it together. There is usually some pitch or some melody in the center that makes a chord progression or a piece of music feel united. So this piece of music is about that. It's about pouring red dye on the DNA of a piece of music, of a melody. It explores that type of concept."

The piece of music he described is Anatomy of a Box: A Sonic Painting in Wood, Metal, and Wind. Harris, with Imani Winds - a quintet from New York City - will perform the world premiere at 7:30 p.m. Friday in City High's Opstad Auditorium, 1900 Morningside Drive. Tickets are $10 to $28.

Imani Winds consists of flutist Valerie Coleman, oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz, clarinetist Mariam Adam, bassoonist Monica Ellis, and French horn player Jeff Scott.

The group, which formed in 1997, was Coleman's idea. She wanted to create a chamber-music wind quintet with musicians from ethnic minorities. Since then, the group has performed around the world with two resident composers, Coleman and Scott, while collaborating and working on various projects that expand the idea of what such a quintet can play.

Harris' new piece, co-commissioned by Hancher, is part of Imani Winds' Legacy Commissioning project, which the group established to celebrate its 10-year anniversary. The project aims to commission and perform 10 new works by 10 composers from various backgrounds. Thus far, the composers have been Alvan Singleton, Roberto Sierra, and Jason Moran.

"It was an opportunity to just go on a journey with these musicians," Ellis said. "I think some of them would not have gravitated toward writing for these wind instruments, but once we approached them, it was something that they were really excited about.

"It's very interesting when you come up with a project like this. You never really know how it is going to work. It's just been fantastic. I think it's a classic case of 'If you build it, they will come.' All you have to do is ask and put the project out there."

Harris' piece is the fourth premiere for the quintet. Ellis said the musicians were extremely excited about the debut and described Harris' creation as a work filled with worldly sounds that take the audience on many journeys.

He combined the wind instruments and his own instruments, the vibraphone and marimba, with other tracks of music to create a multimedia piece. He also introduced improvisation to the classical quintet, a new concept for the group and one that the members discussed a couple of years ago when first collaborating with Harris.

"In terms of improvisation, what an unbelievable opportunity I have to take a teaching concept that I have called melodic progression and have musicians of the caliber of Imani Winds put it into practice," Harris said. "It is an unbelievable opportunity for me. They are so incredible. It's a real testament to whether my system will work or not. It's working beautifully so far. It's really just giving them some core tools."

The quintet members were a bit intimidated at first by the idea of improvisation, he said, but after time and what he described as "letting it build," they understood the concept. Not only is improvisation concerned with construction, he said, the piece itself embraces that key concept - breaking the music down and rebuilding. With improvisation, he said, every performance should be fresh and exciting.

And so - before composing, before rehearsing, before improvising - the piece started with a box, an instrument that holds music together. And it ends with a composition held together by its performers.

World premiere of Stefon Harris' piece for Imani Winds by Deanna Howard
At first glance, the pairing of jazz vibraphonist Stefon Harris and woodwind quintet Imani Winds might seem a little odd.

After all, what can a jazz great know about classical music and vice versa?

Apparently, a lot.

Though Harris has made jazz his niche and the quintet has made its world music, neither wants to be labeled one or the other.

"We are an example of the iPod generation," Harris said in a phone interview. "We don't really see music as having such strict boundaries."

Hancher co-commissioned Harris' new work, "The Anatomy of a Box: A Sonic Painting in wood, metal and wind" for the Imani Winds. The world premiere of the new piece takes place at 7:30 p.m. Friday at City High. Harris will join the Imani Winds on stage.

"We are thrilled to present the world premiere of a piece by Stefon Harris for Imani Winds," said Jacob Yarrow, Hancher's programming director.

"They're both at the forefront of their fields, have fascinating approaches to making music."

Harris met with the quintet numerous times to discuss the new piece.

"What I didn't want to do is say, 'I will write a piece for you and see you in concert,'" Harris said. "They had a strong emphasis in improvisation. We had sessions talking about improvisation.

"I think of it as a process of discovery. They were learning about improvisation. I had some techniques to use."

Moments of group and individual improvisation can be found in the 25-minute piece. To Harris, the improvisation helps to "blur the lines between improvisation and composition and, in turn, between classical and jazz."

Jeff Scott, French horn player for Imani Winds, said he is pleased with the piece.

"(Stefon) really understands the osmosis from classical to jazz and to world music," Scott said.

"The Anatomy of a Box" is part of Imani Winds' Legacy Commission Project, which commemorates the quintet's 10th anniversary with 10 compositions by established and emerging composers of color.

The quintet plans to start recording the compositions for an album in December.

Scott refers to the rest of the concert as a "potpourri of styles."

"Everybody will find something, and hopefully multiple things from the concert that they will enjoy," he said.

Introducing improvisation to classical music by John Kenyon
With all due respect to the entire history of classical woodwind music, rarely does someone utter phrases like "lit a fire" or "scary" or "stretched to the edge of our imagination" when discussing it.

That, then, is the first indication that Friday's concert featuring Imani Winds and Stefon Harris will not be your typical night of polite chamber music.

Anyone familiar with Imani Winds already knows this. The quintet formed in part because its members wanted to show that African-Americans could excel when performing classical music. A recent New York Times article about the group cites a survey by the League of American Orchestras that show "blacks make up less than 2 percent of professional American orchestra musicians, while Latinos make up less than 3 percent."

The group is composed of Valerie Coleman on flute, Toyin Spellman-Diaz on oboe, Mariam Adam on clarinet, Jeff Scott on French horn and Monica Ellis on bassoon.

Other groups have followed Imani Winds down that path, making it less unique from that standpoint. But its repertoire - and most important for audiences in Iowa City, its choice of composers - continue to set it apart.

The quintet is in the midst of what it calls the Legacy Commissioning Project, a five-year effort to celebrate its 10th anniversary with commissioned works from 10 composers of diverse backgrounds. Already it has worked with Alvin Singleton, Robert Sierra, Jason Moran and others. Its concert Friday with Harris marks the debut of his commissioned piece, "The Anatomy of a Box: a sonic painting in wood, metal and wind." The piece was co-commissioned by Hancher Auditorium.

The performance takes place at 7:30 p.m. Friday at City High School's Opstad Auditorium. Tickets, ranging from $10 to $28, are available by calling (319) 335-1160 or 800-HANCHER, at the Hancher box office on the first floor of the Old Capitol Mall next to Sweets & Treats, or online.

Those who know Harris' work - he has performed often in the Corridor in recent years - know he has a strong improvisational streak. Improvisation and classical music don't often intersect, making this collaboration all the more exciting for the performers, Coleman says.

"Every time we collaborate, we learn something new," she says. "He has a technique he uses. He believes using this technique, any musician can improvise. Around that, this piece he wrote, it's epic, I gotta tell you."

Harris describes the piece as "a live demonstration of a sonic painting in which we experiment with blending the textures of our instruments. We will blur the lines between improvisation and composition, and in turn between classical and jazz."

Coleman says composers like Harris, Moran, Wayne Shorter and Paquito D'Rivera, all of whom have worked with Imani Winds, are able to merge the worlds of jazz and classical together. She adds that the group members become innocent bystanders to the process.

"Contemporary music has so many different sounds to it, and there are so many people that are bringing their own voice to it, an esoteric side, a dissonant side," she says. "Others are sticking to other sounds. Jazz musicians do cross over into classical music when it comes to their own writing. To ask a jazz musician like Stefon and like Jason and like Wayne to write a classical piece, they're going to bring the most cutting edge sounds to it."

She says each composer the group has worked with has continued its evolution into better improvisers.

"As a classical musician, you don't really think about it," she says. "They make us think about it. They've made us hungry for it. As a group, we have talked about it all the time. One by one, we each came aboard with the desire to improvise.

"We like to improvise," she adds. "I don't think we're great improvisers yet. But all of the information we have gathered for the last 10 years is stewing in our brains. If we stopped playing music today, we have enough to think about for our lifetimes."

Coleman and Scott also compose for the group, and each has a piece on Friday's program. The group will world premiere Coleman's "Red Clay and Mississippi Delta," and perform "Homage to Duke by Scott and "Quinette" by Jean Francaix.

Coleman says her piece, which is about five minutes long, "popped into my head back in May. When things pop into your head, you've got to write them down, because just as quickly as they come, they go."

She says one could call it a scherzo, and that it deals with triplets and how they swing. More specifically, it recalls her mother's side of her family, which hails from Jacksonville, Miss. Her relatives on that side have skin that is chocolate brown with red overtones resembling clay, she says.

"I had in mind the juke joints, casinos, the blues sounds I grew up with courtesy of my Mom," she says. "Don't be fooled, though. The piece is classical music."

The notions of jazz and swing continue with Scott's piece, which pays tribute to Ellington's sacred music (coincidentally enough, Harris performed some of Ellington's sacred music with the Turtle Island String Quartet at Hancher in 2008), and the Francaix piece, which Coleman says is a "type of French piece that shows the American-based invasion of jazz. It has a touch of impressionism with chords reminiscent of Ravel."

Imani Winds is scheduled to work with other composers through 2012 as part of the Legacy Commissioning Project, including Simon Shaeen and Danilo Perez. Its collaborations won't end there, Coleman says.

"We can't stop with the 10th composer," she says. "It has lit a fire for us, taken us in directions we didn't anticipate." Describing a recent meeting with Shaheen, she says, "Our brains and hearts were stretched to the edge of our imagination.

"We see the possibilities, and that is a thrilling prospect," she adds. "(Classical music) is an art that is full of rich culture and the music is glorious. I think this new way of possibilities will help us to get outside of what it means to be a wind quintet. It's scary, but exciting."

Imani quintet stepping outside chamber music's comfort zones by Diana Nollen
Imani Winds is taking a giant leap outside the box with "The Anatomy of a Box: a sonic painting in wood, metal and wind."

The 25-minute piece by Stefon Harris, co-commissioned by Imani and Hancher Auditorium, will have its world premiere Friday at City High School in Iowa City. The concert begins at 7:30 p.m.

Improvisation provides the challenge for the five-piece woodwind quintet, formed in 1997 in New York City.

"None of us learned to improvise in school; any way we've been exposed to it has been outside of school," says Toyin Spellman-Diaz, 36, of Queens, the quintet's oboe player. She also teaches in the pre-college division of the Manhattan School of Music, where the group's members met as college students.

"(Flute player Valerie Coleman) had the idea of putting together a wind quintet of musicians of color," Spellman-Diaz says. "She wanted us to go as far as the world would take us. ... I thought we were just getting together to read some music!"

The other voices in the group are Mariam Adam, clarinet; Jeff Scott, French horn; and Monica Ellis, bassoon.

The ensemble has multiple missions, Spellman-Diaz says.

"The main thing is to expand the repertoire of the wind quintet. The wind quintet is a standard chamber music formation, but it's rapidly evolving in the 21st century, and we wanted to have some sort of stamp of where the wind quintet is going. We want to change the sound and change the way people perform together, to have that radiate to all the different forms of chamber groups," she says.

"The way we perform is very much more on the interactive side. We think that just sitting in your chair and staring at your music is not the way to convey what the composer had in mind with the way he or she wrote the music."

Harris' piece, however, takes the group outside its comfort zone.

"We've been working with all these people who have been encouraging us to do some improv, but Stefon was the first to teach us," Spellman-Diaz says. "He wrote into the music how we should improvise in rehearsal. He has a whole method for teaching us. ... He's laid out a structure that's easy theatrically for us to improvise over.

"Taking that first step - taking that leap - is really exciting, and I gotta admit, a little scary. But it's really rewarding. The product is going to be exciting for the audience to listen to."

Harris, 36, a composer, jazz musician and vibraphone player from Sayreville, N.J., met with the players long before sitting down to write the piece.

"We talked for a very long time about where they're going as an ensemble, where they came from, their mission," he says. "The task for me was to figure out how to break down and explain the anatomy of improvisation," he says.

"For me, creating music is not about creativity, it's the process of discovery," he says. His inspiration came from the log drums in his music room.

"They're little boxes with music in them," he says. "I would write down the notes coming from the box, created a pattern, then went to the piano and mapped out every harmonic possibility that would fit on top of this box. I created a harmonic palette to draw from and play in different keys.

"With music there's always something that holds it together," Harris says. "With Beethoven's Fifth, there a motif at the beginning that holds the piece together. I reversed the process, taking the thing often hidden - the DNA - and highlighted that."

He'll join the Imani Winds in Friday's concert on vibraphone and marimba, and won't be standing still. That's one of the reasons he likes his mallet instruments.

"I can dance a lot, move a lot. Movement is a critical part of translating my emotion into sound," he says.

 by Peter Dobrin
These virtuosic and stylish musicians come here so often they really should just settle down and become this city's woodwind quintet in residence. But for now we'll settle for a single concert, Nov. 6, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. (215-569-8080 or www.pcmsconcerts.org.)

Debuts, Makeovers and Milestones
If Brett Favre can come out of retirement yet again, why not Anonymous 4? At this point, all four of the women on the nationwide tour beginning in October may throw a better pass than Mr. Favre does (or is that just the Packers fan in me speaking?), and they certainly all sing better. Here, in Corpus Christi Church's invaluable Music Before 1800 series, they perform their newest program, "The Cherry Tree," consisting of medieval English carols and English-influenced American sacred songs. Dec. 20. Corpus Christi Church.

 by Bill Mayr

Four Centuries of Anonymous Chant  by Charles T. Downey
For almost twenty years after four women came together in 1986 to found a group dedicated to the performance of medieval chant and polyphony, Anonymous 4 was a fixture on the shelves of early music collectors. Their trademark sound was noted for its clarity, faultless unity of intonation, and pure and translucent vocal color, and they created programs that were both beautiful on the auditory surface and of considerable musicological interest, due to the guiding hand of one of their members, Susan Hellauer. Vocal problems began to appear in the early years of this millennium, heard at the group's 2004 concert in Washington, around the time that, for whatever reason, Anonymous 4 stopped touring and being an active ensemble, at least temporarily. For the first time since, a reconstituted Anonymous 4 will return to Washington this fall, a concert listed in our preview of the best on the upcoming classical music calendar. Johanna Maria Rose, who did not sound well at that 2004 concert, will not perform, replaced by Ruth Cunningham, who will now sing alongside Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, who had replaced Cunningham when she left the group in 1998.

Their new CD features no new material but is instead a repackaging of the monophonic tracks from ten of Anonymous 4's earlier albums. So, Anonymous 4 fans who might think, quite understandably, that the group has released a new recording do not need to rush out to buy this disc. On the other hand, someone looking for an introduction to the sound of Gregorian chant could do a lot worse than this lovely compilation, rather than one of the many wildly selling chant discs from the monks of Solesmes or Santa Domingo or elsewhere. What I love about Anonymous 4's approach to chant is that Hellauer makes transcriptions from manuscript sources and that the group uses research on regional pronunciation of Latin. What you hear on many chant recordings is the Solesmes editions, which are reconstructed amalgamations made from comparing many individual readings of chant melodies from all over Europe, performed according to the Solesmes method.

This is nothing against the monks of Solesmes, whose work I admire greatly and with whom I have visited and worked -- believe me, few things are as transcendent and beautiful as hearing the choir at Solesmes celebrate the Mass or Divine Office. However, the experience of singing and listening to chant in the Middle Ages was in no way homogeneous from place to place. Canons, monks, and nuns pronounced Latin differently, wrote Latin differently, and sang different versions of all chants. If you are used to singing the hymn Ave maris stella, for example, you will recognize that the Anonymous 4 version is that hymn but in a form that marks it as distinctly English (originally on the English Ladymass CD), as if you were a monk from somewhere else visiting an English monastery and hearing how things were sung differently there. Likewise, there are transcriptions from Aquitanian sources (with a memorable sort of trill to render the quilisma), the Codex Calixtinus (for the Sant'Iago CD), and an unforgettable Hungarian version of the Te Deum.

Chamber music series begins Saturday by Amy Matzke-Fawcett

Washington Concert Preview, Fall 2009 by Charles T. Downey

Freud's riddle as musical comedy by Tom Purdom
What do women want? In The Loathly Lady, Freud's famous cry of despair becomes a quest forced on a knight as the penalty for his crime against a woman. Merlin and the Viennese Sage accompany the knight on his journey, along with an incredible outpouring of comic rhymed couplets by librettist Wendy Steiner and a musical score by composer Paul Warner that enhances the couplets and adds a few twists of its own.

The Penn Humanities Forum signed an all-star early music team for this, its Irvine Auditorium debut production. Soprano Julianne Baird is one of the best-known early music specialists in the world, and the other female parts were sung by three members of the best-known early music vocal group, the Anonymous Four. Piffaro provided the historic winds, and the historic strings were bowed by one of Piffaro's best partners, a New York viol consort called Parthenia.

The knight's quest forces him into encounters with a female lineup that spans the centuries. He interrogates Queen Titania, Sheherezade, Jane Austen's Emma, Eliza Doolittle, Virginia Woolf and Tennyson's Lady of Shallot. Period instruments accompany the medieval scenes and modern instruments take over when the women from more recent eras step into the spotlight.

Next: An animated film

Steiner is working on an animated film version of this "early music musical." Critics received a DVD of the pilot in their press kits, and the Penn premiere accompanied a concert-style production with large-screen projections taken from the animator's paintings and storyboards. The result was a complicated multi-media experience that combined on-stage acting and costume changes with the elegant fantasy world projected on the screen. When Emma sang about her ideal husband- the "Mr. Knightley," who is both passionate and respectful- the screen backed up the song with images of the upright Jane Austen gentleman and the upright life he and his wife would lead together.

In addition to its other virtues, Warner's score contains some old-fashioned standout numbers in the great tradition of operatic arias and Broadway hits. Emma's song and Titania's dream of motherhood are both appealing ballads. Sheherezade's paean to female sexual passion is a driving tango that turns comic when the knight realizes she's answering everything he says with the same description of physical desire.

Are men this insensitive?

My only critical demurrer concerns the character of the knight. He is not, I must protest, a worthy representative of malekind. Some of his responses to the women's visions seem weak and petty. Titania's ballad, for example, lovingly describes the emotions of motherhood and visualizes husband and wife working together as they convey their child through infancy, but the surly narcissist knight responds by whining that women ignore their husbands once the baby arrives. Am I the only human male who looked forward to fatherhood and enjoyed sharing the adventure of parenthood with his wife?

I'm more inclined to think both sexes want the same thing: an impossibly perfect mate who fulfills every requirement on their checklist. The spouses who build successful marriages are the astute, realistic types who grasp the need to sort out priorities and make tradeoffs. A successful Type A surgeon or hedge fund manager probably won't make a sensitive and understanding husband. The dazzling beauty may not look so great when you need someone who can cover your back with a shotgun. You can't have everything. And you can't give someone else everything either.

But that kind of thought shouldn't be seen as a criticism. It's primarily a sign that The Loathly Lady touched on important matters as it delivered a full evening of music, comedy and visual pleasure. The Penn Humanities Forum presented the premier of The Loathly Lady as a gala celebration of the organization's tenth anniversary. It was a perfect choice and a glittering success.

What do women want? Go ask Chaucer by David Patrick Stearns
NEW YORK - Centuries collided last weekend in a smallish room in Chelsea Studios, where some of the biggest names in the early-music movement - from Anonymous 4 to Piffaro to soprano Julianne Baird - were collaborating in ways they'd never attempted.

The occasion was a rehearsal for the new Chaucer-inspired opera The Loathly Lady, premiering tomorrow at the University of Pennsylvania's Irvine Auditorium. It requires musical specialists from a number of distant eras but sees them through a distinctly 21st-century lens.

"Can we make shawms and rebecs play a tango? I think we just did - and with such joy," said conductor Gary Thor Wedow during a break. "It was like they're playing hooky."

Many of these musicians haven't had to follow a conductor - or in some cases, a conventional time signature - in years. "It takes every single brain cell," lamented Joan Kimball, cofounder of Piffaro, the Philadelphia-based Renaissance band. "We're used to shifting rhythms and accents, but not this. . . ."

"Lots of these instruments don't normally play well together. To look out there and see them . . . is cuckoo," says Susan Hellauer from Anonymous 4, the best-selling vocal group. She hasn't had work like this since a two-line walk-on in La Traviata decades ago. "But it'll be fine. . . ."

There's a shade of irony in her voice.

The clash of times and places is part of the piece. Chaucer - "The Wife of Bath's Tale" in particular - is just the starting point, telling the story of a knight who is obliged to go through the world looking for what women want. The twist is that he has anachronistic encounters with figures such as Sigmund Freud, Virginia Woolf, Eliza Doolittle and the Lady of Shalott. As the piece's synopsis says, one of them wants a room of her own, another wants a room somewhere, another wants a room with a view.

The unexpected author of this freewheeling concoction is Wendy Steiner, English professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of several celebrated books, including Venus in Exile: The Rejection of Beauty in Twentieth-Century Art. She wrote the libretto to The Loathly Lady back the 1990s, motivated by nothing in particular.

"It's been one improbability after another," Steiner said. "The idea that I would be thinking about Chaucer is strange; I specialize in contemporary everything. And then to step out of this academic world that I live in? And take time out to let the words sounding in my head to be written down? It's not as if I was a repressed poet waiting for my chance."

But Steiner does traffic in archetypes, and the "loathly lady" is among the most powerful and constant in Western culture. She's a hideous crone who gives Chaucer's knight the choice between an ugly but constant wife and a beautiful but fickle one. When he asks her to choose for him, she delivers both beauty and constancy, like Mozart's Papagena in The Magic Flute.

Steiner was learning how to play recorder several years ago when her teacher read the long-languishing libretto and encouraged her to find a composer. An advertisement in the American Music Center yielded Paul Richards, a University of Florida faculty member who had been writing incidental music for local Shakespeare productions and was ready for something bigger.

He immersed himself in the music of Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377) while Steiner and Irish artist John Kindness (who similarly embraces anachronism with works such as Aristotle Contemplating Laundry) spent long afternoons in museums of Chaucer-era art devising the piece's visual language. The ultimate dream is to create an animated feature film - which accounts for the piece's unusual sense of fluidity and fantasy.

However, the project seems to have naturally attracted live performers, and some of the best, among them Hellauer, who participated in a demo tape created two years ago to help raise production money. Suddenly, all kinds of big-reputation singers and players were signing on with an "if they'll do it, I'll do it" attitude - one that gave rehearsals the feeling of a class reunion.

The participants include countertenor Drew Minter, tenor Jeffrey Behrens as well as members of the male a cappella group Lionheart, the viol consort Parthenia and Piffaro. The linchpin, though, was Rutgers University-based soprano Baird, who combines vocal and academic chops in her early-music performances - and who initially inspired Steiner to take up music.

"Julianne Baird is one of my personal idols in life," said Steiner.

Ironically, playing the unsavory, wizened version of the Loathly Lady is forcing Baird well out of her vocally ornate Baroque comfort zone. She's having to talk herself into singing out of tune. "I'm trying to give really hard consonants and not sustain the notes too much," she said.

Obviously, the one-night-only Irvine Auditorium performance is an interim version - staged as part of Steiner's annual Penn Humanities Forum and on a slim budget of $60,000. The singers will be semi-staged, holding their music, with most of the visual interest coming from slide projections of Kindness illustrations.

"This is close to what we need to maximally present the ideas," said composer Richards. "It's acted out and produced, but it's based on ideas more than actions."

"We have a storehouse of images," said Steiner. "We [she and Kindness] sat for hours and hours developing a director script. We can't realize it all. There's so much visual material that could be added."

Most collaborative artists hit a point at which they must let go of a personal vision to accommodate those of others. Early-music specialists are used to flexibility in fashioning vocal lines to their needs, and Richards accommodates that. Steiner, however, says she hasn't let go of her vision in the least.

"Not yet! I haven't had to," she said. "Paul and I had one scene where we disagreed - out of how many scenes? This is the project of projects. It's magic."

What women want is subject of limited engagement performance at Penn by Elisabeth Perez-Luna
At one time or another, in almost every culture, questions about love and marriage appear in songs, paintings and the stage. The modern opera "The Loathly Lady" takes its cue from medieval literature to tell a story that's as old as history and as modern as yesterday's gossip.

Transcript:
What do women want?

Way before Freud, in fact 600 years ago, Chaucer asked the same question in one of his Canterbury Tales. The story pits a clueless knight against a distressed lady in a life and death riddle. It's retold in The Loathly Lady, a modern opera premiering this week in Philadelphia.

Steiner: "The concept behind this has to do with the kind of magic of transmission, of communication across time and culture and every sort of cultural difference."

Wendy Steiner is an author and literature professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She took the original story and gave it a contemporary twist while maintaining Chaucer's picaresque language, medieval tinge and universal appeal.

Steiner: "In my version I just imagine what it would be if the knight could have leaned from some some women who came afterward and so I have Virginia Woolf and Sheherazade, Emma, and Freud and a number of other people giving him advice."

It took Wendy Steiner ten years to bring the The Loathly Lady to the stage. In the process, she wrote the script and found renowned composer Paul Richards to write music that conveyed the literary context of the work.

Richards: "In the scenes that take place in Chaucer's time I'm giving a nod to medieval instruments and medieval music but she's also set up this very clever procedure where the main character does a little bit of time travel and as the knight meets different people I've used instrument and musical idioms and ideas from the time periods in which these characters took place."

Richards sees The Loathly Lady as a piece bordering between music theater and opera, so he used medieval instruments for the piece but took contemporaries liberties in his composition.

Steiner: "Part way through this process, I decided that modern operas come and go, but if one were to do an animated film it wouldn't be able to go, it would be around."

So for the sake of preservation Steiner brought in Irish artist John Kindness to create a story board and a short animation that opens and closes the performance and is now only visible on the web.

How does it all end?

As in Chaucer's tale, in Wendy Steiner's opera, the riddle is solved when the knight eventually figures out what women want.

Steiner: "It's a rather wonderful solution to think that what women want is their independence and their love for somebody else. But once they have that, what they really want to do is make sure that the other person is as happy as possible."

It's what Chaucer calls "mastery in marriage."

>>>Download MP3

Critic's Picks by Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
Imani Winds. This Grammy-nominated African American wind quintet busts the boundaries of traditional chamber music with an inventive modern repertoire. 8 p.m. McCullough Theatre, UT campus. $30. 477-6060. www.utpac.org.

The Loathly Lady librettist Wendy Steiner and composer Paul Richards on WRTI's Crossover
The Loathly Lady, an original comic work conceived at the cusp between opera and musical theater, will debut at Penn's Irvine Auditorium on April 1st. Join Jill Pasternak when she interviews librettist Wendy Steiner, and composer Paul Richards.The Loathly Lady is based on Geoffrey Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Tale (c. 1400), in which a cruel knight must discover what women want most. The Loathly Lady's knight meets a series of opinionated characters in the course of his questing--Sigmund Freud, Jane Austen's Emma, Sheherezade, Virginia Woolf, Shakespeare's Titania, the Lady of Shalott.

>>>Download MP3

The "Devil's Fiddler" by George Whipple
Roby Lakatos, the so-called "Devil's Fiddler" and a seventh-generation violin player in the Hungarian tradition, recently performed at Midtown's Carnegie Hall.

"My music, it's unorthodox Gypsy fusion," says Lakatos. "When I was very young, 18 years old... I went [from Budapest, Hungary] to Belgium. It was a little bit difficult at this time for the Gypsy music, [so] I mixed my music with the classical music and jazz."

Lakatos's performance was part of a Carnegie Hall series celebrating Hungary which runs, appropriately enough, through Valentine's Day.

The violinist is a descendant of Gypsy aristocracy.

"I am the seventh-generation from Janos Bihari, he was really the 'King of Gypsy Violinists' at this time," he says.

After a life of "practice, practice, practice," Lakatos finally made to the main stage at Carnegie Hall.

"It's really fantastic, of course, playing in Carnegie Hall," says Lakatos. "First time, it was very nice because the first time I played it was a really great success. It was really nice out there, nice people, and I hope this evening shall be the same, I hope!"

I grew up in a place called Gipsy Trail where the Gypsies literally came through with wagons every spring. One of their expressions is "Sy simusar syum," which means, "All who are with us are ourselves." After hearing Lakatos's fiddle, you may feel the same way.

He's Called the Devil's Fiddler

The Roby Lakatos Ensemble
Gypsy violinist Roby Lakatos is not only a scorching virtuoso, but a musician of extraordinary stylistic versatility. He's a gypsy violinist, a classical virtuoso, a jazz improviser, a composer and arranger, and a 19th-century throwback all at once. Click here to see how he performs Brahms's Hungarian Dance No. 5. Carnegie Hall presents Roby Lakatos and Friends as part of three festival series in Stern Auditorium on January 27th. But before you hear him at Carnegie, hear him on WQXR. Roby and his ensemble join Elliott Forrest for live performances in our studio on Monday, January 26th at 4:30 P.M.

Magyar Madness
Carnegie Hall's next festival, which is devoted to Hungarian music, begins with a concert by the violinist Roby Lakatos, the uncontested king of Gypsy music, and ends with a performance by another icon, the composer and pianist Gyorgy Kurtag.

Wayne Shorter & Imani Winds
The music and spirit of Wayne Shorter filled Carnegie Hall for two uninterrupted hours in a recital (Dec. 2nd) that united the genius saxophonist/ composer and his quartet of Danilo Perez, John Patitucci and Brian Blade with the contemporary classical quintet Imani Winds for an intriguing fusion of modern sounds. The Quintet opened the concert with a Villa Lobos composition, followed by a fluid reading of "Terra Incognito," a multi-hued chamber piece composed by Shorter that traversed a multiplicity of emotions. Greeted with an extended standing ovation, Shorter and Company then took the stage for a typically courageous set, interweaving numerous compositions from his voluminous repertory into a vibrant, everchanging tapestry of sounds. Rarely remaining tied to any single melodic mooring long enough to settle into comfortable complacency, with the leader shifting between tenor and soprano, the four master musicians engaged each other in a musical conversation that was cerebral, soulful and constantly surprising. Remarkably, when the wind quintet returned to the stage to join the band, the music remained as revelatory, the nine musicians melding together into a single entity with Shorter at the helm, directing the inventive arrangements of a trilogy of his compositions -- "The Three Marias," "Prometheus Unbound" and "Pegasus -- with a singular attentiveness to sound and silence that held the audience in spellbound rapture.

Wednesday: Imani Winds
Imani Winds has been getting some great press lately. They're performing selections from their new album, This Christmas, all over town, including Border's at Columbus Circle Wednesday evening, and Trinity Church on Thursday afternoon. But before that, Imani Winds plays live for you, when they join Elliott Forrest Wednesday at 4:30 P.M.

A very special Christmas list for fans of all musical genres by Brian Mansfield
This Christmas With Imani Winds, Imani Winds (Koch). This New York-based chamber ensemble breathe new life into Bring a Torch Jeannette Isabella, I Saw Three Ships and a dozen other seasonal favorites with brisk arrangements.

Review of Wayne Shorter at Carnegie Hall by Jacob Teichroew
Celebrating his 75th birthday year with a Carnegie Hall performance that featured his jazz compositions as well as a new work for wind quintet, Wayne Shorter gracefully plunged into unknown territory. With his groundbreaking quartet, consisting of pianist Danilo Perez, drummer Brian Blade, and bassist John Patitucci, the group often led Shorter, as they created rich textures into which Shorter nestled the voice-like tone of his tenor and soprano saxophones.

The Imani Winds quintet began the concert with Heitor Villa-Lobos' "Quinteto em Forma de Choros," a laughing and sharply contoured piece whose revolving series of moods served as a miniature model for the rest of the evening's performance. Next came the New York premiere of Shorter's "Terra Incognita," commissioned in 2006 by the La Jolla Music Society. Its singing, mournful melodies, and occasional sputtering outbursts, reflected the playing of Shorter himself.

The highlight of the piece was a middle section during which each instrument played rapid and angular gestures, each improvised in terms of its rhythmic placement, as there was no determinable pulse. The disoriented, mysterious mood dissipated after a short-lived ostinato in the bassoon and horn. Both devices are common in Shorter's music.

When Shorter's quartet took the stage, the initial duet between Patitucci and Perez stayed planted in the same territory where "Terra Incognita" left off, with Perez creating pleasant but fragile harmony as Patitucci bowed a bouncy melody with delicate precision, matching that of the Imani Winds. Shorter's entrance, with an unsettled and airy tone, gave the impression that it was his first time playing, something that was true in a sense, as the goal of his quartet is to create music that is entirely new with each and every performance.

Throughout the set, Perez seemed to be taking charge, dictating whether the music would be full of space and contemplative, or dense and agitated. At times the focus centered on an impromptu duet between various pairs of instrument, as the group took a liberated approach to a traditional jazz practice. The idea of soloing was also readjusted. With few exceptions, much of the time all the musicians were improvising simultaneously. There was hardly ever a sense of one person accompanying another.

This style, which injects structured ensemble playing with elements of free jazz, allows the group to explore moods and colors that are perhaps inaccessible to the more conventional small jazz ensemble. But it has restrictions of its own. During the first 15 minutes of the set, which contained loose versions of "Zero Gravity" and "Sanctuary," the band seemed to be caught in a rut, cycling through brief periods of two moods: stately and confident, and then deliberately meager and disoriented. Later, however, the quartet broke out of the cycle, sustaining moods for longer, and developing unpredictable and compelling contours.

For the final segment of the concert, the Imani Winds joined the quartet, forcing an added degree of structure. The ensemble was restricted to steady pulses and defined sections for the sake of the wind players, who were reading parts. However, the timbral richness that resulted made up for whatever the quartet had to sacrifice. "Pegasus" was the pinnacle performance of the evening. Beginning with a newly formulated rendering of the introduction to "Witch Hunt," a Shorter classic, the piece dove into an intensely improvised multi-paneled design, enhanced with woodwinds.

Shorter, who turned 75 this year, proved that his creative talents are as strong as ever. His current music draws from his previous work, as well as from the expansive musical territory that lies ahead.

Imani Winds
Imani Winds are expanding the centuries-old repertoire for wind quintet in unusual, genre-bending directions. Comprised of black American and Hispanic players, the group is collaborating with tenor saxophone great Wayne Shorter to celebrate his 75th birthday. The group joins us to share "Terra Incognito," Shorter's first piece of classical chamber music.

Wayne Shorter by Steve Dollar
Shorter, who turned 75 on August 25, is marking the occasion with a festive Carnegie date that also includes the five-piece Imani Winds. They'll come together on the debut of Shorter's Terra Incognita, his first commission for classical players -- and a sure sign that the reinvigorated composer isn't dozing on his laurels.

Jazz Listings
★ WAYNE SHORTER 75TH-BIRTHDAY CONCERT (Tuesday) Wayne Shorter has been a jazz seer since the 1960s, but his stature has grown appreciably in the last decade, a period of selective outpouring. For this occasion he augments his superbly elastic quartet -- featuring Danilo Perez on piano, John Patitucci on bass and Brian Blade on drums -- with the Imani Winds, performing his first classical commission, "Terra Incognita." This qualifies as an event for more than one modern-jazz constituency.

Wayne Shorter at Carnegie Hall by Jacob Teichroew
Saxophonist Wayne Shorter will perform a new classical work at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday, December 2nd at 8:00 pm.

The Imani Winds quintet will perform "Terra Incognita," Shorter's first composition for a classical ensemble, in the piece's New York premiere.

Shorter will also perform pieces from his jazz repertoire with his cutting edge quartet featuring pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Pattitucci, and drummer Brian Blade.

A wind quintet's big world by Peter Dobrin
Imani Winds encompasses a world a good deal larger than anyone might expect from a mere woodwind quintet. Its general sound is large, and its vocabulary of particular sounds is expansive, with a French hornist pecking out dull, pitchless percussive thuds as easily as he belts out a good ripping melody, and an oboist who regularly melds notes where others might see unmalleable steel.

The even more enduring achievement of its expanded concept of ensemble-self is the way Imani has grown the repertoire. In town Friday night for one of its regular visits - this time at the Kimmel Center's Perelman Theater - it played two premieres, either of which could be imagined as future standard programming.

One, Call, came from within the ensemble, written by oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz. It starts like an early-morning yawn and gathers its call-and-response energy with standing players slightly moving around to help choreograph its message.

The other new work was Jason Moran's Cane. Moran, a musical polymath with a big profile in jazz, was commissioned by the Kimmel to write for this opening concert of its Fresh Ink series.

Here, Moran reaches into his own ancestry: The title refers to the Cane River in Louisiana, which runs through Natchitoches, where Moran's family lived in the 1700s. Literal references, if they existed, were hard to catch. But it does convey mood. In a rather conservative musical language, Moran in one movement pits melody against urgent, telegraphing rhythms. In another, he's pastoral and reflective. It's lovely music, but there was only a pale sense of musical material tying it to a sense of place.

Imani showed off its technical chops in Ligeti's Ten Pieces for Wind Quintet, whose movements traveled to far-reaching atmospheres, from an angry burlesque to a patch of high dissonances that sliced like a scalpel. It was all impressively rendered.

Imaginary Johnny: Only Chimneys by Natalia Kutsepova
God knows what sort of an itinerant being Imaginary Johnny is, toting music with him at all times. Once a bright-eyed Kansas City boy with sun-bleached hair. Maybe. Once a young man from rainy Seattle, tin-soldier-marching it through a heartbreak. Possibly. Somewhere in midtown Manhattan, a cubicled soul that didn't even know how to get sick. That, too. Or, if you please, a rather robust four-piece from Brooklyn - as sharply observant as before, but now on a grander, louder scale and with a good pinch of dylanesque sociopolitical salt. Only Chimneys is Imaginary Johnny's fourth release, with all songs written and sung, as usual, by Stuart Wolferman. The news is that Wolferman's all-instruments-played-by cocoon has been broken: the new recording has been done with a traditional full-band setup. Compared to the blissful altostrati of "Upside of the Downside" or burnt-sugar nostalgia of "Painting Over The Dirt," Only Chimneys is full of blood and force and loudness. The music, for better or worse, is out of the thicket of tender electronic beats and into the high stream of proper indy oeuvre. A scattershot attempt at "sounds like," if you will: cold-showered Grandaddy, Spoon with no sugar, and, at its best - Tom Waits, if he had a cherubic face.

Technically a near-perfect recording (produced by Brooklyn's decorated soundman Joel Hamilton), Only Chimneys flows with grace, mostly holding its balances well. Musical jellybeans of every flavour are scattered all over: a banjo's stealthy twang, a sudden surge of splendid, indulgent strings, a breath of ethereal piano, a makeshift choir, even a French horn - each a delight to pick out and savour. The vocals, however, are the true focal point of the record. Wolferman's clear, luminous voice articulates emotion almost uncannily. His style is frugal and devoid of obvious histrionics; listening to him summon meaning and mood with but tiny inflections, and at times just a breath, is a rather delicate affair. That's why hearing the vocals sink deep into the mix - thankfully, this doesn't happen so often - makes one lose compassion for the artist's own choices. The hiding, however, may have been intentional, and is revealing in its own way.

The record's musical architecture holds no shockers, is tricked out but just so delicately, and is not too imaginative - Wolferman's is a different blessing, that of a hymn writer. His hymns are wrong hymns because they are humble, disarming and lovable, each sung as if with a sharp-edged lozenge on the tongue. But as with all hymns, they carry affirmation and praise and are lined with stoic acceptance. This strange marriage of qualities gives a heart a sweet ache - we hear about sadness and fear, scars and defiance, but they all are a part of a world that is loved for what it is and prayed for - a place of hope and endless wonder, even though eroding, even though falling into itself. What words don't say, the music will. Curiously, and aptly, Wolferman's hopeless utterance - "There can't always be an answer, there can't always be a plan" - loses its "t"s to the piano.

Lyrically, the record is a tangle of the naive, the wise and the obscure. As opposed to Imaginary Johnny's earlier records, Wolferman apparently strives out of the personal and into the larger, sociopolitical - if not philosophical - realm. "Civilizations," "Midwest Scorpions" (a special nod to this one for the choir and the unabashed 70s art-rock grandeur), "Your Slice" and "It'll Burn" are all red-lined with the theme of human beings' insignificance. Like milk, remembering your own smallness is good for you. It's also a great (as well as easy, trivial and abused) reason for melancholic brooding. A tiny speck against the vast background of time and space? Check. A small heartbeat lost in rhythms of shifting tectonic plates and undulating oceans? Check. Futile struggles and arrogance of creativity? But of course. "Everything that I write down / I do so it'll stick around / Everything that I write down is on paper / ... / It'll burn. It will gloriously burn. / Short burst and we float up towards the sun." "Your place in history / is not a mystery / Just a moldy shower curtain on the floor." Not fresh; mute the music and the words will fall flat, but the melodies that carry them are so stoically exultant that the effect is both eerie and delightful. The little dimes of dull old truth, they shine and twinkle again in a charmer's hands. How much for your self-importance?

"Duct Tape" and "Everyone Has A Texas Song" are pretty boxes with no keys - both, it seems, deliberately obscure. Wolferman's stories are often fragmented and/or someone else's, and you do wonder about his choices of tales to tell: a shy or aching heart won't speak of itself directly. You, however, are allowed to make guesses and eavesdrop on conversations with an invisible (or imaginary?) friend. Some lines will make you idly wonder what happened - "Is your mother taking it hard? Is your mother taking it bad?" "They asked about a girlfriend. / I'm scared of remembering. / When will they put me under? / Am I already under?" To others, you can nod contentedly - or argue with. "What do you mean by what you believe / I can't wade through it / Absolutes are land mines / Trouble in wrong hands." The more political "Fleas" doesn't fight against beliefs and absolutes; instead, it prompts - wisely, insistently, impatiently - a good questioning of our notion of tyrants and victims. And then, there is "Tiny Moving Parts." Written very soon after the Virginia Tech massacre - "33 kids to sort through" - the stark and tender piano ballad had to be carried through badlands where even a tiny misstep plunges a songwriter into a bog of opportunism and hysteria. We salute Wolferman for walking the line. Of a few who dared, fewer could do the same.

Set against the background of a crumbling city, "Falling Into Itself" is a radiant and anguished tale of finding someone who was meant to be found ("I don't believe in believing in luck"). It takes hundreds of years for a city to fall, and only a minute for a heart. They shared a taxicab. That is all, no story to follow, and was there even a story?

"Between The Days," which closes the album, is sliced in half through its middle and leaves you dizzy, like a sudden awakening would. It begins with cautious, woolly-socked piano steps of a winter morning. The alarm clock hasn't rung yet, the city is mumbling in its sleep; till the sun is up and the moon is gone, every crazy dream is free to be dreamt. The piano blooms into a magnificent sunrise; this would be the time to wash the bliss off with cold water, scoop up your sorry notions and lock them up again, but Wolferman chooses not to. Screaming through the blinding daylight of caterwauling guitars and drums, he stubbornly holds onto a chance of making the dreams real. If that's not life-affirming, we don't know what is.

And there it is, Only Chimneys - a landscape of a shy and tricky heart. What happened to its houses and railroads and people, you will find out if you do a little homework on the record's title. But the hard times are lived through, the bad wounds heal, and as long as we remember who we are, and do our work, and dream, all shall be well.

Classical, jazz groups trade batons by Mark Stryker
Meanwhile, Shorter's "Terra Incognito" (2006), his first piece of classical chamber music, will be performed Saturday in Ann Arbor by the Imani Winds, a young ensemble that specializes in genre-bending works. Shorter, a leading tenor and soprano saxophonist, will also appear with his remarkably spontaneous quartet -- pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade. Shorter's quartet and the Imani Winds will team to play his arrangements of his compositions.

This Week In Jazz by Sriram Gopal
The University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Center for the Performing Arts hosts another great double bill on Sunday with saxophone legend Wayne Shorter and his quartet, featuring pianist Danilo Perez, drummer Brian Blade, and bassist John Patitucci. The supergroup will join forces with world/classical quintet Imani Winds for what is sure to be a spectacular show. Tickets to the 6 p.m. show are sold out, but it's worth contacting the box office for last minute cancellations.

Compositions by Marsalis and Shorter a seductive blend by Mark Stryker
Composers have been marrying elements of jazz and classical music for a century with drastically uneven results. The aesthetic bliss promised by the union is too seductive for many composers to ignore, but the challenge is daunting. So if you're Wynton Marsalis, you seek advice from a master.

When Marsalis finished his 1999 oratorio "All Rise" for orchestra, jazz band and chorus, he shared the score with the composer-pianist John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet, who had dedicated a large part of his career to synthesizing classical forms and jazz improvisation. Lewis, a fiercely intelligent man not given to empty flattery, silently studied the score for an hour. Finally, he spoke:

"This piece has solutions to a lot of problems we've been thinking about for a long time."

Metro Detroiters have the rare opportunity this week to hear two starry jazz composers, Marsalis and Wayne Shorter, renew the quest to merge jazz and classical idioms. Marsalis' "Two in 3" will be given its world premiere Wednesday in East Lansing by the Michigan State University Symphony Orchestra and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. A cocommission by MSU, Wharton Center and Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the piece will also be performed Saturday by the DSO and Lincoln Center band at Orchestra Hall.

Shorter's "Terra Incognito" (2006), his first piece of classical chamber music, will be performed by the Imani Winds, a young ensemble that specializes in genre-bending works, on Saturday in Ann Arbor for the University Musical Society. Shorter, a leading tenor and soprano saxophonist, will also appear with his quartet and both groups will team to play his arrangements.

Marsalis, 46, the most famous jazz musician on the planet, and Shorter, 75, the most influential composer in jazz since the '60s, are musicians of vastly different artistic temperament and style. But both, to paraphrase Lewis, are seeking solutions to similar problems -- how to marry the formal complexities, strategies and orchestral colors associated with classical music with the improvisatory freedom, melodic language and blues-groove-swing of jazz.

Marsalis: 'I go purely off of my hearing'

The 100-year-old dialogue has encompassed a byzantine exchange of ideas, influences, successful cross-fertilizations, noble failures, aesthetic dead ends and pretentious disasters. Landmark early examples include ragtime-braised pieces by Erik Satie and Claude Debussy and Scott Joplin's ragtime opera "Treemonisha."

Composers like Gershwin, Ravel, Copland, Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud, Ellington and James P. Johnson picked up the thread in the '20s and '30s. So-called Third Stream composers, led by polyglot Gunther Schuller (who coined the term), earnestly upped the ante in the 1950s and '60s.

Today, aesthetic crossbreeding is epidemic, from jazz avant-garde heroes like Anthony Braxton to mainstream classical composers like John Adams to post-everything musicians like drummer-composer John Hollenbeck, whose improvising chamber ensemble doesn't so much cross boundaries as bury them.

In any era, the difference between success and failure is whether the music strikes the ear as organic and indivisible or sounds like an incongruous graft of ideas. One key, says Marsalis, is to exploit the common ground between jazz and classical music:

"Orchestration, how to build climaxes, how to use percussion, the harmonic system is the same, marches and two-beat grooves that exist in classical music and exist in jazz, funereal music, call-and-response -- Beethoven's Third Symphony has all kinds of call-and response. ...

"If we're going to come up with a work of art that features both, we may have a section where we feature our disagreements, but ultimately what will be successful will be that mountain of material that we have in common."

"Two in 3" is a 16-minute waltz cast roughly as a concerto grosso -- an 18th-Century form in which a smaller group of instruments (in this case a jazz band) functions within a larger orchestra. The two ensembles (or families of instruments within them) bounce off each other. Jazz band sections leave open space for improvised solos. Marsalis says he has tried to emphasize lyricism over virtuosity.

The title refers to lovers and the three-beat waltz meter. "The premise is that everything is in that first glance that you have with a person who you will be in love with," says Marsalis.

The commission grew out of Marsalis' long ties with the Detroit-born bassist Rodney Whitaker, who worked with the Lincoln Center band for years and now directs jazz studies at MSU. "Two in 3" is the successor to the trumpeter's classically oriented works written in the '90s, including the string quartet "At the Octoroon Balls," the Stravinsky-inspired "A Fiddler's Tale," the orchestral ballet "Them Twos" and the monumental "All Rise."

These pieces bring together a gumbo of idioms, including conservative classical modernism, country fiddling, gospel, Ellingtonia, New Orleans shouts and dirges and an omnipresent blues tonality. Some are marred by a long-winded pedanticism, but the best music, especially large chunks of "All Rise," sings in a natural vernacular.

You can hear Marsalis gradually lassoing command of his materials, especially in the lower end of the ensemble. Lewis used to harp about the staid motion of Marsalis' bass lines. "That's an example of a problem," says Marsalis, who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1997 for his jazz oratorio "Blood on the Fields."

"When the bass moves around a lot, generally music is going to groove less. If you want the music to groove, the bass has got to be rooted. So, can you get the bass to move but also groove. ...

"I didn't study composition in school or orchestration or arranging. I learned it as I went along. As much as I advocate education, I've had very little of it in these arenas. I go purely off of my hearing."

Shorter: 'Whatever you want to make it'

If Marsalis is a staunch traditionalist, handing down commandments like Moses, then Shorter is a maharishi, who speaks in slippery metaphors and whose career has been defined by creativity, change and risk. He's played in four landmark bands since the late '50s -- Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Miles Davis Quintet, the jazz-rock group Weather Report and, since 2000, his quartet with pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade.

The compositions Shorter wrote in the '60s such as "Nefertiti," "Fall," "Infant Eyes" and "Speak No Evil" have become a cornerstone of the repertory. These are short stories, bewitching unions of elliptical melody and beautifully enigmatic harmonic color. His recent compositions, best represented on the sophisticated fusion album "High Life" and the acoustic "Alegria," are like novels. He eschews simple song forms for labyrinthine structures and thick clouds of brass and reeds.

Shorter's idiom remains jazz but classical influences percolate. His 2000 appearance with the DSO included orchestral arrangements of new and old pieces and an 11-minute excerpt from a work-in-progress he called "Syzygy." Essentially, Shorter has reconnected with his training as a composition student at New York University in the early '50s.

Imani Winds clarinetist Mariam Adam says that Shorter uncovered material in his NYU notebooks that he used in "Terra Incognito." She also recalls how excited he was to show off his orchestration books and scores by Ravel and Stravinsky when the quintet visited him at his home. (Shorter was unavailable to talk for this story.)

Commissioned by the La Jolla Music Society's SummerFest, "Terra Incognito" is written for flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon and horn. The piece is through-composed like a classical work. But in a jazz-derived twist, Shorter encourages the players to devise a new roadmap for each performance, cutting and pasting sections from the 15 minutes of material.

Adam says the music blends Shorter's lush harmonies with a tart melodic bite. She compared passages to spring awakening, a leaky faucet and a scary movie. The title translates to "unknown land."

"At the first rehearsal we played the entire piece top-to-bottom," says Adam. "He said, 'That's cool. Now, you don't have to play it start-to-finish. You can start there or there, and you don't have to play that part at all. Whatever you want to make it.' Our mouths were hanging open."

An Imani Winds promotional DVD includes a 2007 concert performance from France of Shorter's "The Three Marias" by the quintet with his quartet. It's a leap forward from the opaque, stiff orchestrations that he offered with the DSO in 2000. Of course, clarity is easier to achieve with a chamber group than an orchestra. But the flexibility of the wind writing, the integration of the two ensembles and seamless web of composition and improvisation all suggest a composer finding solutions.

As Shorter told the Free Press eight years ago when asked about the motivation behind his classically oriented works, "The music I'm writing is really out of the workshop arena," he said. "It's an adventure."

 by Lavanya Ramanathan
CONCERT: Wayne Shorter Quartet and Imani Winds This concert, set for late September at Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, showcases the ensemble headed by Shorter, a sax man whose contemporaries include Herbie Hancock, and Imani Winds, a woodwind quintet as likely to dip into jazz and funk as classical music. But the show will also feature the two outfits performing together -- as one nine-piece band that is sure to cut across genres. After the concert, among the big opening events of the University of Maryland arts season, catch a reception with hors d'oeuvres and a cash bar. $40; students $7. Sept. 28 at 6 p.m. Kay Theatre, Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, University Boulevard and Stadium Drive, College Park. 301-405-2787.

Tai Murray, Imani Winds and Turtle Island String Quartet play summer series by Anna Reguero
Elinor Freer and David Ying, artistic directors of the Skaneateles Festival, say that putting together a summer music festival is just like planning an elaborate meal. The combination of dishes has to be just right "so that your palate is really stimulated," says Freer.

This summer is a smorgasbord ranging from wind quintets to string quartets, voices to organs and chamber ensembles to orchestras. Each of the four weeks will titillate the senses using themes of jazz, music based on literature and turn-of-the-century Paris and Vienna, cities that experienced a wealth of artistic growth. Each week is a mini festival in its own right.

"I won't deny it's a great challenge," says Freer, a pianist who not only co-directs, but also performs throughout the festival with co-director and husband Ying, cellist of the Ying Quartet. "But it's a real labor of love."

They had a little help planning the final week of the festival, asking concert-goers what they wanted to hear.

"I can't tell you how many hundreds of requests for pieces we got," says Freer. "The most diverse pieces that were requested, ever. Lots of 20th-century compositions, which I was really impressed with."

Ying and Freer were named artistic directors in 2005 and, using their solid connections throughout the industry, have continued bringing name artists to small-town Skaneateles in Onondaga County.

The festival, situated around Skaneateles Lake, has been a summer oasis for many famous musicians and nurtured young talent. The roster over the festival's 29-year history includes conductor David Zinman, guitarist Eliot Fisk and prodigy violinist Hilary Hahn, who began performing at the festival when she was 12 years old, only to grow into a career so big that she has been unable to come back for the past few years (festival organizers say she's agreed to return in 2010).

This year features the Grammy nominated Imani Winds, the two-time Grammy Award-winning Turtle Island String Quartet (one of the Grammy awards was won for a collaboration with the Ying Quartet) and Avery Fisher Career Grant recipients the Mir Quartet.

"I love it; it's amazing," says 26-year-old violinist Tai Murray, who debuted with the festival in 2005 and will return this year. "I love being near lakes and blue herons."

Murray is an example of how the festival seizes on young talent and watches it bloom. In recent seasons, Murray performed with such orchestras as the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She solos with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra this fall.

She also represents the diversity of musicians included in this year's festival. As a female African-American classical musician, she's an anomaly in classical music. White males have typically dominated the field and a certain amount of wealth is required for training and purchasing excessively expensive instruments. (Murray only recently bought her very own professional violin; she had been borrowing antique instruments prior to this past concert year.)

However special Murray is, she tries not to attribute her career to her differences.

"It's weird because it's almost like I have to have two sets of thoughts about it," she says. "Doing what I'm doing, on one hand I would be stupid to not know what I am, but that really has nothing to do with who I am and what I do. The coincidence that I am all these improbable things is outside my control. I have to be aware of it, but I cannot pick up my violin and say that's why I'm doing it because it's not."

Imani Winds, which visits during the first week of the festival, not only represents diversity as a wind quintet of Latin and African-American heritage, but it does so while playing music inspired by its roots, including popular styles of music. The group's latest CD was a tribute to early jazz vocalist and entertainer Josephine Baker; it will release a Christmas CD this fall.

"These are people who grew up listening to Latin and jazz music all their lives," says Imani's French hornist Jeff Scott, the lone male in the ensemble. "It's in their blood."

"One of the hardest things as a young ensemble is to find out what your niche was going to be, what's going to be your thing. We didn't have to create it."

Imani will perform the jazzy music of Gershwin and Poulenc, and will play its own compositions. Imani also will share a concert with the Turtle Island String Quartet, which performs an additional concert of music from its latest Grammy Award-winning CD of John Coltrane's music.

Next year is a banner year for the festival â€" its 30th anniversary â€" and Ying and Freer have already started planning. Expect to see performers from the early days of the festival (including clarinetist Larry Combs, hornist Gail Williams and tenor Marcus Haddock) and a commissioned piece based on poems about Skaneateles and central New York.

Up, up and away: Imani Winds by Andrew Druckenbrod
It was 2001 when I first interviewed Monica Ellis, the Pittsburgh-born, CAPA-trained bassoonist and member of the New York-based Imani Winds. Back then, the group was cutting its teeth on a tough circuit playing in small venues and schools around the state. It was hard work, but it showed the group that its more informal and entertaining approach to concerts and its broadening of the repertoire for wind quintet -- flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn -- could make a mark on audiences. Its members also were emboldened by their success to continue their goal of performing and promoting classical repertoire from the black cultural context.

In that first article on Imani (which means "faith" in Swahili) I felt the ensemble had the substance of a group that could make waves and the look of one that understood the necessary marketing to do so: "With four attractive women no older than 30 years and a penchant for urban chic, this group could be the next Ahn Trio."

I am not typically the predicting type. In fact when I wrote that I kind of regretted it later -- more than anything because I hate to set up a group for failure. Not as if they read my writing on them, but in any case the musicians were not jinxed. A recent look at its myspace page shows upcoming concerts in France, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands and Turkey! It's obvious the group has really exploded. Combine this with the Grammy nod for the album "The Classical Underground" and its Legacy Commissioning Project (which aims to expand the wind quintet repertoire with new works over the next five years) and you have yourself one amazing success story. I mean, who really thought that the group could really re-invent a genre and make a living doing it? I certainly can't honestly claim that.

Pittsburghers will get yet another chance to hear the group February 16 when the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society presents them at Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland performing works by Husa, Ligeti and Piazzolla.

Imaginary Johnny began as a solo bedroom recording project for Stuart Wolferman when he lived in Seattle. Over time, the project has evolved into a full band and now calls Brooklyn, NY home.

On their new album "Only Chimneys", their songs are brought to life with full production and a little extra instrumentation which includes string arrangements and horns in the mix. During this session, you'll hear the band perform 4 tracks off "Only Chimneys".

Track listing:
Civilizations
Midwest Scorpions
- interview -
Everyone Has A Texas Song
It'll Burn

Backbeat by Sarah Wengert
Imaginary friends can be partners in crime or they can be the worst type of shadow (anybody remember Drop Dead Fred?). Imaginary Johnny's Stuart Wolferman has abandoned pretend friends for real-life band mates. The result has only enhanced Imaginary Johnny's dream-rock, indie-pop sound.

The Reader talked make-believe playmates, underdogs, dive bars and the evolution of the Brooklyn-based Imaginary Johnny with Wolferman just one day into a very real tour that will bring the group to O'Leavers on June 7.

"The band was originally my solo project," said Wolferman who played all the instruments, then recorded and mixed his 2003 EP The Upside of the Downside. At the time the Kansas City native was living in Seattle and Imaginary Johnny was briefly known as Pork Chop in Vegas.

After moving to New York in '04 Wolferman attempted larger projects that brought in other players, finally arranging a full band that's been comprised of the same players for the past two years. This group is behind the April release Only Chimneys, an effort that has been well received by fans and was recently named a 'Paste Recommends' selection for July.

For Only Chimneys Imaginary Johnny worked with producer Joel Hamilton (Lou Reed, Elvis Costello, Tom Waits).

"He's got great taste and he also has a knack for hearing and understanding what you're trying to do," Wolferman said of Hamilton's influence, adding that with his solid rock background, "He also helped bring more of an edge to the songs."

When asked his preference between playing in a full band versus a one-man band, Wolferman said, that while he is ultimately more comfortable in a band in which "everybody has their own thing going on," he would like to continue doing both.

Imaginary Johnny plays O'Leavers with The Roman Numerals, June 7 at 9 p.m. Visit myspace.com/imaginaryjohnny for a preview.

Originally the show was slated for Slowdown and Wolferman curiously inquires about O'Leavers. When I describe it as, "Smaller, but a great place for a show, a wonderful little dive bar," he's delighted.

"When I say 'dive bar' that means I want to go there," he said.

Sounds like Imaginary Johnny will have plenty of real friends in Omaha.

It's apparent from the opening track of 'Only Chimneys' - a fourth offering from the much-acclaimed Brooklyn-based group Imaginary Johnny - that the band have found a sense of stability and fulfillment with their new sound having taken a dramatic change in direction over the years. Once an electronic-driven solo project, the band now embody all the characteristics of a resurgent rock group brimming with vitality and purpose. 'Fleas' - the ferocious opening track - is a punchy, drum-laden opener that, combined with Stuart Wolferman's strained vocal, serves as a powerful, introductory anthem to what could be their finest album to date.

Lyrically, the band have been revitalised and are now writing with importance and vigour. Collective insecurities are dealt with in graphic detail on 'Tiny Moving Parts' as Wolferman professes (Maybe it's my age and maybe it ain't / But lately when I walk the ground seems to shake / When the cracks in the ground are bigger than my thumb / I know that's when my enemies will come). 'It'll Burn' is a frenetic, three-minute's worth of perseverance that perfectly symbolises the band's tangible new approach to song-writing closing with a line of poignancy and reflection (A short burst and we float up to the sun / Yes, it'll gloriously burn).

To balance out the insistent nature of the album's opening, the band bring forth a subtle change of pace midway through with 'Falling Into Itself' and 'Duct Tape' - tracks that summon feelings of anxiety and desperation (Duct tape won't do it this time / No matter how you cut it / Is your mother taking it hard?). The album as a whole boasts some solid production work - as well as a collaboration of songs that the band can feel truly proud of.

These days, it's common for indie bands to move from guitars to synths. The Brooklyn act bucks that trend, retreating from laptops to the classic haven of crashing electric guitars. The group's controlled chaos recalls one of its own lyrics: ‘Yes, it will gloriously burn.'

The Brooklyn indie-rock band Imaginary Johnny is at the Abbey Lounge tomorrow night. The music is a blend of Tom Petty pop hooks and Wilco spirit, and the band's new disc "Only Chimneys" was produced by Joel Hamilton, who has also worked with Elvis Costello and Lou Reed. How's that for name dropping? Johnny kicks off a show that also features Alright Jr., Destroy Babylon, and the Cool and the Deadly.

Brooklyn's own Imaginary Johnny will release their third full-length, 'Only Chimneys,' this April. Impeccably produced by Joel Hamilton (Lou Reed, Justin Timberlake, RJD2), this album just could be what this band needs to finally get their fifteen minutes. Originating in Kansas City, it comes as no surprise that their sound elicits memories of The Get Up Kids and other Midwest emo bands of the early part of this decade. Carried by tinkering-piano melodies and a drum kit, their dreamy sound is spandex-tight, but not to a fault. Front man Stuart Wolferman's voice, like a lake upstate on a warm July afternoon (think Clean and Clear, not East River), draws comparisons to Granddaddy's Jason Lytle with perhaps a bit more of an edge.

The legendary Gypsy violinist Roby Lakatos and his band rolled into town on April 28 for their exclusive New York appearance. The jam-packed house, mood lighting, and an unusually late showtime of 8:30 p.m. all helped to transform Zankel Hall into a musical pleasure den that delivered its promised centerpiece of intoxicating virtuosity. Judging by the number of instrument cases throughout the auditorium, this concert was popular among new York's musicians, including members of Orion Quartet, who were spotted in the audience....

Postmodernism ate sincerity. Cynicism is the new irony. It's a very tiresome world of shrink-wrapped music and standard-issue thoughts. Cubicled, bored, tv-fed and hopelessly adult, we develop a defence reaction against a sincere soul. We forget and get good at avoiding reminders. Feeling acutely, as well as paying attention to what is not work-related, might have an adverse effect on our performance, no no no, we can't risk that. But once in a while, in a small dark space with a dirty floor, among ripped bar stools and beer bottles, music melts all armour off listening hearts, and we have nothing to do but take the uncalled-for gift of remembering.

Sunlight-striped floor on a summer morning when you were four. You woke up not a minute ago and through sleepy haze couldn't, just couldn't see the cause of your happiness. It probably was a little nothing - a new toy, a salty wave of a warm sea chasing after your bare feet, a rabbit-shaped cloud. There, on the brink of remembering, all possible joys of the vast world were yours, and you helplessly smiled to yourself.

Imaginary Johnny is that elusive little nothing. Acute and causeless bliss of their sound disarms. Its lush, intricate underlining is music spun from a swirl of routine city noises. Over it are melodies, forgive me a platitude, so beautiful they can make you cry. Each musical phrase is a peace pact, an exhale, a cool wet towel over pulsing pain. Stuart Wolferman (music, lyrics, vocals) was born with a luminous voice to match, a voice that you can, no kidding, see in the dark.

Tucked in between the deadly boring (Steve Northeast) and the obscene (the infamous Cock Lorge), Imaginary Johnny played a mismatched shared-bill show at Sin-e last week. A legend transplanted from St Mark's Place to the corner of Attorney and Stanton, Sin-e is now a tamer, gentler locale, with a faint memory of Jeff Buckley's stellar ascent still attached to it - a nebulous blessing, a chance to make it for anyone who takes the stage. Right now, if I could wish upon a rising star, it would be Imaginary Johnny's. Whens and ifs and money are in the way, as always; Stuart can easily strand you in between tears and laughter, but marketing wars are more often won by the loud shockers - makers of simpler, cruder art. There is also a question of whether a musician's success equals roaring hordes of fans. Still, if anything is still hinged on artistic merit and good happenstance, Imaginary Johnny are the first in line for being heard more widely.

The summery setlist was mostly songs from the full-length 'Painting Over the Dirt', released, ironically, on the last day of winter. First there came a slow, heatwave-heavy version of 'Soupy Sidewalk' - an off-kilter hymn to every melting city in the world. Then, 'Missouri Sky', a gentle ode to hot summer mornings and tornado warnings of Kansas City, Stuart's hometown. 'Little Dimes', a scatter of round marbles on Stuart's tongue, is a digressive love song: She's got hard eyes, but there's something soft inside - like a jelly-bean. Further in, there is as good a metaphor for continuity of love as can be: We started with a shape on a canvas mostly clean. Now the canvas is a blur, the meaning is obscure. Extra points for rhyming 'James Joyce' with 'choice'... wait, want to know how Joyce got there? She reads like James Joyce - there isn't, I assume, anywhere to stop, and the further in, the more hopelessly entangled you are. And did you, would you ever notice that dice thrown onto a felt-covered casino tabletop sound exactly like shoes falling off a bed? They do.

On to 'Work Related' - of running from the law and mirrors: And if I'm fast enough, and if I'm quick enough, I'm invisible even to myself. On to 'Summer Day Dream', a song about absence as presence, and why you can savour the former. 'I forgot my wallet' is a space never taken by anger and irritation: It was raining again this morning. I forgot my wallet. Things weren't going my way. Yes, but somehow I walked for miles thinking bad thoughts. I'll get farther thinking better thoughts. And more - I have a garden now, and it's winter. Whatever you feel, I feel free... I don't ever want to need anyone that much again. No. This isn't soppy or self-help book 'positive'. This is a gentle, home-grown variety of zen. Every melody, too, is replete with witty squiggles and zigzags, and carries a meaning just as words do.

Also heard were three brand-new pieces - 'Fleas', 'A crack Between the Days' and 'Texas'.

Live, Stuart's voice is as rich with minute inflections as it is in the studio, though a little more nervous and labile. There is no between-the-songs banter - I've got new shoes, that's about it. Indeed, snow-white sneakers glow in the dark beneath the keyboard. There is zero fawning for the public, zero showing off, only honest-to-god music. The setup is minimalistic - besides Stuart's red Nord Stage piano, there is a guitar, a drum kit, a Mac with controller keyboard and some things from a toy store. The ensemble is noticeably well-rehearsed - the sound flows effortlessly.

With his disarming voice and words, Wolferman is a village savant of the most precious kind. He can melt our die-cast perception habits into a jolly soup of wisdom and little things that we would never, ever notice otherwise. By themselves, though pretty to tears, they might not mean much to you, might not seem weighty, but next time you look around, you'll find your own. So there you have it, a medicine that isn't bitter: music as children's syrup for adult forgetfulness.

Gypsy-violin virtuoso Roby Lakatos combines an almost impossible virtuosity with equal measures of sensitivity, taste, and humor on his latest CD, Fire Dance (Avanticlassic; Belgium). One Minute, he and his bandmates are conjuring images of rustic dances around woodland campfires; the next they're in a smoke-filled Parisian cafe, playing a version of the Modern Jazz Quartet staple "Django" that its namesake, illustrious Gypsy-jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, might have recognized.

Gypsy ensemble, groovy mustache spice up Gville by Sheila Scarborough
Any parents out there who have suffered through their child's early (and extraordinarily screechy) violin lessons? Arrrggghhh.

If you crave that light at the end of the stringed-instrument tunnel, there is an option this weekend suited for music fans of all levels: Say "Szia" (that's "Hello") to the Hungarian Roby Lakatos Ensemble, which performs Sunday night at the University Auditorium.

The gypsy violinist is expected to add a paprika kick to Gainesville during his five-stop tour of the East Coast in support of a new CD, "Fire Dance." The group has played to great acclaim in Los Angeles and Canada, and is well known throughout its European home base, but Lakatos (LA-ka-toash) hopes to introduce more American audiences to his vibrant, engaging playing style and diverse play list.

Lakatos means "locksmith" in Hungarian - most appropriate for a man whose skilled fingers can open the secrets of the violin. The legendary Lakatos family is descended from influential 1800s Hungarian gypsy violinist Jˆnos Bihari. They are all over the Magyar musical map; jazz maestro brother Tony plays tenor sax, Lakatos' father and uncle are accomplished musicians in their own right and the versatile Roby also has classical chops as a first-prize winner for violin at Budapest's Béla Bartk Conservatory.

Roby Lakatos Ensemble's repertoire is quite a goulash of musical styles (wait, just two more Hungarian references to go, only because I can't figure out how also to insert some damp analogy to the famous Gellrt Baths in Budapest). The mix of flavors is fitting given how the ancient nomadic bands of Roma entertainers were influenced by the music of the countries through which they traveled.

On Sunday, the concert will feature one piece of music tinged with Moroccan rhythms, while another has the bipolar title "Russian Tango." And mixed in with joyously mournful Gypsy compositions is a cover of the Tokay-sweet Fats Waller tune "Honeysuckle Rose."

Lakatos' virtuoso playing style is insanely fast, with hyper-perfect timing and some unique touches (like one moment when he stops using the bow and finger-plays his violin as though it were a ukulele perched on his shoulder).

He's a "controlled firebrand ... the real deal," noted Michael Blachly, director of the hosting University of Florida Performing Arts. Blachly cited the ensemble's universal appeal - an apt complement to UFPA's continuing efforts to add more international diversity into the programs.

From my research, I can tell you this: Many happy grins are exchanged between the ensemble members as they play to sizzling tempos; they obviously enjoy their craft. These wandering troubadours channel a lineage of close-knit, wandering Roma/Gypsy caravans, known throughout history for never settling in any one place. It is fitting that this group tours the world showcasing their heritage.

I have to mention the 'stache.

Lakatos has a fairly impressive handlebar mustache, the ends jauntily twirled into neat upright points. This no doubt requires a bit of waxy assistance, possibly from the favored Clubman brand found on eBarbershop.com, but then I found a recipe for "Hungarian" pomade with ingredients like bergamot, gum-arabic and attar of thyme, which seemed more suitably anachronistic. Whatever the guy's using to get that 1898 look, it fits perfectly with much of his music's historical roots in the turn of the century.

There is a saying that "the Hungarian wants only a glass of water and a gypsy fiddler to make him drunk." Similar to the full-flavored fruity-spicy Bulls Blood red wine of their native country, the Lakatos Ensemble stands to offer a deliciously authentic splash of musicianship.

Review by Jesse Pelkey
It's Sunday afternoon; its quiet, peaceful, and lazy as a good Sunday should be. I've had a record TWO moments of intense deja vu, writing this very phrase being the second. It's about 5:30, and I haven't left my apartment yet today, and I don't plan to. I'm drinking coffee and listening to music. Its here where you'll find me listening to Imaginary Johnny's disc, Painting Over the Dirt. Perhaps a cigarette, if I smoked them, would complete the ideal listening environment.

In his second full-length release, Johnny very humbly presents a pointed collection of songs, skillfully arranged, and poetically penned. And while being laid-back, quiet, and humble, it's far from boring, instrumentally. Multiple layers of experimental electronics, drums old and new, guitars, and conspicuous pianos guide us through the words, setting the mood, and keep me listening.

The lyrics on this album are powerful and very human, like thoughts revived after being pushed to the side in favor of the daily grind. One of my favorites is from "First Time to New Orleans," a little slice of Americana flavor, sort of like Springsteen if he weren't such a jock: "Sprawled on the couch / screen door clackin' / Cool breeze flaps magazines / on the way to my face." Later the chorus: "This city's waking me up tonight." The album as a whole feels like a memory, anecdotal and touching, and never really loses steam on the way to the end, in that manner.

As for the subject matter, its hardly varied, but maybe its the fact that I'm single that I get irritated with too many love songs, or that I live in a city and I hence get bored with songs about cities. On "Little Dimes," we're told, "She reads like James Joyce / Every smile's a paragraph long / It's like I don't have a choice / But to figure out what's going on." Additionally, I wouldn't say that the album is completely free of any pretension (most evident on "Sad Girl"), but thankfully those moments are rather sparse and forgettable.

The record is full of slow pop sensibility, crafted with electronics and arrangements in the major scale. But tracks like "She's Dug" and "Rat Race" are bit darker, the intro of the former feeling almost theatrically evil. The quick inserts of a heavily-processed sample increase the tension, and sit strangely comfortable behind Johnny's modest, mod tenor. "Rat Race" paints a somber picture of the doldrums of an office job in the northern chill, and is fortunately brightened by the typical "love interest" angle.

Now the bad news. The aforementioned layers of production elements have a downside. While interesting, all the beeping and clicking seem extraneous. The piano is obviously Johnny's weapon of choice, and the lyrics are strong, sensible and mature. So why all the extra fluff? I can understand a poor songwriter needing to "spice 'er up," or to cover sloppy songwriting with production elements, but I believe his songs can (and perhaps should) stand alone, pared down to the basics. Make it a humble record, with piano, voice, and maybe some quiet drums on a few tracks. It just seems to deliberately appeal to a younger, more hip crowd; it feels like a "marketing" move.

All in all, though, Imaginary Johnny's record is well-produced and wonderfully written. I will always belabor the points that stand out, whether good or bad, but its still a good record overall. Its got heart and soul, and despite the moments of "hipster-ism," it feels truly human. I feel that I can relate to the songs, that they make me feel welcome in its world. With some refinement, I'll assume Imaginary Johnny will be writing and producing music for a long time to come.

Review by Stewart Mason
Singer-songwriter Stuart Wolferman makes his full-length debut as Imaginary Johnny with the low-key but appealing Painting Over the Dirt. Pitched somewhere between the Postal Service's indie electronica and the bedsit romanticism of Belle and Sebastian or the Clientele, Painting Over the Dirt fuses smart, melodic pop songwriting to a melancholy worldview exemplified by Wolferman's barely-there vocals and minor-key tunes. Wolferman may perhaps be a bit too subtle for his own good, because if the listener's attention wanders over the first half of the album, it can be hard to differentiate one pretty, yearning tune from another. That changes for the better with the compelling "She's Dug," a quirky ballad built around a dramatic loop taken from a scratchy jungle-exotica record and Morse code synthesizers that swell and fade at crucial moments. That's followed immediately by the backwards rhythm track and vintage electronic sounds of the childhood reverie "Missouri Sky" (though now based in Brooklyn, Wolferman's a Kansas City boy) and the cabaret-tinged drama of the swelling ballad "Little Dimes." By the time of the lyrical ambient-electro closer "Spatula," it's a fair question why Wolferman chose to put all of the album's most inventive and musically interesting songs at its far end. Regardless, Painting Over the Dirt requires only the barest minimum of close listening for its subtle charms to reveal themselves.

Under the Radar: Imaginary Johnny sets himself apart by Steven M. Benavides
Every so often a large number of bands and artists get pegged as the next Beck, due in part to the art of genre crossing, experimentation and wit.

Frequently, these bands have mild success and are quickly ignored like the middle stepchild in a family of eight.
Imaginary Johnny is the rare variable in this common equation.

Like an ingenious episode of the Gilmore Girls put to record, Imaginary Johnny manages to acquaint the listener with stories of travel, instant coffee and adoration without trampling his tires through mud of pretentiousness.

‘The Upside of the Downside’ sets itself apart with electronic taps and IJ’s weightless voice. Though only a 5-track EP, its the substance of each song that makes it an essential album.

‘First Time to New Orleans’ and ‘Summer Day Dream’ gently unfold as periodical entries set through the warm surroundings of tenderly fused electronics while being narrated through the common eyes of an individual lacking editorial certitude.

Throughout, Imaginary Johnny has something sorely lacking in many songwriters â€" sincerity.

Whether through words or sounds, it never feels artificial and never overriding. This, in a sense, is indie-pop’s equivalent to Willie Nelson’s ‘Red Headed Stranger.’ It really is that good.

Imaginary Johnny is on track, if this is any indication of what one should expect in a full-length, of becoming the new, significant voice in independent music.

While there are other singer-songwriters who enhance their storytelling with electronics, Imaginary Johnny envelopes acoustics, burbles and ideal pop vocals into a gentle, less-handled whole.... Imaginary Johnny is either arriving at a new place or painting a picture of where he’s been, sometimes fitful and other times content. The Upside of the Downside, with its warm fills and club-affectionate beats, is a songwriter with equal regard for electronics and illumination.

If the debut from Imaginary Johnny is any indication of what's to come, Belle and Sebastian best be watching its back. Muffled broadcasts and tweaked-out squiggles peg lyrics about instant coffee, tropical rain storms and purple-clad prostitutes. Wolferman's summery ballads flutter past like sweet visions of rose colored icing on a three-tier wedding cake [...] the commentary on love, loss, and New Orleans never grows tiresome.