Family Saga: A Bad Time to Laugh
About 12 seconds into the performance, I look down, and that is when I notice that I never changed out of my flip-flops. Ari’s in a suit and tie; I’m in my mid-twenties mélange of tight, stretchy, lacy black; Em’s in a long black dress. But my feet are ready for the beach.
Cleonice Archives: Shellfish Notes from Crystal River
“I am absolutely not going in here to eat.” I am usually a great food researcher, but I had made a terrible mistake, and now we were parked outside an enormous deserted mall in Crystal River, Florida (population 3,108). Looking up at the old bricks and the huge K-Mart sign, my fantasies of fried oysters and jambalaya began to drift away. I was starving, but my survival instinct would not permit this.
Program Notes: Beethoven String Quartet No. 1 in F major, Op. 18, no. 1
This is the 18-1 of my childhood, my dreams, my heart. My program notes, I hope, describe the way in which 18-1 is elemental, foundational, and influential of everything that came after – and the best thing I can say is: so too, is this recording, for me. My Dad’s quartet made this recording – which is actually a live performance, with the tiniest and most minimal editing from another live performance – in 1982, four years before I was born. My Mom loves to tell the story that she brought me to my first Juilliard Quartet concert when I was two weeks old: she carried me in a basket to Carnegie Hall, and sat with me backstage, listening on speakers, while they played a Beethoven Quartet Cycle. (If you’re thinking “This explains a lot,” you’d be right.)
Études & Inspirations: Barbara Stein Mallow
Here is what you gather about Barbara moments into being with her - whether in a chamber music coaching, in the audience, or in conversation with her, eyes aglow with her rapturous love of music: there is no end to the belief she has in those around her, in music, and in the great, life-affirming things that happen when people make music together.
Family Saga: A Changing Room (Brahms Cabin, with Laurie)
Laurie puts her violin down on the chair next to her.
“Here, just look at this and tell me if it’s a tick bite!!” She starts to pull her shirt up and I scream.
“No!!!”
“I don’t care if you see my breasts, I just can’t see it myself!!” I start laughing and put my head in my hands, the neck of the cello tucking into my elbow.
“What!!??” she cries.
I can barely breathe I’m laughing so hard.
Family Saga: Flying Debris
“I was hit in the head,” he shouts, “by flying debris!” His voice escalates at the end of the sentence, an adrenalined but very characteristic bit of word painting. The triage nurse stares at him, wide-eyed, and then looks at me. She hands me a clipboard, asks him to please have a seat, calls him “sir” as people always call my Dad.
Program Notes: Donald Martino - Trio for violin, violoncello, and piano
Donald Martino is one of the great American composers of all: a master of lyricism, humor, complex polyphony, and rhythmic drama. This is deeply-felt, deeply evocative music: it is Italianate, mercurial, gorgeously melodic; it is hot-tempered and emotionally complex; it changes mood at the virtuosic drop of an especially beautiful hat.
Études & Inspirations: Brian Alegant
I am 19, and I have just left my Music Theory III class in a shroud of ignominy after the teacher invited me to leave (emphasis very pointedly on the italicization). I skip down the second floor of the Bibbins building, defiant, triumphant, and even think I glimpse — can it be? (No, it can’t) — a faint whiff of sunshine falling into the huge glass diamonds of the windows facing Tappan Square.
