April 14--Over the next three weeks, one of the Midwest's and the nation's leading music schools is kicking up its commitment to community service a couple of notches.
Make that 125 notches.
That's the number of informal concerts students and faculty of the Music Institute of Chicago will present at community and senior centers, libraries, churches, hospitals, nursing and rehabilitation centers and other grassroots venues across the Chicago area.
The vast majority of those events are free, and they are all part of the institute's jam-packed Community Music Festival, a 16-day marathon of classical and jazz performances that begin Friday and will run to May 3.
The festival, explains MIC president and CEO Mark George, is the Evanston-based institution's way of giving back to the many communities it has served in the course of the 85 years it has been changing lives through music education.
It is also, he says, a means of sharing the talents of the school's thousands of music students, of all ages and levels of music-making experience, particularly with ordinary people who may appreciate classical music but who have few opportunities to access the live article.
George does not hesitate in calling the scope of the festival unprecedented for a local educational institution.
"Ours is the biggest community service music project that I know of," says the MIC chief executive, 54, who has been brainstorming and fine-tuning the festival with faculty, staff and students since spring 2014. "Coordinating the 125 events has been a logistical mountain, really an all-hands-on-deck operation. Not-for-profit organizations are not known for being overstaffed, so I'm indebted to every one of my colleagues, and all the musicians who are volunteering their services for this project."
George, an accomplished concert pianist along with being a nationally recognized educator and administrator, doesn't mind saying that the festival effectively will serve as a fundraising and public relations tool for the music institute, in addition to being a showcase for student musicians ranging from the very young to retirees.
If some of the folks who catch the free programs come away with an awareness of the comprehensive range of music education available to the more than 2,000 students who take private lessons and courses at the school's North Shore network of campuses, it might just inspire them to enroll in a class, or to take up that musical instrument they've always been hankering to play.
"In addition to being known as an excellent music school, we of course want the community to know that our doors are open," says George, whom the Tribune named its 2011 Chicagoan of the Year in classical music. "We want them to know that, far from being a rarefied experience, music is something people can come and learn and absorb."
Many hundreds of MIC students, he points out, are underprivileged and receive scholarship monies raised through various means, including MIC's annual spring fundraising galas.
Along with a full range of services through its community music school, the institute operates its remarkable Academy, which last fall began its ninth year as an elite, pre-conservatory training center for students with exceptional talent and career potential.
Which brings us back to the Community Music Festival.
Some festival offerings, particularly those to be given at area medical and rehab facilities, are open only to residents, but those that are open to the general public span a wide spectrum of music and performers. Chamber music will take center stage at many performances, but piano recitals, jazz and a great deal else also will be on display, if you know where to look.
George explains the rationale and objectives behind the festival thus:
"I have always thought that musicians have a special responsibility to other people to their community," he says. "It's not just the aesthetics of making music -- there is an ethical responsibility as well. There is a connection to be made between a performer and a listener, especially if it's in close proximity, that consoles, heals, provides joy -- pretty much anything people may need at that moment. I want to make sure that that idea, that value, is instilled in all of our students."
Bringing music to the community is one important means of achieving that, and the takeaway for the student participants is immeasurable, he believes.
"I really want our students to see that all of this time and effort they and their parents put in to their music lessons really has value beyond dollars and cents. If, following the end of their study time at the institute, they walk away with that idea in their heads, I feel we will have succeeded."
Ticketed concerts by the Cavani and Ying string quartets will bookend the MIC's otherwise free Community Music Festival. The former ensemble will perform at 3 p.m. Sunday; the latter, at 7:30 p.m. May 2.
MIC faculty and Academy pianists will present a free round-robin recital on pianist Vladimir Horowitz's legendary Steinway "Concert D 503" piano at 7 p.m. April 22.
All three festival concerts will take place in Nichols Concert Hall, 1490 Chicago Ave., Evanston; tickets for the Cavani and Ying concerts are $30, $20 for seniors, $10 for students; 800-838-3006, brownpapertickets.com/event/851979.
For a full schedule of festival events, visit musicinst.org/cms-festival.
Northbrook Symphony plays Foerster
Incredible as it may seem, Sunday marked the North American premiere of Josef Bohuslav Foerster's Symphony No. 4, a work written 110 years ago.
The Czech composer has inexplicably slipped into obscurity outside his native land, and it took a heroic rescue mission by Northbrook Symphony Orchestra music director Lawrence Rapchak to bring this forgotten gem of Czech music to domestic shores. A worthy performance of the Foerster Fourth brought the conductor's enterprising multiyear series, "In Mahler's Shadow," to a grand conclusion at the Sheely Center for the Performing Arts in Northbrook.
Foerster was an intimate of Gustav Mahler's, and Foerster's wife sang in Mahler's choruses at the Hamburg and Vienna operas. There are Mahlerian elements in the fourth of Foerster's five symphonies, but the most prominent influence is that of Antonin Dvorak, particularly in the scherzo, an utterly charming movement that could easily be mistaken for one of Dvorak's Slavonic dances. The nearly 50-minute symphony, subtitled "Easter Eve," recollects the Easter celebrations of Foerster's childhood, ending in a triumphant resurrection celebration that recalls, in spirit, the finale of Mahler's own "Resurrection" Symphony.
While not as inspired a melodist as Dvorak, Foerster was his equal in his handling of symphonic structure and development, which makes the symphony well worth the attention of major symphony orchestras. It would make a welcome change from the final three Dvorak symphonies we always hear.
"Easter Eve" benefited from Rapchak's fervent advocacy and the diligently prepared reading he drew from his musicians. Some of the playing could have stood greater polish (particularly the horn playing) but was remarkably good overall. I found the symphony a rewarding discovery, the prize of a series that included neglected symphonies by Franz Schmidt and Hans Rott.
It shared Sunday's mostly Czech program with a Dvorak Slavonic dance; the Polka and Fugue from Jaromir Weinberger's opera "Schwanda the Bagpiper"; and four of Mozart's Church Sonatas, with Patricia Lee playing the obbligato organ parts in the Mozart works. I found the Weinberger performance rather more inflated than the classic recording by Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony, though no less fun.
Sharps and flats
"God's Fiddler," director Peter Rosen's absorbing documentary about the legendary violinist Jascha Heifetz, will be broadcast nationally as part of the PBS series "American Masters." The first local airing will be 8 p.m. Thursday on WTTW-Ch. 11.
Access Contemporary Music will present its 10th anniversary "Sound of Silent Film Festival" at 7:30 p.m. Sunday at the Music Box Theater, 3733 N. Southport Ave. ACM-commissioned scores by its resident composers will be performed live to accompany modern silent films. Among the offerings is "Junk Girl," an animated film by Iranian director Mohammad Zare that, because of Iranian government structures, has not been scored up till now; $20, $12 online, $8 students and seniors; 773-334-3650, acmusic.org.
Flutist Claire Chase, executive director of the International Contemporary Ensemble, will be the keynote speaker at the Bienen School of Music Institute for New Music's free, daylong symposium, "Programming New Music: Strategies, Successes, Challenges," 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday at Northwestern University's Lutkin Hall, 700 University Place, Evanston. Various area musicians, arts presenters and educators also will take part; music.northwestern.edu/academics/new-music.
jvonrhein@tribpub.com
