Opening week at the Moss Arts Center
We’ve shared photos from the inaugural visual art gallery exhibition openings. But we know you’re hankering to see everything else that went on during opening week here at the Moss Arts Center.
The Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology hosted their second annual Tech-or-Treat in the Cube on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2013. Children from all over were able to step into the Labyrinth and interact with all sorts of tech-based, Halloween-themed activities. Check out photos below, or a traditional slideshow here.
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While Tech-or-Treat was going on in the Cube, the Blacksburg Children’s Chorale took over the Anne and Ellen Fife Theatre for dress rehearsal ahead of their performance with the Philip Glass Ensemble on Friday, Nov. 1. Under the direction of Children’s Chorale founder and artistic director Patrice Yearwood and with some help from Michael Reisman, music director for the Philip Glass Ensemble, the singers took on their bits of the score for Powaqqatsi: Life in Transformation.
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After a brief break on Thursday, we hit the ground running on Friday, Nov. 1, with our ribbon cutting ceremony. Hundreds of folks turned out for the momentous occasion. Our executive director, Ruth Waalkes, was joined by Virginia Tech President Charles W. Steger and Virginia Secretary of Education Laura Fornash for remarks prior to cutting the ribbon. Afterwards, we opened the gallery and lobby spaces, as well as the performance hall, in the newly named Moss Arts Center to folks who wanted to take a peek.
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We all recharged a bit over lunch, where we presented Ruth with a signed, framed photo of the staff–in hardhats, of course! It’s hard to believe it was just a few months ago that the building was still a hardhat zone. It feels like years and minutes, all at once.
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In a blink of an eye, we were all preparing to welcome 1,200 patrons to the center for our inaugural performance from the Philip Glass Ensemble. In what felt like moments the lobby filled with patrons mingling, meeting new friends, and enjoying the exhibitions in the galleries. Then, just as quickly, everyone was seated, Ruth was taking the stage for her curtain talk to welcome the inaugural audience and to introduce the performance, the members of the ensemble were walking on stage, Powaqqatsi was beginning, and some of the staff were possibly beginning to cry…
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But the inaugural performance wasn’t all we had up our sleeves for Friday night. After the show, we welcomed donors into the Cube for a meet and greet with Philip Glass–our way of saying thank you to everyone who helped make our opening week possible.
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Another brief pause in the flurry of activity on Saturday, and then we geared up to welcome community members during our Community Open House. The open house featured several a cappella groups positioned strategically throughout the center, culminating in An Impromptu Glorious Chorus led by Elise Witt.
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After the open house, patrons enjoyed a beautiful performance by the Sphinx Virtuosi, during which Virginia Tech music students tried out an experimental educational opportunity: Tweet Seats. The music students engaged in an educational discussion on Twitter about the performance, led by instructors Tracy Cowden and Erica Sipes using the hashtag #cfasphinx. After the performance, we hosted a reception for our tweeters–and they were joined by the Sphinx Virtuosi!
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We had a very busy week, but it was such an exciting, rewarding experience. We want to thank everyone who has supported us along the way, and we hope you continue to support us and enjoy the new arts opportunities we bring to Blacksburg and the surrounding areas.
Q&A: Chatting with Aaron Dworkin; the Catalyst Quartet of Sphinx Virtuosi
In celebration of the upcoming performance by Sphinx Virtuosi (which is tomorrow, Sunday, Nov. 3, at 3 p.m.) we spoke with both Aaron Dworkin, founder of Sphinx Virtuosi, and the Catalyst Quartet, the string quartet of Sphinx Virtuosi.
Aaron Dworkin, founder of Sphinx Virtuosi / Photo courtesy of Sphinx Virtuosi
Center for the Arts: I know you’ve said that you would attend orchestra concerts, look around, and wonder why you didn’t see anyone else who looked like you. How did you deal with that realization? What obstacles did you have to overcome in order to be a significant part of changing that?
Aaron Dworkin: In recognizing the issue, my personality is such that I tend want to do something about it. I felt that there must be a pool of people out there that are much like myself. I thought about the issues of access, exposure and awareness, and I wanted to build a platform (At the time, the Sphinx Competition, followed by all of the additional education and artistic programs), whereby, young artists of color would have access to professional development and educational opportunities.
CFA: How do you feel Sphinx Virtuosi shapes the landscape of classical music?
AD: Members of the Virtuosi have and continued to study at all top 10 music schools and conservatories. They perform as soloists in their own right with almost 30 orchestras nationally. Some past and present members are also members of professional chamber groups, as well as professional orchestras. Furthermore, they reach thousands of people in live audiences each year, from the most prominent stages of halls across the nation, pioneering cutting edge programming and building awareness of the vast talent inherent within the ensemble.
CFA: If you had to choose only one, which achievement would you say you’re the most proud of to date?
AD: That would be a difficult question to isolate: I am deeply proud of having just celebrated the 10th anniversary of Carnegie Hall performances of the Sphinx Virtuosi. I feel that their talent, dedication and commitment to artistic excellence is a profound statement for our industry as a whole.
Catalyst Quartet, from left: Karla Donehew Perez, Jessie Montgomery, Christopher Jenkins, and Karlos Rodriguez; not pictured: Paul Laraia / Photo courtesy of Sphinx Virtuosi
The members of the Catalyst Quartet are:
- Karla Donehew Perez, violin (KDP)
- Jessie Montgomery, violin (JM)
- Paul Laraia, viola (PL)
- Karlos Rodriguez, cello (KR)
Center for the Arts: With master classes and engagement opportunities, it seems safe to say that music education is a passion for each of you. What is the biggest thing you hope your audiences learn from your performances?
Paul Laraia: I hope that audiences are able to take away a deeper appreciation for classical music, and how it can relate to them, their lives, and that the performance allows them to get in touch with the deeper parts within themselves.
Jessie Montgomery: Teaching provides an opportunity to reflect on the “why” and the “how” of what I do as an artist.
Karlos Rodriguez: That music is for everyone and that there is a social and community aspect that even a non musician can understand through talking about the practice of chamber music.
Karla Donehew Perez: I would love to help children realize that there is more to classical music than meets the eye. That there is more variety out there. Besides the music, I would love to show that anything is possible with hard work and dedication.
CFA: Can each of you recall the first moment you realized that music would play a big role in your life, when you realized you were hooked?
PL: I was a freshman in high school, in the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra, and we were rehearsing Rachmaninov Symphony No. 2. It was my first experience with such great players and repertoire. Even though I could barely keep up, I was just enraptured by the sounds surrounding me, and the powerful push and pull of the music I was a part of. Even though my tiny little contribution to the music may not have been much, the passion inside my heart was one with the passion of the music around me, and I was filled with a sense of true awe.
JM: I was about 13 years old. I had recently taken a “break” from playing because it was getting frustrating an taking up a lot of my extremely valuable social and homework time. But after about 3 months of not playing, I began to really miss playing, and miss the regular interaction with my teacher, and all of the really close friends I had made at music school and I gradually just came back to it, realizing that the music and the community surrounding it were a part I me and I couldn’t go on without it. Soon afterward, I committed myself to gearing up for college auditions and the rest is history.
KR: I remember my first quartet rehearsal in high school at the new world school of the arts in Miami, FL. It was a defining moment!
KDP: I think it happened around age 12. I enrolled in a special arts school in Berkeley, Ca that specialized in chamber music. It changed my life.
CFA: What do each of you most look forward to before each performance you give, either as part of the Sphinx Virtuosi or the Catalyst Quartet?
PL: I look forward to a concert where there is that magic combination of hall, audience, and colleauges, i.e. when the hall is full of enthusiastic and attentive listeners, the acustic is not too dry nor too wet and there is no need to force the tone, and whenever I get to share the stage with musicians such as my quartet-mates, because I am able to gain true inspiration and create music that is greater than the sum of its individuals.
JM: Anytime I get up to perform, I am excited to share all the new ideas I have been working on with each group. Each time I get up to stage I am trying to communicate something unique, and each time I look forward to hearing how best it can come across.
KR: Communicating. Both with each other and with our audiences.
KDP: The endless possibilities while on stage. Anything can happen!
CFA: If you had to pick only one, what would you say is one moment from your experiences as part of either the Sphinx Virtuosi or the Catalyst Quartet that you’ll never forget?
PL: I’ll never forget the first time we as the new Catalyst Quartet performed our first Bach Goldberg Suite and the music came alive in a way it never could in rehearsals. All of our hard work and preparations, not to mention the excitement surrounding its creation, came to fruition and left a definate impression on me.
JM: Last year the quartet played at the Gianni Bergamo Competition in Swizerland. I had only been with the quartet for a few months and it was exhilarating performing all this new repertoire in a foreign country for a completely new set of peers and mentors and be so well received. We won 2nd place!
KR: Playing with members of the Guarneri quartet in concert at Carnegie hall. Not just because of what they’ve contributed to the landscape of chamber music but because I was also playing with my teacher.
KDP: There are so many, it’s hard to choose. Just sharing the stage with these amazing musicians is enough.
Click here for more information about Aaron Dworkin, Sphinx Virtuosi, and the Catalyst Quartet. For tickets to Sunday’s performance by Sphinx Virtuosi, click here.
Digging into the inaugural season
By now you’ve probably seen the lineup. You’ve likely narrowed it down to your top, say, 10 choices. Or better yet, your top 21 (that would be all of them).
We’ve already heard from some of you that you can’t possibly narrow it down, so you’ll just come to as many as you can. To which we say, “Yes, please! Come on in!”
But for those of you who are still looking things over, allow us to help guide the way a bit.
(Speaking of “guide,” have you seen our Inaugural Season Guide yet? When the hard copies were delivered to our office, we may or may not have spent some time gazing longingly at them, petting the different pages with different textures, and–in one instance–smelling the brand new ink smell. I think we’re in love! Kudos to our Creative Services Manager Brian Yohn for all his hard work.)
Anyway, back to the season. Let’s jump right on in, shall we?
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Erica Sipes: Her take on Tweet Seats
Today, we welcome Erica Sipes to the blog to share her thoughts about our experimental educational opportunity, Tweet Seats, which was held during the performance by Sphinx Virtuosi on Sunday, Nov. 3, 2013. Here’s what she had to say:
I almost always play the role of the “good girl” but a few weekends ago I found myself in a position where I was being glared at with obvious distaste and disgust within the confines of a concert hall. At least I wasn’t alone.
There we were in the back row of the balcony, with black canvas totes on our laps in which we could conceal our typically illegal mobile devices. As audience members walked in to find their seats some were visibly distressed to see us up there, obviously up to something that couldn’t possibly be good. They stared. They whispered. They pointed. And when it came time for the announcement for everyone to turn off their mobile devices with the exception of us tweet-seaters? That made me feel like a rebel.
So why were we in this somewhat unusual and typically unacceptable classical music world scenario? Believe it or not, I was invited by Heather Ducote, the Director of Marketing and Communications at the venue to co-host what they call a “tweet-seat” event at a performance given by the Sphinx Organization’s “Virtuosi” touring group. Ducote remarked about the concept,
Tracy Cowden, a professor in the music department at Virginia Tech, and I were asked to engage students in an educationally based discussion as an experiment. I have to admit I could understand the audience members that were initially wary of what we were doing since I was a bit skeptical myself beforehand. I was concerned that we would be distracting to others and that we would distract ourselves resulting in us not being able to pay attention to the performance. I was also not sure what we could tweet about that would be deemed as “educational.” In the end, I think all of us were surprised at how successful it ended up being, including the staff at the Center for the Arts. According to Ducote,
Tracy and I had split up the program, with each of us taking responsibility for researching half of the pieces beforehand so that we could provide program notes in 140 character[s] or less during the course of the concert. For example:
During their performance of some of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Tracy tweeted:
My partner in crime and I had also put together a list of questions that many of the orchestra’s members graciously responded to before the concert. We asked about some personal things – what they enjoyed about touring; which pieces on the program were their favorite and why; and how they made the arrangement of the Goldberg Variations among others. We incorporated many of their answers into the twitter-stream which I feel helped make an instant connection between us and then [sic] musicians.
For their part, the students contributed interesting comments and questions of their own, about different string techniques, how a conductor-less ensemble puts pieces together, the process of rehearsing, and reasons behind various ways of positioning the musicians on stage. Their enthusiasm for the ensemble, the repertoire, and the composers was tangible. While hearing Benjamin Britten’s Simple Symphony, several of them declared a desire to have a Britten listening party. During the Goldberg Variations it was decided that the piece worked really well as a string quartet since the voices were so clear and defined. In D’ Rivera’s Wapango they were able to pick up the changes in meter and to sense the rhythmic vitality that they brought to the piece. As an educator, it was exciting to see the students applying what they were learning in school to a live performance and to sense their excitement about what they were seeing and hearing. And yes, we all did end up having plenty of time to really take in the performance – none of us were tweeting all the time. One of my favorite aspects of this experiment was having the chance to meet with the musicians afterwards and sharing the twitter stream with them. Heather Ducote and the staff at the Center for the Arts had set up a special reception for us where they had a large monitor set up to show our tweets. The musicians eagerly read them and seemed to enjoy getting instant, and sometimes colorful feedback. They too could pick up on the excitement and enthusiasm we all had for their performance. Several of them mentioned how unusual it is for them to have any real contact or discussion afterwards with audience members and we enjoyed having the opportunity to ask them questions that had come up during the performance that only they could answer. It was a wonderful experience – one that was tweeted about later that evening by some of the orchestra members themselves. You can view an album of photos that were taken by the Center for the Arts staff by clicking here.
As for the students, I asked several of them at the end of the event how they thought it went. The reactions were all positive, with one student mentioning that because he was trying to find things to tweet about he ended up listening more intently throughout the entire performance. He said he remembered more about each piece on the program than he typically does. I have to say that I felt the same way myself. Even though I had the extra responsibility of co-leading the tweeting, I feel I was much more attuned to the whole performance, not only in its details but also in the overall effect.
So to the folks that glared at us when they walked in and saw us there, to my older friends that were apparently “appalled” by our “twitter invasion,” according to an e-mail I received after the fact, rest assured what we were doing up there in the back row was really not so bad. And if you would like to join us next time, we’ve got a seat ready for you and I’d be happy to give you a crash course in Twitter beforehand. Who knows, you may enjoy the performance even more!
Gasp!
If you’re interested in reading the whole Twitter stream from the event, please click here.
P.S. – In case you’re wondering, the Sphinx Organization’s “Virtuosi” ensemble is absolutely amazing and inspiring. I encourage you to catch their show whenever they’re on tour next!
Thanks, Erica, for that awesome recap of our first Tweet Seats Master Class! If you’d like to read Erica’s post on her blog, click here.