The SANTA FE CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL An interview with Executive
Director STEVEN OVITSKY
FanFaire:
It's known that the legendary Pablo Casals was the honorary president of the
Festival's inaugural season. But could you tell us more about its origins? Was
there an individual or a nucleus group who had the inspiration to celebrate
chamber music in this most enchanting city? Who provided the leadership for
the Festival in its early years?
OVITSKY: The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival
was founded to present and celebrate the incredible art of chamber music. Santa
Fe’s incredible beauty, cultural strength and location was a natural choice
to compliment the focus of a summer music festival.
PABLO CASALS
was the honorary president of the Festival’s inaugural season in 1973, with
ALICIA SCHACTER the Music Director from 1973—1991, followed by HEIICHIRO OHYAMA
from 1992 – 1997. For the past eleven years, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival
has been led by music director and composer MARC NEIKRUG, who has not only contributed
to the Festival’s growth and reputation as a presenter of great chamber works,
which was begun by the Festival's founders, but also as a champion and consistent
contributor to contemporary chamber music repertoire, a tradition the festival
began in 1980. Marc has brought the number of commissions to an incredible 47,
more than any other chamber music festival today.
The Festival, now in its 36th season, prides itself on the range of chamber
works and the various contemporary composers that have contributed to the Festival
over the years, ranging from AARON COPLAND, to NED ROREM, to LEE HOIBY, to this
year’s composers, KAIJA SAARIAHO, ROBERTO SIERRA, HUANG RUO and JOAN TOWER.
FanFaire: Did the founders find encouragement in the
phenomenal success of Santa Fe Opera? And with Santa Fe Opera having set the
stage, so to speak, was there immediate community support for the Festival?
Does the Festival have a relationship with Santa Fe Opera?
OVITSKY:
The success of the Santa Fe Opera reinforced, I’m sure, the Festival founders’
selection of Santa Fe. The community is an extremely culturally oriented and
knowledgable one, and there was strong early support for the Festival. The festival,
in its early years, had a history of threatening financial issues, which I’m
delighted to say is no longer.
The
Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival is a financially stable organization with a
strong endowment, generous annual support and solid ticket sales. This past
fall, the Festival celebrated the culmination of the 2007 season with the successful
completion of our 35th Anniversary Endowment Campaign, which surpassed its $5
million goal by $1.7 million.
We are proud
of our close relationship with the Santa Fe Opera. We regularly engage some
of the Opera orchestra musicians and singers. This year, for example, baritone
LAURENT NAOURI, the Opera’s Falstaff, will sing Schumann’s
"Dichterliebe", mezzo-soprano ISABEL LEONARD who sings Cherubino in
The Marriage of Figaro for the Opera, will sing Handel’s La
Lucrezia for the Festival, and mezzo-soprano MONICA GROOP, who appears
in the title role of Adriana Mater will also sing the US premiere of
LANCINO’s "Onxa for Mezzo-soprano, Cello & Strings."
FanFaire: Could you give us a cross-section picture
of the Festival audience? Surely you must have a big subscriber base. Do your
subscribers come from far and wide? And are you able to build on this, say,
from the thousands of tourists that come to Santa Fe? Do you have audience members
who come for the entire season?
OVITSKY: The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival
attracts audience from across the United States and abroad who love the high
level of music making and varied programming and the wide variety of national
and international guest artists the Festival presents each season. We have non-local
patrons who come to Santa Fe for one or two concerts and those that come for
the entire Festival season. That said, about 40% of our ticket sales are to
visitors, and 60% to full and part-time Santa Fe residents.
FanFaire:What is the Festival's primary
mission? Commissioned works have been among the Festival highlights for many
years - this season, for example, you will premiere four co-commissions (in
addition to the world premiere of other new significant works, e.g., by the
Festival's Artistic Directo, MARC NEIKRUG). Is the commissioning of new works
one of the Festival's primary missions - as perhaps one of the the best ways
of expanding the chamber music repertoire?
OVITSKY: The Festival’s primary mission
is to present and promote chamber music of the highest quality in all its forms
by the world’s finest musicians, and to build a broad and knowledgeable audience
of all ages. Its mission also is to provide diverse educational opportunities
and to enhance the cultural environment of Santa Fe and New Mexico.
The Festival seeks to serve as a model chamber music festival, and has transformed
the chamber music festival model by extending its musical hallmark, that of
a presenter of great masterpieces and champion and contributor to the contemporary
repertoire, to include works of fine art by local artists, underscoring the
relationship music has with other art forms.
FanFaire: The Festival also has a wide array of guest
performing artists - this season they range from super stars (such as PINCHAS
ZUKERMAN) to the up-and-coming (such as ISABEL LEONARD and the ESCHER STRING
QUARTET who not only will perform in concert but, interestingly, will also be
taught a masterclass by their "seniors" in the field - the ORION STRING QUARTET).
Could you walk us as well through the process of selecting up-and-coming artists
as well as programming for the Festival? Is this type of masterclass a regular
feature of the Festival?
OVITSKY: Master classes are a regular
part of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival season. The Festival’s music director,
MARC NEIKRUG, is always on the look-out for the most talented young musicians,
and hears from colleagues around the world about young talent. Each year four
young musicians are selected; often a violinist, violist, cellist and pianist.
They perform as a piano quartet and also with some of the more established festival
musicians. We then hold a series of master classes with each of the young musicians.
This year, the Festival invited the ESCHER STRING QUARTET as our young musicians.
They will have a master class taught by DANIEL PHILIPS of the renowned Orion
String Quartet.
FanFaire: The Festival's long-standing success must
owe a lot to an exemplary partnership between you as Executive Director and
the versatile and dynamic composer-pianist-conductor MARC NEIKRUG as Artistic
Director. How long have you been working together and how would you characterize
this partnership? What would you cite as MARC NEIKRUG's unique contributions
to the Festival? And what particular challenges confront you as the Executive
Director?
OVITSKY: Thank you. Marc and I have been
working together since 2004. Marc brings not just his skills as a musician (he’s
an accomplished pianist) and music director to the table, but also his talent
as a composer. This unique combination of skills allows him to create interesting
and well balanced programs of chamber masterpieces and contemporary works, to
have the Festival present commissioned premieres by the world’s best contemporary
composers and also to seek out and engage the up-and-coming artists of tomorrow
for Festival audiences each season.
As the Festival’s executive director, I am continually working on finding new
avenues through which to help the Festival continue to grow. One example of
this is the wonderful relationship the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival has with
The WFMT Radio Network (since 2005) and the United Kingdom’s BBC Radio 3 (since
2007). I’m proud to say that the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival is one of very
few chamber music festival to be broadcast nationwide – since 2005 the Festival’s
13-week, hour-long radio serried has been produced and nationally distributed
by The WFMT Radio Network, and since 2007, the Festival’s series has been aired
on BBC Radio 3’s Lunchtime Concert Series.
FanFaire: It seems to us that Santa Fe is a city in
which ALL the arts prosper. How would you characterize the relationship between
the city's various art establishments - does rivalry coexist with, say, a spirit
of community? Do they support one another, and if so, in what ways?
OVITSKY: Santa Fe is an incredible city,
where indeed, all the arts do prosper. All the various arts establishments support
each other in the spirit of a cultural community. As I mentioned, we have a
close relationship with the Santa Fe Opera; we find that many of our concert-goers
also attend the opera, sometimes even on the same day. We also have strong ties
with businesses throughout the community as a result of our annual presentation
of art by local artists, throughout the Festival season. The arts, I think,
in and of themselves, foster a sense of community.
FanFaire:We notice that Festival's activities
are not limited to Santa Fe. You also hold events in nearby Albuquerque and
occasionally also in Arizona. How do these fit in with the Festival's avowed
missions? Do your activities begin and end with the summer Festival or do you
hold other noteworthy events at other times of the year?
OVITSKY: Arizona was actually a tour
concert some years ago. While the Festival’s base is and will continue to be
Santa Fe, and the majority of our presentations take place at St Francis Auditorium
and the Lensic, the Festival does seek, as part of its mission to educate audiences
about and to promote chamber music to the broadest audiences possible, to present
concerts in other states and locations. The Festival’s Albuquerque concerts
are part of a new partnership with KHFM, Albuquerque’s commercial classical
music radio station. We are thrilled to be working with KHFM in their new live
concert series, inaugurated earlier this year.
FanFaire: What in your opinion sets this Festival
season apart from past seasons?
OVITSKY: Each season is unique, due to
the variety of programming and guest artists on the season’s roster, not to
mention the new commissions by composers around the world. MARC NEIKRUG programs
fresh and compelling programs each season. It’s so difficult to pick just one
or two things to mention about this incredible season, but I would say that
the variety of premieres that we have this season – 4 Festival commissioned
premieres that include KAIJA SAARIAHO’s Serenatas; ROBERTO SIERRA’s
Concierto de Camera, HUANG RUO’s Real Loud and JOAN TOWER’s
A Gift, the world premiere of MARC NEIKRUG’s new work, Piece for
Pro Piano Hamburg Steinway Model D & Marimba One, and the US premiere of
LANCINO’s Onxa for Mezzo-soprano, Cello & Strings plus the completion
of the second installment of the Beethoven String Quartets by one of the world’s
renowned interpreters of the works, the ORION STRING QUARTET, is definitely
exciting.
Through a grant from the NEA, we’ll have a special American Composers Residency
program that will feature Roberto, Joan and Marc this season, providing opportunities
for audiences, musicians and students to interact with the composers and talk
to them about their works.
Also new this season is our first collaboration with the famed Sibelius Academy
of Helsinki’s new Santa Fe Composer’s Workshop. Finnish and American composers
and performance students will work under the supervision of KAIJA SAARIAHO and
cellist ANSSI KARTTUNEN. They will then be featured at a free concert in August.
Our program book program cover this season is “Morning Song” an original painting
especially for the Festival by the acclaimed Navajo artist, EMMI WHITEHORSE.
FanFaire:That you have been able for many
years now to sustain a 6-week long festival devoted solely to chamber music
is an eloquent testament to your and MARC NEIKRUG's leadership. It not only
speaks volumes about the state of chamber music but also bodes very well for
the future of classical music in America. Are you confident that classical music
has a bright future in America and that the reports of its certain upcoming
demise are premature and, quoting Mark Twain, "greatly exaggerated"?
OVITSKY: For 36 years, the Santa Fe Chamber
Music Festival has continued to grow and expand its presence in the classical
chamber music world, which certainly couldn’t happen if there wasn’t great interest
in the music from audiences. This year, for example, we’re seeing an interest
in attending festival concerts from a group of younger listeners who are also
planning some fun social events after the performances. Classical music, in
all its forms, is a part of our cultural heritage, as are all the arts, and
it seems to be doing just fine.
UK
The SANTA FE CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL