BRATTLEBORO — Yellow Barn Music finished its young artist residency in June, is beginning its core program for more seasoned musicians, and on Saturday, July 20, is presenting its annual Scholarship Benefit Concert, which this year honors Stewart Miller, headmaster of the Greenwood School.
It has also navigated its first year without its founder, David Wells, who died in 2012.
“Life without David is a tricky thing,” says Yellow Barn Executive Director Catherine Stephan. “We want to honor his legacy, yet go forward. It feels so strange that he is not here to guide us.”
Cellist David Wells and pianist Janet Wells co-founded Yellow Barn in 1969 as an informal summer retreat for David Wells' Manhattan School of Music students. It just so happened that, as the decades passed, Yellow Barn grew into one of the finest chamber music training and performance centers on Earth.
Through its annual summer educational programs and its ongoing artist residencies, workshops, presentations, and collaborative performances, Yellow Barn has welcomed thousands of musicians from all over the globe to Vermont, and has reached thousands more in audiences from the local community and across the nation.
Last week, Yellow Barn began its adult program performance schedule with an opening night concert in tribute to Wells. But Stephan says the tribute to Wells runs throughout the 2013 season, woven into the fabric of almost everything they're doing this year.
“In almost every concert, we are performing works for David, or pieces that remind us of David, or things that David would have loved,” she says.
Although Wells retired from official duties from Yellow Barn 12 years before his passing, he remained a guiding force for the chamber music programs.
Artistic director Seth Knopp says Wells' presence was felt everywhere at Yellow Barn, even after he stepped down from day-to-day duties there.
“It was his spirit that was his greatest gift. His message was simple: just love music, and enjoy sharing it through teaching and performing it. He made Yellow Barn into a place not about stature so much as celebrating the joy of music,” he said.
Knopp carried on Wells's vision, but liked knowing he could always call him up with a question on leadership, programming, or operations. And Wells understood Knopp's struggles.
“David would say to me, 'I know what you are going through. I'm thinking of you,'” said Knopp. “One time, when I met him in the halls of The Greenwood School, he said to me, 'Wow! Look what happened.' I felt that it was his complete embracing of the trajectory of Yellow Barn, as if he were our father saying, 'Everything is OK. I still like it. Great.' David was a man full of grace.”
The Yellow Barn is ever looking ahead, as well. Noting the unique interaction between the musicians that happens with every program, Knopp marvels that “Every year is a new adventure. The flavor changes,” he said, “but in a unified way.”
The most striking change this season: Yellow Barn is adding a harpist, Sivan Magen, to the faculty.
“We have never had a harp before,” Stephan says. “A harp opens a whole different repertoire of music than Yellow Barn has been able to play before. [It's] an often under-appreciated musical instrument that's more versatile than people often think,” she says.
Stephan explains that the harp is pivotal in contemporary music, where it's often used as a percussion instrument: “Trust me, here there are no cherubs strumming lyres.”
Another exciting feature of this summer season is the return of Arlene Sierra, who was a participant last spring when, with four other musicians, she composed an opera about human trafficking, which had a work-in-progress performance at Yellow Barn and premiered later in the summer in Santa Fe.
However, this time her role as composer-in-residence will be more pivotal for Yellow Barn's summer programs.
According to Stephan, what's unique about Sierra is that she makes the faculty take notice of her as a female composer, which, she says, is too often is overlooked in classical music.
“Don't get me wrong, her work stands on its own. But she's an important reminder of the importance of women to what we do. We will present a concert dedicated to her works, which will be both a retrospective and an occasion to present some of her new pieces,” Stephan says.
World premieres on tap
Yellow Barn also is set to perform several world premieres this year in keeping with its tradition of performing unusual and contemporary works.
“I don't go out of may way to program modern music,” says Knopp. “One thing I do try is to create a dialogue with different generations of music. This way all of us hear the repertoire fresh.”
On tap this summer are performances of Allen Ginsburg's epic poem “Howl” in a setting by Boston composer Lee Hyla for narrator and string quartet; a modern transcription of traditional folk songs promised to deliver a surprise at the end of the concert; and a fascinating piece, “Linea,” for two pianos, vibraphone, and marimba, by Italian composer Luciano Berio in the season's final concert.
Scholarship benefit concert
On Saturday, July 20, at 8 p.m., Yellow Barn will present its annual Scholarship Benefit Concert, which this year honors Stewart Miller, headmaster of the Greenwood School.
“This is a very special tribute,” says Stephan. “The partnership between Yellow Barn and Greenwood has been mutually fulfilling. We have more than a landlord and renter relationship: Yellow Barn leads workshops and has become a vital part of the Greenwood School in a relationship that has only extended our mission.”
“The benefit concert is not just honoring Stewart, but also the whole school,” Knopp adds. “The Greenwood School has been a wonderful partner with whom to work which made a great difference for both of our institutions. The school allowed us to bring eight music studios onto their property, six of which the school also uses. When we did the opera on human trafficking last summer, the school constructed its whole year's curriculum around human rights.”
The concert will include Sierra's “Harrow-lines” (1999) for piano quintet and the North American premiere of her “Mirrors” (2013) for violin and cello; Ernst von Dohnányi's “Piano Quintet in E-flat Minor, Op. 26” (1914); Krzysztof Penderecki's “Duo Concertante” (2010) for violin and double bass; and Alexandre Lunsqui's “Topografia, Index 3A” (2008) for flutes, clarinets, and percussion.