| Katzen proves popular with local neighborhood BY SALLY ACHARYA There was stirring music and enthusiastic applause, but it was more than a recital. There was a knowledgeable discussion about composer Dmitry Shostakovich, but it was more than a lecture. The first Katzen Community Lecture was a window into a performing arts education and a glimpse into life within the sprawling arts complex for people who may never have had occasion to venture onto campus before. And it also showed what the Katzen Arts Center is bringing to its neighborhood. 
Photo by Jeff Watts
Nurit Bar-Josef, concertmaster with the National Symphony Orchestra, discusses the interpretation of a Shostakovich quartet with AU music students. On a recent wet and dreary night, the recital hall at the Katzen was filled with members of the community who had come through the rain to listen to the soaring notes of Nurit Bar-Josef’s violin and the vigorous harmonies of the American String Quartet. It began with the AU students and Bar-Josef, a virtuoso violinist and the young concertmaster of the National Symphony Orchestra, playing a few selections to appreciative applause. But when Bar-Josef turned to the students, the atmosphere changed. It was as if the four musicians and the visiting master had become engaged in a workshop, with the audience hidden behind an invisible fourth wall, privileged to enjoy a rare glimpse of precisely how a musical education happens at AU. “What do you know about that piece?” she asked the students, who had just played String Quartet no. 8 by Shostakovich. A student violinist volunteered that the composer was referencing some of his earlier works in it. True enough; but Bar-Josef has something else to share with her listeners, both on-stage and off. “It’s subtitled, ‘To the memories of the victims of fascism in war,’” she noted, explaining the background to the challenging piece before pointing to an early section of the sheet music and saying, “You have a nice warm tone. But here, I want to feel cold. I want to feel shivering.” Violinists Michael Galvin and Alyson Slack, violist John Harrison Akins, and cellist Erin Silliman tried again briefly, to nods of approval, and then Bar-Josef thumbed to another section. “I’d like much more crescendo,” she said. “I don’t care if the sound is distorted. This is about war—seriously devastating stuff.” She demonstrated, ripping sound from her violin in a way that made the audience, and the four students on stage, sit up in rapt attention. “Don’t hold back,” she urged the students. And they didn’t. When they finished tearing through their piece again, the audience at the Abramson Family Recital Hall burst into spontaneous applause. The musical evening—part recital, part workshop, part lively discussion with students and audience—is an example of one of the innovative ways that AU’s College of Arts and Sciences is opening the Katzen to the community. “The inspiration came from our dean, Kay Mussell,” said musician in residence Nancy Snider. “She wanted to do some community outreach to say, ‘Yes, we have this wonderful new building, and we want you to be a part of it.’ That was the genesis for the idea.” In a number of the events taking place at the Katzen, the community is part of the building not just as spectators at a performance. They’re part of the educational experience. And that, said Mussell, is quite intentional. “This building was designed as an educational facility. We’ve always thought about it this way, and always thought about the potential it has to provide education,” Mussell said. Gallery talks at the AU Museum have drawn crowds to hear artists discuss their work. Noted Mussell, “Each time, there have been a lot of people there who have not been to AU before.” There was also a strong community presence to hear chamber music by Mozart earlier this month, including a number of people who said they heard about it through brochures mailed to AU’s neighbors. And several local elementary schools planned to bring children to matinees of a new play by Caleen Sinette-Jennings. The spring lecture series is slated to feature Kenneth Slowik, artistic director of the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society, “another remarkable musician, and a genius musicologist,” Snider said. “He has enormous recall, and that kind of knowledge can be intimidating, but what’s so great with him is he wants to share it.” The young, engaging Bar-Josef—who, as it happens, lives in the AU neighborhood—made her solo debut with the National Symphony Orchestra in 2001, and became its concertmaster later that year at the age of 26. “She is a fantastic violinist, but what appeals to me is the depth of her musicianship,” Snider said. “There’s a certain quality of musicianship that’s beyond virtuoso, that goes to some deeper place of inclusive expression. That’s really the thing that makes art change our lives. “It’s one thing to observe a juggler. But when they throw you up in the air with them, you have this wonderful feeling—‘Gosh, I’m part of this.’ We can’t go as far as she goes. She’s a great artist. But she takes us along with her.” And that’s part of what AU is doing for the community as well. At the Katzen Community Lecture and other events at the center, an education is taking place—and neighbors are invited along for the ride. |
