#kneisel

This always happens, but we honestly can’t believe that it’s our last day in Blue Hill. We made sure to make stops at Bucklyn Coffee, the Blue Hill Wine Shop, the Blue Hill Coop, Bay View Bakery, the Fish Net, and all of our favorite places in town throughout the day.  In the morning we returned to GSA for another visit to Jam Bake. Clara and Hannah performed a movement of the Ravel duo and Sam and Tom challenged the students to try to take inspiration from Ravel and look for ways to create interesting ways of making the music flow and transition in their own arrangements.  Tom and Sam re-ordered the solos in Jam Bake’s version of “Rondo à la Turk” so that the feel could be more spontaneous, but also issued a challenge for each soloist to think about a bigger structure.

We really got into some serious music making with Jam Bake, as we considered questions of the same ilk as those posed by traditional chamber music, such as:

- What are the ways we can take this music off the page and really make it alive?How can the energy from one solo be passed to another to make a larger shape throughout the solo section?

- How can soloists choose the more unexpected notes of a scale more often, to prolong suspense and play with the audience’s expectations?

- What are the ways we can take this music off the page and really make it alive?

- How can the students who are backing up the solo (in this case drums, keys, and bass) influence or respond more quickly, and more specifically, to what the soloist is doing by changing up the rhythmic feel of the accompaniment?

The Jam Bake players were game for anything and had a lot of fun trying out new solos, transitions, and on-the-spot challenges. Thanks Mr. O for your tireless work as an educator, and for being a great host to KHBH once again!

Today we finally had a spot of time to hike up Blue Hill and have a picnic lunch at the summit, and we were thankful for the excellent weather.  We attempted to take some album cover/band photos with limited success and enjoyed reflecting on the week’s experiences as we walked.

The day concluded with our annual Spring Concert at Kneisel Hall.  It was extraordinarily meaningful to play Ravel, and Tom and Sam’s arrangements of Couperin, Takemitsu, Scriabin, Liszt, and others for a large audience of people from all over the community, from longtime friends of Kneisel Hall, to folks we met during the week at Jam Bake and the “History of Music in Blue Hill” event. Hannah and Clara were reflecting that-with a few years off here and there-one or both of them has performed every year in Blue Hill for the last fourteen years. It’s become our home audience away from home, and we are ever so grateful to be a part of such a unique and vital community. We love challenging ourselves to bring fresh, dynamic programs each time we play here, and hope to continue doing so far into the future. Thanks for coming out for us, Blue Hill! Till September!

We hit the ground running today (Wednesday) with stops at Bucklyn Coffee and the Blue Hill Coop to fuel up for a morning of arranging and rehearsing. The afternoon brought the first of three visits to Bill Schubeck’s band program at the Blue Hill Consolidated School. This is our 5th year working with Bill, and we are always super impressed by his patience and skill in teaching so many different instruments and levels, from beginners to advanced students. The eighth grade band is getting ready for their final concert of the year, so we sat in to give some last minute pointers on Hymn to the Fallen and other pieces.  

Later that day we continued our series of children’s concerts at the Blue Hill Public Library with “Kind of Bleu - Inspired by Jazz,” a journey from America to France and back again with an exploration of Ravel’s music and how it was inspired by jazz.  Our conversation naturally pointed towards the intersection between notation and improvised music: can audience members tell when musicians start playing off the page? We practiced improvising with children and parents in the audience by singing Row, Row Your Boat in many different ways, picking one element of the music to be free with each time.  In one version, everyone sang the words in any order they wanted to (Row! Row! Row! Row! Merrily, Boat!, etc.), in another, we changed the notes to any notes we wanted.  We created a quite a cacophony by all improvising simultaneously!

In the evening we were proud to host at Kneisel Hall an event celebrating the history of music in Blue Hill, organized by Hannah Cyrus and the Jonathan Fischer House in collaboration with Bagaduce Music, The Gilbert and Sullivan Society of Hancock County, Kneisel Hall, and several other individual contributors. Sam and Clara played part of a Mozart sonata to commemorate the first piano’s arrival in Blue Hill (by boat!) in the 19th century.  Clara and Hannah also shared some music by Ravel to tribute Franz Kneisel, who gave the NY premiere of the Ravel String Quartet in 1905.  Kneisel Hall executive director Ellen Werner read remarks prepared by board member and historian Betsey Harries. It was very meaningful to contribute to this celebration of the rich cultural and musical history of the region, and it was great to see so many new faces in the hall!

KHBH-Together in Music is STOKED to be back in Blue Hill for a week-long residency, where we are discovering the many connections between Classical chamber music and jazz. Directors Hannah Collins and Clara Lyon can’t believe their good luck in being joined by fantastic and multi-faceted musicians Thomas Bergeron (trumpet-Atlantic Brass Quintet and Springfield Symphony, and Director of Chamber Music at Deerfield Academy), and Samuel Adams (pianist, bassist, and composer: recently the composer-in-residence of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra).

We arrived in Blue Hill late last night, just in time to see a million stars come out. The heavy, vibrant stillness of the forest was just what we needed to ease our travel-weary selves. Our morning began with a visit to the fantastic Bucklyn Coffee (house-made roasts! great conversation!), followed by terrific breakfast sandwiches at our office-away from campus, the Blue Hill Co-Op.

Cross pollination and inspiration between classical and jazz composition is a long-standing tradition, and we had a blast in our morning rehearsal, examining the well documented territory of Ravel’s fascination with the blues via the Violin and Cello Duo and the Violin Sonata, as well as tackling for the first time some jazz-influenced arrangements of Couperin (Adams), Scriabin (Bergeron) and Takemitsu (Bergeron). 

We enjoyed a visit to the 8th Grade Band at Blue Hill Consolidated School in the afternoon, where our cherished collaborator Mr. Bill Schubeck is prepping the students for their year-end concert next week. The students are making good headway with “Hymn to the Fallen,” from the movie Saving Private Ryan, and it was a fun treat to hear Thomas’s story of how this piece inspired him to get serious about the trumpet as a young student.

Rehearsals ran far into the night, with lobster rolls from the Fishnet, an afternoon espresso at the outstanding Blue Hill Wine Shop  (office-away-from campus with all the excellent wine, cheese, bread, coffee, and friends with excellent musical tastes that you’ll ever need if you sail to Greenland from here*) haddock chowder at Marlintini’s, rounded out a great start to the week.

Stay tuned to our activities and silly antics to see where we’ll be tomorrow. And don’t forget to come to our shows: we can’t wait to play music for you!

Tuesday May 29, 4pm at Blue Hill Public Library: Interactive Childrens Concert  

Tuesday May 29, 7pm at Kneisel Hall: The Music History of Blue Hill

*this event is co-sponsored by the Jonathan Fisher House, the Blue Hill Historical Society, Bagaduce Music, the Gilbert and Sullivan Society, and Kneisel Hall

Thursday May 30, 4pm at Parker Ridge

Friday May 31, 7pm main stage performance at Kneisel Hall