["Theme from The
Welcome to Monday Night Live.
The wind may be whistling around the streets of Kalamazoo, bringing winter in for the first
time this year, but here in the Access Studio we have these wonderful lights.
We're warm, we're relaxed, we're looking forward to the week's festivities, and I mean that.
Wonderful things are going to be happening in the next few days in Kalamazoo, and we're
going to be talking to two of the key people in the Festival of Sacred Music in just a
moment.
As usual, however, before I introduce our guests, one or two thoughts for you to hold
on to.
The Bible has a story about the hunter who settled for the night and lit a fire and was
afraid and took a piece of wood and carved for himself an image so he felt safer with
the God of his own creation.
And then in the morning, of course, he got up and he carried his image away with him.
You probably remember the film with Tom Hanks, Castaway, and there was the Bible story all
over again.
Tom Hanks, I think, cut his hand and had some kind of a ball, a basketball or a soccer ball,
and there was the imprint of his hand on that ball, and it was stuck on a stick and became
an image, became something he could worship in a way for the rest of the movie, took it
back to real life when he was rescued, when he was found.
Mythology.
People from the very beginning of time have needed to look outside themselves, find something
beyond the everyday, and mythology develops.
And a number of years ago, the late Joseph Campbell had a wonderful interview with Bill
Myers on public television.
The book, the series had the same title, The Power of Myth, and there's a book which captures
more or less everything that was in the public television series.
And one page, I thought, might be worth quoting.
They're talking about myths, they're talking about religions.
Campbell says, Brotherhood, in most of the myths I know, is confined to a bounded community.
In bounded communities, aggression is projected outward.
For example, the Ten Commandments say, Thou shalt not kill.
Then the next chapter says, Go into Canaan and kill everybody in it.
That's a bounded field.
We're in this particular religion, we're in this particular myth.
Brotherhood exists there, but beyond, everyone is fair game.
And what our friend Campbell says is, the problem is, we now need a myth for the planet.
And there isn't a planetary myth.
He says the nearest thing we have to it is Buddhism.
Because the Buddhists see the Buddha in every one of us, in every living being.
So maybe the closest thing we come to having a planetary myth is Buddhism.
We still need that rounded thing.
And this week in Kalamazoo, we're going to be celebrating sacred music from many faiths
right here.
It's going to be an exciting hour.
Please stay with us, because this is an important subject for this time on the planet, not just
in Kalamazoo.
Now we have probably a broad shot, and I can introduce our mystery guests who we're hiding
in the dark for a while.
It really is a pleasure to introduce you.
Let me first of all make sure I get the names right, and then we can talk a little bit about
yourself before we talk about the festival.
We'll start with the ladies, of course.
That's an old kind of...
Yeah, age two, you know.
Oh, let's not go there.
Dr. Elizabeth Start.
May I call you Elizabeth?
Sure.
But we have to, from time to time, we'll flash up Dr. Elizabeth Start, your executive director
of the Michigan Festival of Sacred Music.
You are the boss of the festival.
What you say goes.
Well, I do have a board that I answer to, and I do have a program committee that helps
in the initial programming.
I'm being facetious.
Okay, yeah.
I didn't mean you were a bossy person.
I do say nobody can touch me, yeah.
You do need a guiding light, particularly in a complicated festival like this.
There's a lot going on.
And then across the table from me, Rohan Christian-Murthy.
Did I get anywhere close to the pronunciation?
Pretty close, yeah.
Christian-Murthy.
Okay.
May I call you Rohan?
Sure.
You can use my lotus or whatever.
You are going to be part of the festival.
Let's talk about you first, and then we'll come back to Elizabeth.
Okay.
You're part of the festival because you are a student, a senior at Kalamazoo College.
Correct.
And double major.
I'm double majoring in music and chemistry, and I'm actually coordinating the program
on November 11th.
That is Sunday.
And this is sort of a music and dance collaboration featuring two of these artistic traditions
from southern India, music and dance traditions.
Tell us how you got to Kalamazoo.
Tell us a bit about yourself.
Don't be shy.
Okay.
You don't have to reveal anything with which you feel uncomfortable, but you weren't born
in Kalamazoo.
I wasn't born in Kalamazoo.
I was actually born in California, and I moved here when I was around four.
But I'm, for the most part, a product of Kalamazoo.
I've gone to school completely here in Kalamazoo.
I'm a graduate of Kalamazoo Central and the Meth and Science Center.
And I've been a student at Kalamazoo College for the past three years.
As you mentioned, I'm a senior there, double majoring in music and chemistry.
So that's just a little bit about my background and what I've been doing here at Kalamazoo.
But obviously, I've also been pursuing music alongside my academics.
And I've been specializing in percussion for about the past ten years.
So how I began learning this instrument, which is not the usual percussion that most people
know.
The modungum.
Modungum, correct.
Modungum.
I'll get it right.
Modungum, a South Indian drum, is a bit unconventional in that I first started taking lessons from
a graduate student at Western ten years ago who had training in this art form of South
Indian percussion.
And I learned from him for about two months, after which he received a job transfer to
Massachusetts.
And since there were no other modungum instructors within a 300 mile radius of Kalamazoo, which
is still the case, we continued lessons over the speakerphone, which is really the only
option at the time.
And though it was unconventional, it actually worked out quite well.
And within a year of training over the speakerphone, I was in a position to begin performing.
And since then, I've been performing in several venues in the US, Canada, and in India.
And I've been performing in India for about the past nine consecutive years.
So I've had a wonderful opportunity to perform.
And I also enjoy teaching.
I have an Indian percussion ensemble at Kalamazoo College, which gathers about a dozen students
every quarter.
So this is something that we really enjoy at Kalamazoo College.
And we also attract members from Western and just general community members as well for
that.
You might know about the Indian Classical Music Lecture and Performance Series at Kalamazoo
College, which also attracts guest artists and scholars for lectures and performances
at Kalamazoo College.
Your president will be our guest in two weeks' time.
So I can check all this out with her.
And I can certainly ask about that field of studies.
I knew nothing about it.
Definitely.
I think she'll have plenty to say about it.
One of the objectives of Monday Night Live is to let people, not just in Kalamazoo but
in Portage, because it goes out in Portage probably next week, the people who hear about
it in Portage will have missed the festival because that's this weekend.
But the objective of this program is really to let people know the treasures that we have
in this area.
And very often people just don't realize what is beneath their feet, at their fingertips.
Having a teacher who, how many miles away?
Yeah, I mean he was initially here in Kalamazoo, but I guess a lot of people probably didn't
know that there was an instructor in town, but I happened to chance upon him at that
time.
And again, such a dedicated teacher who was even willing to continue lessons over the
speaker phone when he was all the way in Massachusetts.
Don't be shy.
You go back to India where all this started.
How do you match up to the people over there who have been doing this since they were babies
perhaps?
Well that's a tough question, although I think I got a fairly early start as well,
I started when I was eight.
So yeah, I mean I guess that's really not a question for me to address directly.
But I have been going there and I've had the opportunity to perform with several leading
artists in India as well.
Reading between the lines, this means he is very good.
Yes, I think he's won a couple of competitions there.
He wouldn't be invited back in time if he didn't hold his own over there.
That's interesting to know.
Right.
So it's a nice opportunity to go back and see how things are going on, as you said,
sort of in the source of South Indian music.
In terms of a future career, again I'm prying, and if you tell me to shut up I'll do that,
music or science?
Is it an either or?
That's a good question.
That's something that I'm really grappling with at the moment as well.
But I have been pursuing the arts and sciences in parallel pretty much since middle school.
And at this point I think I'm most interested in actually pursuing the music at a professional
level.
So my next step would most likely be a graduate program, a master's, PhD program, most likely
in ethnomusicology, which is sort of the study of world music.
World music.
So again we're coming back to the theme we'll probably explore in the rest of the program
of when we talk about music we're talking about a common language that crosses linguistic
boundaries and faith boundaries.
Thank you.
The spotlight is on you Elizabeth.
How did you, tell us a bit about yourself, where did it all start?
Well actually in Kalamazoo, I'm also a Kalamazoo product, we went to the same junior high school
in high school, and my father taught at Kalamazoo College and was actually a philosophy professor
but also an ordained minister and was very interested in comparative religion courses.
Those were some of his more popular courses, comparative philosophy.
And I just grew up with this interest in looking at the parallels and the things that are similar
between the religions.
And I'm a cellist initially, though I also, it's funny listening to Rohan because when
I was in high school and college I was doing both math and music as well.
And it wasn't until I was well into college that I kind of went straight for music.
But there's always been a technical side, I've done recording techniques, I've done
electronic music composition, things like that.
I've studied acoustics, which of course is something that Rohan's been involved in with
his new design of his drum too.
We've got something going here, Peg, who's behind that camera, teaches at the Math and
Science Centre.
He does?
And is a musician.
So are we talking about the same side of the brain, is there some wiring involved here?
If you can cope with the difference between one and three, can you cope with the difference
between do, la, so?
So I mean, is it, we don't need to go there.
I don't know, a lot of people have written about that.
I think if I could answer that question I wouldn't have to go to grad school.
Oh, you have to go to grad school.
Well thank you very much.
Now let's switch to the main topic for the night and make sure I get it right.
It is the 4th Michigan Festival of Sacred Music.
And it's going to start on, well it's already started to some extent, I know various events
have taken place.
Well, our fringe events are actually starting up tomorrow.
But we're already scurrying about getting things ready and the festival itself starts
Thursday with the opening ceremony of the Tibetan monks and their sand painting.
We need to say this kind of thing repeatedly, we'll remind people that it starts on Thursday
at noon and what have you as we go along, because not everybody, this will shock you
I know, not everybody watches the full hour.
This wonderful thing, the remote control, means that some people take five minutes here,
some stay for the full hour.
But don't be afraid to butt in and say, Keith we haven't set Thursday at noon, it starts
in the public museum.
Okay, well I don't want people to miss though that Wednesday night there will be a wonderful
event that the Kalamazoo Shape Note Singers will be doing at First Presbyterian Church.
There's a wonderful documentary called Awake My Soul, which is about the Shape Note singing
tradition, the Sacred Heart tradition.
And they're showing that and doing a workshop in Sacred Heart singing and that's one of
our free events.
We have a lot of free events in the festival.
I remember trying to make the festival start on Thursday and then we just kept getting
more and more fringe stuff and just more and more involvement in the community, so it's
great.
It's good to know we've got a fringe.
But anyway, let's go back again because you shuffled from you.
You studied math, you studied music, your doctorate is?
Music composition from the University of Chicago and I also have performing degrees and cello
math degrees.
I've taught a number of colleges in the Chicago area, DePaul University and Columbia College,
and freelancing as a cellist all the time as well.
And though I'm in Kalamazoo now, I still go back and perform in Chicago and am actually
working with the Chicago Composers' Consortium as well, so keeping busy in all aspects of
music.
You sleep just about four hours a night, I suspect?
If the cats let me, yeah.
Okay, now, when did it all begin?
This is the fourth festival, so it began in 2000 and so?
2001 was the first festival.
They were planning it in 2000.
It does take us a couple of years to get everything in place.
And it was actually the idea of Dr. Wenqiao Chen, who was a professor at Kalamazoo College
retired, and he just thought it would be a good way to involve the community and bring
the community together with music.
And as far as I can see, I went to your website, and we'll flash up the website from time to
time.
That's a very interesting website, all kinds of information on it.
Oh, thank you.
It sounds as if from the very beginning, this idea of ecumenical mingling, we need to bring
in Presbyterians.
I think it started, didn't it, in the Baptist Church?
It did.
That's where the discussions took.
But now we have programs in the Baptist Church, in the Presbyterian Church, the Congregational
Church, the Congregation of Moses.
So we're bringing in these, I was going to say local faiths, I didn't mean that, different
denominations.
But you're reaching out beyond.
Yeah, well I think that the downtown churches especially, look at how they participate in
New Year's Fest.
They're interested in doing things that bring the community together.
And the fact that those are our venues, it makes it seem more Christocentric, as they
used to say in the festival.
But it's just that these are people who are involved, and these are great places, great
venues for our events.
And also if you look at our schedule, things are so close together, that it's just really
nice to be able to walk from one building to the next to the next.
And then you can see everything rather than having to get in your car and drive over to
some other place.
So it's still basically a downtown event, but it's global in its reach.
These are not the days to talk about crusades, are they?
I think Bill Myers and Campbell had something important.
We need a global, a planetary myth, we need something that goes beyond particular faiths.
And so many of these have things in common.
And yet sometimes we fight over just a minute, I think the difference between the Catholic
Church and the Orthodox Church is minute, the philoquic clause or something like that.
And because of this we say you're outside, you're not in our brotherhood circle.
We can't do that these days, can we?
Rohan, I mean, what do the people in India feel about Christocentric?
That's a pretty big question, but I guess I'd speak on behalf of musicians in that I think
for many of us our religion really is the music, the art.
And what, at least for me, allows me to reach out to other faiths and other cultures is
really my music and the ability for the music to bridge these cultural gaps, so to speak.
And I've again had wonderful opportunities to attempt that initiative at a variety of
venues both here in the US and in India.
Yes.
So we're not just going to, I was going to say subject, no, we're not going to subject
our audiences to music.
We're not just going to entertain our audiences.
We're not just going to teach them something about other kinds of sacred music.
Are we going to give them a spiritual experience?
I think so.
The music that we have, it's all very high quality in its genres and in its faith traditions.
It's a wide variety of things.
We have actually a radio music drama.
We have of course Rohan's work with the South Indian Music and Dance, the Tibetan Monks,
Kalamazoo Singers, Kalamazoo Children's Chorus will be giving us a wonderful performance
of wonderful choral music, the Chichester Sounds, as well as some other works.
So it's a wide range.
We have a wonderful organist coming in.
We're working with Miller Auditorium and the NAEA Gospel Fest Choir to present incredible
gospel music, both the choral music and then Take Six, whose a cappella vocal harmonies
are just wonderful, wonderful to hear.
So there's a wide variety of things and also what's really nice is that it does bring the
community together.
If you look at the list of organizations involved, it's just, I couldn't even try and rattle
them all off right now, but we have artwork that brings in Kalamazoo Public School students
and that gives us a whole new perspective.
We're tying into people right now reflecting on the transformational power of the Kalamazoo
Promise for the community and children in the community.
So one thing that I notice is working with all these different people, different faiths.
When we come together to celebrate ourselves in our community, those conflicts that you've
mentioned earlier, they just, they're not important and we just don't run into them
really.
Well we hope not.
But I was almost, maybe I'm getting into too deep water, but when you play that cello,
it isn't just about making music I suspect.
Why did you choose the cello?
Because my father played it.
Well not mundane, I heard it all my life.
And I started on violin and just the cello was what I wanted to play.
But yeah, I think that Rohan would agree, when you're playing, it's almost like a form
of meditation.
It is an experience that takes you somewhere else and when you're playing with other people,
you're doing that with them and that also sort of expands how you relate to people in
the world.
When I haven't played for a while and then I get to sit down and play, no matter what
it is, I feel calmer afterwards, I feel more connected.
You really have got something beyond the music, you've been connected.
I think really what's important to note is that when we practice or when we perform,
we really also need to be cognizant of the tradition that's behind all of these art forms.
For example, the tradition that I'll be presenting on Sunday, November 11th, the music and dance
collaboration, it has a history of nearly 2,000 years.
So for me to just play an instrument or perform this music is not just an event taking place
at a given time, but really it harks back those two millennia and all of the evolution
and revolution that took place during all of those years.
I think what's really wonderful about this festival is that it reveals how so many of
these musical traditions have in a sense a spiritual history.
For example, a lot of Western classical music originated in the churches and similarly Indian
classical music essentially originated in the temples, the Hindu temples and even the
dance form that we'll be presenting on Sunday.
November 11th is essentially something that began in the temples, but since it developed
as sort of a unique artistic entity, now we have another means of perhaps a more accessible
means of sharing this spiritual and cultural tradition with the rest of the world and that's
really I think one of the key missions of this festival.
If we're getting close to this, the mission of the festival is not just to entertain,
it is to represent diverse faiths through their music, bringing greater respect and
understanding through sharing the treasured music of these traditions.
So we're not just reaching across the faiths, we're reaching across the centuries and a
sense of continuity with the people who taught this instrument in many, many years, 2,000
years ago.
The drum that you're going to play is not 2,000 years old, but it's been around now.
Going back to the first, the opening, which is at noon on Thursday in the Kalamazoo Museum,
the monks, the Tibetan Buddhist monks, Buddha, I think the first Buddha was born 600 BC,
so we're going to be going back 2,500 years when we have that very first opening ceremony.
So we're covering the world in terms of music, the world including in terms of faiths and
we're covering 2,500 years in this festival that starts on Thursday, at noon, in the free.
We're not allowed on our program on access, we can say anything, this is the home of free
speech.
We're not allowed to say tickets cost, but we can say tickets are available, go to the
website to find them, but not every performance needs a ticket.
The first performance of the monks is free, the film that follows directly from the Fetsun
Institute again is a free occasion.
Any of the events at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum are going to be free events.
So our three documentary films, the Shokuhachi Japanese Bamboo Food Concert and also of course
watching the monks do their sand painting as well as their opening and closing ceremonies.
Those are all free as is the Shape Note Singing Workshop, Rohan's Workshop, the Briner Lecture
where our organist will talk about the northern German Lutheran tradition organist as preacher.
And I'm sure there are more, we have an organ master class, so there's a lot of opportunities
to see our artists in a free situation.
Yes, so there are free things and there's mingling, a good time will be had by all and
a superb time will be had by many.
We might mention the Gazette, Yesterday's Gazette, I thought did a very good job of
talking about this festival and there's a schedule there, I say schedule now that I'm
an American you see, I don't say schedule anymore.
A schedule there and people can look at Yesterday's Gazette or they can go to your website and
they can choose the thing that really, there will sometimes be some duplication, am I right?
It's not possible to see everything because some things take place at the same time.
Our fringe events do conflict a little bit, Wednesday night believe it or not you have
to decide between two fringe events whether to hear Ellen Kushner in an author event at
Kazoo Books or go and participate in the shape note singing workshop and Saturday morning
we do have three free events happening, the organ master class, the documentary film on
Yusuf Islam, the artist formerly known as Kat Stevens and also Rohan's workshop.
So there are three different things going on there but that really is the only time
you have to make a choice.
All the other events, especially our ticketed ones, but everything else works in such a
way that you can go from one to the next.
Let's go back to that first event because we have supposedly first event.
You lent me a DVD and we've taken some still photographs from that showing the mandalas
and there's no sound with it but maybe we could talk a little bit about what we see
on the screen as they flash past, if we could ask Anthony out there or Bill to roll that
first tape showing the monks at work, that's a very brief shot, I believe there's their
beginning work on or a completing work.
Well actually that would be pretty near the completion because what they do first is lay
out lines in which they will be pouring the sand and they actually lay it down almost
grain by grain, what he's holding there is a little metal scoop and by running a stick
up and down it, the sand falls out grain by grain.
Grain by grain, two pounds of sand I believe they bring with them.
All I know is that when they dispose of that at the end we will have less than a cup of
sand.
Incredible.
And it's a six foot diameter circle.
Here I think the monks are performing.
Yeah, they're posing with their instruments, that's some of what you would see at Chenree
Auditorium on Saturday night and there's dance involved, there's some incredible costumes
involved with their dance but those instruments will also be used in chanting, will occur
during the opening and closing ceremonies of the sand painting as well.
Do you know what kind of instruments they use?
The name of the horn is dung chen I think and there are some drums, they also are famous
for multi-phonic singing where they're producing two and three pitches at the same time with
their own voices.
I heard them some years ago, they were in Kalamazoo, an amazing ability to use three
of their vocal chords simultaneously.
So they're going to be, I hadn't realized it, at the very beginning when they start
to lay out the mandala there will also be some music as well at that.
Yes, there's chanting and playing of instruments.
The ceremonies at the beginning and the end are between a half an hour and 45 minutes.
And they will be working throughout the festival all building that mandala.
The wheel, the first Buddha was born in northern India I believe, Nepal, what's called Nepal
now, and the wheel, the Buddhist wheel which seems to feature in some of those mandalas,
isn't that in the middle of the Indian flag?
Most likely.
I think, I think it's, there's still this link up, these are Tibetan Buddhist monks
but they're not in Tibet now of course, they're in an Indian monastery.
Right, their monastery is in exile in India.
Yes, I can't pronounce the name of the, I've got it written down here, Drepung Le Seling
Monastery?
Yeah, I've been calling it Drepung Le Seling myself but I don't know if I'm right.
But they're exiled Tibetan monks and they have an American off-hute somewhere down south.
So they have an office that manages their tour.
The monks that will be coming though, they're selected from the monastery in India for their
skills at the sand painting and at chanting and at dance and at the instruments.
So they come in a tour group that is still being led by an elder monk who sees to their
spiritual needs while they're here.
So we're sort of in contact with them through an office in Atlanta but these are monks coming
straight from Tibet.
We've been given a sheet of a few phrases like hello and things like that because probably
one or two maybe will speak English.
So they're really just on this excursion and they'll go back to the monastery.
Well, let's move off, if you're not careful I'm going to have you talking about the Buddhist
faith for the rest of the evening and we have all kinds of other things to cover.
Thursday, that takes place down there at the public museum but then if we move on to the
congregational church at 3.30, a very special person is performing I believe.
Well, many special people are performing in that but I will be playing with them.
Capriccio is a flute and harp duo out of Chicago and they pitched to me the idea of doing a
program based on Hebraic themes and there are a number of pieces on the program that
are based on Hebraic themes.
There's also a work for soprano flute, harp and cello based on the Diarrhea Van Frank
which is a very powerful, wonderful piece and that will be closing the program.
And the singer in that happens to be a singer who does a lot of things with Music of the
Broke and Lyric Opera in Chicago and she lives in Minnesota now but she is featured in the
Fetzer film, The Mystery of Love, a film sponsored by the Fetzer which will be shown at one o'clock
that day.
So you can go and see her in the film and find out what mystery of love was involved
in her life and then hear her sing this piece, The Diarrhea Van Frank.
So cello light and then light.
In person, yeah.
We should have mentioned, I mean funding, some of the funding comes from, I think originally
Gilmour Foundation, Kalamazoo Foundation, Fetzer as well, they're still involved, those
three foundations?
Oh yes, again to rattle off all of them it would take a while, it's a very large list
and we do have them listed on our website.
But this is a good indication of the support in the community for what we're doing here.
This is something important we're involved in, this isn't just, let's entertain ourselves
as the winter creeps in.
Are you going to play something from that capriccio?
Yes, I'm playing as part of the concert, there's a flute and cello duos that we're doing and
they're canons so what I can play for you is pretty much the whole piece except of course
I'd be playing, the flute would be playing the same music at a different time so it'd
be more complicated sounding, there's more counterpoint but the essential melodic elements
I could play for you.
And these are called Hebrew canons and by a composer named, his last name is Lichter,
is known mostly in film writing and television writing but I'll just play you a little bit
of a couple.
If you can leave your, maybe Roger out there can cut that microphone and I'll take care
of it while you slide across to the other microphone in the corner.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to this performance, I've only heard Dr. Starr a couple of times.
Most recently we actually did a performance together of a concerto, a merdangum concerto
for myself and string orchestra so this is something that we performed at Kalamazoo College
just a few months ago but yeah definitely looking forward to hearing her perform today.
Oh my, have you composed anything together, have you done original music?
Some of these pieces are basically first of their kind collaborations for Indian percussion
and string orchestra.
Yes.
Are we all set?
Can we?
I'll just play a little bit of one of these, well two of these different Hebrew canons.
This one is subtitled Once Upon a Time and it's the only one the cello starts, so.
Here we go.
So that's one of them, and if you can imagine the flute doing something similar at the same time,
they're really very, very wonderful kind of polo pieces.
There's a far more lively one that it ends with that's called Plexmer Canon.
Plexmer Canon
Thank you very much indeed.
You said the second one was a Plexmer Canon, and I think I could recognize that rhythm at least.
Thank you very much.
It's really a lot of fun playing with this flutist.
She's done these with a number of other cellists,
and she says she's really enjoying how I'm getting more into the spirit that I like the glissandi.
She's converting you.
Oh, she doesn't need to convert me. I'm enjoying it.
It's fun, some of the things you can do on a string instrument,
and sometimes we're afraid to really go in for those little inflections, but it's a lot of fun.
Something just occurred to me. You're learning another language.
It's like learning French and then switching to Swedish perhaps. I'd never thought about that.
As you move into the music of another faith, you're actually moving into another kind of language.
That's a really interesting point, Keith, because in the performance that I'm coordinating on Sunday, November 11th...
Keep saying the date.
Sure. Sunday, November 11th at 1 o'clock in the St. Luke's Church in downtown.
We will be featuring a violinist, Shruti Iyer, from Philadelphia.
Actually, all three of the other artists are from Philadelphia, including myself,
and they include Cure Noveli, Vidya Shankar, who's the vocalist, Shruti Iyer, who's the violinist, and Shoba Narayanan, who's the dancer.
In this performance, we are going to be featuring a violinist who has learned Indian classical violin in addition to Western classical violin.
It's really interesting. I think our audience will really enjoy seeing how the violin has been adapted to Indian music.
In fact, it's been around in Indian music for almost 150 years.
The playing style and the techniques are considerably different from the Western classical tradition.
I think it'll really be nice to see how the same instrument is being dealt with by a different musical tradition.
I certainly plan to be at that performance at 1 o'clock.
November 11th.
At St. Luke's.
At St. Luke's Church.
The Baptist Church, we've mentioned that's where it all started, but again on Thursday the 8th, 7.30.
Messiaen, you have that wonderful, deep quartet that he composed in a prison camp.
Yes.
An amazing story in itself.
Yeah, it's a wonderful piece and I've written about ten pages on it, so I won't talk about it too much.
So there will be notes for people to read out?
Yeah, I cut it down to much less.
But there is so much in the piece and it's regarded as one of the masterworks of the 20th century just as a piece of music.
And then when you look at the spiritual significance of the piece, this is all based on this one man's incredible faith.
He based it on the Book of Revelations and there are a lot of elements in it.
The fact that he saw colors in music and actually composed to the colors that he saw in his mind as he heard different notes.
Also using bird song as the symbol of freedom of our striving for higher spiritual planes.
And of course we have incredible people performing it.
We have artists in residence from the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra performing with Raymond Harvey on the piano.
So it's going to be a wonderful performance.
And it's also working as a concert to bring together multi-faith musical reflections from our other artists.
So you actually will get a sampling of some of our other artists that night.
Yale Strom will represent Judaism.
Dawood Warnsby, Islam.
Michael Chikuzin Gould will play the shakuhachi representing Buddhism.
And David Trader who is our Briner Lectureship Collaborative Artist.
He's an organist.
He'll speak on Christianity.
And all of this will be moderated by Ellen Kushner who is a public radio personality.
Her program Sound and Spirit is very popular.
Will the maestro say anything about the story of the prison camp?
I know that someone will speak about that.
But certainly that is somewhat in my program notes.
And there is a wonderful book out by the author.
I think her name is Rishan who speaks about...
She interviewed all the people involved who were still alive about eight years ago.
And it's just an incredible book that lets you know what it was like to be performing it,
what the subsequent performances were like,
the lives of these musicians who happened to be in this POW camp.
It's a really interesting book.
And also the perspective of Messiaen talking to Messiaen's wife and finding out his views on the piece.
So I assume that someone from the group is going to talk a little bit about that.
It's a powerful story.
Yeah.
But we do of course want to make sure it's clear that this is primarily a musical event.
The reflections by Dawoud and David and Michael and Yale are going to be a little bit of speaking,
but then a lot of music in these elements.
And also I should point out that the program starts with a really interesting piece
that's being performed by percussionist Greg Sikor.
And it's actually based on a person's image of a self-immolating Buddhist monk.
The images we saw in the early 1960s in Vietnam.
And that was this monk's way of protesting religious persecution.
And the piece is called A Robe of Orange Flame.
And he speaks of taking on this robe in order to be noticed.
A feast, a feast coming up.
Television sometimes makes me want to weep.
Only once have I cried in front of the television set.
And that was late at night years ago in England.
Pablo Casals has given the United Nations Medal of Freedom.
And he stood there, took the medal, and then said,
I have not performed in public, because against fascism,
I have not performed in public for the past 40 years, but tonight I would like to play.
And he took his cello and he played a little Basque piece about the bird of freedom.
And you were talking about the bird of freedom.
Now we're going back 40 years, about two and a half thousand years.
I have to butt in for just a moment.
Because remember, one of the aims of this program, Monday Night Live,
is to say all the good things we have going on in Kalamazoo.
We have a competing festival, the Russian Festival, comes to town.
And I think I should mention the fact that that will be on Friday the 9th.
There will be a gala concert, I believe, in the Dalton Center.
And that ticket would get you into the festival at the Fetzer Center on the Saturday.
So there's another show in town as well.
But I think perhaps different audiences.
Everybody will have.
And I had dinner the other day with some of those folks,
and we were talking about how perhaps they might want to be in nicer weather.
So a little bit earlier on next time.
A group from the Washington, the Russian Culture Center is coming into town.
It's quite an important event.
We have a lot of good things in this community.
I would like to show a little roll-in that you provided of a rehearsal.
I don't know if it was a rehearsal for the performance that will be on the 11th.
Yeah, correct. This is some rehearsal footage for our upcoming performance on Sunday, November 11th,
a performance at 1 o'clock at St. Luke's.
And this was taken a couple of months ago when I went to Philly, Philadelphia,
for a rehearsal for this program with the other musicians and the dancer.
So these are the actual musicians who will be the violinists,
the vocalists, the vocalists, vocalist and dancer.
So I believe this is probably the first piece that we'll be presenting in our performance.
So while if Terrence or Roger or Bill have got the roll-in of the...
Ensemble.
Ensemble, the rehearsal for this performance, while Etta's playing,
you could maybe move over to your...
Ensemble.
We've finished the extract, the rehearsal in Philadelphia.
And now if we can come right in on you, Rohan,
you might want to tell us just a little bit about the drum itself.
Sir, hopefully one of these mics is picking up my voice.
This is the mazangam, and this is a 2,000-year-old South Indian drum, pitched drum.
It basically has three major parts to it.
We have two playing surfaces that are played with the fingers and wrists of both hands,
and they're fastened to a central wooden shell.
The instrument that we have here is actually something that I sort of re-engineered.
This isn't a traditional design, but this is something that tends to be a lot more
recent-looking and durable than traditional design items for performances throughout the past few years.
So we've played a short improvisational piece in a piece I've known as Bobby Fowler.
I should give you some idea of what this instrument sounds like.
Let's have a listen.
Thank you very much indeed.
If you could come back to the table.
You said something that I think I understood.
You said you re-engineered the drum.
You said it was tunable. Was that the phrase you used? Pitched?
What that basically means is the instrument has this tonal or pitched element to it.
It can produce a pitch, and that's quite unique for a percussion instrument,
because most percussion instruments don't have the ability to produce these distinct pitches.
What allows for this tonal production is a really ingenious fixture on the tonal head of the instrument,
which you probably caught in the video footage of the demonstration.
That is made of an iron oxide and starch mixture.
That black disc is made up of about 40 layers of this material.
It allows for the production of these harmonic overtones, or basically pitches.
With this new design, tuning the instrument is a lot easier, and preparing the instrument is a lot easier.
I've got to be careful, because one of the treasures of this community is Western Michigan University,
as well as Kalamazoo College.
We hear the marching band practicing its drums every evening from our home.
Not quite as subtle as this. It's invigorating, but you can really play this.
You're right. It's not as voluminous as a lot of Western percussion is in that sense.
Since it's played with the hands, obviously it can't be as loud as something that's played with a large stick,
but at the same time there are a lot of nuances and a lot of intricacies that are quite characteristic of this drum.
You've been playing that instrument, or one like it, since you were eight years old.
Yeah, about the past ten years.
How long does it take an ordinary person to master it?
I think everyone has the potential to. They just have to find whatever system works for them.
Obviously, how long it takes for an individual to reach a performance level is the question.
That really depends on the individual and what the individual considers performance level.
This is a gifted person here, the Buddha in each of us, even though this is a Hindu instrument in the temple.
Buddhism itself originated in India.
Thank you very much. All kinds of good things. We have just about five minutes. We have to be selective.
I looked at the other things that were coming along, and David Schroeder came to mind.
I heard him play on the harpsichord at the previous Gilmore Festival, played the Goldberg Variations. Amazing!
He is an amazing musician and plays all keyboards. He plays clavichord, organ, piano, and he plays all types of music.
He is certainly involved with early music groups, but he plays a lot of contemporary music.
As a matter of fact, that's where I first met him, was performing with contemporary chamber players at the University of Chicago, Ralph Shapie's old group.
He was the piano player at the time that was playing with them in ensembles, and I was playing cello with him.
He has been here and been featured on the Gilmore at least once, and I think he did five concerts at that festival.
He will be performing on St. Luke's organ on Friday at 3.30, and he will be also doing the Briner Lecture at First Presbyterian Church.
He will be talking about, as I mentioned earlier, the North German Lutheran tradition, organist as preacher, and playing, of course, examples to go along with that.
He will also be in First Presbyterian's worship service Sunday morning, so there are definitely chances to catch him for free in those two venues,
and also he will be teaching a master class with members of the Southwest Michigan American Guild of Organists at First Methodist Church Saturday morning.
First Methodist Church Saturday morning, let's be clear on this now. You don't just walk in and say, teach me the organ. People, he'll be criticizing, listening to our organists,
but the public is welcome to sit in the pews and listen to these people take it.
Yeah, well, I think he will not be critical. He will be helpful.
Yes, I'm sure.
Yeah, they have prepared pieces for him, and he will hear them and make suggestions as to how to get more out of there.
What I'm amazed with, Don Upshaw did a master class, Yo-Yo Ma did a master class some years ago.
The generosity of these people who have mastered their instrument in teaching and critiquing people who haven't quite reached that level yet.
The generosity, the love for a fellow musician, somebody who cared enough to put in the hours and hours of,
have you ever worked out how many hours of practice you've put in?
No.
I heard that if you look at the music schools in Berlin, there are two, Conservatoire, the and the next one.
And to get into this one, it's a question of hours, but the time you can get into the lower level,
you've done something like 18,000 hours of practice. To get into the next one, it's 50% more than that.
I mean, hours of practicing and ability later on go together. Hard work goes behind all this.
Now, the mechanics of putting together a festival. Sounds as if you know these people.
This is when I first met him, you say, in Chicago.
So are you one of the people who will pick up a phone and say, could you come this week in November to Kalamazoo?
Oh, yeah. For the most part, I am the person who made those calls or emails.
And some of them are indeed people I know, but there are a number of people that I don't know.
Certainly the first thing I lined up, because people were asking about Tibetan monks, were Tibetan monks.
And I had known of a group performing in Elgin, Illinois a few years ago. I saw their information, and so I contacted them.
The shakuhachi performer, Michael Gould, I found him actually initially online, just Googling Michigan shakuhachi and Buddhism.
And that's who I found. But he has wonderful credentials. And Rohan, I'm lucky enough to know him.