13 June 2010
Big interest in small ensembles: Chicago's young musicians find audiences for wide-ranging contests
By Wynne Delacoma
Their names are hip — Third Coast Percussion, eighth blackbird, Fifth House Ensemble.
The photos on their Web sites are hipper still. Striking an attitude in jeans and T-shirts beneath Chicago’s L tracks. Staring at the camera, eyes veiled by serious sunglasses.
Their performance venues are often the hippest yet — the Velvet Lounge, the Green Mill, S.P.A.C.E. in Evanston, Wicker Park’s Elastic Arts.
It’s a whole new world for Chicago’s young, classically trained musicians. Small ensembles showcasing recent music school and conservatory grads are popping up like ghost voters on Election Day. They are figuring out how to find audiences for the informal, wide-ranging concerts they want to perform.
“I began to notice an entrepreneurial spirit starting to develop about three or four years ago,” said Cliff Colnot. “In the last year or two, its growth has become exponential.”
Colnot has a unique perspective on both young musicians and the contemporary music scene. A composer as well as a conductor, he is principal conductor of the Civic Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony’s training ensemble, and music director of MusicNow, the CSO’s contemporary music chamber series.
The collapsing economy has hit orchestras and opera companies throughout the country hard. Too many gifted instrumentalists are competing for a dwindling number of full-time jobs. Recognizing the problem, music schools have begun offering courses in the business of music. At the same time, the Web has made it very easy — and inexpensive — for new ensembles to reach potential audiences.
The new climate suits some recent grads just fine.
“When I was in school, I was very resistant to learning orchestral excerpts,’’ said Cory Tiffin, a clarinetist and DePaul graduate who co-founded a chamber group named Anaphora in 2008. He won two auditions for orchestra jobs, he said, but loathes preparing for them.
“There’s this tedious attention to detail,” he said. “You go to an audition, and chances are there’s somebody there who has more experience and has played all of this stuff. It’s very frustrating.”
Young Chicagoans who want to perform cutting-edge music with like-minded colleagues in hip spaces don’t have to look far for role models. Two of the country’s most successful contemporary chamber music groups, eighth blackbird and ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble), are based in the city.
“We wanted to scratch an itch,’’ said Claire Chase, a flutist and executive director of ICE, about the decision to form an ensemble. “There was no other place for us to do our wacky thing.”
Earlier this year, eighth blackbird offered a seminar at Northwestern about forging a career. More than 100 students showed up.
“They’re so thirsty for knowledge,” said eighth blackbird flutist Tim Munro, “to know what sort of world they’re going into.’’
Taking those first steps is never easy. David Skidmore, a member of Third Coast Percussion, recalls hauling far too many instruments to an early gig. “We probably spent three or four hours setting up the concert,” he said, “and two or three hours tearing it down.” All this for a two-hour performance.
Musicians in emerging chamber groups make little or no money at first, though most are managing to earn a living with their music. But thanks in part to the Web, they are finding audiences, often young people like themselves interested in trying something new.
A YouTube video posted by The Gentlemen of NUCO, members of NU’s chamber orchestra who started doing rock-infused chamber gigs four years ago, has received 25,000 hits. Hits have come from France and Ireland.
“It’s the coolest thing,’’ said Josh Fink, a bass player and the group’s driving force. Facebook is also part of its promotional mix.
Fifth House Ensemble has been using technology of another sort this season. Its three-part “Black Violet’’ series, the tale of a distraught house cat wandering London during the Black Plague, wrapped up in April with performances in the Chicago Cultural Center and S.P.A.C.E. The project mixed luminously colored chamber pieces ranging from Prokofiev to an arrangement of Queen’s “Death on Two Legs’’ with elegant line drawings by Ezra Claytan Daniels. At S.P.A.C.E. listeners could sit at small tables and sip wine and beer during the performance.
What the future holds for Chicago’s emerging contemporary chamber ensembles no one can predict. The going is rarely easy, but longer-established groups such as CUBE and Contempo have been making music for decades. Stephen Burns, a trumpeter and conductor who founded Fulcrum Point in 1997, is a savvy veteran. He warns his students that they have to back up their well-designed Web sites with top-quality performances.
But enthusiasm still runs high.
“This is a significant trend,” said Colnot. “It’s not an anomaly.”
“There are great groups in Chicago,” said composer Kirsten Broberg, a founder of dal niente ensemble, “but they can only perform a fraction of the music that’s out there. I think this is going to become a very good kind of epidemic.”
Free-lance contributor Wynne Delacoma was the Sun-Times classical music critic from 1991 to 2006.
