Susan Lewis

Music lives in West Philadelphia, home of Play on Philly, a program modeled after Venezuela’s El Sistema, in which under-served children are taught to play classical music.  As WRTI’s Susan Lewis reports, the program is as much about social change as it is about music. 

Lewis:  Pictures at an Exhibition was the music behind a life-changing moment for trumpet player Stanford Thompson, who was a student at Curtis rehearsing the Mussorgsky  work with visiting conductor Simon Rattle:

Thompson:  He finally stopped the orchestra and he said, you guys sound like robots. Everything’s perfect, mechanical, in tune. He said, there’s a group of students in Venezuela who could outplay you all any day.

Lewis: After graduating from Curtis, Thompson went to Venezuela to study El Sistema.  He returned to  Philadelphia, and founded Play on Philly, which he describes as a social program:

Thompson: I think putting kids in an orchestra, having them play with one another, is one of the best ways for them to co-exist in the same space. For them all to have a voice, but not be a jumble of noise. I also think it can build a lot of pride within each child, within their families, and within the community. That’s the main goal of what we do.

Lewis: Music, says Thompson, is an ideal vehicle to teach the kind of responsibility that can change lives:

Thompson: It’s the only art form that I know that you can put 100 – 200 – 300 people in a room with a common goal. Even on a spiritual level, there are things you can’t really express in words, and I think that emotion can come out of these instruments.  That’s why I think music is unique.

Lewis: Play on Philly currently has 27 teaching artists, working with 225 students at 2 schools.

Let us know Where Music Lives in your community! Add your ideas in the comments section here and check out our other Where Music Lives posts.

The Philadelphia-based chamber group Dolce Suono is known for exploring historical connections while pushing its art form into the future. As WRTI’s Susan Lewis reports, Dolce Suono Founder Mimi Stillman believes that music is an integral part of life.

Lewis: In 2005, Stillman founded Dolce Suono, which she likens it to a repertory company.

Stillman: We form into different ensemble configurations, combinations, depending upon the repertoire we’re playing. One of our main ensembles is our trio of flute, cello, and piano with Yumi Kendall and Charlie Abramovic. We do music with flute, strings, and harp...we’ve been very active commissioning work for peirrot ensemble, which is a mixed grouping of flute, clarinet, violin, cello and percussion.

Lewis: To Stillman, who is also a music historian, music is more than notes and dynamic notations, however beautifully, or provocatively, arranged. It reflects a history – and history informs her performance.  

Stillman:  I think it's part of an approach to the world - not seeing every piece of music or every composer, every musical style in a vacuum.  It's part of a rich tapestry of music, visual art, culture, the world of ideas.

Lewis: This year, Stillman and her ensemble are exploring the music of Debussy.

Stillman: It always enhances our performance to be approaching music from the most micro – what am I going to do with that note, that phrase? – to the most grand, sweeping –what is the context of Debussy and what do we want to say about that?

Lewis: Stilllman herself is in the midst of her year-long commitment to play Debussy’s short piece Syrinx, each day in different circumstances and venues, which she documents in videos online.

Coming up...Dolce Suono in concert at the Trinity Center for Urban life in Center City, Philadelphia, joined by Anthony McGill, principal clarinet of the Metropolitan Opera, on Sunday, February 17 at 3 pm.

LFC:   For more on how history can inform innovative music making, listen to Susan’s interview with Mimi Stillman at WRTI.org.

The early 19th-century Italian composer Giochino Rossini composed nearly 40 operas before he turned 40.  Later in life, he turned to other forms. And near the end of his life, he wrote  a solemn mass for the dedication of a private chapel.  As two local ensembles prepare performances, WRTI’s Susan Lewis explores Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle.

Lewis:  In some ways, the work summarizes Rossini’s entire art, says Matthew Glandorf, artistic director of Choral Arts Philadelphia.

Glandorf : You get these beautiful, lovely, soaring, natural melodies that you would know from his operas, but you also see somebody who has an absolute mastery of interesting harmonies.

Lewis:  Glandorf says you can see that Rossini  was studying the music of his contemporaries.

Glandorf: Or shall we even say possibly the next generation.  You really find that he's saying, hey look, I can also compose a fugue like the best of them....

Lewis:  Choral Arts will perform the work on Saturday, February 9th and is engaging soloists who specialize in period vocal performance, among them Julianne Baird. 

Lewis:  Another interpretation will be offered  later this month by the Philadelphia Singers, which Glandorf welcomes.

Glandorf: I’m hoping that that might open up a dialogue to say there are infinite number of possibilities to approach the interpretation of music, and actually that its radical to approach music differently. 

Choral Arts Philadelphia performs Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle on Saturday, February 9 at 7 pm, at  St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Center City, Philadelphia. 

The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society presents the Philadelphia Singers performing the work on Monday, February 18th at the Kimmel Center's Perelman Theater.

German composer, performer, and conductor Felix Mendelssohn would have turned 204 on February 3rd.   While he was acclaimed during his short life of 38 years, only a fraction of his works continued to be performed after his death. WRTI’s Susan Lewis looks at Mendelssohn and his musical impact.

Lewis: His violin concerto is one of the works that survived the centuries.  Yet his contributions to music, says Mendelssohn biographer R. Larry Todd, were much more significant than many people realize: 

Todd: He was, of course, one of  the great pianists of his age, arguably the leading organist of the entire century.  He was also – it’s not well known - a violinist and violist. He could pick up a part in his own octet and play that, and of course he was one of the seminal conductors of the 19th century. He was one of the first conductors to conduct using a baton. 

Lewis:  Mendelssohn’s performance of the St. Matthew Passion at its 100th anniversary in 1827 helped spark the 20th-century Bach revival, says Philadelphia Singers Music Director David Hayes.

Hayes:  Most people thought Bach was a composer you studied – he was an intellectual composer. The idea of performing Bach, was, sort of, you know, crazy.  Why would you perform Bach?  But Mendelssohn was the first to really turn around and say, hey, these great works of Bach  - the St. Matthew Passion –we should perform these works.

Lewis:  Mendelssohn’s own compositions included symphonies, concert overtures, concertos, chamber music, choral works, piano and organ music, and songs.  But Todd says that after Mendelssohn died, much of this music was not performed due to anti-Semitism and changing musical tastes.  

R. Larry Todd is  author of Mendelssohn: A Life in Music.

Music lives on a leafy street in the Philadelphia suburb of Wynnewood, where a former Philadelphia Orchestra percussionist and longtime teacher continues to share his talents as a musician and craftsman. WRTI’s Susan Lewis visits percussionist Alan Abel:

Lewis: Abel’s basement was long ago transformed into a studio where he teaches current students, and coaches former students for orchestra auditions.

Abel:  I bought a five octave marimba to accommodate the students and auditionees. This came in pieces... Now, the timpani, that’s another story...This is an old old xylophone ...that’s an interesting bass drum.. and my bass drum stand, which I invented in the early to mid '60s.

Lewis:  Today, orchestras all over the world use Abel’s suspended drum stands – as well as the triangles he began manufacturing 50 years ago.  In a backyard workshop, Abel teaches groups of students to create triangle HOOKs – from coat hangers, plastic tubing, and fishing line – that hold the instrument  just so.

Abel:  I’ll show you what happens when you suspend it...Now I can play faster rhythms...I can also play rolls.

Lewis:  Three of the four members of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s current percussion section studied with Abel, including Principal Chris Deviney.

Deviney:  Jan, his wife, offered you tea, and then you’d go down into the basement, or we’d call it the dungeon sometimes, and you’d have your lesson, and you felt really kind of like you were an extension of his family.

Lewis:  Although he retired as a full time member in 1997, Abel continues to play with The Philadelphia Orchestra when it calls.

Let us know Where Music Lives in your community! Add your ideas in the comments section here and check out our other Where Music Lives posts.

Internationally known jazz musician Dave Burrell is composer-in-residence at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia, where he’s working on a multi-year project focused on the Rosenbach’s collection of civil war artifacts.  

Each year has a theme: the first was Civil War Heroes, the second, Civilian Life. This year, Burrell’s compositions interpret turning points in the war. WRTI’s Susan Lewis explores Dave Burrell's  journey in jazz composition.

One family name spans three generations of Philadelphia’s artistic heritage; each with an artist who has left his own mark on the city. WRTI’s Susan Lewis looks at the impact of three Calders – all, incidentally, named Alexander.

Alexander Milne Calder crafted over 200 figures for City Hall, which is topped by his 23-ton, 37-foot tall statue of William Penn. During a cleaning in 2007, conservator David Cann took us to the very top of Penn’s hat:

CANN: And we can pop the top off so you can see how he’s built in sections...there are 47 sections of casting that are flange bolted together on the inside, so they could put him up here … they couldn’t put it up here in one piece...

From what was for years the tallest point in the city, one can look down at Logan Square’s Swann Fountain, whose figures were sculpted by Calder’s son, Alexander Stirling Calder. Looking up the Benjamin Franklin Parkway is the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the home of the large mobile Ghost, created by his grandson, Alexander "Sandy" Calder.  Sandy Calder also created what are, in effect, tiny sculptures...jewelry:

FOSTER: He grew up in this legacy of sculpture...he couldn’t help it, he was making stuff out of everyday objects and scraps. All of them, in a way, are very interested in public art, and Calder grew into that, coming out of his background as an engineer and a kind of  playful sense of art as part of daily life.

More than 100 years ago, a settlement house in the Southwark section of Philadelphia provided services to immigrants, from English lessons to sewing classes. Soon it began offering music lessons, a mission it continues today.

In 1914, Settlement became an independent music school. And in 1917, it moved into what is still its main branch: the Mary Louise Curtis Building at 5th and Queen Streets. On a typical Saturday, the building is alive with the sounds of kids at play - playing music that is: 

Kid 1: I take ballet, violin and I go to music workshop.

Kid 2:  I play recorder and drums.

Kid 3: I play in a quartet, with piano, cello, violin and viola..

While its conservatory division became the nucleus of the Curtis Institute of Music in 1924, Settlement continued to offer instruction at all musical levels from beginner to pre-professional. Over the years, it has influenced hundreds of people who have gone onto success in various fields. Among them: Twister Chubby Checker, composer Michael Bacon, and the late Star Wars Director Irvin Kershner:

KERSHNER: I consider film as music, because its rhythmic, it has repeats, it has movements..

BACON: So Settlement to me was always a relaxed fun place to be, which is what you want to provide to children with music

CHUBBY CHECKER: Little did I know the things I’d learn there I’d be using in my music career, far beyond my expectations..

Today, in addition to its main building, Settlement has branches in Germantown, the Northeast, Willow Grove, West Philadelphia, and Camden.

Listeners may not think about the visuals in an orchestra concert, but body language is an important way in which musicians communicate with one another. From his chair, Philadelphia Orchestra Concertmaster David Kim leads Mozart’s Serenade in G Major: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik the way it would have been done in Mozart’s time, without a conductor, on January 10th, 11th, and 12th in concerts at the Kimmel Center.

Kim talks with WRTI’s Susan Lewis about body motion and playing without a conductor. Concert information here.

Artist Linda Lee Alter began collecting art by women in the mid 1980s after finding a dearth of female artists represented in museums and galleries. She collected a variety of art in different styles and media, and in 2010 donated approximately 500 works to Philadelphia's Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Now on view at PAFA, The Female Gaze: Women Artists Making Their World, is an exhibition of nearly 250 works from the collection. 

Be sure to check out a companion exhibition opening at PAFA on Saturday, January 12th: Modern Women at PAFA: From Cassatt to O'Keeffe.