\u201cContemporary music and boats! What a lovely combination,\u201d enthuses incoming freshman and flutist Monika Szumski, who was among the 38 members from the Montclair State University Symphonic Band and Wind Symphony participating on June 21, in Make Music New York (MMNY)\u2014an annual free music celebration. <\/p>\n
Musicians from the West Point Band, the Army\u2019s oldest band, joined the Montclair State musicians for the New York premiere of composer Alvin Curran\u2019s 40-minute Maritime Rites<\/em>. \u201cIt is at times calm, intense, confusing, and terrifying and is as much a piece of theater as it is a piece of music,\u201d comments Thomas McCauley, Montclair State\u2019s director of bands. <\/p>\n The 80 musicians of the combined ensembles performed Curran\u2019s signature work while seated in rowboats that were in constant motion on the lake in Central Park. Each rowboat held three performers and a rower. \u201cThree flutists in a boat plus one rower equals trouble,\u201d Szumski says. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t unstable\u2014as long as we barely moved. One of us was in the front, keeping time on a stopwatch, while two of us sat in the back, with the rower in between.\u201d<\/p>\n Clarinetist Amy Wilcox, who is a graduate performance major concentrating in conducting, notes that the boats were rowed from the Boat House across the lake to where hundreds of appreciative spectators were gathered. \u201cWhile some of the boats rowed around a bit more, most of them just floated around during the performance,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cThere weren\u2019t any collisions like Titanic versus iceberg, but occasionally the boats all clumped together and bumped into each other,\u201d says Szumski. \u201cThe important thing is that no instruments fell into the water.\u201d<\/p>\n The musicians, who performed in near record-breaking heat, were grateful that the lake was shaded. \u201cFor me, at least, once we started playing, adrenaline kicked in and I didn\u2019t think about the heat,\u201d Wilcox remarks. <\/p>\n While the ensemble members sat in their groups of three during two rehearsals, they didn\u2019t experience the full effect of the piece until the performance itself. \u201cIt was unique how the sound completely changed in the piece as we floated past different groups of musicians. Now I can see why where you sit during a performance is so important,\u201d explains Szumski. <\/p>\n \u201cThis was a superb performance all around,\u201d sums up composer Alvin Curran, who came from his home in Rome to attend the event. \u201cWithout any real rehearsal on the water, nor much info to guide the rowers in their acts of random choreography, I was more than satisfied with the musical and theatrical outcome of this work.\u201d<\/p>\n Maritime Rites<\/em> is a critically acclaimed, ongoing project of Curran\u2019s, which has been performed in Rome, Chicago, London, and Frankfurt. While it takes different forms for each site-specific performance, it is always played over water. \u201cThe Central Park Lake is one of the most beautiful urban spots in the world. It was more than an ideal world-class location to create a simple, theatrical new music event,\u201d says Curran. <\/p>\n \u201cI never thought I\u2019d get to perform in a rowboat in Central Park! It was a wonderful experience to play for such a large and appreciative audience,\u201d says Wilcox. \u201cMy favorite moment was when the crowd shouted for an encore,\u201d says Szumski, for whom the performance was \u201can unforgettable and unusual introduction to the University." <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Musicians Joined West Point Band for New York Premiere of “Maritime Rites” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":109977,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/john-j-cali-school-of-music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/john-j-cali-school-of-music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/john-j-cali-school-of-music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/john-j-cali-school-of-music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/john-j-cali-school-of-music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/john-j-cali-school-of-music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/john-j-cali-school-of-music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/john-j-cali-school-of-music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/john-j-cali-school-of-music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/john-j-cali-school-of-music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}