Calming Waters with the MusicaNova Orchestra & Saxophonist Christopher Creviston

Greg Kostraba: This is KBACH’s "Heart of the Arts" podcast. I’m Greg Kostraba. The MusicaNova Orchestra presents its "Calming Waters" program, Saturday, May 9th at 7 PM at the Tempe Center for the Arts. The program features music by Jean Sibelius, Gabriela Lena Frank, Victoria Polevá, and MusicaNova composition fellow Cheng Jin Koh. Plus, the world premiere of the saxophone and orchestra version of "My Cross" by Carter Pann, with guest saxophonist and ASU faculty member Christopher Creviston. Chris is in the KBACH studios, and the orchestra's music director Warren Cohen is on the phone. Welcome to both of you!

Christopher Creviston: Great to be here!

Warren Cohen: Great to be here!

Kostraba: There's such a wide range of music on this program, Warren. You go from Finland and Ukraine to Peru and Singapore. Tell us how the program came together.

Cohen: Well, the program was around the Sibelius, basically. That was the fundamental idea. And then when Chris was talking to me about doing repertoire, one of the pieces he suggested was this piece by Carter Pann, and then I listened to that and I went, "That fits perfectly with the Sibelius." So, I pieced those two things, and then the other pieces were things that I was feeling were emotionally compatible with those two particular pieces. Except for the fact that Cheng Jin’s piece hadn’t been written yet, but I told her what the rest of the program was and then she fit it in. I wanted to find other pieces that had that sort of undercurrent of quiet energy, but also tremendous undercurrents of it, which is something I felt that existed in the Carter Pann piece, but also very much in the Sibelius Symphony.

The other two pieces that followed, the Gabriela Lena Frank piece, the Concertino Cusqueño, was a piece that begins in this quiet mode, but because of the fact that she thought of it as being something that was related to the Inca Empire, but at the same time was also related to the music of Benjamin Britten. Because she uses a quote from his violin concerto in it as a thematic element. Same thing, Victoria Polevá’s piece, which is a piece that was written in response, essentially, to the war in Ukraine. It’s called "Turn the River", and it’s based upon a Ukrainian folk song, "Plyve Kacha", which is—it became famous after the Maidan Revolution, or the Revolution of Dignity, in February 2014 when they deposed the Russian-puppet Prime Minister Yanukovych. And it was the beginning of something very good in Ukraine, but then of course things got very bad again, and that’s an undercurrent in the actual song. But the mood of that piece is so close in many ways to the mood of the Sibelius Sixth Symphony that it was remarkable to look at both of those works together.

Then when Cheng Jin actually wrote her piece, which is called "Water Moon", and we’re getting back to the idea of water again—"Turn the River" or water, we had that sort of stuff. And this reminds me, of course, of what Sibelius said about the Sixth Symphony, which was that it always made him think of the first snowfall, and of just this whole nature imagery thing that was coming into it. Now, in her case, that’s also based upon the Buddhist idea of enlightenment and longing for what is unattainable. So, we have almost a mystical undercurrent, an undercurrent of nostalgia, and these pieces all have their own particular very, very strong identity. But they all have that, I guess you could say, overriding consideration of elements of nature and almost a meditative quality in each of them. And it’s interesting in the Sibelius case because it’s a four-movement symphony without a slow movement, and yet it still has that meditative quality.

Kostraba: And it’s the meditative quality of the Sixth, is that what really interested you in the first place? I understand putting everything together to make it a cohesive whole despite all the geographical diversity and content diversity, but was that what attracted you to the Sibelius in the first place?

Cohen: What I loved about it so much was its timelessness. It’s like it was written in the 1920s, but you could not identify a time period when you listen to that piece. Most music you could go, "Oh, I know more or less when that was written." This has no time identity at all, and I found that absolutely amazing. And that’s why of course some of these other pieces that have an element of timelessness to them, I thought were—made a very, very attractive counterpoint to the Sibelius.

Kostraba: Right. And let me ask you, Chris, since you’re in the studio, about the Carter Pann piece. Is there a timelessness to it for you as well?

Creviston: Yes, actually, and it might fulfill that space that you miss from not having a slow movement in the Sibelius. It is definitely not a technical concerto; it’s an odd fish that way. I’m in the Capitol Saxophone Quartet. On our concerts, we’ll play jazz standards and we all improvise, and we’ll play the French Conservatory stuff. We will do Romantic, we will do Baroque, we will do everything, and we love to do that. So the programs are incredibly varied.

Somewhere around 2010, we were doing a tour in Colorado, and we went to the University of Colorado Boulder, and Carter Pann’s on the faculty there. And Carter came running back after the concert was over and he was just inspired and thrilled with the fact that we do so many different things, and he thought it would be great to work with us. So he wrote us a piece called "Mechanics: Six from the Shop Floor", and it was a finalist for the Pulitzer in 2016. All six of those movements are incredibly different. As a saxophonist, I know I’m supposed to be only attracted to the fastest, higher, faster, louder stuff that you can possibly find, but my favorite movement in that piece is the fifth movement called "Balance." He writes such incredibly heartfelt, beautiful slow music, and he knew how I feel about playing slow and pretty.

He also knows how I feel about showing off my high range, so he said, "You know what you should do? You should play this flute piece I’ve got." So he sent it to me. I put it to the side and I thought, "I don’t know how I’m going to get somebody to program this." It’s, depending on how you do the tempos, 8 to 10 minutes of just slow, beautiful, and as you say, it's not necessarily peggable in a certain time period; it’s just gorgeous. It’s not a technical showcase for me at all; it’s more of a finesse showcase, especially considering the range that it puts me in copying the flute range.

Kostraba: Tell us what it’s about.

Creviston: Well, the title "My Cross" is a reference to what you might immediately think. We all have our crosses to bear. And I don’t think that he had a specific instance or person in mind—maybe he did, but he doesn’t tell us that. What he does tell us is that it is about the journey through trying to overcome the obstacles in your life. So the music is gorgeous, but he’s able to keep it moving forward and keeping your interest as a listener without ever actually getting technical. I can’t wait to play it with Warren and the orchestra. I hope that they enjoy playing it as much as I’m looking forward to playing it.

Kostraba: How did you and Warren connect then?

Creviston: He’s worked with some of my students before and some of my colleagues, so I’ve met him on a few occasions and I know that he likes playing modern music, and he’s not one of these conductors that runs away when something is more contemporary. Or runs away from saxophone. Thank you, Warren.

Cohen: Classical saxophone has always been one of my favorite sounds, and I’ve always wondered why people don’t use it more.

Creviston: Sometimes there can be a difficulty if you don’t know how to write for the instrument in the orchestra; there can be a difficulty trying to find how to blend it. That was more of a problem when I think the players weren't as good and the sounds were less consistent. I think composers have kind of started to figure it out more now.

Kostraba: Warren, what’s it like working with a saxophonist as a soloist as opposed to a violinist or a hornist or a pianist or a cellist or whatever other instrument you might be playing?

Cohen: The sense is that every instrument has its own particular limitations and strengths. In the case of a saxophone, you’re probably dealing with an instrument that cuts pretty well over an orchestra, so you don’t have some of the problems you would have with, say, a cello, which tends to get blended in. But on the other hand, you have to make the decision about how much you want to try to make the sound blend and how much you want to differentiate. Most of the saxophone solos I know from the repertoire, like the ones that everybody knows, like "Lieutenant Kijé" or "Bolero", those are usually ones where it’s featured and it comes out. So in that sense, it’s a relatively easy instrument to work with as a soloist.

Creviston: I’ll take it.

Kostraba: And Christopher’s nodding his head during all of this as well. Before I let you go, Warren, let me ask about again about Cheng Jin Koh. She's a MusicaNova composition fellow. Is this the first composition fellow you’ve had?

Cohen: We’ve been doing it for about 10 years, and we have had, I think, eighteen composition fellows. It’s basically a composer who has not achieved a great deal of recognition, but I believe is very promising and their music is very, very good. Cheng Jin and I actually have a fairly long history. My son and her were childhood friends, no less. Then she was at Juilliard as a composition graduate student when he was there as a viola graduate student—of course, he’s a composer as well. And her husband, Tengku Irfan, is somebody who I think he was our first composition fellow, her husband was. But he’s now working as a conductor and he’s actually going to conduct the piece for us.

Kostraba: Oh, that’s so interesting! And nice that you cede the stage for that as well.

Cohen: Irfan is an astonishingly talented human being, so it’s one of the easiest decisions I could ever make.

Kostraba: Warren, Christopher, thank you so much for your time.

Creviston: It's been great, thanks.

Cohen: Thanks.

Kostraba: Warren Cohen is the music director of the MusicaNova Orchestra, which performs its "Calming Waters" program Saturday evening, May 9th at 7:00 at the Tempe Center for the Arts. Christopher Creviston is the soloist on the concert, performing "My Cross" for saxophone and orchestra by Carter Pann. Tickets and more information are at MusicaNovaAZ.org. For the KBACH's "Heart of the Arts" podcast, I’m Greg Kostraba.