For more than 25 years, the Downtown Chamber Series (DCS) has presented concerts amidst visual art at venues across downtown Phoenix. The next concerts take place August 29th and 30th at Shepley Bulfinch Architects, and feature trombone, trumpet, piano, and photography.
KBACH's Greg Kostraba recently talked with DCS founder & Executive Director Mark Dix and two of the musicians featured on the concert, trumpeter Hayato Tanaka and trombonist Harry Gonzalez.
Greg Kostraba: This is KBACH's Heart of the Arts podcast, I'm Greg Kostraba. The Downtown Chamber Series presents its next concerts Saturday and Sunday, August 29th and 30th at Shepley Bulfinch Architects in downtown Phoenix. The program features trumpeter Hayato Tanaka, trombonist Harry Gonzalez, and pianist Rie Tanaka, amidst an exhibit of recent photography of Iceland by Wayne Rainey. Hayato, Harry, and Downtown Chamber Series founder Mark Dix are in the studio to talk about the concert. Welcome!
Mark Dix: Great to be here.
Kostraba: Mark, let's start by talking about the Downtown Chamber Series. Since its founding in 2000, you've really been connecting with venues in downtown Phoenix not typically associated with concert music.
Dix: Yeah, our main mission is the combination of visual art and music. So, all of our concerts feature visual art along with the performance. And it's a loose definition of chamber music, not confined to classical. Many of our concerts feature orchestral instruments that you would hear in a Beethoven symphony; same for this program, with brass and piano. But many of our programs also feature world music. We have programs this year that are going to be featuring flamenco with Spanish artists. We've also got some from Africa, Burkina Faso. And then another aspect that's unique to our series are our venues, as you mentioned. All of our spaces are not churches or concert halls. Instead, they're kind of avant-garde spaces in the core of the city. And for this program specifically, we've partnered with an architectural firm that has their offices in a fantastic building that we all know on Osborn and Central, designed by a famous architect, Sarmiento, who was the mid-century modern bank architect—and a very George Jetson type building from the 1960s, and it's a really compelling place to perform, along with an amazing exhibit.
Kostraba: Let's talk about that exhibit for a bit. Photographs from Iceland.
Dix: Yes, Wayne Rainey has been a real fixture in our city for a long time as a photographer. He founded monOrchid Studios down on Roosevelt. He also has recently returned from Iceland with his family, where he did a fantastic shoot of these massive landscapes of sort of the Earth in its formative years with volcanic ground and glaciers, and with these two young children that are in the distance running through the glaciers or through the lava fields. He calls it "The Divine Children," and it's framed through the narrative of Joseph Campbell's idea of the divine child, which is an intersection of landscape photography and myth. So, this is something we really strive to do in Downtown Chamber Series, is to bring in audiences that are interested in architecture, interested in concerts downtown, and also visual art exhibitions. Creates for a very vibrant collective.
Kostraba: It certainly does. Your commitment to downtown Phoenix is legendary.
Dix: Yeah, it's hard to believe it's been 27 years! Uh, and so, but it's all about audience building, really genuine audience building, so that people can come back. Getting people to put down their phones and to come to concerts is hard for all of us, due to the amount of media that we can see from the comfort of our couch. And so, all arts organizations really have to work extra hard to do programming like this to get people out, and it's been really lifegiving.
Kostraba: Let's chat about the performance itself. On the concert, there's music for one, two, and all three of your instruments: trumpet, trombone, and piano. Hayato, you've just joined the Phoenix Symphony as Assistant Principal Trumpet. Congratulations on that.
Hayato Tanaka: Thank you.
Kostraba: Harry's been Associate Principal Trombone of the Phoenix Symphony since 2024. When did you two meet and decide to put together this program?
Tanaka: Oh, we met on stage my first rehearsal, starting last season at the Phoenix Symphony. And we talked and realized that my brother, younger brother Hirofumi, and Harry went to school together at Rice University. So, we got to be friends, and this summer Mark contacted us about this chamber series, and we kind of last minute put together a really challenging program!
Kostraba: Harry, what makes it a challenging program?
Harry Gonzalez: I don't want to speak for Hayato, but for me, as an orchestral trombonist, I think that there is an idea of what my instrument can do. And the reason it's challenging is to not only play more notes than maybe I would any given week in the orchestra, but also to try to put together a concert that displays other elements of the instrument, and to try to get the trombone and the trumpet viewed as lyrical instruments, at least in my case. And that's challenging, and it's not the first thing you think about, but that's kind of a good challenge for us.
Kostraba: Hayato, when you were looking to put together the program for this concert, did you have a piece in mind as the centerpiece of the program, or did you and Harry kind of get together and go, "Well, we can throw this in from here, and that from there"?
Tanaka: I think the one that we are playing was the first piece I thought of when I heard that I was going to be collaborating with Harry. Title being Cousins, I figured as a fellow second player in an orchestra, I think it would be a good fit. It's going to be really fun, this piece. It's a virtuoso brass band style duo with piano.
Kostraba: Herbert L. Clarke wrote that. He's famous for his band music, right?
Tanaka: Exactly.
Kostraba: Is there a lot of chamber music for trumpet?
Tanaka: A lot for trumpet and brass quintet, but not for this combination. We did look at a couple options, but only came up with a handful.
Kostraba: You picked a Gavotte and one arrangement of the beautiful Simple Song from Leonard Bernstein's Mass.
Tanaka: These pieces I'll be playing at this recital are the pieces I listened to when I was a little, and 'til this day, as my inspiration and reason of why I wanted to play trumpet. Kind of a personal challenge as well.
Kostraba: So when you started on trumpet, you were interested in being a classical trumpet player?
Tanaka: Well, I was a geeky kid growing up listening to only classical music on the radio and movie soundtracks.
Kostraba: And Harry, when you started on the trombone, you were interested in classical, but other genres as well, I think I remember.
Harry Gonzalez: Really, classical music was in the backseat for me. I was not really focused on it. I loved all sorts of music growing up: pop music, hip-hop music, oldies, and things like that. And so I didn't realize that I wanted to be an orchestral classical trombone player until I started playing in different orchestras, started traveling the world, and understanding the history and getting a sense for how my voice could fit into that. It's been incredible since.
Kostraba: Thinking of chamber music specifically since you're doing it, we were talking about not being that much for trumpet and piano; for trombone and piano, there's even less.
Gonzalez: Right, and that is one of the things that I was definitely conscious of. As you go through school, there are certain pieces that you sort of have to work on, but being asked to do this chamber series, it definitely gave me an opportunity to create a different program for myself, right? So maybe trying to find things that are a little off the beaten path or maybe standard, things that I think would showcase the instrument well. So, scarcity of repertoire is kind of highlighted in two separate forms in this program, where The Fantasy by Elizabeth Raum, that one was written as a Christmas gift for her husband who happened to play trombone. And then the Crespo "Improvisations," that one was written because of a lack of repertoire as a sort of audition piece that he wrote for himself. So, I think that those two things kind of go hand-in-hand with what we're talking about here.
Kostraba: And you're also playing an arrangement of "Spiegel im Spiegel" ("Mirror in the Mirror") by Arvo Pärt. It's a marvelous piece, just so relaxing and peaceful the whole way through. But you have to hold your notes a long time, don't you?
Gonzalez: Yes, it's definitely a challenge. And I'm not necessarily concerned with the spotlight being on myself, because the way that I'm approaching that piece in particular is I wanted to find a way to highlight the space and give people an opportunity to maybe not focus solely on the performers on the stage, but give them just a moment. And I feel like that's how I listen to that piece, and I hope that's what I'm going to be able to get across.
Kostraba: Now, let's talk to you about "Cousins" by Herbert L. Clarke. Hayato said it was virtuosic. Tell us about it from your perspective.
Gonzalez: Yeah, I would say that it's maybe more virtuosic for trombone because, not in a way that it's better for trombone, but the things that are written for the trombone are very challenging. And I feel like anytime I hear a trumpet player, that's just their warm-up! And so, I think it's just a really fun piece, kind of anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better kind of style, a little bit of a dueling of the instruments, but at the end of the day, Cousins, still in the same family, and there's a lot of also beautiful, lyrical playing as well.
Kostraba: Now, let's talk about the pianist on the concert. She's not here, Rie Tanaka, and she's based in Tucson. And Hayato, you were based in Tucson for a while when you played with the Tucson Symphony. Did you know her at all when you were down there?
Tanaka: We've overlapped a year. During my last season with the Symphony, I actually never worked with her or met her, but I've known her through my other colleagues who collaborated in recording projects. I'm very excited to play with her, finally.
Dix: It speaks to the ambition of DCS to have the musicians find people that they want to work with creatively so that they aren't thrown together like you would for a gig, for instance. We also really try to make sure we maintain a relationship with artists throughout our state, and we often feature musicians coming up from Tucson. A lot of the faculty at U of A have joined us on concerts up here.
An interesting aspect of the rep for this program, the musicians all wanted to feature solos on their instruments, and some duets, and then a piece that all three of them were performing. So the pianist, Rie, she has this fantastic piano transcription of Ravel's La Valse. So La Valse is a massive, muscular orchestral tour de force, and we're really excited to hear her performing that on the piano solo.
Kostraba: Hayato, Harry, Mark, thanks so much for your time.
Tanaka: Thank you.
Dix: Thank you.
Gonzalez: Thanks for having us.
Kostraba: Mark Dix is the executive and artistic director of the Downtown Chamber Series. Trumpeter Hayato Tanaka, trombonist Harry Gonzalez, will be joined by pianist Rie Tanaka for a recital surrounded by the exhibit "The Divine Children" by photographer Wayne Rainey. The concerts take place Saturday, August 29th at 2:00, and Sunday, August 30th at 7:30 at Bulfinch Architects in downtown Phoenix. Tickets are at downtownchamberseries.org and will be available at the door. For the KBACH Heart of the Arts podcast, I'm Greg Kostraba.