BRATTLEBORO — Soprano Kristen Carmichael-Bowers is a woman with a mission.
“I want to show the people in Windham County what a wonderful array of great composers are now living and working in our area,” Carmichael-Bowers says. “I do not think the average person living in southern Vermont realizes what an incredible wealth of talent we have around here, all in less than an hour's drive.”
To celebrate this array of talent, she once again has been working with the Brattleboro Music Center (BMC), where she teaches voice, to plan a daylong festival to introduce to the public prominent local musicians who write classical music.
These artists will perform their works in concerts or give master classes for BMC students. A few will do both.
On Sunday, March 16, BMC will host “Composers in our Midst: A Celebration of Musical Collaborations,” drawing together the vast compositional and musical talents in the region and featuring the works of New England composers.
The daylong event includes master classes, a student recital, and an evening performance, all featuring a wide variety of instrumental and vocal pieces by regional composers. The evening concert will feature professional musicians and the works of local composers.
The composers come from diverse backgrounds and have produced very different kinds of music:
• Lynn Mahoney Rowan is a cofounder and director of the Keene World Harmony Chorus, teen choral director for the Hanover Christmas Revels, and she sings with the vocal quartet Windborne.
• Conductor and music educator Will Thomas Rowan, based in Marlboro, has had his works performed by choral ensembles across New England. In 2011, he was commissioned for a piece as part of the Vermont Poetry and Song Project, an album of local music by Social Band, a group of Burlington-area singers.
• Harpist and Professor Emerita of Medieval Literature Carol Wood lives in Vermont and has published more than a dozen collections of music for harp, voice, and other instruments, including her best-selling The Chaucer Songbook.
• Pianist Clifton “Jerry” Noble Jr. has served as the staff accompanist at Smith College for 25 years. His compositions and arrangements include vocal, choral, chamber, and orchestral music, and he has accepted commissions from many prominent ensembles throughout the United States.
• Philip Thomas, a native of Long Island, N.Y. who lives in Vermont with his wife and two children, has had his music performed by internationally renowned artists around the globe at venues that include jazz, world music, and classical events.
• Allen Shawn, a member of the music faculty of Bennington College since 1985, has written a dozen orchestral works and concertos; three chamber operas; a large catalogue of chamber music; songs, choral music, piano music; and music for ballet and theater.
• Paul Dedell is director of the middle school program at Hilltop Montessori School in Brattleboro, and his scores for the theater have been heard locally and internationally. His evening-length choral work “Songs of Divine Chemistry” was performed in Brattleboro last month.
• Twice-Grammy-nominated guitarist Jose Manuel Lezcano has composed four concertos for guitar, both solo and in duos, with orchestra accompaniment. He has premiered his works with professional orchestras in New York City, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, and New Hampshire.
The Composers in Our Midst festivities begin with master-class sessions at BMC Recital Hall, 38 Walnut St., from 1 to 3:30 p.m.
Here, BMC students will be able to work directly with composers of new works. The public is invited to this free event, where they will be able to see the special collaboration between student musicians and Rowan, Noble, Thomas, and Dedell.
“It's very cool, because students can work with music they have never heard before, often with the composer who wrote it,” says Carmichael-Bowers.
At 4 p.m., following the class, the students will give a recital of the new works by composers with whom they have studied. This program is also free and open to all and will take place in the Recital Hall.
At 7 p.m. in the Centre Congregational Church at 193 Main St., BMC will present a Composers in Our Midst faculty concert. Wood, Lezcano, Thomas, Noble, and both Rowans will present new works, including two world premieres.
The diverse program will offer art songs, a sonatina, and a rhapsody for violin and piano. Performing musicians include sopranos Carmichael-Bowers and Margery McCrum; mezzo soprano Jennifer Hansen; guitarist Lezcano, pianists Shawn, Noble, and Bruce Griffin; and violinist Kathy Andrew, as well as Alex Ogle on flute, Wood on Celtic harp, and Thomas Nasiatka on alto saxophone.
“Composers will briefly introduce their pieces, and they will also be available to converse informally after the concert in the parlor over refreshments,” says Carmichael-Bowers, who seeks to promote contemporary music by classical composers.
“You can not ask Beethoven what he was thinking when he wrote his Fifth Symphony anymore,” she says. “But here we are inviting a dialogue between the composers and their public. We are planning a Q-and-A after the concert, and are asking the composers to say something about their pieces before each is performed in the concert.”
“The music we are doing here is fresh, new, and in our own backyard,” continues Carmichael-Bowers. “Carol Wood and Phillip Thomas are presenting world premieres of work. And the other pieces are very new.”
The type of music these artists compose varies a great deal. “Thomas's work has these interesting atonal leaps,” Carmichael-Bowers says. “In contrast, we are performing Lynn Mahoney Rowan's 'Windsong,' a folksong she wrote last year for a performance of Lorca's play 'Blood Wedding' at [New England Youth Theatre], and Will Rowen has written a madrigal.”
Carmichael-Bowers notes that, unlike popular music, what she terms “art music” does not get much airplay.
“People might know a local composer like singer/songwriter Lisa McCormick, which is great, but these other musicians get overlooked,” she says. “While popular music is too often highly engineered, the music these artists write makes a very direct appeal to the audience. It's just singers and acoustic instruments.”
Honoring new music
The first Composers in Our Midst was organized by Carmichael-Bowers two years ago, but it was a much smaller event, merely a concert with fewer composers.
“The last Midst was programmed by BMC as just another faculty concert,” Carmichael-Bowers says. “This year, we have expanded our vision, to [give the program] its own identity that includes music, education, and discussion.”
“I would like to see this celebration grow each year, as we pull in more resources in our community who are involved in creating important contemporary art music.”
Carmichael-Bowers wants to be “neurotically clear” that without the Brattleboro Music Center underwriting this venture, “it would be next to impossible to have a musical offering like this.”
“I feel so grateful to have such support from faculty colleagues, students, and administration alike,” she says. “The BMC plays a vital role in this community. I don't want to give the impression that this is 'my' thing alone.”
“I am not very interesting,” she adds modestly. “My love for new music, I think, came from my voice teacher at Smith, Jane Bryden. As singers and voice teachers, we are of Jan DeGaetani's lineage. Jan was a pioneer of new music in the U.S., working with George Crumb, among many other composers.”
DeGaetani earned her fame with her recording of 'Ancient Voices of Children' - what Carmichael-Bowers describes as “a gorgeous, primal, and haunting piece of music by George Crumb.”
“My master's thesis was written on DeGaetani's pedagogical influence on singers in this country. She sang everything from Renaissance music to the avant garde and felt it was essential to be open to new and unorthodox musical expression as well the established western 'classical' aesthetic.
“Like her, I feel that it's important to honor new music, because it is a window into our collective cultural consciousness,” Carmichael-Bowers says. “It's about being aware and being present to this moment in time, even as we honor the artistic genius of the past.”