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      Russian and Ukrainian Pianists Meet in Texas at Cliburn Competition

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      The war in Ukraine looms over the prestigious contest named for the pianist Van Cliburn, who was a symbol for art transcending global politics.FORT WORTH, Texas — On a sultry recent morning, 30 young pianists from around the world gathered in an auditorium at Texas Christian University here for the start of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, one of the most prestigious contests in classical music.The mood was celebratory. But politics also loomed. The Cliburn, defying pressure to ban Russian competitors after the invasion of Ukraine, had invited six Russians to take part, as well as two pianists from Belarus, which has supported the Russian invasion. A Ukrainian also made the cut.As they signed posters outside the auditorium and were fitted for cowboy boots, a Cliburn tradition, several competitors from those countries said that they found it difficult to think beyond the war.“It’s a tragedy, what’s happening now,” said Dmytro Choni, a 28-year-old pianist from Kyiv. “I’m trying to stay focused on the music.”Dmytro Choni, from Kyiv, is the sole competitor from Ukraine. “I’m trying to stay focused on the music,” he said.Jake Dockins for The New York TimesIlya Shmukler, 27, a competitor from Russia, said he at times felt guilty about the invasion. “The key words for me,” he said, “are shame and responsibility.”The politics surrounding the Cliburn competition show the depths to which the war has upended the performing arts. Largely unaccustomed to grappling with geopolitical concerns, arts organizations are now being forced to resolve difficult questions about the rights of Russian and Ukrainian artists, the morality of cultural boycotts and the limits of free expression. Many institutions have cut ties with artists closely associated with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, while continuing to welcome Russians with less public political leanings.Competitions like the Cliburn, which help determine who rises in the field, have come under intense scrutiny. Some contests, responding to pressure from board members and activists, have banned Russians altogether. Others have announced plans to disinvite Russians, only to face a backlash and reverse course weeks later.The debate over Russian artists echoes similar discussions playing out in the athletic sphere, with Wimbledon saying that it would not allow players from Russia and Belarus this summer, and FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, kicking out all Russian teams from global competition.The Cliburn, named for Van Cliburn, an American whose victory at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958, during the Cold War, was seen as a sign that art could transcend politics, said that it had an obligation to defend Russian artists, who have long been a prominent force in classical music.Audience members at a performance by the Russian pianist Geniushene. The decision to include Russians has alienated some Ukrainian activists and Texas residents.Jake Dockins for The New York TimesThe Cliburn has also taken steps to ensure some degree of political conformity, warning competitors that any statements in support of Putin or the invasion of Ukraine could result in disqualification or the revocation of awards.“I don’t think sanctioning a young pianist who is 22 years old will have an effect on the Russian government,” said Jacques Marquis, the Cliburn’s president and chief executive. “That will play exactly into the playbook of Putin, if we isolate the Russian people.”While the Cliburn was widely applauded in the arts world for allowing Russians to compete, the decision has alienated some Ukrainian activists and Texas residents. Some argued that the only way to put pressure on Moscow to end the invasion is to cut political, economic and cultural ties.“It’s a shame that the Cliburn is not paying attention to human suffering and public opinion,” said the Rev. Pavlo Popov, the leader of a Ukrainian church in suburban Dallas. “How do you influence Russia? It has to come from the people. If they don’t like the war, if they want to be a part of the civilized world, if they want to be part of these competitions, they have to stand for the same values.”Many of the Russian competitors now live outside Russia and have said that they are fiercely opposed to the invasion. Some have taken part in protests and signed petitions demanding the withdrawal of Russian forces.Geniushene at her host family’s home in Fort Worth. To summon the proper character for a series of Brahms Ballades, she said, she thought of suffering in Ukraine.Jake Dockins for The New York TimesAnna Geniushene, a 31-year-old pianist from Moscow, said she felt a duty as an artist to show solidarity with Ukraine. When she tried to summon the right character for a series of Brahms Ballades in the quarterfinal round of the competition, she said, she thought about the grief and suffering in Ukraine.“I have a lot of chats with different people who are really surprised to know that the entire population, the whole nation, is not supporting and rooting for Putin,” said Geniushene, who lives in Lithuania. “Being an artist doesn’t mean that you are a kind of freelancer, that you’re living in a completely different world, and that you forget about politics and everything that you are not involved in. You must speak up and spread the word.”Even as they have denounced the war, many Russian competitors said they were distraught by the scrutiny of Russian artists in the United States and Europe. Some Western cultural institutions have demanded that artists condemn Putin as a condition for performing. Others have removed works by Russian composers in an effort to show solidarity with Ukraine.“The fact that you’re Russian doesn’t mean you’re a bad person,” said Sergey Tanin, 26, a pianist from Siberia who added that he had lost engagements and invitations to competitions since the start of the war. “We shouldn’t be forced to have political discussions before concerts or competitions.”Arseniy Gusev, who grew up in St. Petersburg, says he feels connected to Russia’s past and musical heritage.Jake Dockins for The New York TimesSergey Tanin, from Siberia, said he had lost engagements since the war started.Jake Dockins for The New York TimesRussian participants said they felt that the Cliburn offered a platform to remind the world of a side of Russia distinct from Putin’s bellicosity.Arseniy Gusev, a Russian pianist who grew up in St. Petersburg, said that as an artist, he had grown distant from contemporary Russia but felt intimately tied to its history, and particularly to the music of composers like Scriabin and Rachmaninoff.“I cannot say I belong to this contemporary Russia anymore, but I feel I’m connected to some parts of its past culture,” said Gusev, 23, who will begin a graduate program at the Yale School of Music in fall. “And I think in this way that unites many of us here.”How the Ukraine War Is Affecting the Cultural WorldCard 1 of 6Gavriel Heine. 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      A Young Horn Player Could Become ‘a Real Legend’

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      At 21, Nathaniel Silberschlag landed a principal seat with the storied Cleveland Orchestra. Now tenured, he doesn’t ever want to leave.When the Cleveland Orchestra brought Mahler’s Fifth Symphony to Carnegie Hall in 2019, its conductor, Franz Welser-Möst, lowered his baton and paused before the Scherzo.An unassuming young man walked from the horn section to the front of the stage, where he stood as if he were a concerto soloist. He lifted his instrument, and let out a call: a buoyant, warm herald of a bright new day. When the movement ended, he simply took his seat again.It was an unexpected interlude. Few orchestras follow the practice — dating back to Mahler’s lifetime — of placing the horn so prominently, near the conductor’s podium, in the symphony’s Scherzo. More surprising, though, was the sound that came from that player, whom barely anyone in the audience had heard before. His solo turn, delivered with a clarity even veterans struggle to achieve, had the makings of a major artist’s arrival. But who was he?A quick flip through the program provided the answer: Nathaniel Silberschlag, who, at just 21, had recently taken the seat of principal horn with Cleveland, one of the most skilled and storied orchestras in the country. And the concert was among his first with the ensemble.But because of the pandemic, it was also his last at Carnegie for a long time. The Clevelanders didn’t return there until June 1 — when Silberschlag’s horn resounded again, in the soft yet dignified opening theme of Schubert’s “Great” Symphony. Now 23, and following a two-year probationary period, Silberschlag is an official, tenured member of the orchestra, with a long career ahead of him there if he wants it.“It’s not a joke when I say that when I was practicing in my basement while growing up, my parents, out of encouragement, would yell, ‘It sounds like the Cleveland Orchestra down there!’” Silberschlag said in an interview before last week’s concert. “The tradition of this orchestra, the tradition of this brass section — it is as cliché as it gets, but it is a dream come true that I made it here.”SILBERSCHLAG WAS BORN into what he called a “very, very musical family.” That might be an understatement. There are well over a dozen professional musicians, and plenty of Juilliard School degrees, among his relatives. His grandfather was Sol Greitzer, a violist who played under Toscanini and held the principal seat at the New York Philharmonic for over a decade (appointed by Pierre Boulez). His parents met as members of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. And his older brother, Zachary Silberschlag, is the principal trumpet of the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra.An offer to teach at St. Mary’s College of Maryland brought Nathaniel’s father and mother to that state, where he grew up in Leonardtown. The rural Chesapeake Bay location belied a well-traveled life; he followed his parents on work trips, most often to Italy. Because of that he became, he said, “a second-grade dropout” and was home-schooled — at a rapid pace that had him attending college classes when many teenagers would be starting trigonometry.Silberschlag started piano at 3, then horn at 4. His first teacher was his father, but when he was about 12, he met Julie Landsman, the longtime principal horn at the Metropolitan Opera and a member of the Juilliard faculty. “His parents were very solicitous of my skills as a teacher,” she said. “But I found him to be brilliant, motivated, personable and talented beyond belief.”“When I was practicing in my basement while growing up,” Silberschlag said, “my parents, out of encouragement, would yell, ‘It sounds like the Cleveland Orchestra down there!’”Ross Mantle for The New York TimesWith Landsman, he learned extra-musical practices that have been crucial to his youthful success: meditation and visualization. “You train your brain and wire it for this goal, and you at some time put yourself in a meditative state,” Silberschlag said. “You are training your brain to keep the negative thoughts out and positive thoughts in, and goal oriented.”He visualized auditions so that when he did them, they would feel familiar and nonthreatening. And he had a goal in mind: a job with the Cleveland Orchestra, whose recordings were the first he reached for throughout childhood.A major step came when he was accepted into Juilliard. That was right before a Passover Seder, which with Silberschlag’s extended family can involve impromptu performances or name-that-tune games. A relative joked: “OK, you got in. Let’s hear what was so good.” So, without a warm-up, he played from his audition — a virtuosic concerto — on the spot.At 19, near the end of his third year at Juilliard, he won the assistant principal horn seat with the Kennedy Center Opera House orchestra. As a congratulations, he was offered a drink. “And of course,” Silberschlag said, “I had to fess up and tell them, ‘Well, I’m not 21 yet, and unfortunately my father is, like, in the car waiting to take me home.’”During his senior year, he said, “I lived on Amtrak.” He commuted between Juilliard and the Kennedy Center a few times a week. At one point he was playing in a run of “Tosca” at the Washington National Opera while preparing a studio recital, orchestra concerts, papers and graduation at school.He was also busy with auditioning for Cleveland. The orchestra’s principal horn position had been empty for several years. Welser-Möst invited guests, including the principal horn from the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, who turned down an offer because of the move it would entail. Gifted players didn’t seem like good fits for the group. “When you hire someone, don’t make it a compromise,” Welser-Möst said, “because it will always remain a compromise.”When Silberschlag, here at Severance, plays, “every note has meaning,” said Franz Welser-Möst, the Cleveland Orchestra’s music director.Ross Mantle for The New York TimesWelser-Möst sought advice from Landsman, who told him that she had this guy, “the biggest talent I’ve ever seen.” So Silberschlag was invited to play — first for the conductor, then for the audition committee. He breezed through Mozart and Strauss, and ended with the Long Call solo from Wagner’s “Siegfried.”“The last two measures of that, you always sit biting your nails thinking, ‘Is that person going to make it or not?’” Welser-Möst said. “This was the first time where it sounded like it was no problem. And I looked around at everyone there. They all sort of had an open mouth. They couldn’t believe it.”Hear Silberschlag perform, and you can quickly tell what won them over. Landsman described his sound as rich, creamy and colorful; it’s also tenderly human, with the singing quality of a cello. And, Welser-Möst said, “whenever he plays, every note has meaning, and is connected to the overall expression of a movement or entire piece.”But members of the Cleveland Orchestra, as Welser-Möst said, must be not only good instrumentalists, but also good musicians — invested in the ensemble as a whole, and able to navigate the dynamics of a team (something that Silberschlag had experience with, after years of playing baseball, his other passion, which could have become more serious if it weren’t derailed by an injury). Hence the probation period, which lasts two years.At no point was Welser-Möst worried about Silberschlag’s youth. “If someone has potential, then the experience comes by itself,” he said. “And it’s not about age; it’s about maturity.” Experience came fast. One of Silberschlag’s first appearances was in that Mahler symphony. Not completely sure how to respond when Welser-Möst asked whether he would be willing to play at the front of the orchestra, he simply replied, “Would you like me to sit or stand?”Welser-Möst conducing the Cleveland Orchestra at Carnegie Hall last week. Silberschlag played in the opening of Schubert’s “Great” Symphony.Chris LeeThe solo itself wasn’t stressful, but the trip to the front of the stage was — “a long time to be thinking about yourself in silence while everyone else is also silent,” Silberschlag said. He tapped into the walking meditations he had learned from Landsman, who was at the Carnegie concert and recognized what he was doing from her seat. At the end of the performance, he took the first solo bow. Next was Michael Sachs, the principal trumpet, who gave up his own bow to walk over to Silberschlag and raise his arm like a champion fighter.Probation was interrupted when the pandemic shut down performances in March 2020, and again when concerts resumed with almost exclusively string repertory, since those players could remain masked, while brasses and winds could not. Silberschlag had to take a long break from the orchestra. He ended up spending much of the time in Maryland, where he practiced in his parents’ basement.That’s where he logged onto a video call one day for his final tenure meeting. He was in. “When you play Mahler Five in your second week and you succeed like he did — sorry, it’s a no-brainer,” Welser-Möst said. But, he added, other players also follow Silberschlag’s sound with ease, which is a sign of natural leadership. He has a running joke with Silberschlag about checking in from time to time to ask, “Has your head gotten any bigger?” But the answer, as recently as last week, was still no.With the possibility of five more decades ahead in Cleveland, Silberschlag said, “I couldn’t be happier that I got to be in this orchestra as soon as I did so that I can spend as much time as I physically can in the orchestra.”Having once listened to the ensemble’s recordings obsessively, he is now on them himself. And he has begun to teach, sharing a studio at the Cleveland Institute of Music with Richard King, Silberschlag’s predecessor. He has, Welser-Möst said, everything it takes to be a role model, not just a great artist.“The potential with him,” Welser-Möst added, “is to become a real legend.” More

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      Review: ‘Third Bird’ Doesn’t Quite Land

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      The fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi is a terrific host, but this production at the Guggenheim Museum is awfully shaggy for an avian story, our critic writes.Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” is a children’s classic, an ideal introduction to the instruments of the orchestra. The production of the score that Works & Process has presented annually at the Guggenheim Museum since 2007, narrated by the fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi, has itself become a local classic.Now Mizrahi, who has been the designer and director since 2013, has created a companion piece, “Third Bird,” with the composer Nico Muhly and the choreographer John Heginbotham. Why? The premiere at the museum on Friday provided no reason other than to have a little fun. “Third Bird” is charming and slight.As in the Prokofiev original, each character in “Third Bird” is connected with an orchestral instrument or two, here played live by members of Ensemble Signal arrayed around the stage. For the bluebird, there’s flute and piccolo. For the duck, there’s oboe and English horn. The ostrich — the “third bird” — gets the heavier, unusual bass clarinet, and so on, through the cat, the grandfather, the ornithologist and the zookeeper.Mizrahi explains all this at the start. He’s a terrific host, kid-friendly without condescension, an expert teller of bedtime stories, voices and all. His enthusiastic appreciation for how the instruments evoke character establishes exactly the right tone. And by adding instrument-animal pairings that Prokofiev did not, he and Muhly extend Prokofiev’s idea. A bass clarinet is like an ostrich. The orchestra contains more wonders.Mizrahi’s new libretto is less wonderful. It’s a kind of sequel to “Peter and the Wolf,” set in a Central Park elegantly evoked by a skyline silhouette backdrop and the branches of a tree. The duck (Marjorie Folkman), having emerged whole from the stomach of Prokofiev’s wolf, returns to tell its adventure in pantomime. Chased by the Gwen Verdon-like cat (Lindsey Jones), it learns to fly. The ostrich, a new character (played by Brian Lawson), does not.Christine Flores, left, and Marjorie Folkman. The bluebird (Flores) is a ballerina, smug about her skills while Folkman pantomimes her story.David Andrako for Works & Process at the GuggenheimThere are witty touches. Mizrahi, the narrator but also the designer, takes a moment to stop and fix the duck’s wolf-ruffled attire. The bluebird (Christine Flores, light and precise) is a ballerina, smug about her skills. Heginbotham plays the moon by simply sitting in white, high in the skyline backdrop. Muhly evokes the zookeeper (Macy Sullivan) with bouncy harpsichord and whirly tube, and Heginbotham’s choreography responds with some standard vaudevillian humor.But “Third Bird” is awfully shaggy for an avian story. Eventually, a suggestion of a moral emerges, advocating acceptance of different shapes and abilities. (The flightless ostrich is the only character without a human head.) As in “Peter and the Wolf,” danger and even mortality flash briefly and an improbable resolution consoles, though here the resolution is a hoary joke (about New York snowbirds).That’s typical. At one point, Mizrahi announces that the ostrich is about to do “a very special dance.” It isn’t very special. It’s just nice, as is everything else in the production, including the costumes — lots of casual wear ornamented with wings or duck feet. Like many sequels, “Third Bird” offers the pleasures of returning characters and performers, squeezing out something diluted from the original idea. It reflects a weaker light, but then again, so does the moon.“Third Bird” was performed on Friday at the Guggenheim Museum. More

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      Review: Beatrice Rana Plays Tchaikovsky at Human Scale

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      The pianist made her New York Philharmonic debut with the composer’s Piano Concerto No. 1, on a program with Shostakovich.The New York Philharmonic’s season isn’t quite over. There are a couple of chamber concerts coming up, and, next Friday, a one-off at Carnegie Hall, as well as the traditional parks programs in mid-June.But this weekend does mark a farewell. After its last events at Alice Tully Hall three weeks ago, the Philharmonic is now saying goodbye to the Rose Theater, its other main host during this wandering season while David Geffen Hall has been closed for renovations.Tully, built for chamber music, was a sonic adjustment for the orchestra. Though it’s not much bigger in capacity, the Rose, part of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s home on Columbus Circle, has been a better fit. On Thursday, its acoustics admirably bore the grand onslaught of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 — with Beatrice Rana making her Philharmonic debut as soloist — and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5, conducted by the ensemble’s music director, Jaap van Zweden.Not that Rana’s Tchaikovsky ever felt like an onslaught. Her take on this war horse is more of an embrace. Even when she’s muscular, she’s lyrical.From early on, the stylish use of rubato gave a sense of dreaminess to her performance. The sprawling first movement never felt lost, but it wandered: assertive; then suddenly reflective, translucent; then once again roiling. In the finale, her playing danced with appealing, almost sticky heaviness, but then the next line would take off with sparkling freshness.All this changeability never evoked anxiety, as it has in the hands of other artists. Rana projects an underlying calm command, a grounded quality, with the concerto’s different moods on human scale. Small corners were intimate communication: the notes touched, with perfect clarity, by her right pinkie as punctuation to her mellow left hand; her trills, lucid yet silky, a little melty.The orchestra played with panache in the third movement — and van Zweden supported artful details, like the double basses seeming to take up the resonance of the piano near the end. But it was hard to focus on anything but the central player. Even during a big flute solo in the first movement, you couldn’t take your ears off Rana. It was a truly memorable debut.Shostakovich is van Zweden country, the kind of repertory in which his characteristic clenched grip on the music helps rather than hinders it. This was a punchy, tightly played Fifth, an angrily grinning take on a work whose politics will always be ambiguous. (Its composer was desperately attempting to get in Stalin’s good graces, but as far as the score’s meaning, who knows?)The Philharmonic played well, with an almost choked grotesquerie in the march in the first movement, an eerie danse macabre of the second and bristling unsentimentality in the third. Van Zweden began the finale very fast, and the orchestra responded with clean ferocity. The progression to the climactic major-key explosion was grim, and its achievement, as Shostakovich may well have intended, was the very definition of an empty victory.New York PhilharmonicThis program continues through Saturday at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      American Modern Opera Company Takes Over the Ojai Festival

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      The American Modern Opera Company, a collective of restless and enterprising young musicians and dancers, is preparing for the Ojai Music Festival.CATSKILL, N.Y. — At the Lumberyard center here on a recent evening, more than 15 artists gathered outdoors around a long banquet spread over several picnic tables that had been lined up and topped with tea lights, bottles of rosé and accouterments for a feast of roasted pork lettuce wraps.The group — mostly members of the American Modern Opera Company, or AMOC, a collective founded five years ago by some of the most restless and enterprising young people in the performing arts — locked hands around their place settings. “Close the circle,” one said, nodding toward a remaining gap. Bobbi Jene Smith, the dancer and choreographer, arrived with her toddler, a multilingual mega fan of “Frozen,” to fill it.There was no prayer or any kind of speech. Just a pause, before they all smiled and said in near unison, “Thanks.” Then dinner began.As friends caught up and musicians mingled with dancers, Rebecca Sigel, the company’s manager for its Lumberyard residency, relayed pandemic safety measures, like daily testing, and asked for help cleaning up after dinner. Cooking, something of a competitive sport in AMOC, had been planned in advance; but dishwashing was handled just as easily. The night before, the honors fell to Julia Bullock, one of the world’s great sopranos, who had happily volunteered.That is how AMOC operates: with an all-in-it-together, egalitarian spirit. And that’s how its members insist on offering themselves to partnering institutions and presenters — the latest of which is the Ojai Music Festival in California, where the company will have its largest platform yet, programming and performing four days of events, beginning June 9. As at any AMOC show, anything goes; with disciplines colliding, a violinist may dance, or a concert may turn theatrical. Regardless, novelty and experimentation will reign.The company’s role as this year’s music director at Ojai — a festival overseen by a different guest each year, in collaboration with the artistic director, Ara Guzelimian — is a testament to the precious space it occupies. Endlessly adventurous, it is also a magnet for major support; its members have performed on high-profile stages, been commissioned by the likes of the Paris Opera and even won a MacArthur “genius” fellowship. In March, it received a $750,000 Mellon Foundation grant.From left, Smith, Zack Winokur, Bullock, Schraiber and Hanick debrief at Lumberyard after a rehearsal for “Harawi.”Lauren Lancaster for The New York TimesDespite such prestige, AMOC is “an island of misfit toys,” said the bass-baritone Davóne Tines, who like everyone in the company balances his work with it and a busy outside career. “I don’t know what the ‘misfit’ means, but I know that part of it is a yearning for a different sort of way.”That type of yearning is how the company was born, over a lunch between the composer Matthew Aucoin and the stage director Zack Winokur in 2014. The two had grown up in each other’s orbits, overlapping at camp and the Juilliard School, but never really had a substantial conversation until then. They talked about the frustrations of getting a project done quickly with a group of strangers, and wondered what would happen instead if a small network of artists were brought together for intentional, enduring relationships.Over the next couple of years the idea grew more earnest, and Aucoin and Winokur began to invite some of their favorite colleagues from the worlds of music and dance to join. They also sought recommendations; Aucoin asked the violinist Keir GoGwilt, a member, “Who is the violinist you respect the most?” Miranda Cuckson, GoGwilt responded. So she came on board, too.“There was a very particular profile that we were looking for in the artists, which is people who are virtuosos in their area and therefore are appreciated by institutions, but sometimes chafe at the limitations,” Aucoin said. “It was the people who had the chops to excel in the capital-C classical versions of these art forms but didn’t want to live there all the time.”One such artist was Paul Appleby, a tenor who appears regularly at the Metropolitan Opera. When he heard from Aucoin, he recalled, he had been looking for more new-music projects. “How many times,” he said, “can you do ‘Magic Flute’ before you start to glaze over a bit?” Tines felt similarly, describing repertoire like Schumann’s “Liederkreis,” for all its beauty, as “a straitjacket.”During the more nebulous days of AMOC, its artists found refuge in the rural town of Stamford, Vt., where they were regularly hosted by the dancer Marta Miller on an idyllic property with a vegetable garden, pool and rehearsal studio. (Aucoin and Winokur have also bought houses nearby.) It’s now a tradition to meet there in August.“Usually the Vermont time has not been about creating a project as much as working on stuff,” Winokur said. “Or workshopping ideas or totally experimenting. And there’s a level of social engagement: You’re living together, eating together, doing dishes together.”Vermont is where the ritual of giving thanks at dinner started. It’s also where, between the meal and dessert, AMOC members tend to give impromptu performances — a private entertainment that inspired “Family Dinner,” a modular set of miniature concertos by Aucoin that will premiere at Ojai.When they get together, artistic disciplines blur in an open-minded manner redolent of Black Mountain College, the short-lived liberal arts college where Merce Cunningham, John Cage and Anni Albers, for example, freely experimented alongside their students. With AMOC, Smith said, “One thing feeds another.” She continued: “Why would Keir pick up a violin to play, and why would I dance to it? It’s amazing to understand the why, and so much gets answered from there.”Less formal cross-pollination has been productive, too. One night, Bullock danced with the former Batsheva company member Or Schraiber after dinner, and the casual fun led to Schraiber joining a staged production of Messiaen’s song cycle “Harawi” at Ojai, directed by Winokur and choreographed by Smith.When the company formally announced itself, in 2017, it had a mix of instrumentalists (including the JACK Quartet cellist Jay Campbell, the exhilaratingly versatile pianist Conor Hanick, the genre-blending flutist Emi Ferguson, the bassist and composer Doug Balliett, and Jonny Allen, of Sandbox Percussion); vocalists (among them the ubiquitous countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo); and dancers (in addition to Schraiber and Smith, Julia Eichten — though the cellist Coleman Itzkoff has convincingly pulled off this role as well).From left, Miranda Cuckson, Anthony Cheung and Paul Appleby preparing for the premiere of Cheung’s “The Echoing of Tenses.”Lauren Lancaster for The New York TimesAt first, the company really had only one project on the calendar: a small festival at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., where it had an early champion in Diane Borger, the theater’s executive producer. She already knew Tines and Aucoin — their talent, she said was obvious and extraordinary — and committed to three years of hosting them for an event that, she recalled, had to be called Run AMOC!, because “how could it not?”It was essential to the company that its members receive equal pay for their work. “All of these people are at the same caliber, yet their pay is so different based on their disciplines,” Winokur said. “Musicians make more, and dancers make less.” So they set a precedent of a high minimum pay for performance and rehearsal weeks. “It’s less, obviously, than what Anthony or Julia can make in a night,” he added, referring to Costanzo and Bullock’s star status in opera, “but it’s not chump change, either.”The policy is built into the company’s contracts. Sometimes, it’s too expensive — most often at dance institutions, which tend to be chronically underfunded. So when it can, AMOC makes up the difference with subsidies. (That Mellon grant will help.) In the end, Winokur said, “everyone enters the room feeling the same way.”Usually, Winokur said, partners are fine with AMOC’s pay standards. One reason could be that most institutions would be willing to support the company’s artists anyway. Many of them have been regulars at Lincoln Center; during the 2018-19 season, Bullock was in residence at Metropolitan Museum of Art. Costanzo was instrumental in bringing the New York Philharmonic back from its pandemic hiatus. “We have,” Tines said, “earned our stripes.”That puts the company in a position not enjoyed by many avant-gardists, or young artists generally. They have freedom, and means.“The way AMOC engages with institutions is, we are happy to utilize the resources of the hardware,” Tines said. “We need the spaces, we need the financial support. We do not need the artistic ideals or ideas even. Just allow people to be their full selves and artists to create, and hopefully you will allow an ecosystem for beautiful things to be made. The provider of resources cannot also be the arbiter of them.”When AMOC is left to its own devices, it operates in a disciplined, democratic way. It has a “small but busy staff,” Winokur said, consisting of him, the managing director Jennifer Chen, the producer Cath Brittan and the company manager Mary McGowan. The company is also made up of committees, such as the one overseeing Ojai.Anthony Cheung, who composed one of the festival premieres, “The Echoing of Tenses,” said: “I’ve never seen an organization like this, where even in the planning stages people involved or not in the project are so invested.” Guzelimian laughed while recalling the sight of a shared Google Docs file for Ojai, where changes from all members were happening in real time. “Even editing documents,” he said, “is a collective effort.”During the pandemic lockdown, the company met regularly on video calls in which members had long, seminar-like discussions about AMOC’s mission and future. Group decisions, they learned, don’t come easily. Cuckson said, “There’s a lot of work you have to put in,” while Appleby put it more bluntly: “Democracy can be a pain in the ass.”But at their best, the artists achieve what Guzelimian described as “Brownian motion,” adding: “They exert creative pulls on each other that just make more energy. I’m still scratching my head, because conventional wisdom would say that the larger the committee, the more it becomes leveled. In their case, the interaction seems to push them.”Winokur directing a rehearsal of “Harawi” with, from left, Schraiber, Bullock and Hanick.Lauren Lancaster for The New York TimesWhen they do push one another, it’s often friendly. At Lumberyard, they were preparing a dense slate of Ojai programming, including new works, a tribute to the long-overlooked composer Julius Eastman and dances including the premiere of Smith’s “Open Rehearsal,” based on her film “Broken Theater.” Days are long, and sometimes hot, with one of the spaces cooled only by open doors and fans. Winokur had the most aerial view, moving from room to room with his dog, a young mutt named Henry (one of three on site, joining Sigel’s senior beagle-terrier mix, Ollie, and new puppy, Otis).Even amid struggle — repetition of a single passage, say, for an hour at a time — the mood stayed light. With Costanzo in New York singing in “Akhnaten” at the Met Opera, Tines playfully sang his part in falsetto during rehearsals for Aucoin’s setting of the poet Jorie Graham’s “Deep Water Trawling,” newly arranged for AMOC. And the artists were quick to compliment. Appleby told Cheung that he felt like “The Echoing of Tenses” made him “see the Matrix.” In a break from the thorniness of “Deep Water,” Bullock told Aucoin, “I like this music, Matt,” to which he said, “Thanks, Jules; it’s nice to hear every once in a while.”As she spoke, Bullock rubbed her baby bump. Her coming parenthood is a reminder of the life events that loom over AMOC. They all have independent careers, and some already have families. Winokur said that the company’s structure — more of a relationship network than an organization with regular programming — could protect it from committing to a future it can’t maintain. AMOC’s sustainability, Tines said, is a “big philosophical question.”“I’m interested in understanding what we look like in our next phases of scale,” he added. “Does it mean inviting new people? Does it mean modeling what we’re doing for other groups?”For now, the company’s institutional support continues apace. Winokur said the coming year, after the wave of work created for Ojai, will entail a lot of touring. “Harawi” is going to the Aix-en-Provence Festival in July. “Comet/Poppea” — which blends Monteverdi’s “L’Incoronazione di Poppea” with a new opera adaptation of W.E.B. Du Bois’s story “The Comet” by George Lewis — will premiere at the Spoleto Festival USA next spring.And that future, as open-ended as it is micromanaged, is currently taking shape at picnic tables in the Hudson Valley, alongside expressions of thanks, songs from “Frozen” and dinner recipes explained in great detail.“I only refer to AMOC as a group of my closest friends and colleagues,” Tines said. “When I’m doing any other project, this is home.” More

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      New Effort Aims to Bring More Contemporary Music to Orchestras

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      An initiative by the League of American Orchestras will enlist 30 ensembles to perform works by six living composers, all of them women.Many orchestras, eager to demonstrate a commitment to contemporary music, have taken pride in programming works by living composers in recent years. But when the glamour of the premiere fades, many of those works all but disappear from the standard repertoire, rarely to be performed again.Now a group of nonprofit leaders is working to make new music a more permanent part of the artistic landscape. The League of American Orchestras on Thursday announced an initiative that will enlist 30 ensembles over the next several years to perform new pieces by six composers, all of them women.“There’s too much great music that gets lost and is never heard after its premiere,” Simon Woods, the league’s president and chief executive, said in an interview. “We thought, ‘We need to solve that.’”While many orchestras are eager for the prestige of commissioning new works, Woods said they are not as focused on playing pieces that have premiered elsewhere.“Orchestras should be patrons of new work,” he said. “But still, the second performance and the third performance are really important. Because it’s only when one hears a work a few times that it sort of snowballs and it has a chance of getting a toehold in the repertoire. Building that momentum is really important.”The League, in partnership with the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation and American Composers Orchestra, has been working since 2014 to bring more diversity to orchestral programming, including awarding commissions to female and nonbinary composers.The initiative announced on Thursday will build on those efforts, pairing each of the six composers with five ensembles. The program, which will cost at least $360,000, will be financed by the Toulmin foundation.The six composers are the British-born Anna Clyne, who works in the United States; Sarah Gibson, who is also a pianist; the Hong Kong-born Angel Lam; Gity Razaz, an Iranian American; Arlene Sierra, an American based in London; and Wang Lu, a China-born composer and pianist, who lives in Providence, R.I.Wang said in an interview that it was often difficult for contemporary composers to find orchestras interested in playing new works after they have premiered.“As a composer, I can’t just like knock on the door and say, ‘Hey, this is my music, why don’t you play it?’” she said.Wang, who is working on a new piece that the New York Philharmonic is to premiere in January, said the league’s initiative would give artists more opportunities to develop. “You can only get better by working with orchestras,” she said in an interview. “Only by listening can you improve.”The initial group of orchestras taking part are the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Kansas City Symphony and the Sarasota Orchestra. Those ensembles will begin to premiere and perform the works by the composers next season.In the coming months, the league will choose the remaining 24 ensembles that will take part in the program. More

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      ‘A Vocal Figure Skater’ Makes His Mark as an Operatic Hamlet

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      The British tenor Allan Clayton’s portrayal of the title role in Brett Dean’s opera is personal, emotional — and a breakthrough.The tenor Allan Clayton was in near-constant motion and almost always onstage. At a dress rehearsal of Brett Dean’s “Hamlet” at the Metropolitan Opera a few weeks ago, he staggered, capered, fell to his knees, leaped into a grave and dueled to the death — all while singing Dean’s difficult, vocally shimmering, emotionally shifting music. Taking a bow afterward, alone on the huge stage, Clayton looked slightly dazed, drenched in sweat and understandably exhausted.“Hamlet,” which runs through June 9 at the Met, was a breakthrough for the British-born Clayton when the opera premiered at the Glyndebourne Festival in 2017.Writing in The New York Times, the music critic Zachary Woolfe said Clayton was even better at the Met. “His tone is sometimes plangently lyrical, sometimes sarcastically sharp,” Woolfe wrote. “Without losing the character’s desperation, Clayton now makes Hamlet more persuasively antic and wry — more real.”In an interview a few days before the May 13 Met premiere, Clayton said he was both “a more canny singer” and more stable than when he first sang Hamlet. “It is a wonderful role,” he said. “But emotionally it’s very hard. It dredges up issues in my personal life which were true in 2017 and are still true now, and completely inform what I do onstage.”His father, he explained, died when he was in his 20s; his relationship with his mother is difficult; he went through a traumatic breakup with a girlfriend during the rehearsal period for the opera. In short, his life had some eerie parallels with that of Hamlet. As he told The Telegraph in 2018, “an awful lot of difficult stuff got drawn on and dredged up.”Now, he said, he is “better able to distinguish between the character and my reality.”Clayton’s Hamlet with, from left, Sarah Connolly as Gertrude and Rod Gilfry as Claudius.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesClayton offstage looks very much like his Hamlet onstage: bearded, slightly rumpled, in jeans and a loose T-shirt. Friendly and funny, he takes the British art of self-deprecation to Olympic levels and is clearly prone to excessive self-doubt. Just two months ago, he said, he had to lecture himself sternly when a dress rehearsal of Benjamin Britten’s “Peter Grimes” had gone poorly in his view (his description is colorfully unprintable) a day before its Royal Opera House premiere.“I often go through, I can’t do this, it’s too hard, too stressful, and I’m not doing anything useful, like being a doctor or nurse or teacher,” he said. “But I sat in my flat on that day and thought, If I am not going to enjoy myself, why do this job?”His performance was acclaimed by the British press. “His tenor has gained heft,” said John Allison, the editor of Opera Magazine, in a telephone interview. “And he had the lyricism and the power, and a rawness and vulnerability that made his portrayal of the character as an oddball dreamer so affecting.” (Clayton is scheduled to perform the role again, at the Metropolitan Opera House, in October.)Clayton, who grew up in Malvern in the southwest of England, began to sing at 8, in his school choir, led by a teacher who followed the Vienna Boys Choir model, and had the students do both concerts and tours. At 10, he won a choral scholarship to the Worcester Cathedral School, founded by Henry VIII. “We sang everything,” he said. “Carols by Britten, work by George Benjamin, as well as the older things.”Although Clayton modestly said he “wasn’t particularly talented at anything,” he was encouraged to apply to Cambridge University. “No one in my family had even been to university,” he said. He was accepted as a choral scholar, and began to learn about opera and lieder while studying archaeology and anthropology. “Something just clicked in the second year,” he said of his singing. “I thought maybe I could do this.”After earning a postgraduate degree at the Royal Academy of Music, work came steadily. Pivotal experiences, he said, included several roles with the Leeds-based Opera North and his first title role, in Britten’s “Albert Herring” at Glyndebourne in 2008.But performing Castor in Barrie Kosky’s 2011 production of Rameau’s “Castor and Pollux” proved “a game-changer,” Clayton said. “I realized I wasn’t a particular ‘type’ of tenor, neither Italianate or ‘English.’ I just sing like I sing.”“I realized I wasn’t a particular ‘type’ of tenor, neither Italianate or ‘English.’ I just sing like I sing,” Clayton said.Tonje Thilesen for The New York TimesKosky, who has directed Clayton in six operas, called him his “tenor muse” in an interview. “He has the openness and ability to access his inner emotional landscape that you more usually find with actors,” he said, “but with a distinctive and beautiful voice.”A small role in George Benjamin’s “Written on Skin” (2012) was Clayton’s first experience of having a part written for him. “To have someone write something for you, do an almost forensic investigation into your vocal ability, was thrilling,” he said.Working with Dean on “Hamlet” was even more intense. First, Dean said, he recorded Clayton delivering several of the character’s soliloquies, “to hear where his voice sat, and his natural rhythms.” In workshops, Dean could “see and hear how he used the words and that influenced how the rest of the piece unfolded.”By the time he finished writing the second act, he added, “Allan’s ease at singing high without having to belt it out, the flexibility and ease in his voice, were very much in my head.”Matthew Jocelyn, whose libretto boldly cuts and reweaves different folio versions of Shakespeare’s text, said hearing Clayton in the workshops was useful in both practical and intuitive ways. “He is a vocal figure skater,” he said, and “has that mobility that allows him to twirl and to land, to go to the extremes, both emotionally and vocally. Basically, he showed us we didn’t need to be afraid of anything.”Clayton said he read and researched the play, but he felt he had to be as truthful and personal as possible in the part. It felt natural, he added, to explore Hamlet’s darkness and imbue him with a febrile physicality. “I move easily, have always liked sport, and it seemed like a natural extension of Hamlet’s character,” he said. “He is light on his feet both mentally and physically.”The director of the opera, Neil Armfield, said that Clayton’s freedom as a performer made many of the staging ideas come to life. “He is a beautiful physical performer, has the freedom of a ballet dancer without any self-consciousness,” he said. “That fueled a physical sense of something adolescent about Hamlet, his attachment to grief, his breaking of the social rules, his mischievousness and hyperactive glee.”Clayton is at an important moment in his career, said the conductor Mark Elder, who has worked with him on several occasions, most recently on “Peter Grimes.” Clayton’s voice has filled out, Elder said, “but the strength and passion in his singing has not obscured its delicacy and gentle expressiveness.” The roles he chooses in the next years, Elder added, “are going to be crucial for him.”Asked about this, Clayton hesitated. “Casting directors don’t know what to do with me, and I don’t know what to do with myself,” he said. “But as long as I am working with interesting people and trying new things, I think I’ll be happy.” More

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      Carnegie Hall Musters Stars for a Benefit Concert for Ukraine

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      Headliners from the fields of classical music, jazz and Broadway joined forces to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine and show solidarity with its victims.It was not a typical chorus on the stage of Carnegie Hall: the acclaimed pianist Evgeny Kissin reading from a sheet of paper as he sang Leonard Bernstein’s “Somewhere” with a gathering that included the actor Richard Gere, the mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard and the Broadway star Adrienne Warren.But there they were — four members of the full company that took part in Monday night’s benefit concert in support of Ukraine, an array of star power singing onstage as members of the Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York joined from the aisles.“Hold my hand and I’ll take you there,” they sang. “Somehow. Someday. Somewhere.”It was that kind of night at Carnegie Hall, as artists from many disciplines and the institution itself came together to speak out against the Russian invasion of Ukraine and show solidarity with its victims.The stars sang Leonard Bernstein’s “Somewhere” for the finale.Julieta Cervantes for The New York TimesThe Ukrainian Chorus Dumka, an amateur ensemble that specializes in secular and sacred music from Ukraine, opened the concert with the Ukrainian national anthem. Diplomats foreign and domestic offered thanks and spoke about the power of the arts in times of crisis. In between songs, the mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves paused and choked up briefly while speaking about her husband, a doctor, who was in attendance just a day after returning from Ukraine, where he had been helping provide medical care.And there was a message from Ukraine’s first lady.“Music heals and inspires, music boosts hope and confidence,” the first lady, Olena Zelenska, said in a prerecorded video message that played early in the program. “Today’s event is a reminder that Ukraine is an integral part of world culture.”“Music on this stage is a separate important victory,” she added. “It is a sign of unity of our cultures against the chaos and grief of war. And all of you who are in this hall today are our effective and true allies in this cultural struggle.”The hall displayed the blue and yellow colors of Ukraine’s flag.Julieta Cervantes for The New York TimesThe evening included more than a dozen artists and ensembles. There were performances by the jazz vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant, the violinist Midori, the singer Michael Feinstein, the soprano Angel Blue and the Broadway singer Jessica Vosk. Mr. Kissin appeared toward the end of the program — first with the violinist Itzhak Perlman to play John Williams’s Theme from “Schindler’s List,” and then to play Chopin’s Scherzo No. 2 alone.In an interview with The New York Times before the concert, Mr. Kissin said that playing in the benefit felt “so natural for me that I can’t even call it a decision.”“Unfortunately, I am too old and not qualified to take a gun and go to fight in the Ukraine, so I’m doing everything I can: sending money and taking part in concerts for the Ukraine,” he said. “As a Jew who was born and grew up in Russia, I, having belonged to the greatest victims of the Russian xenophobia, I have always felt solidarity with all its other victims, including the Ukrainians.”How the Ukraine War Is Affecting the Cultural WorldCard 1 of 6Gavriel Heine. More