CREATION & CONFLICT; 8 DAYS IN JUNE FESTIVAL HOPES TO CHALLENGE CONVENTION
by Ted Shaw, Windsor Star
Windsor Star (Ontario)
June 21, 2007 Thursday
Final Edition
When the Detroit Symphony Orchestra wanted to put together a festival
of music that challenges the conventions of orchestral music, it
looked north.
Or south, actually, to Ontario.
More specifically, the DSO asked Peter Oundjian, Toronto-born music
director of the Toronto Symphony, and its own principal guest conductor
and artistic adviser since last September, to assemble 8 Days in June,
a bold, new arts festival that begins today at Orchestra Hall.
The DSO also lured a Canadian radio personality Tom Allen, host of
CBC’s Music & Company, to act as creative consultant over several
classical music announcers on Detroit radio.
Far from a snub, it was a recognition of the close relationship
between the two countries and the cities of Detroit and Toronto,
Oundjian insists.
"I think that since Detroit is north of Canada, it is Canada,"
Oundjian said with a twinkle in his eye.
The 52-year-old conductor said the ties binding us are tight.
"Seriously, I think the fact that Detroit gets all the CBC stations
has had a lot of impact over the years. They’re always in touch with
Canadian news and the Canadian arts scene."
Since his appointment as the DSO’s artistic adviser in the absence
of retired director Neeme Jarvi, Oundjian has earned frequent-flyer
points between Toronto and Windsor.
"There’s been a close connection going back to Gunther Herbig," he
said. While Herbig was music director in Toronto in the early 1990s,
following his tenure in Detroit, he continued to live in Bloomfield
Hills, Mich.
"It’s an easy connection," Oundjian said. "I fly into Windsor to
conduct in Detroit. It’s an internal flight for me."
The Canadian-born Oundjian, the youngest of five children of Armenian
immigrants, still bears the British accent of his musical education in
England. From the age of seven, he studied violin there and eventually
attended the Royal College of Music. He also studied at the Juilliard
School in New York with, among others, Itzhak Perlman.
Oundjian was appointed music director of his hometown Toronto Symphony,
succeeding Jussa Pekka Saraste, in 2003 and has contributed to turning
that troubled operation around with some unconventional programming.
A cousin of Monty Python original Eric Idle — his mother and Idle’s
are sisters — Oundjian will conduct the premiere in Toronto later
this month of Idle’s oratorio, Not The Messiah (He’s a Very Naughty
Boy), based on the film, Life of Brian.
His challenge in Detroit, he said, is to push the envelope in a
similar way.
"The whole idea of the festival is to challenge convention,"
he explained.
So the classics of Beethoven and Stravinsky rub shoulders with jazz
music by Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, hip
hop from Public Enemy’s Chuck D, rock ‘n’ roll, and a 20th-century
stage play with music, Stravinsky’s A Soldier’s Tale, recast by
novelist Kurt Vonnegut.
The Canadian connection extends to the participation in A Soldier’s
Tale by Colm Feore, his wife Donna Feore as director, and Stratford
Festival actor Graham Abbey.
"We understand we are messing with tradition to a certain degree,"
Oundjian said. "But this festival is a great place for people who
think the concert hall is dull to come and experience music in a
different way."
A classical music performance in the new millennium, Oundjian said,
relies on what he calls "enhancements," the use of techniques common
to other media, like cinema and theatre.
"The audience comes conditioned to expect that," he said. "We’ve
been getting messages from our audiences for years now that they are
totally ready for enhancements."
When he conducted the Shostakovich Symphony No. 11, The Year 1905,
based on historical events in czarist Russia, the performance opened
with a single shaft of light trained on him. When it ended, the hall
was thrust into total darkness.
"It was very ominous and very effective," he said. "It’s a simple
technique done in every theatre in the world. But you almost never
see it in a concert hall."
That performance will be duplicated during 8 Days in June.
Each year, the festival will have a new theme. In its debut, the
theme is Creation and Conflict.
It’s the perfect climate in which to depart from the norm, especially
in programming classical music.
"We start out with the Beethoven 5 (Symphony No. 5) and Stravinsky’s
Rite of Spring on the same program," Oundjian said. That concert is
tonight at Orchestra Hall at 8:30 p.m.
"You never see those works on the same program. But there’s a very
strong reason for it here. In the festival, we are looking at the
start of three centuries — the 19th, the 20th and the new millennium
— and taking a particular interest in the conflicts at the start of
those epochs.
"There were the Napoleonic Wars in Beethoven’s time, the First World
War and the Russian Revolution in Stravinsky’s time, and our own era
of post-9-11.
"The Beethoven and the Stravinsky were absolutely central to two of
those epochs, and it will be very instructive to see what music was
produced out of the conflicts. These kinds of juxtapositions can
provide new perspectives, new ideas."
Another example is Vonnegut’s rewrite of A Soldier’s Tale (L’histoire
du soldat), which transports Stravinsky’s early-20th century stage work
inhabited by magicians and fairies to the court-martial and execution
of Second World War Pte. Edward Slovik, who was born in Detroit.
Ultimately, Oundjian would like to see a new kind of audience attend
8 Days in June.
"If you’re doing anything that is somewhat worthwhile," he said,
"one of the ways you find that out is the criticism you receive. I
don’t think anyone has done anything that makes a strong statement
without some kind of criticism.
"We aren’t doing anything truly outrageous. We’re letting the material
dictate how far we need to go. The Vonnegut-Stravinsky piece represents
what the festival’s all about.
"It’s a work not often performed, but transformed into something
different and completely relevant to this city and these times."
[email protected] or 519-255-5777, ext. 641
8 DAYS IN JUNE HIGHLIGHTS
All events take place at the Max M. Fisher Music Center and Orchestra
Hall, 3711 Woodward Ave., Detroit. Tickets range from US$65 to $20,
or $300 for the series pass. For more details and to order tickets,
go to , or call 313-576-5111.
– Tonight at 8:30 p.m., DSO performs Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 and
Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.
– Friday at 8 p.m., trumpeter Wynton Marsalis leads the Lincoln Center
Jazz Orchestra.
– Saturday at 8 p.m., pianist Christopher O’Riley performs
interpretations of the music of Radiohead.
– Sunday at 5 p.m., a screening of the documentary Beethoven’s Hair,
plus performances of two sonatas.
– Monday at 8 p.m., rapper Chuck D of Public Enemy discusses the
hip-hop movement, followed by a poetry slam by Detroit writers.
– Tuesday at 8 p.m., a DSO program of world music inspired by events
of 9-11.
– Wednesday at 8 p.m., Kurt Vonnegut’s reworking of the Stravinsky
work, A Soldier’s Tale, starring F. Murray Abraham, Colm Feore and
Graham Abbey.
– Thursday at 6:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., DSO performs Shostakovich’s
Symphony No. 11, The Year 1905, and the String Quartet No. 8.
www.8daysinjune.com