Chamber Music at the Barn will showcase a variety of musical styles

Asked what makes performing at Chamber Music at the Barn different from his regular job, Gregory Lee doesn’t stop at just one example.

There’s the small number of musicians who play together, leaving each more “exposed” to the audience. There’s the setting, a rustic two-story log cabin with reserved seating for fewer than 150 people. And, there’s the absence of a conductor.

“There isn’t somebody dictating when to come in and what to do,” said Lee, concert master of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic and an associate professor of violin at the University of Oklahoma. “You have to be more on your feet in terms of listening and responding to what you’re playing.”

“Chamber music definitely has that collaborative aspect to it. I love chamber music and any chance to do it.”

Lee gets that chance again this summer as one of the performers in the Chamber Music at the Barn series. It’s the 19th year for the series, which is held at the Prairie Pines tree farm in Maize.

Lee will be in the string quartet for the third concert, which features Rob Kapilow, music commentator and host of “What Makes It Great?” on National Public Radio.

Other concerts will showcase young New York guitar virtuoso Julian Lage, the concert series’ debut of one of Mozart’s best-known works for clarinet, and a well-traveled group of Wichita musicians.

Catherine Consiglio, artistic director of the series and professor of viola at Wichita State University, said she put together this summer’s program much the same way as always, by first consulting with friends and colleagues in the music world.

“I usually say ‘Hey, is there anything you’d really like to play next summer?’” she said. “It always gets refined from there. The key is that all of us are really interested and engaged in making that kind of music together.”

The exception to that pattern was Lage, who will perform July 9-11, and who Consiglio knows only through his agent, Mike Epstein.

“He strongly recommended a year ago that I look into Julian, so I did,” Consiglio said. “I listened a lot.”

Proclaimed a virtuoso before he was a teenager, Lage was the subject of a 1997 documentary “Jules at Eight.” Now 27, he leads his own trio and is also a member of Gary Burton’s New Quartet and Eric Harland’s Voyager. His most recent CD, “Free Flying,” was recorded with pianist Fred Hersch.

The New Yorker magazine said Lage “is in the highest category of improvising musicians, those who can enact thoughts and impulses as they receive them.” Bassist Scott Colley and drummer Kenny Wollesen play in his trio.

What strikes Consiglio is Lage’s versatility.

“When I talked to Mike, I said ‘How do I sell Julian to my audience? He doesn’t just do jazz. He does folk, he does bluegrass. He composes his own music. There’s not exactly a peg I can put him into.’ And Mike said, ‘You really do get who he is.’”

Kapilow, the NPR commentator, is a pianist and composer, but he won’t be performing music in the usual sense on July 16-18. Rather, he will explain what makes Antonin Dvorak’s “String Quarter in F Major Op. 96” – better known as the “American String Quartet” – a great piece of music. Kapilow sits at a piano during his presentation, playing snatches of music to illustrate the point he’s making.

“He (Kapilow) is gifted when it comes to taking them apart, dissecting them for an audience and showing them the magnificence and greatest of this work of music,” Consiglio said. “He does it in a way that’s filled with humor at good spirit. He’ll do that with examples. He’ll be at the piano.”

During the second half, a quartet consisting of Lee and Evgeny Zvonnikov on violins, Emmanuel Lopez on cello and Consiglio on viola will play the work. With Kapilow’s words fresh in their minds, “the audience gets to see it in a different light,” Consiglio said.

Kapilow will also be part of the chamber series’ youth music camps and children’s concerts during his stay in Wichita.

Lee said Dvorak’s “American” quartet, written when the Czech-born composer was living in New York City, is easily appreciated and justly renowned.

“It’s definitely got the folk element that Dvorak heard when he was living in America, and sort of his impression of what American music was like,” Lee said. “It’s the kind of music people can hum.”

The series’ first and last concerts will feature compositions in a variety of styles and moods. “Contrasting Rhapsodies and a Classic Quintet,” June 18-20, includes pieces by Bela Bartok, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Charles Martin Loeffler and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

“I realized that one of the well-known and loved pieces of chamber music – the Mozart clarinet quintet – had never been played at the Barn,” Consiglio said. “And it’s time.”

She said the themes in Mozart’s “Clarinet Quintet in A Major” are “really like an old friend. Every time you might hear that on the radio, or wherever you are, it’s always like ‘what a beautiful piece of music.’”

The Bartok piece, “Contrasts for Clarinet, Violin and Piano,” was commissioned and first performed by Benny Goodman, while Vaughn’s work was based on the poems of William Blake and is played by tenor clarinet and oboe alone.

“It’s a really unusual and effective piece of chamber music,” Consiglio said.

Michael Hanawalk plays the tenor and Andrea Banke oboe. Other musicians performing are Sarunas Jankauskas on clarinet, John Harrison and Zvonnikov on violins, Leonid Shukaev on cello, James Knight on piano and Consiglio on viola.

The last concerts of the series, to be held July 30-Aug. 1, star the Orfeo Piano Trio, formed by WSU faculty in 2012. Since then, the group has toured southeast Asian and played several regional concerts. Its members are Julie Bees on piano, Zvonnikov on violin and Shukav on cello. They’ll perform Dmitri Shostakovich’s “Piano Trio No. 2,” written in the midst of World War II as a moving tribute to its vices, and then be joined by Consiglio on viola for the lighter “Piano Quartet in C-minor” by Gabriel Faure.

“I’m always looking for ways to round out the concert,” Consiglio said. “You need contrast, you need a way for the audience to feel like they’re invested in these different styles.”

In addition to reserved seating inside the Prairie Pines barn, seats for about 100 more people are available outside. Concessions are served during intermission and the audience is invited to walk around the grounds before the show.

Once the concert starts, Lee said, the experience is intimate.

“The audience is pretty close, and it’s nice to feel that.”

This story was originally published June 14, 2015 at 8:13 AM with the headline "Chamber Music at the Barn will showcase a variety of musical styles."