• About Jeff von der Schmidt, the Hà Nội New Music Ensemble & LA International New Music Festival

Sound Travels with Jeff von der Schmidt

~ A blog about new music, travel and food

Sound Travels with Jeff von der Schmidt

Tag Archives: Betty Freeman

A Canticle for Oliver Knussen, The Gentle Giant of New Music

09 Thursday Aug 2018

Posted by Jeff von der Schmidt in Alexander Goehr, Contemporary Music, Elliott Carter, Hanoi New Music Ensemble, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Oliver Knussen, Southwest Chamber Music, Toru Takemitsu, Uncategorized, Vietnam

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Aleander Goehr, Betty Freeman, Elliott Carter, Ernest Fleischmann, Hanoi New Music Ensemble, Hans Werner Henze, Oliver Knussen, Southwest Chamber Music, Tanglewood, Toru Takemitsu

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A perfect last photo of Oliver Knussen on July 6, 2018 at the Royal Academy of Music in London, receiving an Honorary Doctorate.

”Aren’t you the fantastic horn player I’ve been hearing?” came an introduction towards my direction, in that one of a one voice. We were in the Music Library at Tanglewood in the summer of 1980. As fate would have it on that humid Berkshire afternoon in July, I was studying the score of Voices by Hans Werner Henze and he was working on Where The Wild Things Are. I didn’t realize that just opening that particular Henze score would be all the personal introduction needed for Oliver Knussen to strike up a conversation with me.

A warm friendship began that would last for the next thirty eight years, until his untimely death a few weeks ago. We always remained in touch, either here in Los Angeles, where he conducted often in the 1980s, during our engaging phone calls, or on our return trips to Tanglewood to visit my wife Jan’s family. “I’ve certainly met you in past life!” would become Olly’s charming Leit-motif for saying hello to Jan.

Grief creates a strange energy, and I know that I am not alone coping with the shock that Olly is no longer with his daughter Sonya, with my wife Jan, with me, with any of his friends, with the entire new music community all over the world. A man of uncommon common sense, don’t let appearances fool you. Of all of Oliver Knussen’s gigantic appetites, the largest was for music.

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From 100 to 103: The Wisdom of Elliott Carter

18 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by Jeff von der Schmidt in Composers, Contemporary Music, Elliott Carter, Evan Hughes, LA International New Music Festival, Los Angeles, Music, New York City, REDCAT, Southwest Chamber Music, Tambuco Percussion Ensemble, Walt Disney Concert Hall

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Abdiel Gonzalez, Betty Freeman, E.E. Cummings, Elissa Johnston, Elliott Carter, Ezra Pound, Jon Lee Keenan, LA International New Music Festival, Leonard Bernstein, Leonard Stein, Marianne Moore, Pierre Boulez, Strand Bookstore, Tambuco Percussion Ensemble, Wallace Stevens

Elliott Carter at work in his Greenwich Village apartment on W. 12th.

Elliott Carter at work in his Greenwich Village apartment on W. 12th Street.

Around 2:30 P.M. on the afternoon of June 7th, 2012 my wife Jan and I arrived at Elliott Carter’s apartment for what was to be our last meeting together.  With Jan’s family in Brooklyn and New Jersey, we’d drop in on Elliott every opportunity we could and have luckily lost count just how many times we’d visited.  As Elliott entered his late 90s, each meeting became a special occasion. He was 103 that final late spring day.

The days of lunches prepared by his wife Helen were long gone by that point, but we still remember her simple New England tomato soup, and often quietly wear the scarf she gave Jan or the tie she gave me. And Carter was not far, about a block down and over, from the apartment of Charles Ives, which we’d sometimes go and see after visiting with Carter.

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A Berkshire Morning Walk to Lake Buel

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by Jeff von der Schmidt in Betty Freeman, John Cage, LA International New Music Festival, Music, Southwest Chamber Music, Travel, Uncategorized

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Berkshires, Betty Freeman, Eikando Temple, Henry David Thoreau, John Cage, Kyoto, Lake Buel, MItsuyo Matsumoto, Quartets by John Cage, Red Fox Music Camp, Seiji Ozawa, Tanglewood

A path in the Berkshire woods near Lake Buel.

A path in the Berkshire woods near Lake Buel.

I awoke yesterday morning to the sound of soft rainfall on the leaves and trees. The birds were an amazingly diverse choir, tweeting and humming and cooing and singing me out of sleep into emerging daylight.

The Berkshire Hills in Massachusetts are a locus for my life. They provide a genuine home for American musicians at Tanglewood in Lenox, where in 1979 I met my wife Jan. Her mother was born in Pittsfield in 1928 and her grandparents are buried there. Her aunt and uncle still live in New Marlborough, her old Cousin Andrew is a farmer in Sandisfield and young Cousin Rebecca is getting married on Saturday in Great Barrington.

But as I heard the rain fall softly I remembered, with birds and rainfall my soundscape as I awoke, music by John Cage inspired by the old colonial composers and Henry David Thoreau.

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Hanoi in Hollywood 3

01 Thursday May 2014

Posted by Jeff von der Schmidt in Betty Freeman, Composers, Contemporary Music, John Cage, LA International New Music Festival, Los Angeles, Southwest Chamber Music, Travel, Uncategorized, Vietnam

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Betty Freeman, Bruce Weigl, Claude Debussy, Elliott Carter, Emperor Bao Dai, Hanoi, Igor Stravinsky, LA International New Music Festival, Leonard Bernstein, Los Angeles, Mark Swed, Paris, Song Hong Ensemble of Hanoi, Ton That Tiet, Venice Beach Walkway, Vu Nhat Tan, Walt Disney Concert Hall

 

Song Hong selfie going up Bunker Hill to Disney Hall.

Song Hong selfie going up Bunker Hill to Disney Hall.

I’ve always thought of Los Angeles as the New Vienna of classical music. Because if you care about the 20th century story of classical music, the chapters about LA are page turners.

Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky for monumental starters. Martha Graham is from Santa Barbara cutting her teeth here as a young woman. John Cage is born here in 1912 (and Merce Cunningham dances in the world premiere of Appalachian Spring, which was composed mostly when Copland was at MGM). Erich Wolfgang Korngold establishes the film score and let’s be culturally honest and admit that movies have had an influence on the world. Pierre Boulez conducts his American debut at the Monday Evening Concerts, the oldest continuing series of new music in the world. And the LA Philharmonic’s Minimalist Jukebox Festival this season proves that a big institution can move forward.

And God bless Betty Freeman, who commissioned everybody and took pictures of them all (mine with Elliott Carter and Oliver Knussen are great lifetime memories). Driving past Hillcrest Dr. in Beverly Hills where she lived, just up the road from where I grew up in West Hollywood, never feels the same anymore……

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For John Cage & Betty Freeman in Los Angeles: Yoga from India & Zen from Japan

08 Saturday Feb 2014

Posted by Jeff von der Schmidt in Betty Freeman, Composers, Contemporary Music, Food, John Cage, Kyoto, LA International New Music Festival, Latin Grammy Awards, Music, Southwest Chamber Music, Uncategorized

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Betty Freeman, Cage 2012, HInduism, John Cage, Los Angeles, Mineko Grimmer, Robert Rauschenberg, Roland Berger, Shalini Vijayan, Vienna Philharmonic, Yoga, Zen Buddhism

Cage looking for his childhood home in Los Angeles (photo by Betty Freeman).

John Cage looking for his childhood home in Los Angeles in 1987 (photo by Betty Freeman).

Though I’ve spent time writing about Southeast Asia, Mexico and our recent Latin Grammy nomination with Gabriela Ortiz, my blog is rooted in my LA International New Music Festival. I am very grateful that since September I’ve acquired over 2,900 readers in 73 countries. My posts will continue to cast a wide net describing the personality of my programming. But with this blog I now want to spend time here at home.

No, I’m not moving to Southeast Asia or Mexico. I don’t need to because I live in LA.

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