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

Sound Travels with Jeff von der Schmidt

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Sound Travels with Jeff von der Schmidt

Tag Archives: Tanglewood

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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Autumn in Asia: New Roles as Artistic Advisors in Hà Nội, Việt Nam Begin in October

17 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by Jeff von der Schmidt in Composers, Contemporary Music, Food, LA International New Music Festival, Music, REDCAT, Southwest Chamber Music, Travel, Vietnam

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Anthony Bourdain, Ascending Dragon, Asia, Hanoi, Hanoi Philharmonic Orchestra, Kim Ngoc Tran, LA International New Music Festival, Leonard Bernstein, Nguyen Thien Dao, Pham Minh Thanh, Song Hong Ensemble of Hanoi, Southwest Chamber Music, Tanglewood, Ton That Tiet, Vietnam, Vu Nhat Tan

Jan and I at

At Phở Sương, or Happy Noodle, in the Old Quarter of Hà Nội in 2013.

Jan and I are thrilled, honored, and excited to begin a new adventure this October, one which I am happy to share with all my blog readers around the world.

Soon after my last post about our Los Angeles International New Music Festival at REDCAT in Walt Disney Concert Hall, an official invitation arrived from Dr. Lê Anh Tuấn, Deputy Rector of the Việt Nam National Academy of Music in Hà Nội. Dr. Tuan was inviting us to serve as Artistic Advisors to the Hà Nội Philharmonic Orchestra and play a key role in the founding of the Hà Nội New Music Ensemble.

Our answer? An obvious and immediate YES, YES, YES!

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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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The Housatonic at Stockbridge

31 Saturday May 2014

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

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American Music, Berkshires, Boston Symphony, Brooklyn Bridge, Charles Ives, Charles Wuorinen, Elliott Carter, Gloria Cheng, Hollywood Boulevard, John De Keyser, Leonard Bernstein, New York City, Tanglewood, When Pigs Fly Farm

The Housatonic at Stockbridge.

The Housatonic at Stockbridge.

Maybe I was fated to fall in love in the Berkshires…

Let me flashback to a hot summer afternoon on Hollywood Boulevard in 1968. The bookstores, record shops, head joints, Indian restaurants, foot traffic and motorcycle gangs of Hell’s Angels were prodigious. I’d been inspired hearing The Fourth of July on a CBS Young Persons concert with Leonard Bernstein. Who was this American composer, Charles Ives? Our “Emerson, Twain and Thoreau all rolled into one” as Bernstein had described him.

John Kirkpatrick had recorded the Concord Sonata and I had gobbled it up like a piece of pumpkin pie when I saw the record at an old Hollywood Boulevard legend, Phil Harris Records. No bar lines? No meter? Fists on the piano? Forget the Mahler revival underway, my passion revolved around this American composer from Danbury, Connecticut. Next door to Phil Harris Records was a legendary music shop, our Doblinger’s or Patelson’s, owned by John de Keyser. Oversized scores of Boulez’s Pli selon pli and Penderecki’s St. Luke Passion were in the window display enticing me to enter.

I looked in awe at an item on the shelf. There was the great white whale of American music, The Concord Sonata by Charles Ives.

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Maples & Blossoms: My Journey to the East began with Japan

20 Friday Sep 2013

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Asia, Boston Opera Company, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston University, Japan, Sarah Caldwell, Seiji Ozawa, Tanglewood

2013-05-26 13.09.47

Young maple leaves at Ei-Kando Temple in Kyoto, May 2013.

Here’s a thought experiment.  Pierre Boulez, Benjamin Britten and John Cage are stuck in a Tokyo elevator for over three hours.  While waiting for a repairman, what do they talk about to pass the time?  Send me your ideas!

As I mentioned in my last post, our first visit to Asia was to Japan in 2002 and started in Kyoto.  A celebration of our 20th wedding anniversary, Jan and I decided to visit her college friend and enthusiastic chamber music collaborator from Boston University days, Mitsuyo Matsumoto.   We were transformed and overwhelmed with the beauty of cherry blossoms, sakura, as Miko guided us around the temples of Kyoto.

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Posted by Jeff von der Schmidt | Filed under Composers, Contemporary Music, Education, Food, LA International New Music Festival, Music, Southwest Chamber Music, Travel, Uncategorized, Vietnam

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