A Far Cry from Traditional
October 21 marked the start of Phillips Exeter Music Department’s Fall 2016 Concert Series. Ten minutes before the official start, the 200 seats of the Bowld had all been filled up with Exonians, faculty members and seniors from the Riverwoods Community, yet students were still rushing in from the main entrance, causing concert ushers to scramble to arrange two additional rows of chairs. Though it took place on a Friday before Saturday classes, A Far Cry’s Music in Migration attracted a remarkable turnout after the group’s preview during Assembly. According to Rohan Smith, Director of Exeter’s Chamber Orchestra, more than four hundred people attended the event.
A Far Cry is a chamber orchestra hailing from Jamaica Plain, MA nominated for the 2015 Grammy Award in Best Chamber Music. This self-conducted group has performed in concert halls across the globe and currently serves as Chamber Orchestra in Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. It is composed of 17 tight-knit members, each bringing something new to the group. A Far Cry’s first albums, “Dreams and Prayers” and “Law of Mosaics,” from their own in house label, received critical acclaim from the New Yorker’s Alex Ross.
The group has gone a long way since its formation in 2007, when the first Criers “went out to lunch one day and started brainstorming,” as bass player Karl Doty recalls. “We wanted to do something which we could own, so we got together and just started rehearsing,” he said. From the beginning, the group determined that every member would have an equal voice in all decision-making processes; any new member added to the group has to be unanimously approved by current Criers. Despite the fact that they do have a management structure, all of the bylaws and documentation, including the process of becoming an incorporation and a non-profit, “was all done by the musicians.”
The first item members of the group had to agree upon was choosing a suitable name for the ensemble. Staying away from “traditional” choices like “the Boston String,” the founding members wanted a name that sounded similar to that of a band. “The concept of ‘criers,’ there’s something very visceral and human about it,” Doty said. It turned out to be their final choice, despite not being the most popular one at first. A Far Cry performed their first concert in the First Church on Harvard’s campus, then branched out to Brookline, Vermont, the West Coast and Europe for subsequent tours.
The group’s special leadership structure allows each Crier to step up and take charge of different concert series. The quality of each concert is maintained by the absence of a conductor, a factor that usually surprises the audience. Prep Carly Mae Buckner, who played alongside A Far Cry as a bassist, said, “When you have a chamber orchestra without a conductor, it can be hard to stay together rhythmically and also stylistically.” She was impressed that the group was able to listen to each other so well and maintain perfect rhythm throughout the performance.
The proposal to bring A Far Cry to campus was brought forth by part-time cello instructor Loewi Lin, also a member of the group himself. The concert series manager further recommended them to Chair of the Music Department Peter Schultz, who was intrigued by the group’s concept and stylistic choices. “The themes of internationalism and fluidity and movement in the music fits the spirit of our school, it’s something we want students to internalize especially now,” he said.
While guest performers of the Concert Series often get involved with students through Masterclasses or rehearsal, an actual performance together is “not something that happens usually,” according to Schultz. “It’s a rare, special thing.”
Rehearsals were a great learning experience for chamber orchestra members, who started working alongside individual Criers, cellist Rafael Popper-Keizer, Michael Unterman and violinist Sarah Darling, three weeks before the performance. “They came for three rehearsals in a row after sending us some music with notes on interpretation style,” said Smith. “It was a very compact phase.” Describing the learning curve of Chamber Orchestra members as “a combustion,” Smith was amazed by their improvement in technique and style over the short period of time.
“A Far Cry’s bass players were very helpful in showing me and Nosa different techniques for playing some of the harder parts in the piece,” Buckner said. “In one movement, we had straight sixteenth notes and were supposed to be playing them very ‘roughly;’ the bass players taught us how to channel that tone so that we matched the rest of the orchestra and the mood of the piece.” For senior Amanda Sherwood, the challenge was exploring a different musical style with her instrument, the cello. “Now, I definitely have a greater appreciation and understanding for baroque music and how difficult it is to replicate a baroque sound with a modern instrument,” she said. Echoing these sentiments, lower Sophia Cho, also a cellist, said, “I’d have to say that rehearsing and performing with A Far Cry was one of the best experiences I’ve had at Exeter.”
The Criers also had a memorable experience performing for and alongside Exeter students. “It’s great to see how involved they are, you look into their eyes and see that they’re genuinely into the music, and they’re very present and focused.” Doty said. He noted that while this level of attention may be a conventional occurrence at PEA, it is very rare amongst students of this age group. “The rehearsals went very well,” he said.
Violinist Alex Fortes said that the connections created between players and the audience were the most important part of performing. “We all measure concerts in different ways but one thing that’s important to us is that we’re connecting with other humans and I felt like we were doing that today, contextualizing [music] as different kinds of human movements, some happy, some not.” Crier Robyn Bollinger also expressed her satisfaction with the group’s performance. “I had a great experience working with students [...] With everything that had gone into tonight, it was very rewarding to finally do it,” she said, adding that for her, the concert was a success.
The audience agreed. “It was really neat to see how a larger sized ensemble/orchestra operated without a conductor. That really stuck out to me because their attacks and cutoffs were all super clean,” lower Jack Liu said. Lower Jasmine Liao also found a special connection with the piano concerto. “I really liked the second piece, where the pianist performed a concerto about her life [...] I’ve always wanted to be in the Symphony, but I can’t because I don’t play a string instrument, so I liked seeing the talent in Exeter,” Liao said.
“It’s a nice program because it has something old, Telemann, but also unusual, and a completely brand new piece was being heard for the first time in public tonight,” Schultz said. Prep Christina Xiao also enjoyed the first piece particularly, because it was a collaboration between the Criers and Exeter students, while prep Serena West preferred the final Weinberg symphony, which incorporated many unconventional ways of using the instruments. “My favorite part was when the cellos did the slide with their note.” she said. Liu agreed, saying, “I quite enjoyed the craziness of it all, it was pretty contemporary.”
For Smith, the music is special because it “provokes and invites [the audience] to imagine the setting it was composed in,” drawing parallels to current migrations and the movement of refugees. He elaborated, “Each piece came from a different world; it requires an active listener to fully appreciate the program. The calibre of members in a far cry is so high, and they play with such communicative conviction [..] It’s an enveloping experience.”