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Introducing improvisation to classical music

By John Kenyon

With all due respect to the entire history of classical woodwind music, rarely does someone utter phrases like “lit a fire” or “scary” or “stretched to the edge of our imagination” when discussing it.

That, then, is the first indication that Friday’s concert featuring Imani Winds and vibraphonist Stefon Harris will not be your typical night of polite chamber music.

Anyone familiar with Imani Winds already knows this. The quintet formed in part because its members wanted to show that African-Americans and Latinos could excel when performing classical music. A recent New York Times article about the group cites a survey by the League of American Orchestras that show “blacks make up less than 2 percent of professional American orchestra musicians, while Latinos make up less than 3 percent.”

The group is composed of Valerie Coleman on flute, Toyin Spellman-Diaz on oboe, Mariam Adam on clarinet, Jeff Scott on French horn and Monica Ellis on bassoon.

Other groups have followed Imani Winds down that path, making it less unique from that standpoint. But its repertoire — and most important for audiences in Iowa City, its choice of composers — continue to set it apart.

The quintet is in the midst of what it calls the Legacy Commissioning Project, a five-year effort to celebrate its 10th anniversary with commissioned works from 10 composers of diverse backgrounds. Already it has worked with Alvin Singleton, Robert Sierra, Jason Moran and others. Its concert Friday with Harris marks the debut of his commissioned piece, “The Anatomy of a Box: a sonic painting in wood, metal and wind.” The piece was co-commissioned by Hancher Auditorium.

The performance takes place at 7:30 p.m. Friday at City High School’s Opstad Auditorium. Tickets, ranging from $10 to $28, are available by calling (319) 335-1160 or 800-HANCHER, at the Hancher box office on the first floor of the Old Capitol Mall next to Sweets & Treats, or online.

Those who know Harris’ work — he has performed often in the Corridor in recent years — know he has a strong improvisational streak. Improvisation and classical music don’t often intersect, making this collaboration all the more exciting for the performers, Coleman says.

“Every time we collaborate, we learn something new,” she says. “He has a technique he uses. He believes using this technique, any musician can improvise. Around that, this piece he wrote, it’s epic, I gotta tell you.”

Harris describes the piece as “a live demonstration of a sonic painting in which we experiment with blending the textures of our instruments. We will blur the lines between improvisation and composition, and in turn between classical and jazz.”

Coleman says composers like Harris, Moran, Wayne Shorter and Paquito D’Rivera, all of whom have worked with Imani Winds, are able to merge the worlds of jazz and classical together. She adds that the group members become innocent bystanders to the process.

“Contemporary music has so many different sounds to it, and there are so many people that are bringing their own voice to it, an esoteric side, a dissonant side,” she says. “Others are sticking to other sounds. Jazz musicians do cross over into classical music when it comes to their own writing. To ask a jazz musician like Stefon and like Jason and like Wayne to write a classical piece, they’re going to bring the most cutting edge sounds to it.”

She says each composer the group has worked with has continued its evolution into better improvisers.

“As a classical musician, you don’t really think about it,” she says. “They make us think about it. They’ve made us hungry for it. As a group, we have talked about it all the time. One by one, we each came aboard with the desire to improvise.

“We like to improvise,” she adds. “I don’t think we’re great improvisers yet. But all of the information we have gathered for the last 10 years is stewing in our brains. If we stopped playing music today, we have enough to think about for our lifetimes.”

Coleman and Scott also compose for the group, and each has a piece on Friday’s program. The group will world premiere Coleman’s “Red Clay and Mississippi Delta,” and perform “Homage to Duke by Scott and “Quinette” by Jean Francaix.

Coleman says her piece, which is about five minutes long, “popped into my head back in May. When things pop into your head, you’ve got to write them down, because just as quickly as they come, they go.”

She says one could call it a scherzo, and that it deals with triplets and how they swing. More specifically, it recalls her mother’s side of her family, which hails from Jacksonville, Miss. Her relatives on that side have skin that is chocolate brown with red overtones resembling clay, she says.

“I had in mind the juke joints, casinos, the blues sounds I grew up with courtesy of my Mom,” she says. “Don’t be fooled, though. The piece is classical music.”

The notions of jazz and swing continue with Scott’s piece, which pays tribute to Ellington’s sacred music (coincidentally enough, Harris performed some of Ellington’s sacred music with the Turtle Island String Quartet at Hancher in 2008), and the Francaix piece, which Coleman says is a “type of French piece that shows the American-based invasion of jazz. It has a touch of impressionism with chords reminiscent of Ravel.”

Imani Winds is scheduled to work with other composers through 2012 as part of the Legacy Commissioning Project, including Simon Shaeen and Danilo Perez. Its collaborations won’t end there, Coleman says.

“We can’t stop with the 10th composer,” she says. “It has lit a fire for us, taken us in directions we didn’t anticipate.” Describing a recent meeting with Shaheen, she says, “Our brains and hearts were stretched to the edge of our imagination.

“We see the possibilities, and that is a thrilling prospect,” she adds. “(Classical music) is an art that is full of rich culture and the music is glorious. I think this new way of possibilities will help us to get outside of what it means to be a wind quintet. It’s scary, but exciting.”