Music@Menlo Chamber Music Festival and Institute

Music@Menlo 2016 Winter Residency

Menlo School students will have an opportunity to extend their coursework through the exploration of classical music through Music@Menlo’s annual Winter Residency Program. Throughout the week of February 29 through March 5, violinists Boson Mo and Suliman Tekalli, violist Cong Wu, cellist Jiyoung Lee, and pianist Michael James Smith—all past participants of Music@Menlo’s Chamber Music Institute for aspiring professional musicians—are joining forces with Music@Menlo Artistic Director Wu Han and Audience Engagement Director Patrick Castillo for a series of special performances, discussions, and classroom presentations designed to introduce Menlo students to a broad selection of chamber music masterpieces, all in the context of curricula ranging from American literature to math and foreign language studies.

Classroom Presentation Schedule

(Note: All presentations take place in Martin Family Hall unless otherwise noted.)

Monday, February 29

  • 8:00 a.m.–9:00 a.m. / Sophomore English
    Theme and motif are devices equally essential to music and literature; in the work of William Shakespeare, the elements of cadence and character—particularly musical characteristics—take on special importance as well. Writing for the stage, the Bard of Avon took notorious care with what the written word sounded like. Complementing Menlo School sophomore English students’ study of Macbeth, Music@Menlo’s Winter Residency artists will explore how the practice of reading Shakespeare similarly applies to the experience of instrumental chamber music. This presentation is designed to focus students’ ears, honing their aural skills for a deeper appreciation of both music and literature.  
  • 9:00 a.m.–10:00 a.m. / Sophomore English
     
  • 1:00 p.m.–2:00 p.m. / Sophomore English
     
  • 2:00 p.m.–3:00 p.m. / Sophomore English
     

Tuesday, March 1

  • 9:00 a.m.–10:00 a.m. / Monsters!
    Monsters have represented a powerful theme in much art and literature throughout history. From Greek mythology to contemporary fiction and film, the vilification of the misunderstood has revealed deeply rooted tensions and anxieties. In music, similar tensions have been manifested much more literally, as in the music of Dmitri Shostakovich, whose work serves to chronicle the experience of the Russian people under the repressive Stalin regime. Music@Menlo’s Winter Residency artists will introduce Menlo School students to the music of this seminal voice of twentieth-century music.
     
  • 9:00 a.m.–10:00 a.m. / Dystopian Fiction and Film
    As a complement to this Upper School elective, Music@Menlo’s Winter Residency artists present music similarly rooted in highly charged sociocultural circumstances, with a special focus on the music of twentieth-century Russia—a time in which the cultural community was forced to survive and respond to the oppression of the Stalin regime.
     
  • 2:00 p.m.–3:00 p.m. / Dystopian Fiction and Film
     

Wednesday, March 2

  • 8:00 a.m.–9:00 a.m. / AP Music Theory (Chorus Room)
     
  • 9:00 a.m.–10:00 a.m. / Chamber Orchestra (Orchestra Room)
    The string players will sit in on a chamber orchestra rehearsal
     
  • 10:15 a.m.–11:15 a.m. / Sophomore English
     
  • 2:00 p.m.–3:00 p.m. / Sophomore English


Thursday, March 3

  • 7:50 a.m.–8:35 a.m. / 7th Grade Foreign Languages
    In partnership with Middle School World Languages teacher Martine Gullung-Miller, Music@Menlo’s Winter Residency artists explore the life and music of French composer Maurice Ravel. In preparation for the Winter Residency, Menlo School foreign language classes have studied Ravel’s background and artistic career. Music@Menlo’s presentation represents the culmination of these studies, bringing high-level performances of the composer’s chamber music directly into the classroom.
     
  • 8:38 a.m.–9:23 a.m. / 7th Grade Foreign Languages
     
  • 10:00 a.m.–11:00 a.m. / Fiction Writing
    Alongside Menlo School Fiction Writing students’ investigation of tone, tension, and dissonance in Ben Marcus’s “Cold Little Bird,” Music@Menlo’s Winter Residency artists will illustrate various uses of dissonance in the Western chamber music repertoire, from traditional Classical models to experimental, satiric, and other modern uses of dissonance. In music as in literature, dissonance and resolution provides a piece with a narrative framework and directionality. This presentation will attune students’ ears to this phenomenon in an abstract musical context, sharpening their instincts as writers along the way.


Friday, March 4

  • 11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. / Sophomore English

  • 8:00 a.m.–9:00 a.m. / Self and Society
    The turn of the twentieth century saw the ground shift beneath the feet of the Western world. Sigmund Freud challenged our fundamental understanding of self and identity. Artists across disciplines, from Gustav Klimt to Oscar Wilde, represented a countercultural rebellion against social conventions, viewing art as a vehicle for the liberation of the id. Building on Menlo School students’ studies of these and other significant artistic figures, Music@Menlo’s Winter Residency artists will illustrate analogous changes in classical music: composers from Arnold Schoenberg to Claude Debussy who, in distinctly personal ways, turned previously accepted modus operandi upside down to express something irrepressibly modern.