Musical America: Top 30 Movers & Shapers - Neeta Helms

Musical America

Movers and Shakers: Musical America's Top 30 Professionals of the Year
Susan Elliott, Musical America Editor

If “Movers and Shakers” is a familiar moniker for bigwigs and high rollers, “Movers and Shapers”
represents a perhaps less visible but arguably more important category. These are the individuals who are actually “shaping” programs, practices, and perceptions of the performing artists.

NEETA HELMS
By John Fleming

Music is the universal language, and Neeta Helms speaks it around the world. As founder and president of Classical Movements, now in its 25th year, she specializes in tours for orchestras and choruses, with clients ranging from the National Symphony Orchestra to the Yale  Glee  Club.  Based  in  Alexandria, Virginia,  the  company  does about 60 tours a year, and has brought music to 145 countries.

Helms  is  a  risk-taker  whose  breakthrough  came  in  1993, when she organized a tour of the Choral Arts Society of Washington with  the  National  Symphony  Orchestra  and  legendary  Russian conductor  and  cellist  Mstislav  Rostropovich  to  the  former  Soviet Union. Rostropovich led a free concert in Moscow’s Red Square that drew more than 100,000 people. “It was probably like touring the United States with the Beatles, that was what it was like going to Russia  with  Rostropovich,”  she  says. “It  was  so  exciting. The  world was  changing.”  Last  spring,  Classical  Movements  handled  its  30th NSO tour, again to Russia.

Classical  Movements  also  produces  choral  festivals  in Washington,  DC,  and  South  Africa,  as  well  as  a  summer  festival  for young  singers  and  instrumentalists  in  Prague.  Since  2005,  the company has commissioned composers from 20 countries to write more than 50 works. In 2015, it commissioned 10 American composers for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s 100th anniversary. This  year,  Syrian  clarinetist-composer  Kinan  Azmeh  became  the company’s first composer-in-residence.

Helms  grew  up  in  a  musical  family  in  India.  She  began studying  piano  at  age  four,  sang  in  public  at  five,  and  went  on  to earn  a  BA  in  economics  and  an  MBA.  She  has  lived  in  the  United States since 1986.

What  annoys  her  most  about  travel?  “Airlines  get  on  my nerves. They are absolutely the most difficult part of our job.” Some tours take special resourcefulness, such as those in Cuba, which has a  shortage  of  musical  instruments.  In  June,  Classical  Movements took  both  the  Minnesota  Youth  Symphonies  and  the  Stanford
Symphony  Orchestra  there. “Our  biggest  challenge,  believe  it  or not, was finding and renting the timpani.”

Strings: Prague Summer Nights Festival

Strings Magazine
By Heather K. Scott

The Prague Summer Nights (PSN) Festival is a monthlong opportunity for conservatory-level students to learn and perform opera music in some of the most music-rich cities in Europe. It’s also much like taking lessons within a living, breathing music-history museum. If you think it sounds both dreamy and intense, you’re 100 percent correct. “You walk around, from rehearsals to your hotel, and see the cafes and the canals. It is different than playing the same music anywhere else,” says cellist Amit Peled, who joined PSN in Salzburg, Austria, to perform the Dvorak Cello Concerto this summer.

Encompassing 18 performances over the course of just one month, and triangulating three grand European cities (Prague, Salzburg, and Tabor), PSN is a heavy mix of learning, culture, and performance all stirred together in one big bowl. Sprinkle in long rehearsals, tight schedules, ever-changing concert programs, and loads of travel, and you’ve got the recipe for a challenging—and uniquely stylized—learning experience.

To successfully devour this musical feast, students must tackle the gritty nuts and bolts of daily rehearsals and simultaneously develop some serious time-management skills. As violinist and past PSN attendee Kristen Morrill explains, “Time is everything. If we don’t use our time efficiently, then we lose precious details and stylistic embellishments that are crucial to the success and power of each piece.”

Another PSN participant, bassist Harrison Dilthey, concurs, declaring that the biggest lesson he’s learned from PSN is just how much work and time it takes to be a professional musician. “Not just in terms of playing ability, but in terms of the hours of rehearsal required to pull together a concert in less than a week,” he says. “It’s a mentally exhausting process, and physically draining as well. But it is a high-level professional organization, and the wonderful faculty at PSN give me the tools needed to be able to play two three-hour opera performances in one day.”

Preparation Is Key
Knowing that schedules are packed and study is intense, what is the best way for students interested in participating in PSN to prepare? Peled suggests doing more than just reviewing YouTube videos, recordings of other players auditioning, or performing the same pieces slated for PSN performances. Instead, he recommends finding ways to go above and beyond playing accurately. “[Sometimes,] people are efficient and play the right notes, but there’s something musically lacking [that’s needed] to give them context.” He reports that this is one of the challenges so many music educators face today. “As a teacher, helping students fill in that missing piece is important to me,” he says. “I want to encourage students to become curious, because that doesn’t happen much anymore.”

PSN gives participants an opportunity to be curious and immerse themselves in music, culture, and living history as well. “[Participants] can look back at this experience and smile because they will know what it looked and felt like when the music was created and first performed,” Peled says.

Another consideration while preparing for the festival is less esoteric and much more physical. The human body can handle only so much, and practicing for the rigors of a festival like this can be not just exhausting and challenging—but painful, too. “It was really important for me to prepare my body for playing six to eight hours each day without injuring myself,” says Morrill (who has struggled with tendinitis). The solution: Morrill focused on balancing practicing with self-care during the time leading up to the festival. She shaped her practice sessions by working through fundamentals. As she says, “It only takes one person to completely derail a rehearsal, resulting in loss of time and frustration for the other members of the orchestra.”

Life Lessons
Undoubtedly, preparation is key. But the bigger question for students interested in PSN may be more about what they stand to get out of the experience. “What we teach at the festival can shape players and students in new ways,” Peled says. It makes students think more personally, rather than copying to learn.

The program, only in its third year, is already garnering accolades. The true sign of success? Students who want to come back again . . . and again. This is the case with Morrill and Dilthey, two of the program’s inaugural students who are happy to apply and participate again and again. As Morrill explains, “After having an amazing experience in 2015, I decided to return. There are even more opportunities for orchestra players—including our final concert on the stage of the Mozarteum University of Salzburg, so when I was asked to consider coming back to the festival, I decided to apply again.”

For Dilthey, who was inspired to apply for PSN after a fair amount of time spent in youth orchestras (and a deep-seated passion for opera), the decision to go back was simple: He looked forward to more opportunities to work with vocalists. After participating in PSN once, he was sold. “Seeing the opportunity to perform Don Giovanni on the same stage where it was premiered by Mozart so many years ago seemed to be exactly what I was looking for,” he says. “And it ended up being so much more. This is my third summer with PSN, and it has brought something new for me, year after year. I’m excited to go to Salzburg and have the opportunity to perform Mozart’s operas in the city where he is from.”

The program is rich in opportunity for faculty as well, particularly for newcomer Peled, who looks forward to connecting his love for opera with his passion for teaching and performing. “There’s something incredible about playing music in the place in which it was composed—particularly in Prague,” he says. There are also rare opportunities for string players to learn from being part of a vocal performance, Peled adds. He has his students take voice lessons so that they can learn how to accompany singers from both sides of the fence.

It’s All About Opera
During the days of Dvorak and Mozart, opera was the entertainment—the TV-social media-radio-newspaper of the day. And musicians and vocalists were the storytellers who drew in audiences, night after night. Instrumentalists were tasked with translating emotion without words. “When students perform The Marriage of Figaro, they’re part of creating not just the music, but the story and words, too,” Peled says. “Being a musician and having a chance to work with vocalists together to deliver that story offers a unique learning experience.”

Playing with an orchestra is one thing, but performing with vocalists who are also actors on a stage is quite another thing. “When working in any live performance, nothing will be exactly the same each time,” Morrill says. “Specifically, working with a live opera at this festival has helped me learn to collaborate with players and singers alike. An opera setting requires the orchestra to take on the role of accompaniment, meaning that we have to listen and react to the soloists.

“Working in such long and demanding operas also challenges the orchestra to adapt quickly to any changes or deviations.”

Additionally, PSN participants are stationed in the same opera houses in which the pieces were performed hundreds of years ago. The smaller spaces and less-comfortable seating can be eye opening. “The sticky summertime temperatures make the music making more authentic,” Peled explains. “This is part of what Mozart had in mind when he wrote this music and it is important for musicians to see these spaces and feel what it is like to play in them.”

Peled, like many students, is inspired and excited by all that PSN has to offer. “This inspires me, and I hope I have time to talk with the students about it. I want them to know that they are important and this music is important. I hope I am able to do that and give them a good experience,” he says. “Our grandfathers played this music, and I want participants to feel that, too. These instruments and music—we are the new caretakers.” 

Favorite memories from Prague Summer Nights alums

“One of my favorite memories from my first year at PSN was performing Don Giovanni at the Estates Theatre. Mozart is easily my favorite composer, so having the chance to perform this opera where Mozart premiered it in 1787 was truly overwhelming. The sheer history that lies within the building seemed tangible. The most intense moment for me was during our fourth and final performance as we reached the recapitulation in the finale of Act II. Hearing the culmination of the opera and realizing our time in Prague was coming to an end sent tears streaming down my face. Music truly has the ability to move us to the core of our being, and I can only hope that this emotion reaches not just the musicians performing, but the audience.”

—Kristen Morrill

“In the first installment of PSN, we performed Suor Angelica by Giacomo Puccini. James Burton (now Tanglewood’s festival chorus director) had a way of pulling every musician into the intensity of Puccini’s story. At the end of the opera, when Suor drifts off to heaven, it was the most magical musical experience I had ever been a part of. There was not a dry eye in the building, and most of the audience didn’t even speak
the language of the opera. It was a moment of universal peace that I’ll never forget."

—Harrison Dilthey

Opera Wire: A Passionate Duo at Prague Summer Nights

Opera Wire
By Francisco Salazar

Sherrill Milnes & Maria Zouves

What do you do after you’ve taught, formed a young artist program and had a legendary career as a singer and conductor?

The answer? Direct opera.

That is exactly what famed baritone Sherrill Milnes has embarked on alongside his wife, Maria Zouves. In collaboration with the Prague Summer Nights, presented by Classical Movements, the duo has already directed two Mozart masterpieces with the festival and have garnered rave reviews.

Passing On Tradition

When the Prague Summer Nights Festival was started Artistic Director John Nardolillo contacted Milnes and Zouves with the idea of bringing them to the program and having them work as directors. It was the opportunity to not only bring their knowledge to young artists but it was also a new opportunity for Milnes.

“I’m post-career and the idea of passing on to younger singers ideas is important,” Milnes noted in a recent interview with OperaWire.

Part of those ideas is passing down musical history. “I go back to the Bernstein, Solti, Giuliani and Karajan and all these giants. And I sang under Fritz Reiner, who was a great maestro in the old style. He was scary. I often categorize the old conductors as ‘Fear conductors’ and now from James Levine to now, I call the ‘Love conductors,'” Milnes joked.

The baritone recalled working with Reiner noting that he was part of the generation where conductors were more like enemies and often times scary to work with. However, that trend changed while he was singing. “When you look at Jim Levine or Jim Conlon, you feel like, ‘Let’s do this together.’ Psychologically you feel like you can give more. I don’t know if you actually do, But you feel like you give more when you see a face that is bright and wanting you to succeed,” he noted.

For Milnes, it is crucial that younger generations understand this newer conducting philosophy and its impact on music,  as well as the tradition and style of the old masters.

But it also goes beyond passing down history. While Milnes sang he learned a lot about languages and realized that the English language could be an obstacle when singing in Italian or French. And that is something Milnes is constantly looking to improve.

“In America, we tend to be mathematically correct, tah-tah eighth notes, 3/4 bar or whatever it is. But every language has its own contours. For example in Italian, you don’t say ‘Am-mo-re’ accenting the ‘Re’ but you say ‘amore’ smoothly. It’s mathematically precise but with a flow.

“You have to be correct, but beyond correct, there is a whole musical level. There has to be intention and meaning. Correct doesn’t make good music,” Milnes noted.

The Dynamic Directing Duo

The second opportunity that the program allowed was for Milnes and his wife Maria Zouves to collaborate as directors. Milnes would make his directorial debut, expanding his artistic horizons and also furthering his artistic relationship with Zouves.

“Maria is the stage director,” Milnes revealed. “She has the ideas. If I have a bunch of people on stage, I don’t know what to with them. She is very imaginative. She really does the staging. However, if you show me a staging, I can make it better.”

And Zouves agrees that Milnes always goes back to his experience and it is really helpful.  “He is the eyeballs. I look at him and he goes, ‘This isn’t working.’ And then he says, ‘When I did it with Jean-Pierre Ponnelle or Tito Capobianco, we did it that way.’ So the partnership works.”

Milnes has another forte while they are directing together. “I know how to cheat on stage. Audiences can judge left and right but they can not judge depth at all. Well, you never walk straight stage across for many reasons and that is important.”

As for how they approach the directing, Zouves is extremely diligent with going back to the original text as is Milnes who is always looking for meaning and intention. So before going into blocking or stage direction, they both sit down with their cast members and do what Zouves calls a “Script reading.”

But there is a twist. Zouves describes it as a Babel reading because everyone reads it in their first language. So in one reading, there could be Korean, Spanish and German.

“It’s always about reacting. In opera, we’re in a different language and we generally only speak English and you have to sing most of the time for a language which is not their language. That is tough and we’re supposed to be as good as the native speaker,” Zouves noted.

The result is that singers react more naturally in their own language, allowing them to discover the character and, as Milnes notes, “the intention becomes real.”

Zouves recalls one of the first readings she did with this technique and notes that it really created the drama. “We had a ‘Don Giovanni’ in Korean and the Leporello repeated it back in what he heard of the Korean. And he just repeated it that way as an impulse. We saw the humor in the scene and those are the responses you get when you use that gut level translation.”

She finds that this technique eventually leads to great listening when the young singers are finally on stage getting ready to perform.

The Advantages of Prague

Beyond their artistic rewards and the teaching experience they both bring to young singers, Milnes and Zouves feel a great reward seeing them grow.

The duo noted that some of the singers enter the program without having ever performed an opera and seeing them develop into their characters and learning the process is incredibly important.

“One of the Figaros this year had never been in an opera scene before. He had no operatic experience whatsoever. He came here and he had no idea what to do. Everything was new. But he got through the title character and he did a wonderful job and he feels really good now and excited. It is a huge deal. There are other singers who are a little more seasoned so it’s a little more mileage. For others, it’s a huge arch,” Zuoves revealed.

And the other important aspect is learning from each other and their environment.

“They are also able to experience a foreign language,” Milnes noted. “They are also working with international students and they are learning from each other. We have Korea, Poland, America, France, Canada, Germany, China and much more represented here. It’s the United Nations and that is very good for all.”

Milnes and Zouves also feel that working in Prague opens the possibilities for general growth.

“These types of programs where they go to another country, they also absorb what our art form has intrinsically in it, which is the international scope and they are learning how to manage their way through this. For some of them, it is the first time out of the U.S and out of their home. So they are learning how to experience foreign currency and culture and sometimes it’s not as comfortable. But they are also learning about audiences. Here in Prague, they love music. It’s part of the culture.  To have that type of audience, that’s important for a singer. When the work is done they want to have someone to perform for,” noted Zouves.

And the other aspect that makes Prague so enriching is the history. This year, for example, when the Estates Theater was closed, the festival found a venue where Mozart and Hayden gave recitals. That made the experience even more exciting for them.

“We all throw around Mozart but he was here. In fact, I was the first American to sing ‘Don Giovanni’ in the theater where it was premiered. And there is a plaque. They have redone it several times but Mozart walked there and that is awesome.”

A Changing Landscape

With the Prague Summer Festival having ended Zouves and Milnes will go back to their development program in Savannah and continue to enrich and develop new singers. And most of the young singers at Prague will not be going back with them. Some will go back to auditions while others will be back to college having learned and garnered an international performance on their resume. But some of them will face new obstacles.

In the operatic landscape, singers today are crashing and burning quickly with many promising voices faltering after a few years. And that is something that Milnes and Zouves have tried to avoid as they develop singers.

“Part of the problem is today’s culture. Today everything is instant and it’s all an app. You can’t download an app in opera. It’s a slow process and today’s instant life gets in the way of that slow process,” said Zouves.

Milnes goes back to his 42-year career and has two words of advice for young singers, “Common Sense.”

“You have to have enough rest. Sleep and the voice are very friendly. When I didn’t have to get up at 7 a.m. to do a 10 a.m. audition I was better. That means the day of a performance you better be careful. There wasn’t really a conscientious effort but it was all about being smart. One of the worst things in performing is going to a noisy nightclub after singing because you have already used your voice and then the music is so loud you have to yell. Then you really beat up the throat,” Milnes joked.

But Zouves also thinks it was due to her husband’s discipline and learning to say no when he felt uncomfortable.

“He was very disciplined. He was very good at performing and it had to do with his musicianship. There are singers who were great artistically which he was but there are also good musicians. Singers that are just singers who make beautiful sounds. When those beautiful sounds no longer work there is nothing else to do. Sherrill is a wonderful conductor and teacher and great masterclass giver. He could, as a result, take projects not just with opera. He did a lot of concerts, recitals and oratorio work. His roles diminished in terms of what he could take on. But those roles like Scarpia, Germont and all of these guys stayed constant. He was doing Scarpia up to the end and Falstaff was a defacto. Sherrill was also smart and he said no to things.”

One such thing that he did not sing,despite the insistence of  Karl Böhm, was “The Flying Dutchman.”

“It wasn’t the right fach and the center of my baritone was a little higher than what Wagner requires,” Milnes recalled.

But with the operatic world changing so quickly, both Zouves and Milnes do have faith in the future. With their Voice Experience program, both are giving singers an opportunity to perform and learn their craft as well as engage with audiences.

And the other thing that Zouves is excited about are the new initiatives and the new opera companies coming up.

“I see a lot of singers starting their own companies to start their opportunities and I think that is great. Organizations like Opera America give them more resources and that is a different idea. You have to create and that has changed.”

“It’s about the longevity of the art form. Opera is not dead because it is ingrained in our history and culture.”

Daily Mail: Serenade! Choral Festival finds the universal in choirs

Neeta Helms, president and founder of Classical Movements, poses with the Madras Youth Choir from Chennai, India, ahead of the Serenade! choral festival in Washington

Daily Mail (via Agence France Presse)

The human voice is the most basic of all musical instruments. But when singers come together as choirs, quality standards vary widely around the world.

A festival in Washington is bringing together top-tier choirs from a dozen countries in a bid to show music's universality -- how the joy of singing together transcends cultures.

But the festival is also part of an effort to boost training for choral music, which can be rudimentary in many countries.

The Serenade! Washington DC Choral Festival is the brainchild of Neeta Helms, president of Classical Movements, a company that runs international tours for major music ensembles.

Helms, who launched the festival in 2011, said she had been struck by an explosion of global interest in choral music -- largely outside the Western canon.

"I'm not on a mission to change the world through choral singing -- although I think that sometimes we end up doing that. I've seen a need and I've seen I can help," she said.

"Everybody has a voice -- well, almost everybody -- and almost every culture has this huge tradition of songs and sounds and rhythms and folk tunes," she said.

The latest Serenade festival, which runs eight days through July 4, is part of celebrations for the centennial of the birth of slain US president John F. Kennedy.

With free concerts at the Kennedy Center and other sites across the Washington area, the festival features choirs from countries with strong connections to Kennedy or the Peace Corps, the international volunteer program his administration created.

Performers include Mongolian folk group Egschiglen; the Madras Youth Choir, formed by celebrated South Indian film composer M.B. Sreenivasan, and Spain's L'Escolania de Montserrat, considered the world's oldest boys choir -- which has ties to cellist Pablo Casals, who was famously invited to the Kennedy White House.

Choirs also come from Kenya, Zimbabwe, China, Northern Ireland, Panama, Bulgaria and Latvia -- which Kennedy visited while a Harvard student.

- Refining oral traditions -

Helms, who was born in India, said she saw a particular demand in the billion-plus country where many people without means can instantly sing along to Bollywood hits yet have nowhere to train.

Classical Movements has started a fellowship to send established choir directors to India as instructors. As part of the festival, the company also has commissioned original works from around the world.

Members of choirs especially need to master harmony -- coming together as a whole by singing different, and often fewer, lines.

"I always say that Pavarotti would have been terrible in a choir. His voice would have stuck out," she said.

Choirs at the Serenade festival vary sharply in their traditions. The Mongolians sing from their throats while the Africans often have rich vibratos and, compared with Europeans, dance and move much more when they sing.

With choral music often passed down by oral tradition, it can carry more freedom than, say, Western orchestral music, which emphasizes precision.

But Helms said it was also critical to transcribe choral music.

"That's how things spread. That's how literature has spread -- the printing press was created," she said.

"Someone has to take all those folk tunes that are in people's heads, or some records of them, and put them down on paper so that people can figure them out."

But whatever the course of education, Helms said she was impressed by seeing choirs bond -- uniting in music without regard to race, gender, religion or other barriers.

"We are firm believers that in this small way we are changing the world bit by bit," she said with a laugh, "no matter who is in power in that country or our country."

Strings: A Musical Journey to India

Strings Magazine
By Robert Mealy

We come onto the stage of a beautiful 19th-century concert hall with an elegant half-circle of seats facing a proscenium stage. It is packed with people—some even standing in the aisles. Juilliard415 is in Chennai, India, to perform a program of Rameau, Telemann, and Bach. But what does this audience expect? I wonder if they have heard much live Western classical music before. How to explain a concerto, a dance suite—the idea of early music as a whole?

Our ensemble, the Juilliard School’s historical-performance group, quickly found out, and won over the crowd, which responded with booming applause between movements and attentive listening while we played. Some of the younger members of the audience told us afterward that they had never heard Western classical music played live before—what a responsibility and an honor!

And so ended our tenth day on the road, with this concert in Chennai at the Government Museum. Our tour was organized by Classical Movements, a concert-tour company that promotes cultural diplomacy across 145 countries. Neeta Helms, president of Classical Movements, is a native of Mumbai and was delighted to show off her home country to us. Our first concert was in Delhi, in a spectacular hall that was part of the Bahá’í House of Worship, a building from the 1980s set in a gorgeous park. After a side-trip to Agra for a life-changing visit to the Taj Mahal (where we discovered that it is impossibly beautiful, even more so than one imagined), we went on to Mumbai to play at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, where they were just about to produce Gandhi: The Musical!

Juilliard415’s tour to India came out of an ongoing collaboration with Yale’s Schola Cantorum, the chamber choir of the Yale Institute for Sacred Music. Juilliard415 has done several projects with them over the years. It’s a natural fit that allows both groups to explore some of the major choral works of the Baroque, since a choir often needs an orchestra, and vice versa. The director of the Schola Cantorum, British conductor and organist David Hill, is a musician who is equally committed to early music as he is to new music. Thanks to his openness to both worlds, the result was a program unlike anything any of us had ever done before.

Sitar virtuoso Rabindra Goswami was a recent visiting scholar at the institute. Thanks partially to his presence at Yale, the idea took root to tour India with chorus and orchestra. Our concert program also featured Bach’s Magnificat, as well as a Rameau suite. But as the centerpiece of our collaboration was a new piece that Yale commissioned for the occasion from Reena Esmail, an Indian-American composer who is a graduate of both Juilliard and Yale. Reena produced an extraordinary, seven-movement meditation using texts from seven different sacred traditions, each in its own language: This Love Between Us: Prayers for Unity.

The result, a 40-minute work for choir, Baroque orchestra, sitar, and tabla, turned out to be especially resonant in light of our recent political upheavals. Being able to perform as Americans and Indians together with a message of breaking down boundaries, reaching across barriers, and connecting through music made each concert a moving occasion for everyone involved—both audience and musicians. The singers had to master the challenges of diction in languages like Malayalam, Ardha Magadhi, and Sanskrit, and had to discover how to make Reena’s written-down vocal improvisations into their own.

The piece was introduced with a raga by Goswami and his amazing tabla partner Ramchandra Pandit to set the stage for the collaboration between all these traditions. Interestingly, the question of playing at A=415 or A=440 didn’t matter for the Indian musicians—they worked from whatever pitch was given as a basis. What turned out to be more complicated was the integration of these two brilliant soloists into the highly ritualized traditions of orchestral playing. In the end, Reena sat next to the tabla and sitar, to give a kind of simultaneous translation of abstract conducting patterns into a pulse that could be felt and sensed.

It’s a challenge for contemporary composers to write music for Baroque instruments that brings out their special characteristics of color and rhythmic vitality. Reena had some great ideas that brought the worlds of Indian instruments and 18th-century strings together. Sometimes she introduced propulsive, polymetric vamps to accompany the tabla and sitar. In other sections, the Baroque strings provided a transparent wash of ethereal sustained chords as a background for the singers, or for solo moments by the winds.

We had the opportunity to sightsee in Mumbai and Chennai, where the choir and orchestra each did a separate performance, and one last joint concert. By the time we got to the deep south of Tamil Nadu and Chennai, temperatures were soaring around 104. And to our surprise, everyone congratulated us on missing the really hot weather.

The experience of India itself was overwhelming, saturating, totally fascinating, always compelling, sometimes exhausting. I think none of us were prepared for quite how intense the whole experience was—there was so much going on all the time, so much life, such endless varieties of existence. The most spectacular buildings, the most moving shrines, would be right in the midst of some of the poorest neighborhoods any of us had ever experienced. We had enough time to see wonders both great and small—temples, palaces, the Taj Mahal—and to witness the endlessly absorbing life of the street. Some of the most life-changing experiences for all of us came on the small guided tours that we received from inhabitants of Dharavi, one of the most extensive (and amazingly self-reliant) slums in Mumbai.

A particularly memorable day on the tour was thanks to an organization called Songbound, an initiative that brings collective music-making to some of India’s poorest and most marginalized children. Working with local partners, Songbound sets up and sustains children’s choirs that rehearse each week. They now have 15 choirs in Mumbai, and many of those children came to join us for a day of music-making together at the National Arts Centre. We sang, played, and danced together, and afterward had a great feast outside, where our students continued to, well, sing, play, and dance with the kids.

Each night in concert, it was overwhelming to encounter a great and venerable classical tradition in full flower that none of us really had known much about. Hearing Goswami and Ram playing ragas showed us a glimpse of a kind of improvisatory mastery that we could only dream of approaching. And the tour of one of Delhi’s great music academies, the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya Music School, where each room had a different kind of musical art being practiced, was spectacular, showing us the interrelationships between vocal artistry, instrumental virtuosity, and the exquisite control and power of dance.

These artists and concerts made me start to think how fragmented our Western tradition is, since fashions in music for us change so quickly and so radically. The idea of reclaiming a musical tradition that is 300 years old—the concept at the heart of historical performance—is a little hard to imagine in India, where it seems the great ancient traditions simply evolve to incorporate new technology as it proves useful. For example, the traditional music we heard was always amplified. And now instead of a tanpura player providing the glistening fabric of a drone for the sitar and tabla, players turn on a “tanpur-app,” via their iPhones to set the mood for their raga.

But there are also some strong Western musical traditions there. One particularly moving part of our tour was that each of our concerts was preceded by a brief recital from a local choir—they all sang from memory with a tremendous commitment to the music. They would join with us in the chorus “And the Glory of the Lord” from Handel’s Messiah, as a kind of grand finale.

Our tour was in connection with a much larger project, the India Choral Fellowship, a longterm vision of nurturing the choral tradition in India. As Helms says, “For those students bereft of basics like food, clothing, and shelter, a musical instrument is impossible to purchase and maintain. But the human voice, however, comes free of charge.” Judging by what we heard from the choirs that joined us in each city, as well as the tremendous energy and enthusiasm of the Songbound children, the choral tradition is thriving in India.

Those ten days in March now seem like a dream. For all of us who were on the tour, I think coming back to America was disconcerting. Yes, everything’s safer, cleaner, more organized, but it’s also all so very plastic, sanitized, bland. I would go back to India in a heartbeat, except it takes about 15 hours to get there.

Violinist, educator, recording artist, and early-music specialist Robert Mealy is the director of Juilliard’s historical-performance program.

Source: http://stringsmagazine.com/a-musical-journey-to-india-juilliard415s-life-changing-ten-day-tour/?utm_source=Strings&utm_campaign=281ae7ffb3-STN_Notes_09_09_169_6_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_7811abf900-281ae7ffb3-217737533&mc_cid=281ae7ffb3&mc_eid=fe8958f9c3

Opera Wire: Prague Summer Nights Festival's Le Nozze di Figaro is a Top 10 Must-See 2017 Opera

Opera Wire
By Francisco Salazar

10 Must-See Operas During Summer 2017 [International Edition]

Last week Operawire took a look at some of the 10 must see summer operas in the United States. It featured a range of repertoire and some very intriguing new stars. This week we look at the European Festivals and see where the big stars will be and what they will be performing.

The following is a list of OperaWire’s 10 Must-See productions around the world over the summer.

10. Rigoletto

The Arena di Verona will present Verdi’s “Rigoletto” with numerous all-star casts that include Gianluca Terranova, Francesco Demuro, Arturo Chacón-Cruz, Amartuvshin Enkhbat, Carlos Álvarez, Leo Nucci, Elena Mosuc, Jessica Pratt, Irina Lungu, Jessica Nuccio and Andrea Mastroni. “Rigoletto” will be performed five times and will be directed by Ivo Guerra.

9. Le Nozze di Figaro

Legendary baritone Sherrill Milnes and Maria Zouves direct a new production of Mozart’s ‘”Le Nozze Di Figaro” at the Prague Summer Nights Festival which is set to star a number of young artists. Five performances will be given starting on July 3 and running through July 9.

8. Pinocchio

Stéphane Degout, Vincent Le Texier, Chloé Briot, Yann Beuron, Julie Boulianne and Marie-Eve Munger star in the world premiere of Philippe Boesmans’s new opera “Pinocchio” at Aix en Provence Festival. The opera promises to be something spectacular in a new production by Joël Pommerat and is later scheduled to be at the Monnaie and Opera National de Bordeaux. The opera opens on July 3, 2017, and has five performances in total.

7. Die Entfuhrung Aus Dem Serail

Teatro all Scala will celebrate the 20th anniversary of Giorgio Strehler’s death and the 10th anniversary of Luciano Damiani’s death with a revival of Mozart’s classic opera. The intriguing young cast stars Lenneke Ruiten, Sabine Devieilhe, Mauro Peter, Maximilian Schmitt, Tobias Kehrer and Cornelius Obonya. Zubin Mehta conducts the run which begins on June 17. It will also be broadcast on June 19, 2017.

6. Tannhäuser

The Bavarian State Opera will open a new production of Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” with Klaus Florian Vogt in the title role. He will make his role debut alongside Anja Harteros and Annette Dasch. Mathias Goerne and  Christian Gerhaher also star in a production by Romeo Castellucci. Music Director Kirill Petrenko conducts the momentous Wagner work which opens on May 21, 2017.

5. Adriana Lecouvreur

Anna Netrebko may be singing the role at the Vienna State Opera later in the fall but Russian audiences will get a first look as the soprano will sing her first “Adriana” at the Mariinsky theater in a new production being created for her. Isabelle Partiot-Pieri directs with Netrebko scheduled to perform on open June 19 and 22, 2017.

4. The Siege of Corinth

Beverly Sills’ famously made this work known when she made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1975. Now Nino Machaidze takes on the iconic role of Pamyra as she opens the Rossini Opera Festival on August 10, 2017, alongside Alex Esposito, John Irvin, and  Sergey Romanovsky. Roberto Abbado conducts the new production by La Fura dels Baus.

3. La Clemenza di Tito

Continuing the annual Mozart cycle, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and Rolando Villazón team up for Mozart’s Opera-seria with a star-studded cast at the Baden-Baden Festival. Sonya Yoncheva and Joyce Didonato also star alongside Regula Muhlemann, Tarra Erraught, and Adam Plachetka. The performances will take place on July 6 and 9, 2017, and are scheduled to be recorded for Deutsche Grammophon.

2. Aida

Anna Netrebko makes her role debut in Verdi’s masterpiece in the Salzburg Festival most anticipated production. The occasion will reteam the diva with Riccardo Muti and her frequent onstage partners Francesco Meli and Ekaterina Semenchuk. It will also see the extraordinary Luca Salsi and Roberto Tagliavani in what should one of the most memorable nights of the festival. Filmmaker Shirin Neshat directs a new production which opens August 6. The run is alsready sold out. 

1. Otello

Jonas Kaufmann makes his role debut in Verdi’s “Otello” in a new production by Keith Warner at the Royal Opera House. Antonio Pappano conducts the production which will also star Maria Agresta and Ludovic Tezier. Opening June 21, 2017, all of Kaufmann’s performances are sold out. Gregory Kunde takes over the run for three performances.

Washington Post: Serenade! Choral Festival on the Hotlist for June

Washington Post
By Going Out Guide Staff

The Hotlist: 13 things to see, eat, drink and do in June

Serenade! Washington D.C. Choral Festival at Kennedy Center, June 28-July 3

The international choral festival moves to the Kennedy Center, which continues its celebration of the 100th birthday of President John F. Kennedy by showcasing choirs from countries where his Peace Corps initiative has been active. The list is long: Depending on the day, you can see traditional groups from countries including India, Ireland, Panama, Zimbabwe, Bulgaria, Latvia, Mongolia or Ghana. Catch the grand finale July 3, at the Concert Hall, to see all of the choirs in action together. Free.

— Fritz Hahn, Maura Judkis, Peter Marks, Harrison Smith, John Taylor

Opera Wire: Neeta Helms on Classical Movements & The Prague Summer Nights Festival

Opera Wire
By Francisco Salazar

Neeta Helms is the founder and owner of Classical Movements, a premiere concert tour company for the world’s great orchestras and choirs, creating meaningful cultural experiences through music in 145 countries.

During her 25 years with Classical Movements, Helms has worked with some of the most prestigious orchestras and concert artists in the world. She has traveled to 80 countries and has worked on some of the most complicated, difficult and pioneering projects in the music world.

After many years focused on touring, Classical Movements founded the Prague Summer Nights Festival to help young artists build their profile and gain exposure in the opera world. Now in its third year, Prague Summer Nights continues to grow, with the festival set to expand to Salzburg this summer. OperaWire had the chance to speak with Neeta about the development of the program and about the major challenges of putting on a festival like this one.

OperaWire: Tell me about your role with Classical Movements and the work you’ve done with classical music and opera?

Neeta Helms: I am the President and founder of Classical Movements, which is now 25 years old. We are the premiere concert touring company for orchestras and choirs, so our focus has primarily been arranging tours and concerts. We work in 145 countries and have worked in the Czech Republic for a very long time. Since we have been business, we have organized four choral festivals; we started our first in the Czech Republic 10 years after the company was founded in 1992, then started festivals in South America, Washington DC and South Africa. We work with professional orchestras, as well as conservatories, youth symphonies and choral ensembles to arrange their tours. We’re uniquely placed in the world of classical music and we have a foothold in the worlds of both choral and orchestral music.Incidentally, our involvement in the opera world began as early as 1998 when we toured with the Pittsburgh Symphony and Andrea Bocelli; we have also arranged tours for Dmitri Hvorostovsky including his 45-day tour and with Renée Fleming.

OW: Why did you start Prague Summer Nights?

NH: It came into being because one of our clients, the University of Kentucky, has a very rich music department and had spoken about collaborating on a summer program, which they would plan. They were going to organize auditions and everything. We would arrange the production and all the housing, travel, sets and costumes, but it was going to be their program, not ours. Something fell through with the university, but we were very close to the conductor John Nardolillo, who dreamed of still doing it. After investing so much into we decided, ‘Why not do it ourselves?’ We felt very well placed because we were financially strong and could invest the necessary time and the source. One has to make sure you have everything you need a year in advance. And then you have to engage faculty and when you engage someone like Sherrill Milnes, who is such a giant in the industry, you have to plan to do everything in the best way possible. I never wanted it to be a small program. There is nothing wrong with that, but if we were going into this with our level experience, I really wanted it to be international and felt that we could do that better than anyone else. We were engaged many years ago to do the YouTube Symphony Orchestra; it was a crazy program and one of the things that attracted them to us was that they knew we were able to get the word out all around. And that is something that we brought to this program, as well. We also wanted high-level faculty; together with John Nadalillo, our artistic director, we made an effort to get fabulous faculty, not just from the United States, but from Europe as well. And that has been a major goal of ours. We also have established distinct opera and orchestra programs.

OW: How has the program evolved?

NH: The first year, we were dominated by our opera program. We engaged very famous people from the opera world. We did “Don Giovanni,” and then added “Suor Angelica;” we had so many women applicants that we didn’t want to turn any away. The second year, we added “Gianni Schicchi” and really started to build up the instrumental program as well. We felt that while the orchestra plays with the opera, we wanted to really build it up on its own. This year we’ve gone from “Suor Angelica” to “Gianni Schicchi” to two major operas, “The Magic Flute” and “Le Nozze di Figaro.” We’ve also added Salzburg to the program.

OW: How did that move to Salzburg come about?

NH: Salzburg came about because of the obvious Mozart connection, but it’s also an opera-loving city and therefore a great addition for the people who are performing, a really valuable experience for our performers and our faculty. Everyone was really attracted by the prospect. We’ll be performing at the famous Mozarteum Hall, where we will do “Magic Flute” and “Le Nozze di Figaro.”

OW: Tell me a little about the program?

NH: We started out 30 days in Prague and then in our second year, we spent 11 days in this lovely town called Tabor in Bohemia before going to Prague for 19 days. It was a very fine balance. The whole town was so interested in our program. We have long hours and long days, between coachings and staging rehearsals; everybody has things going on. We have so much happening and the town is in love with the idea of music being done in the summer. We start there and then we go to Prague. This year, because the Estate Theater is completely under repair, we will be at the second home of the Prague Symphony instead. It’s a beautiful venue, where we will stage all our productions, but we also wanted to perform at a prestigious hall, so that is why Salzburg was important. Where we will go in our fourth year, we shall see – but Salzburg is turning out to be a major attraction. We have also partnered with the Prague Conservatory, which is a legendary institution.

OW: Tell me about the audition process and what is it like?

NH: That process happens both in-person and online. We hold auditions in several cities twice: we have a round of auditions in early November in London, Beijing, Los Angeles, New York, Maryland, Washington and so on. And then we repeat those and add some other locations like Indiana, so we get a lot of people from all over the country. We do these auditions in January and February. We also do online auditions for applicants around the world. Then all the major conductors, faculty and stage directors check them out and based on their consensus, we make offers.

OW: Do any of the participants come back?

NH: Yes, that is actually something I want to highlight. One of our alumni, John Holland, did Masetto the first year and then Leporello the second year. And this year, he is going to sing Figaro. He comes back because he says this program has helped him out so much; he’s got roles and it’s really building his career. Our first year, we also had Marcello Ferrero, who came back in our second year. The chance to work with Sherrill Milnes in Europe, in these productions is obviously a huge draw. We are attracting a very high level of singing and that is helping these musicians’ careers.

OW: Tell me about working with Sherrill Milnes and his work with the festival? 

NH: We’re really blessed to have him with us directing “Le Nozze di Figaro.” You know, he made his stage director debut with the Prague Summer Nights Festival program. It was major news in Europe and the press was all over it.

OW: What kinds of productions are produced?

NH: Very classic, all done the way they were meant to be done. We’re not at all avant-garde. We want to give people a chance to experience opera in the classical sense and really get them ready for these roles in their careers. Our goal is to give productions as close to the original as possible.

OW: How has the audience reacted during the first two years?

NH: Our audience tends to be half tourists and half local opera-lovers. We do a lot of promotion and so far we have had a lot of interest from the press, including coverage from the major opera press. That obviously reaches everybody in Prague and now Tabor. The tourists like to come to the Estate Theater because it’s so important to Prague. They just love the idea of seeing something in this opera house. There is a lot of word of mouth and the reviews have been good as well, so people know that the production is satisfying. We’ve had huge ovations from our audiences and have had packed halls. Our goal is to engage the locals – and if we get tourists, that is great too. But it is really exciting to see people discover opera through our festival.

For more information on Prague Summer Nights, please visit: www.praguesummernights.com.

Classical Music Magazine: Winds Without Borders to perform for refugees in Germany

Classical Music Magazine
By Katy Wright

The Yale School of Music is collaborating with Classical Movements on a series of concerts for refugees in Germany.

The concerts, which will take place in June 2017, will see wind, brass and percussion players travel to Germany and perform under Thomas C. Duffy, Yale professor and director of bands.

The project was inspired by a performance which the Yale Concert Band gave under Duffy at the Eleonas Refugee Camp in Athens, Greece in June 2016.

The ten-day, eight-night tour will take place during the last few weeks of June 2017. It will begin in Berlin and continue to two additional cities, most likely Dresden and Düsseldorf; however, due to the constantly changing nature of the refugee situation, the exact cities and dates will be determined at a later date.

Duffy said: ‘We say over and over that music is a fundamental right, so shouldn’t music be something of great, if not critical, value to those who are in camps; who find themselves away from the aesthetic experiences that define their culture; who see the days stretching before them with no aesthetic spiritual stimulation? Let’s meet them and bring them music!’

classicalmovements.com/winds-without-borders.pdf

Classical Movements at 24: Changing the World Through Music

Back in the U.S.S.R.: "Slava" conducts the National Symphony and the Choral Arts Society of Washington.

RUSSIA, 1993—Mstislav Rostropovich is invited back to his native Russia, having defected in 1974. In those two decades, both the cellist, and his homeland, had drastically changed. What a homecoming it was, then, when now-Maestro "Slava" and the National Symphony Orchestra returned with a chorus nearly 200-strong. With just two months’ notice, Blue Heart Travel (what would become Classical Movements) arranged a landmark tour for the Choral Arts Society of Washington, culminating in the first-ever concert broadcast from Moscow's Red Square.

Not pictured: President Zemin conducting that night's encore, a Sousa march.

CHINA, 1999—After playing Bernstein, Gershwin and Copland for Chinese President Jiang Zemin at the Clinton White House, at President Zemin's request, Classical Movements is honored to arrange for the Leonard Slatkin-led National Symphony to perform Dvorak, Schumann and Mussorgsky at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. It's one of many stops on the NSO's 18-day tour of China and Japan.

The late NYPO music director, Kurt Masur.

TUESDSAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 - Classical Movements has the entire New York Philharmonic on tour in Europe. Company president Neeta Helms recalls, “By the time they took off from Hanover and landed in Frankfurt, the travel world, as we knew it, had changed forever." For four long days, all flights in and out of the U.S. were grounded. By Saturday, September 15, every last member of the New York Phil was on the first flight home.

Maestro Leonard Slatkin pauses for a picture with both NSO and INSO musicians.

IRAQ, 2003—The U.S. State Department and the Kennedy Center invite the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra to perform in Washington, alongside the National Symphony. With anti-aircraft missiles still lighting up the sky above Baghdad, flying the INSO out of Iraq proved difficult for Classical Movements. Moreover, many of the Iraqi musicians did not have basic travel documents; visas had to be issued in a country with no government. Military aircraft flew the orchestra to Jordan, and they landed in D.C. during a major blizzard.

The "Dude" leads Dr. José Antonio Abreu'sband.

VENEZUELA, 2007—Askonas Holt invites Classical Movements to organize the first U.S. tour for the 265-plus members of the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, conducted by a then-27-year-old Gustavo Adolfo Dudamel. Venues include Carnegie Hall, Boston's Symphony Hall, Davies Hall in San Francisco and an eventual home for that charismatic leader: the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, California. "Dudamel is absolutely revelatory," writes the L.A. Times.

"Broadcast yourself," indeed, with Classical Movements.

CYBERSPACE, 2009—Google, still Classical Movements' only for-profit client, contracts out all travel and logistics for the debut of its YouTube Symphony Orchestra, where musicians (and all of their instruments) from across the globe finally meet up at Carnegie Hall. It's such a successful venture for all parties, there's a reprise, two years later, at Australia's Sydney Opera House.

Combined Ihlombe! Choral Festival participants at the foot of Signal Hill in Cape Town. 

SOUTH AFRICA, 2009—By 1994, with the election of Nelson Mandela and the full abolition of apartheid, Blue Heart Travel was officially touring to South Africa. To celebrate 15 years there, and especially since Classical Movements' Rhapsody! and Melodia! Choral Festivals had become such hits in Europe and South America, respectively, Ihlombe! (pronounced "Ish-LOM-bay") is launched. The Zulu word for "applause," Ihlombe! quickly becomes the largest international choral gathering in the country.

Tony Ross, Minnesota's principal cello, shares some techniques with a Cuban student.

CUBA, 2015—Likewise, Blue Heart had been taking sanctioned tours to otherwise forbidden countries like Cuba, Vietnam and Syria since President Clinton's first term. “We knew Cuba held such a singular place in American’s minds and hearts," remembers Ms. Helms. With little more than 100 days’ notice, the Minnesota Orchestra tells Classical Movements they want to go, too. Leveraging its well-established ties to bypass decades of diplomatic stalemate, the tour is a triumph, including two performances at the Teatro Nacional, as well as outreach workshops with Cuban music students. The concerts are broadcast live, around the world, a substantial achievement, itself.