Music Fills Lerner From the Inside Out

For an hour in Lerner's Roone Arledge Auditorium on Monday night, Music Humanities students were members of the Columbia University Orchestra, though only for an evening and only as silent observers watching the process of musical creation.

"Music from the Inside: An X-Ray View," a joint presentation by the Columbia University Orchestra, the Music Performance Program, the CU Arts Initiative, and Music Humanities, is only in its first year, but CUO executive director Alicia Kravitz, CC '06, thinks that it has been "very successful."

"Music Hum often relies on recordings, and this [presentation] shows students how a real, live orchestra is like," Kravitz said.

Zoe Slutzky, CC '08, a current Music Humanities student, agreed. "It's great to see the different elements of music. I could see where everything was coming from," she said.

Violist David Coates, CC '08, having already taken Music Hum, thinks so, as well. "It definitely makes music more tangible," he said. "It gives a real aspect to what we're studying. Student tickets often put you in the back, where you can't really see the orchestra. Besides, a rehearsal is completely different from a performance, and at a concert, you don't see what happens behind the scenes."

Because of the event's unconventional setup, with the orchestra situated in the center of the auditorium, the musicians were completely surrounded. As the orchestra rehearsed, students were free to sit in the audience, roam the room, and watch the musicians at work from a close proximity.

After giving a historical overview of the piece, music director and conductor Jeffrey Milarsky selected scenes from Igor Stravinsky's Pétrouchka, featuring piano soloist Peter Liou, CC '08, to perform for the audience. Chosen for their depiction of Russian folk melodies, these poignant passages illustrated different musical ideas and highlighted various instruments.

They "exemplify the thousands of wonderful colors and textures that one piece can contain," Liou said. "I think of Stravinsky as a musical chemist, because he combines different sounds and instrumental textures to achieve the exact musical ideas he wanted to convey."

"We try to bridge the disjoint between the audience and the orchestra," Kravitz said of the event.

"It's not fun watching the conductor from the back," Milarsky added. "You want to see the democratic process of conductor interacting with musicians."

According to Milarsky, the idea of an open rehearsal began with the hope of bringing the different aspects of the Columbia community together.

"The Columbia University Orchestra seems so separated from the rest of the Columbia community," Milarsky said. "The Core Curriculum is one of the most important aspects of the undergraduate experience here, and the orchestra is one of the oldest and best university orchestras in the nation-how do you put them together?"

As for the concert's program, which features music by Rameau and Ravel, in addition to Stravinsky, both Kravitz and Coates believe that it demands musicians to perform in different ways. "It's a combination of old-fashioned and New Age, edgy Russian music," Coates said. "It demonstrates the versatility of the orchestra and its creative playing."

"These are some of the most colorful works I could find," Milarsky said. With what it expects of the musicians, the pieces-which contain dance elements and are by composers who have written for ballets-become, in Milarsky's words, "technicolorful."

Just as "Music from the Inside: An X-Ray View" captured its Music Hum audiences on Monday evening, Kravitz is confident that this weekend's concerts will charm listeners.

"It's a top-notch production of works in the classical repertoire," she said. "It will be entertaining, and it will be very, very good."

"Music from the Inside: An X-Ray View"
Thurs., March 29
Miller Theater, Columbia University
8 p.m.
Sun., April 1
John C. Borden Auditorium, Manhattan School of Music
8 p.m.