A Cause For Harmony

Cello in hand and ideas in head, Denis Brott's direction of the Montreal Chamber Music Festival dispells old myths about a venerable art form

Story by Benjamin Pomerance

Photos courtesy of the Montreal Chamber Music Festival

Denis Brott has been fighting prejudice for the past 14 years. He has never marched in a single protest, never attended a single rally, never carried a single banner. He has never gone to jail for his cause, and when his campaign actually reaches the ears of Montreal’s law enforcement personnel, they tend to applaud him, not condemn him, for his efforts. However, Brott is anything but complacent about agitating for that in which he believes. For more than a decade now, he has openly defied conventional authority and received media attention for doing so. He has spoken publically about breaking down barriers and succeeded in doing so, and his labors, as he openly acknowledges, are performed with the goal of making the world a more accepting place.

His tools hardly follow the blueprint used by most cause-minded individuals, shunning megaphones and flags for a cello and bow. His gatherings of supporters are equally atypical: concerts at the city’s St. James United Church, programs Brott defines as "events" instead of the more traditional "performances." His ideals, however, are just as lofty as the goals set by activists for any other more conventional cause: openness to change, acceptance of things that may at first seem foreign, and destruction of artificial barriers that hamper one’s ability to advance. To the causal observer, the annual rite of spring known as the Montreal Chamber Music Festival is just that — a celebration of classic works written for small ensembles, a gathering of musicians and music aficionados who delight in works of this nature, a springtime fete for an ages-old art form. To Brott, highly acclaimed cellist and Chamber Festival founder, artistic director and visionary, it’s the annual meeting of a movement he hopes will sweep the world.

"There is a barrier people create when it comes to chamber music," Brott explains of his harmonious crusade, "and it truly is a barrier they themselves create. People see chamber music as old or stodgy or too arcane to enjoy, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. Chamber music is, in actuality, the ultimate democratic art form. You have an ensemble of musicians working together to create the best possible sound not as soloists, but as a collective whole, and that is so respectful of human nature on so many levels. But people don’t see that right away."

"If you don’t like chamber music, or if you’ve never really listened to chamber music, we really do want you to come to this Festival so you can discover what chamber music really is"

With the Montreal Chamber Music Festival, Brott says, many people don’t grasp the accessibility of this art form right away, either. Even by the end of the Festival, he continues, some audience members always seem to come away wowed at their own ability to relate to a genre they once considered highbrow or stuffy. "We are always doing some interesting things," Brott says, "all of which are in line with this concept of dispelling the myth that chamber music is something remote or foreign to people and helping make classical music, which is my domain, accessible to people of different interests. If you don’t like chamber music, or if you’ve never really listened to chamber music, we really do want you to come to this Festival so you can discover what chamber music really is."

What chamber music isn’t, Brott points out, is mundane or dull, nor is it by any means one-dimensional. A glance over the lineup for the 2009 Festival confirms that thought, with programs varying from preludes by J.S. Bach to waltzes by Johann Strauss to jazz by Benny Goodman — and seemingly every other imaginable style and genre in between. "A festival needs to be festive," Brott says. "So we look to create programs that are fresh and exciting for the performers and fresh and exciting for the audience. We don’t compromise the music itself by any means. We are fortunate enough to have world-class artists playing these works, musicians who some of the best in the world on their respective instruments. But we do try some things that are a little different, a little experimental sometimes, to allow audience members of varying musical tastes to experience these great works of chamber music in different ways."

Sometimes, Brott says, chamber music fans are found in the most unlikely places…which is why the musical activist is attempting a brand-new recruiting effort at this year’s Festival. In the week leading up to the official kickoff at St. James Church, the Festival will feature a three-night concert series at Sala Rosa, a trendy bar on Rue St. Laurent, a neighborhood Brott says is known as the "hip section" of Montreal. "These concerts will be presented in a very causal setting," Brott explains of the three-night stand. "We’ll be playing chamber music, but people don’t have to stop what they’re doing in the bar. It will just be music to help enhance the experience of the patrons of the bar and will give us a chance to expand the Festival’s offerings to a very different venue and audience."

The Festival begins in earnest the following week with a May 7 concert that, Brott says, will be not only about breaking down barriers but building musical bridges as well. Every performer on the program that night comes from the Conservatoire de Montreal, a European-style conservatory which, Brott says, is a well-kept secret within his home city. "People don’t really know much about its existence," says Brott, who teaches at the Conservatoire when not tending to the Festival’s operations, "but the whole institution is a real asset to the music scene in Montreal. We accept people according to talent only. The students pay under $1,000 per year to attend, and the people who come through there are very, very gifted artists, as people attending that first concert will surely see."

"It’s something we’ve tried to do really since the beginning: combine words and music"

The next night, the classic strains from the previous evening will be replaced by the evocative sounds of blues from the Mississippi Delta region of America, presented by popular Canadian entertainer Florence K. This program, one of a four-part series Brott nicknames "Jazz and Jeans", offers patrons the chance to experience small ensemble music in a much less classical motif, with jazz combos, piano/vocalist arrangements, and other similar musical groups taking over St. James for a night. One day later, it’s off to Paris, an evening of romance in France featuring works by Maurice Ravel, Gabriel Faure, and Ernest Chausson, each paired with readings of French poetry that correspond to the themes of the musical works. "It’s something we’ve tried to do really since the beginning: combine words and music," Brott says. "By doing that, we’re not compromising the music. On the contrary, we’re enhancing it by adding this verbal stimulus to go with the music itself. We’ll also be showing projections of French artwork on screens on either side of the stage during the performance, and that adds another stimulus, a visual one, for the audience to recognize."

Also on this program, there will be a rendition of Ravel’s notably challenging Sonata #2 for Violin and Piano, featuring Montreal violinist and longtime Festival performer Jonathan Crow. Crow became involved with the Festival when he came to Montreal at age 20 to join the Montreal Symphony Orchestra where he would play as the youngest concertmaster in the storied symphony’s 75-year history. Now the head of the strings program at McGill University, Crow has been coming back to the Festival ever since, an annual tradition, he says, he looks forward to every year. "I think one of the goals of all classical musicians is to break down barriers and bring music to a greater audience," Crow says. "The accessible downtown location of the Chamber Festival helps to bring a casual audience, who invariably are surprised as to how much they enjoy the concerts." The musicians, Crow adds, enjoy the concerts too, particularly the opportunity to make music with top-level artists with whom they rarely get a chance to play. "This is the appeal of an event such as the Montreal Chamber Festival," Crow says. "It is not just an attempt to re-create a CD, or hear a group on tour playing the same rep over and over, but a mix of different players and instruments that gives an exciting feel on stage and in the hall."

"People love Oliver Jones, and they love Oscar Peterson. It’s the perfect match"

Week two of the 2009 Festival begins May 13 with the arrival of a legend: award-winning Canadian pianist Anton Kuerti, who will take the stage for a full evening of Mozart piano works. Kuerti returns the following evening, taking the stage with violinist Lara St. John and young Montreal pianist Wonny Song to play works by Ravel, Bela Bartok, and the always-electrifying Franz Liszt. Then, one night later, jazz returns to the church on St. Catherine Street with world-renowned piano player Oliver Jones taking the stage with his combo to present the music of Montreal native and jazz great Oscar Peterson. Brott, recently named to a city-wide committee in charge of finding ways to appropriately honor Peterson’s memory in Montreal, says he expects this to be one of the most popular concerts of the Festival. "Every time Oliver comes, we get a good crowd," Brott says. "Last year, when he played here, we were completely sold out. People love Oliver Jones, and they love Oscar Peterson. It’s the perfect match."

Concluding the week is an evening in Vienna brought to Montreal through the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the popular waltzes of Johann Strauss. "This is, simply put, nice music," Brott says. "I expect people to leave the church on that night humming the waltzes as they go along. It’s very nice, very uplifting."

The Festival’s third week kicks off with an experiment, something even Brott has never attempted at a Festival before. The program, "Virtuosos of Opera", pairs vocal performances of celebrated opera arias with instrumental arrangements of that same aria or collections of arias from that same opera. Featured in many of the instrumental portions of the program is violinist Rachel Barton Pine returning for her fourth consecutive Festival. "I first met Denis Brott when I invited him to join the faculty for a music festival I was organizing at the time in Massachusetts," Pine remembers. "He was recommended to me by a friend. The first time I met him was when he arrived at the festival. We got to know each other that summer and hit it off well, and the next thing I knew, he invited me to play in Montreal."

Pine’s been returning ever since, including a notable performance last summer combining the classical brilliance of Mozart with arrangements of the more modern-sounding metal band Metallica. Nevertheless, her favorite Festival memory remains one of a far more traditional nature. "In my second year (at the Festival), I played a program of the complete Bach Sonatas and Partidas for Solo Violin," Pine recalls. "And I wasn’t sure how the audience would react to such a long program. It was really the length of a recital and a half." She pauses. "But so many people came out that night and stayed with me from the first note to the last note. It was such a beautiful experience. I’ll never forget that night."

The evening of May 21 features neither Bach nor operatic selections on the bill of fare. Instead, Brott says, audiences can prepare for something completely different: an evening of Klezmer music, a form of traditional Jewish folk music noted for its unique rhythms and sounds. One night later, a new kind of sound enters the church, the swingin’ sensations of clarinetist Benny Goodman played by a combo including Goodman’s former pianist, Gene DiNovi. "Fifty years ago, Gene played on Benny Goodman’s recording ‘The Sound of Music,’" Brott says. "This program commemorates two things: the 100th anniversary of Goodman’s birth, and the 50th anniversary of Gene playing on ‘The Sound of Music.’" The week comes to a close with another chapter in the Festival’s musical travelogue, this time, transporting audience members to Italy with Peter Illyich Tchaikovsky’s famed Sextet in G minor, nicknamed "Souvenirs of Florence."

The Festival’s final week begins with good-bye, a farewell to the members of the esteemed Guarneri Quartet. The 45-year-old ensemble, whose members are retiring from the quartet after the year is done, will present their final Canadian performance on this night, violinists Arnold Steinhardt and John Dalley, violist Michael Tree and cellist Peter Wiley joining for a program of works by Bartok, Antonin Dvorak and Franz Schubert. One night later, another master will grace the stage: the spirit of J.S. Bach, whose French and English Suites will be performed by noted Bach interpreter Ivo Janssen. The following evening marks the finale of "Jazz and Jeans" for the year, a merger of works classical and jazzy featuring Igor Stravinsky’s spirited L’histoire du Soldat and an arrangement of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue for solo piano.

"It’s an atmosphere all about the music being played, and a mutual love and appreciation and respect for that music"

With one concert still remaining, the Festival will be far from over. The final performance on the Festival program is anything but typical: a six-hour May 30 marathon devoted to the chamber works of Felix Mendelssohn. "We first did one of these marathon performances on the 200th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, a 12-hour program to commemorate the works of one of the world’s greatest composers," Brott says. "The response was good, so we’ve had a marathon on our schedule ever since, devoted solely to chamber works of a different composer every year." The concert will last from 6 p.m. to midnight, Brott explains, with one ticket good for all six hours of music. People can come and go as they please during the day, stopping in for the early evening, getting dinner and coming back for the end, or going out for a late night musical snack sometime around 10 p.m. "Whatever the audience wants to do is fine with us," Brott laughs. "No matter what, we’ll be playing until midnight."

When the clock strikes twelve that night, the Montreal Chamber Music Festival will be over for another year, yet Brott says he will hardly be ready for a long summer’s nap. Like all crusaders, he’s already thinking about next year and beyond. There are contacts to make, programs to plan, novel ideas to test out, obstacles to overcome, and, as always, there’s still that issue of ridding the world of that erroneous prejudice against chamber music, a bias Brott hopes to overcome by continuing to bring music to the world. "The Festival is a labor of love, no question about it," Brott says. "The artists are there for the love of the music. The audiences are there for the love of the music. It’s not about being seen. It’s an atmosphere all about the music being played, and a mutual love and appreciation and respect for that music." He pauses. "We believe nothing is better than that, and if we can musically persuade some other people every year that this is the case, then we have done a good thing."

Have you ever attended the Montreal Chamber Music Festival?