WMV Music Web Log

Well it is the eve of the new year, and it feels like big changes are possible for WMV in its sixth year of existence. First of all, we are moving a piano into the Ratner museum - a 6'3" Baldwin loaned by my aunt, Thelma Stein, who bought it new in 1962. Thelma, who is now in her 90's, is living near my parents on Cape Cod, but can no longer play the piano. She was a wonderful pianist, and my first piano teacher. She was in a trio with Daniel Majeske and Paul Olefsky, and did a lot of performing in Washington, many times at the Phillips Gallery. She was also the pianist for several of the most significant Washington dancers, including Ethel Butler and Pola Nirenska, and composed a lot of music for them. I have some of her scores, and eventually I plan to present some of her music on our programs. Washington has had a number of women composers of whom we should be more proud: Ruth Crawford, Esther Ballou, Dorothy Rudd Moore among them. Thelma's story is a lesson in oppression of women artists - she was a superb pianist, but was cast mostly as an accompanist, and replaced by men (who were in no way superior) when it came to making the commercial recordings. And all her life she retained some bitterness about being underpaid and even stiffed on her fee, by male musicians who should have known better. She abandoned performing in the mid-1950s, and taught piano to literally hundreds of children and adults for decades out of her home in NW DC. She gave me her collection of scores when her eyes began to fail. To my astonishment, she had clearly performed such works as the Bloch Quintet, Martinu Trio and Quartet, Shostakovich Quintet, Copland Quartet when they were brand new compositions, as well as the complete standard classical chamber music literature. I have used many of these scores in my performances, and am often struck by her clever and inventive fingering.

The piano will allow us to perform at the Ratner without paying the $600 rental fee for a single use that we paid when it was still possible to get a rental piano at all. The last program was played on our studio upright, because no one would rent us a grand piano for under $1000. Our goal: to play a concert without losing money. We're a long way off, but until that is achieved, WMV is a losing proposition, and the less we do, the better off we are financially. With the Ratner piano, I plan to institute a WEEKLY Sunday afternoon series of free concerts, initially solo, but eventually convincing some of my colleagues that an open rehearsal or reading session at the Ratner would be fun and good pr. This is one version of a longtime dream: a chamber music coffee house, modeled on folk or jazz coffee houses of my youth. I imagine a store front affair, with small stage and piano, art on the walls, and books. A full time operation, gallery and rehearsal/recoding space by day, performance at night - how to make a business plan for that? Is it impossible? It can't be, it's just too good an idea.

In the meantime, the Ratner series will be a good start in that direction.