{"id":23707,"date":"2013-11-06T10:08:35","date_gmt":"2013-11-06T16:08:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=23707"},"modified":"2018-12-14T13:37:04","modified_gmt":"2018-12-14T19:37:04","slug":"nova-chamber-music-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/nova-chamber-music-series\/","title":{"rendered":"NOVA Chamber Music Series"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jason<\/a><\/p>\n

Jason Hardink spent this past summer exploring the music of 20th Century Greek composer Iannis Xenakis \u2014 the Artistic Director of NOVA Chamber Music Series tells us he was planning to program their season opener with three\u00a0<\/a>Xenakis works: a solo piano piece and two solo percussion pieces. But, points out Executive Director Kimi Kawashima, \u201cAs Jason practiced the piano piece, he realized programmatically, this is not going to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, it would have been awesome\u201d interrupts Hardink.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course it would have been\u00a0awesome,<\/em>\u201d agrees Kawashima.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Hardink programmed solo violin music by Bach instead of the piano piece. He still isn\u2019t sure what he would have preferred, but he just didn\u2019t think it was what NOVA needed at that particular moment. How NOVA programs their concerts is critical to their organization. This is no garage band. \u201cWe don\u2019t do pot-boiler programs\u201d explains Hardink. \u201cSometimes chamber music can be like that \u2013 not caring how the pieces work together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hardink and Kawashima have distinct responsibilities, but business and programming decisions are often a result of conversations they have with one another throughout the day, or in the case of replacing the Xenakis with the Bach, during a night out. You see, not only do Hardink and Kawashima make up the entire NOVA staff, the two happen to be married with three year-old twin boys. \u201cLast year was an experiment as far as our working style\u201d says Kawashima. \u201cThat was a little rough in some ways. We had to figure it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems like it brings added stress to our marriage that is totally unnecessary,\u201d jokes Hardink. \u201cFor instance, the marketing is an area of our organization that doesn\u2019t really have clear boundaries. We just redesigned our website and there were so many details. The stress was crazy. But it is one of those things where it\u2019s better to work as a team.\u201d Even when Kawashima is writing a grant, she enjoys the convenience of having someone there to talk things out and explore new angles.<\/p>\n

Hardink joined NOVA in 2009 when the previous Artistic Director and fellow Utah Symphony player Corbin Johnston approached him. Kawashima, who is an adjunct faculty member at Westminster College, was named Executive Director just last year. Hardink claims Johnston had a master plan for him and his wife to run NOVA together.<\/p>\n

NOVA Chamber Music Series was founded in 1977 when Utah Symphony clarinetist Russell Harlow realized there wasn\u2019t a strong presence in town for presenting local musicians. An attitude that our community required performers from outside to bring good music to Utah was a driving force behind the inception. Hardink is only the fourth artistic director in 36 years. NOVA\u2019s mission is simple: \u201cTo be Utah\u2019s premiere forum for resident professional artists to perform high quality concerts of chamber music to audiences in intimate settings and at affordable prices.\u201d On top of showcasing local performers, NOVA programmed four premieres by local composers for this season. On November 10th, they will feature French composers Poulenc and Faur\u00e9 as well as short piano pieces by Utah composer Morris Rosenzweig, along with his trio for horn, violin and piano. This concert contrasts older, more accessible music with contemporary classical which can be a bit more challenging.\u00a0 \u201cChamber music can be very conservative, but the one thing I knew when I came on was that our audience was open-minded. I respond to a lot of what I sense from them. The concerts where we pair old and new music seem to sell the best because you can\u2019t seem to get that variety anywhere else in Utah. The performers really get behind it too, I think because it\u2019s so out of the ordinary for what classical musicians do every day.\u00a0 I\u2019ve done all Beethoven Concerts and all Schubert Concerts and they\u2019ve been the worst attended concerts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hardink keeps pushing difficult repertoire and tickets keep selling. \u201cBack in 2007 a bunch of organizations including NOVA, Gina Bauchauer, Utah Symphony, and the Cathedral\u00a0 got together to present the\u00a0Messiaen<\/em>Festival,\u201d he recalls. \u201cThe NOVA audience liked it, the Gina Bauchauer people were totally open to the solo piece I played, and the Cathedral had no issues, but the Utah Symphony crowd was not ready for a 90-minute Messiaen piece. What I learned is you just can\u2019t have really conservative programming all year long and then drop a contemporary piece on an audience expecting them to get it.\u201d Hardink brought this experience when he started with NOVA and has quite deliberately been curating their audience\u2019s awareness. Kawashima tells a story of a gallery they visited in Amsterdam: \u201cI could tell the curator had a strong opinion about this one Russian artist. He put one of his paintings in every room. I remember thinking, \u2018He\u2019s trying to make a point about the importance of this dude.\u2019 His work was placed alongside Picasso and then some lesser-known artists. I never thought of that idea of being a curator. You\u2019re guiding someone without having to say anything, and I think that\u2019s the approach we\u2019re taking. You can walk away and not be affected, or you can let it stay with you. That\u2019s what has happened with a lot of these juxtapositions we\u2019re making in our programming.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t want it to be contrived or pretentious\u201d Hardink clarifies. \u201cThis is just the way I like to experience music and this is what I\u2019m trying to share.\u201d He gives an example: \u201cTake Beethoven and Rihm. We decided to do this Beethoven sonata cycle. If you were just to do sonatas and nothing else, the concerts would be too long. I wouldn\u2019t say he\u2019s \u2018the Beethoven of today\u2019 but Wolfgang Rihm is unquestionably the greatest living German composer right now. The funny thing about modern classical music is there is so much that people can recognize and respond to even if they\u2019re going into a concert with a question mark.\u00a0 Rihm\u2019s music has so much energy and imagination and when you place him next to Beethoven the juxtaposition is abrupt. Their languages don\u2019t have a lot in common on the surface, but the more you listen the more you can make connections.\u201d Kawashima adds, \u201cYou find one composer informs the listening of the other. The beginning of the first Rihm is just a single note in the low register. I think it builds an awareness of sound that I\u2019m sure Beethoven felt with certain sonorities and things like that. They really do complement each other in a wild comparison.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year NOVA expanded their programming by adding a Gallery Series. On October 13, they performed the Beethoven and Rihm concert to a sold out audience at The Art Barn on Finch Lane. The program featured Utah Symphony Associate concertmaster Kathryn Eberle on the violin and of course Hardink at the piano. The idea was to play in an intimate venue with a small number of musicians \u2013 much how chamber music was originally heard. They will do one more gallery concert this season at the Art Barn and they hope to continue this series next season. Hardink and Kawashima have many ideas for the future, but creative programming will always come first. \u201cWe\u2019re always trying to be as creative as possible as how the music is presented and how the musicians play off each other,\u201d says Hardink. \u201cI would hope that creative energy is something that will continue to inform the way the organization functions.\u201d<\/p>\n

NOVA Chamber Music Series presents \u201cThe Latin Quarter and the French Quarter\u201d on November 10th at Libby Gardner Concert Hall. Tickets are $5 student and $20 regular. Tickets can be purchased through their website:\u00a0www.novaslc.org<\/a><\/p>\n

Featured performers: Stephen Proser, horn; Jason Hardink, piano; Lun Jiang, violin; Roberta Zalkind, viola; Anne Francis Bayless, cello;\u00a0Michael Chipman<\/a>, baritone. This concert includes a world premiere by Utah composer, Morris Rosenzweig.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jason Hardink spent this past summer exploring the music of 20th Century Greek composer Iannis Xenakis \u2014 the Artistic Director of NOVA Chamber Music Series tells us he was planning to program their season opener with three\u00a0Xenakis works: a solo piano piece and two solo percussion pieces. But, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":781,"featured_media":23708,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[1727,1728,1726],"class_list":["post-23707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-jason-hardink","tag-kimi-kawashima","tag-nova-chamber-music-series"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/nova.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-24 14:01:43","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/781"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23707"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41796,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23707\/revisions\/41796"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}