{"id":28711,"date":"2015-05-07T12:49:49","date_gmt":"2015-05-07T18:49:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=28711"},"modified":"2018-10-10T11:01:39","modified_gmt":"2018-10-10T17:01:39","slug":"utopia-early-music-local-group-keeps-the-brilliant-music-of-the-renaissance-and-medieval-periods-alive-and-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/utopia-early-music-local-group-keeps-the-brilliant-music-of-the-renaissance-and-medieval-periods-alive-and-well\/","title":{"rendered":"Utopia Early Music: Local Group Keeps the Brilliant Music of the Renaissance and Medieval Periods Alive and Well"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

by Becky Durham<\/p>\n

Six years ago Emily Nelson and Chris LeCluyse met for coffee. Nelson had heard about LeCluyse from a common friend and knew of his interest in early music. She emailed him and arranged a meeting to see if he might want to collaborate sometime. By the time they finished their coffee, Utopia Early Music was born. \u00a0\u201cWe chose the name Utopia to reflect our ideal of a musical world in which anything is possible,\u201d the two founders explain. This year, the Salt Lake City ensemble is presenting its fifth concert series.<\/p>\n

Nelson holds degrees in voice, music history, and early music performance. LeCluyse, whose love for early music began in the seventh grade, studied voice and has a Ph.D in English. Each possesses a wide range of professional performance experience and each has a particular interest in early music.\u00a0 \u201cChris and I both have a passion for this kind of music, but there just aren’t as many opportunities to sing it since it just isn’t as widely established as Romantic music\u201d, says Nelson. \u00a0\u201cI think we started the group simply to have opportunities to sing the music and share something beautiful that wasn’t often heard.\u201d\u00a0 LeCluyse adds, \u201cThe bottom line is that this music really resonates with us\u2014besides responding to Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music on an aesthetic and emotional level,\u00a0we truly enjoy the creative challenge of bringing this music to life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The specifics of the term \u201cearly music\u201d may or may not be familiar to audiences. It usually refers to music composed before 1750. Concert programs today, whether orchestra, chamber, or choral, usually consist of music composed subsequent to that. Today\u2019s cultural centers offer a wide variety of sounds from the late Baroque, Classical, and Romantic music eras. This more familiar music is sandwiched between the often-neglected early music and \u201cNew Music\u201d. Therein lies the well-known \u201ccanon\u201d represented by Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and even Stravinsky, whose\u00a0Rite of Spring<\/em>\u00a0is now over 100 years old \u2013 still considered by many contemporary listeners as \u201cmodern.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is less often, in those same cultural centers, that audiences have the chance to supplement their musical diet with works by early composers such as Mauchaut, Dufay, Dowland, Legrenzzi, Rigatti, Hildegarde von Bingen, and Barbara Stozzi. Utopia has shared music by all of these composers and it\u2019s important to note that many compositions from these early periods were written anonymously. Obscure, but enduring, they have lasted and offer us a rare look into the sensibilities of people who lived up to a thousand years ago. Baritone Michael Chipman points out that \u201cChris LeCluyse has often remarked in rehearsals that what we are doing when we come together to sing and play as a group of musicians is actually the only way people were able to hear or experience music at all for hundreds of years.\u201d\u00a0 Chipman has high praise for the two founders of the ensemble. \u201cI have loved performing with Utopia. Chris and Emily have a very clear aesthetic of intimacy, nuance and transparency, and they bring together like-minded musicians to re-create music written hundreds of years ago with that same aesthetic\u2026There is something special about one voice, one part, especially in the rich harmonic world of [the] Renaissance.\u201d<\/p>\n

In order to \u201cbring this music to life,\u201d as LeCluyse says, he and Nelson meet prior to each four-program concert series to create and shape their concerts. The music not only spans centuries, but the globe as well. They have performed music from the European continent, Ireland, Nova Scotia and during one concert they focused on music of Colonial America. Nelson says that as they put their heads together they \u201cstart with concepts for the shows [sometimes they have holiday themes, or it could be music from a specific part of the world, or a time period, or some combination of those things], and from there, we decide whom we want to hire.\u201d She qualifies that by saying, \u201cSometimes our process goes the other way around; we wanted to do something with Aubrey and Alex Wood again [violinists], and so we devised our May concert based on what we wanted to hear them play.\u201d LeCluyse puts it this way, \u201cWe follow a \u2019stone soup\u2018 approach to concert planning: everyone brings an ingredient, and the result is often greater than the sum of its parts.\u201d<\/p>\n

LeCluyse (tenor) and Nelson (soprano) perform in every concert. In addition to singers, the earliest music includes instruments such as the Gothic harp, vielle, lute, viola da gamba, recorder, theorbo and Baroque guitar. These and more are all featured in Utopia concerts. They collaborate with other local musicians and sometimes guests from out of state. Utopia focuses on Medieval and Renaissance music, but occasionally they enjoy juxtaposing music from later periods to draw comparisons and contrasts. Just this past season they presented \u201cmash up\u201d concerts in which music of Brahms and P.D.Q. Bach were added to the mix.<\/p>\n

Local music critic Ed Reichel calls Utopia concerts \u201cinfectious and captivating.\u201d He also points out that they have \u201cfound a way to make early music fun.\u201d Perhaps this is because audiences might be treated to one concert focused on \u201cVlad the Impaler\u201d, the 15th century Romanian prince (on whom Bram Stoker based his\u00a0Dracula)<\/em>, or another entitled \u201cMy Bonny Lass She Smelleth.\u201d There is plenty of fun to be had, but other concerts will offer gentle, poignant, and inspiring music created by people with nothing but a few instruments and their voices to express themselves. LeCluyse recalls special occasions when they\u2019ve truly nailed a moving and expressing number. \u201cThe audience will just sit there in silence for a few seconds before clapping. Once I heard a muffled \u2018Whoa.\u2019”<\/p>\n

Nelson and LeCluyse look forward to the future and are thrilled about their growing and diverse audiences. \u201cNaturally, we attract folks who like to attend classical music events, but it seems like that demographic is branching out a little. Sometimes we draw listeners who are interested in hearing a specific musician or style of music, too,\u201d Nelson explains. Besides presenting the concerts that compose their season, LeCluyse adds, \u201cWe also have increasingly offered additional performances, either around one of our main series concerts or during the summer.\u201d\u00a0 Moreover, at some time he hopes to take Utopia on the road and perform at early music festivals.<\/p>\n

Utopia\u2019s founders are proud of their efforts and wish to show lovers of music how \u201caccessible this music is \u2013 perhaps even more than the traditional classical repertoire\u201d and to introduce people to \u201cdynamite musicians \u2026 who play beautifully on instruments that you just don’t get to hear anywhere else in the city.\u201d\u00a0They have faithful regular audience members \u2013 \u201chipsters alongside retirees,\u201d but they are always eager to introduce themselves to new listeners. Chipman, having performed with Utopia on many occasions, would be the first to encourage people to attend a concert. \u201cUtopia keeps the brilliant music of the Renaissance and Medieval periods alive and well, and I am grateful for their passion for their music and for letting me be a consistent part of their music-making.\u201d<\/p>\n

Audiences have one more opportunity to enjoy a Utopia concert this season. The final performance, \u201cPoignant Pleasures: Music of the French Baroque,\u201d features Alex and Aubrey Woods, violins; John Lenti, theorbo; and Eleanor Christman Cox, Baroque cello. In this program, Utopia and a skilled complement of strings will present music of Marais, Charpentier, Campra and other masters of the\u00a0je ne sais quois<\/em>. LeCluyse and Nelson, having given the programming their usual care and research, will focus on French Baroque composers\u2019 \u201cgood fight\u201d to resist Italian influence, only to later succumb after Lully, the leader of their charge, dies, having struck his own foot with a conducting staff resulting in gangrene and its subsequent complications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n