Chanticleer Festival 2000
Ana Cervantes

8. RECAPITULATION

We've made such great music during this short time.  My ensemble partners have been wonderful to perform with, their excitement about the music we've played communicating itself generously to our audiences and sparking an immediate, trusting response.   In this fashion music like the Shostakovich, the Bartók, or the Galindo, or this 3-year-old piece of Arturo Márquez, are not marginal "contemporary" repertoire which one hesitates to bring before an audience of "just regular folks" Hoosier listeners.  Far from being marginal, this music comes across as central, vivid, expressive.  There is a sense of companionship between us, the ensemble, and our listeners, a sense of a gift mutually given.  In the end, our listeners trust us because we trust them and never play, or talk, down to them.  

By the end of these two weeks, the notion is taking shape in my head: that music, made this way, can help to make community.  I've believed for a long time that music can be a bridge between cultures and people; and for a long time I have been a believer in making concerts by barnstorming, by taking the music out of the concert hall and bringing it to the listener who may not be accustomed to attending that concert hall, a kind of music-making we call now "outreach".

Now I am saying, In the hands of someone with the vision and love of a Caroline Klemperer, music does more than reach out to the community, music starts to MAKE community.   For two weeks, we have been in a special universe centered on Chanticleer Farm, which includes everyone around us but which has as its core, strong and vibrant as a beating heart, the five of us.  We all go forth and as though in a series of concentric circles, somehow enlarge that community to include the people for whom we play our music.

In the 24 years it's been in existence, the Chanticleer Festival, at the very least, has certainly created a community from its traditional, final concert.  It's held on the lake on the farm; the audience comes with its blankets and chairs, from little kids to grandparents, and soaks up the music in this atmosphere that can only be described as idyllic.  Now after 24 years there is indeed a community of people who wouldn't dream of missing that concert.

With this thought vibrating in my head late the night before this year's farm concert, I decide that I want to acknowledge and honor this amazing ability of Caroline's to put music – and musicians! - to work making community.  Sneakily, I keep the whole idea to myself, and wait for the perfect moment: when we all come onstage, the audience applauding, to play our encore, Ponce's "Estrellita".  I make my little two minute speech, the audience starts to clap again, some of them on their feet, and now the other members of the Quartet are applauding too, and I turn to see that Caroline is almost in tears, saying to me with her megawatt smile in spite of the tears, "You rascal, you" … and I am hardly surprised to find that I too have tears in my eyes, of great happiness to have been part of this, and sadness that it's the last time, at least for now, that we'll play together. 

NEXT...  Part 9:  CODA

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