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Research has indicated a genetic link between autism and the prodigiously gifted.

Professor of Psychology at Ohio State University, Joanne Ruthsatz, is currently heading a comprehensive study that is investigating the fascinating aspects of such an autism-prodigy connection. Enthralled with its implications, the Southampton Arts Festival, brainchild of pianist Elena Baksht and violinist Dmitri Berlinsky, integrated this aspect of musical heritage to this summer’s classical music Festival that takes place in Southampton, now in its third year.

 

“I knew that so many musicians, who had made it to an elaborate level within their music careers, started out as child prodigies. When I heard that 70 percent of the current study cases are music prodigies, it made perfect sense to lend our full support to the cause and at the same time offer performance possibilities for these gifted musicians,” says Baksht.  “In addition, our support also ends up helping the less fortunate side of the prodigy/autism equation.”

 

The festival offers concerts, performed by acclaimed and award-winning musicians at a variety of locations, including the Southampton Cultural Center and some unique private estates. This year, the festival’s musicians play in cooperation with some of the prodigies, brought to the festival by Ruthsatz.

Their fruitful collaboration has already brought on board Nobel Prize Laureate Jim Watson of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, who now supports Ruthsatz’s research efforts. In addition, the festival will donate a portion of its August concerts’ proceeds to the research.

 

But Berlinsky and Baksht have many more plans for the future, including a teaching program that reaches out to the Hampton community and continues to build on the Festival’s effort of promoting greater exposure to and knowledge of classical music. “The proximity of the festival’s location to New York offers incredible opportunities for us to attract the greatest musicians performing here and Dmitri and I both hope to expand our reputation over time.”

Co –founder and artistic director of the festival is Baksht’s former husband, violinist Dmitri Berlinsky, with whom she continues to share the stage and the many organizational logistics. ”The festival was both of our dreams come true at a time when it felt right to move ahead, despite our personal life,” Baksht says and Berlinsky adds, via email from his current concert-tour in Italy: “Many, many close friends are involved and we owe so much to some of the festival’s supporters” and mentions in particular the President of the Board, Roger Samet, as well as David and Julia Koch and Anneliese Soros. “We could not let anything stand in the way.”

 

“Many things came together in perfect synergy,” says Baksht, marveling about the musicianship of some of the prodigies – and she is not alone. Renowned Juilliard Professor and pianist, Jerome Loventhal, called 9 year old William Chen’s playing “of astonishing artistic authority, perfectly shaped and voiced.” (On the occasion of his winning First Prize at the Crescendo International Competition, William Chen will perform at the festival on August 19^th. (Southampton Cultural Center)

 

So how does it all come together?  According to Ruthsatz, the research based on data collected from young music prodigies turned out to hold a possible key to understanding the cause for autism, as well as helping to provide a viable cure.   As she looked further, she discovered “that both the first degree families of individuals with autism and the first degree families of prodigies in her sample displayed three out of five common traits of autism: impaired social skills, impaired ability to switch attention and heightened attention to detail.”

“This intrigued her so she decided to look for autism in her current sample of prodigies,” wrote Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D. in “The mind of the Prodigy” published by Huffington Post. In her study, published in the journal, Intelligence, Ruthsatz and violin virtuoso Jourdan Urbach, a child prodigy himself, involved eight other musical child prodigies, who were eager to help investigate further clues. Ruthsatz administered the Stanford-Binet IQ test to the prominent child prodigies who have been featured on national and international television programs, and most of whom had reached professional level performance in their domain by age ten. Interestingly the results of the testing showed that it was not necessarily an elaborate IQ value they had in common, but rather a superlative working (long-term) memory and a high attention to detail (a trait prevalent in autism). In this month’s article, published in Slate, “Do child prodigies owe their talents to autism?” Katy Waldman picks up on Ruthsatz’s premises that prodigies may have autism (or at least autism-affiliated traits) to thank for some of their remarkable feats.

 

“Autism runs in the family of many child prodigies,” says Ruthsatz. “It is thrilling to see how willing they are to undergo DNA analysis, to possibly help solve the puzzle. We think that there is a genetic modifier at work with prodigies that brings out their talent and lets their artistic personality shine through, and not the deficit. It may provide the genetic clue for autism, preventing the autistic traits to surface.”  To the daring suggestion that this testing will also highlight the disabilities associated with autism and perhaps impact the world- view of prodigies, most of the child prodigies just say: “Why wouldn’t we want to help?!” “Most of the child prodigies are really social and love the interaction of the Festival,” adds Ruthsatz.

 

It is the following aspect that seems to explain the ‘natural’ connection between fundraisers for the arts and the prodigies: “The child prodigies as a group has advanced moral development,” says Ruthsatz. Future research will investigate the underpinnings to such benevolent behavior (Studies by Ernst Fehr in Switzerland pointing to a scientific, genetic linkage to the ability of being sensitive to the needs of others).”

 

 

This year Baksht also approached international superstar pianist Evgeny Kissin (a most famous child prodigy himself) who agreed to be mentioned as ‘Honorary Artistic Advisor’ to the festival. Baksht remembers Kissin’s performance at Moscow’s famed Gnessin School for Gifted Children, where she heard Kissin perform at age 8. She approached Kissin with: ”I remember you since I was 5 years old – performing 2 Chopin mazurkas and a Waltz… and we laughed about this ”shared” performance and he acknowledged encouraging: “It’s probably a lot of work on your shoulders to put this all together.”…And how right he is,” says Baksht.

Festivals are not created out of thin air: Berlinsky shares that he developed much interest in the launching of the Southampton Arts Festival with the help of supporters of his musical artistry and his personal friendships, forged during the past twenty years.

 

“While it’s a great passion, it also takes the greatest effort and we really hope that the community will give us their full support. Everyone – except the artists- works on a pro-bono basis, so far, but in order to grow, there needs to be an operating budget,” Baksht continues. Coming from a cultural environment where the arts were supported by the government, the fund raising aspect is something the thirty-something young pianist has had to adjust to. Her 8 years old son endorses her efforts:”Mama, you have courage and you never give up.”

 

A vital correlation to promoting classical music,  is added by connecting the dots to the gene pool that holds the secrets of our culture’s talent and can potentially make a huge difference in people lives with autism.

Hampton’s visitors will be able to not only support this important research but also celebrate the gifted musicians.

By Ilona Oltuski, PH.D.

 

 

The Wolffer Estate Vineyard, will host a benefit concert for Southampton Arts Festival

-catered by award winning prodigy chef, Greg Grossman-

on August 22.nd, at 7.30 PM.

139 Sagg Road, Sagaponack, NY. 11962

 

For further dates and locations see the Festival’s website: www.southamptonartsfestival.org

or the South Hampton Cultural Center 631-287-4377 – www.sothhamptonculturalcenter.org

 

For interviews with Joanne Ruthsatz about her study call Terre@917-8334911

Elena Baksht’s website is : www.elenabaksht.com

Dmitiry Berlinsky’s website is:  www.dmitriberlinsky.com

I’ve been greatly enjoying Third Coast Percussion’s new CD/DVD release on Mode. John Cage: The Works for Percussion 2 captures some of Cage’s early music in which he assisted both in the development of the percussion ensemble but also formulated a musical aesthetic in which rhythm took primacy over pitch; “noise” became a welcome part of music’s sonic spectrum. Third Coast’s rendition of the Constructions (particularly the First Construction “in Metal”) and their beautifully filmed, lighthearted yet earnestly delivered version of Living Room Music are can’t miss contributions to the spate of Cage releases in his centennial year.

As luck would have it, we still haven’t worked out that “cloned reviewer” thing. On Thursday, August 9th, I’m heading up to the Berkshires to Tanglewood’s Festival of Contemporary Music. Down here in New York at MoMA, Third Coast are the featured performers for the museum’s “John Cage Day.” At 6:30, they will perform a set in the Sculpture Garden that features the New York premiere of Renga: Cage: 100, a group of short (5-7 seconds) pieces commissioned by Third Coast to celebrate the Cage centennial. Works by Augusta Read Thomas, David Smooke, Paul Lansky, and many others are fleetingly featured!

Way back in September, Charles Ives scholar Jan Swafford reported in Slate that the Ives home in Redding, Connecticut, built by the composer and for many years maintained by his family, was up for sale.

As Norman Lebrecht wrote on Monday for his Slipped Disc column on Arts Journal, the house is being eyed by developers and will likely be demolished.


That is, unless someone intervenes and declares it a national landmark; a part of our cultural heritage worth preserving. Getting the attention of a person with clout would help; someone like Connecticut Congressman Jim Himes (119 Cannon House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515), who represents Redding as part of his congressional district.


Or President Obama.


Below we’ve included an embed of Bernard Lin’s petition on Change.org. It needs more than 900 additional signatures. We’re asking Sequenza 21 readers to consider signing and helping get out the word about the petition via social media, email, etc. in hopes that we can in some small way help in the effort to preserve the Ives house in Redding. If you live in Mr. Himes’s district, please consider sending him a letter too!

I’m pleased to announced that I have begun producing episodes of a new music show/podcast called “We Are Not Beethoven”. This is my contribution to NPR music critic Tom Manoff’s new venture, a start-up public radio network called Washington Public Radio.

The goal of “We Are Not Beethoven” is to talk about music like no other music show: evening the playing field of listening to and talking about music by humanizing composers and musicians, disregarding genres and categories, focusing heavily on listening, and confronting the barriers of entry that discourage people from exploring new kinds of music.

You can find a link to the first episode here, and below is a video preview of what I talk about in the first episode:

 

 

Enjoy!

The great diversity of the Los Angeles area has produced a wide variety of cultural institutions and one of those is the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony (LAJS) – an expression of the sizable Jewish community here. The LAJS is “Dedicated to the performance of orchestral works of distinction, which explore Jewish culture, heritage and experience. It also serves as an important resource for aspiring composers and musicians. As part of its mission, the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony is committed to building ‘bridges of music’ and understanding within the diverse multi-ethnic communities of our great city.”

The LAJS marks its 18th or ‘Chai’ anniversary this year with a concert on August 26 titled ‘Chai-lights – Celebrating 18 years of Jewish Music‘. The concert includes a contemporary work ‘Klezmopolitan Suite‘ by Niki Reiser, in its US premiere. Past concerts have included themes from bible stories, the Sephardic-Latino connection, a tribute to Jewish film composers and many educational performances given throughout the city. As part of its mission, the LAJS actively commissions new works and often includes contemporary pieces in its programming.

Dr. Noreen Green, artistic director, conductor and one of the founders of the LAJS, recently met with Sequenza21 to talk about Jewish music, the LAJS and the process of programming and selecting new pieces for performance.

So what is Jewish music and how do you program it? Dr. Green describes: “People have this idea what of Jewish music is – like its bas mitzvah music – so I try to take it beyond. We do a lot of klezmer, but we do it within the framework of the orchestral instruments so it expands the colors of what klezmer is – I think it adds another level to it. And we also do Castelnuovo-Tedesco [an Italian-Jewish composer who came to Los Angeles in 1939 as a refugee] and we also do Bloch and we also do Korngold and a lot of the film composers. Being a good programmer is really key to how the audience is going to react. Whatever you want to say, we are entertainment dollars, so we want people to come and feel like they have had a high musical experience, but in addition I want them to feel like they have learned something – and had a little fun.”

How do you go about selecting new music for the LAJS? The process, admits a smiling Dr. Green is ‘mystical’, but she declares: “Well, it’s all subjective. First of all, I have to like it. I have to make sure it also fits into whatever theme the concert is. I will commission [a piece] within a theme, like the Istoria Judia, the piece had to fit into the whole.”

The Istoria Judia concert this past March had as its theme the expulsion of the Jews from Spain after 1492 and featured a commissioned work by composer Michelle Green Willner. There was a close collaboration between Dr. Green and the composer as the piece was written, but this is not necessarily the case for new music programmed by the LAJS.

Dr. Green explains: “I seek out the people I want to work with. Now of course there are a lot of people come to me and say ‘will you perform my music?’ – that’s more difficult. …I get bombarded with scores – as you can imagine. The ones I don’t even look at are the ones that come without an initial solicitation – a note or letter [from the composer] that asks ‘would you be interested in something like this?’ I have to come up with a kernel first – something to work from – then I go and seek out music. I have a file – and when people will say ‘I have a cello klezmer concerto – would you be interested in that?’ – and I’ll say ‘Maybe in the future but send me some information’ and that goes in the file. I’ve just done our repertoire for next year, so I went back into that file to see what I had – and I didn’t remember some of the things that had been sent. It can take several years sometimes, before a new piece fits into our programing.“

The LAJS does just a few concerts a year, so the opportunities for new music to be performed are also few, even given the commitment to programming it. It can take years for the right combination of theme and music to converge. This was the case with the ‘Klezmopolitan Suite‘, a work that has been around for some time. Dr. Green describes: “I think what is interesting about the Klezmopolitan Suite is that when I read the description of the themes that he [composer Niki Reiser] took, it encompassed all of the elements of what the Jewish symphony is about, because it uses Sephardic themes, it uses Ashkenazic and it intermingles those two main streams of Judaism in a very interesting and ingenious sound. It has ethereal sections and then it has the real flat out klezmer sections – and how he balances these out – I think it is an ingenious work and I’ve been wanting to do it for 10 years.”

How has new music been received by audiences? According to Dr. Green: “It depends on the piece – some people like it and some people hate it! And that is one of the beauties of new music, it engenders discussion.. and I think it’s great when people have very strong reactions to music. I would say 90% of the time mostly people like it, but sometimes people will say ‘well, that didn’t really resonate with me’. [and I say] ‘Great, didn’t resonate with you – but somebody else was crying during it’. It is similar to the way everyone reacts differently to a movie and that is part of the beauty of live performance. If you sit in front of the computer to watch something or listen to it on the radio – that is not a public experience, it’s not a shared experience – and I think we all need more of that, a shared, live experience.”

And that is as good an argument for live performance of new music as you will find!

Further information about the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony, Dr. Noreen Green and the August 26 concert are here.

 

Today is the last day you can hear Derive 2 at the BBC’s web site–they stream for one week after the concert. There was a CD released earlier this year that contains this same version (which supersedes the earlier version released by DGG in 2005). I don’t generally think of double reeds in Boulez’s music, but he really gives the oboe and bassoon some wonderful music in Derive 2. It’s conducted by Daniel Barenboim, whose Boulez performances are always colorful and invigorating. You can listen to it here.

Some wonderful recent works heard earlier on the Proms: Canon Fever by Mark-Anthony Turnage (premiere), Laterna Magica by Saariaho (the strongest work of hers that I’ve heard in some time — I’m not a fan of her recent music, preferring her work from the 80s and 90s), and a tight, expressive performance of City Noir, conducted by its composer, John Adams, leading an orchestra featuring students from Juilliard and the Royal Academy of Music.

I’m still trying to catch up to this week’s concerts, which include more Boulez, Steve Martland’s Street Songs, and a Kronos Quartet recital. The home page for the 2012 Proms on BBC is here.

TwtrSymphony is an intriguing ensemble of musicians connected via social networking. Instead of working together to simply promote and distribute news about contemporary music, TwtrSymphony is a fully functional new music ensemble in absentia. The individual members of this orchestra never meet and rehearse as a group. Instead, the performers record their parts in isolation from each other, in widely different settings, and Musical Director Chip Michael and his merry band of engineers then assemble these recordings into cohesive works all 140 seconds in duration. Right now, TwtrSymphony is working on Chip Michael’s Second Symphony, Birds of a Feather, and the first movement “The Hawk Goes Hunting” was released on July 17.

While their website has a wealth of information including a recording, video, and thorough blog, I sat down with Chip on Monday night and chatted with him about the ensemble. While I should have kept a certain journalistic verisimilitude and had the exchange via Twitter, we opted for a slightly longer format (Skype).

Jay C. Batzner: Let’s start with the basics: what do you do in your role as Musical Director? Who else is involved (other than performers)?

Chip Michael: My role of Music Director is very organizational, pointing TwtrSymphony in the direction I think it needs to head and keeping the focus on what we need to do to get where we’re going. I am also the composer as that is a good portion of why TwtrSymphony got started.

I was looking for an orchestra to play my music and some of my Twitter friends suggested I start my own – a Twitter Symphony… and TwtrSymphony was born.

But, I want TwtrSymphony to be more than just a show case for my music. It’s a great concept, musicians from all around the world playing together. Musicians who might never get to play with other musicians making music. That’s cool. So, while I’ve written the first piece that we’re doing, Symphony No. 2 “Birds of a Feather,” I imagine a future when other composers can avail themselves of our ensemble.

As Music Director, I’m thinking about how the process works (and what doesn’t), what it means to be a symphony orchestra and how to get the pieces to fit together… so, when the time comes for us to have other composers work with the ensemble, we have the tools and setup to make sure it works right for both the musicians and the composer.

Nothing would be worse than for us to invite a composer to write something and have the end result be a horrible failure. So, in essence we’re using my music to test the waters.

We’re also in the process of re-designing the organization of TwtrSymphony. There is nothing formal to announce at this point, but the way we do things now isn’t the best way. It makes getting recordings out time consuming and requires a lot of engineering effort. A simple re-org should help that. As MD, I’m thinking about what’s best for the music and ways we can achieve quality and still maintain our global nature

JCB: The idea behind TwtrSymphony, the idea of crowd-sourcing performers, is something that we’ve seen taking off recently. I think of Tan Dun’s and Eric Whitacre’s YouTube-based performances. This seems to be a logical technological outgrowth of the “write for your friends” mentality that a lot of composers use (and rightfully so).

CM: Yes… the concept of crowd-sourcing performers is nothing new. Neither is the idea of remote recording sessions to put together an ensemble. However, I’m not aware of any instrumental ensemble to the scale of TwtrSymphony that’s been done. 60+ musicians with 90+ tracks is a lot to manage when the recordings were done in different places, using different equipment…Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir comes the closest to what we’re doing. Read the rest of this entry »

On July 22nd via his PostClassic blog, Kyle Gann published a post titled “One Less Critic,” more or less announcing his retirement from music criticism. Writing for nearly thirty years in a number of publications, notably the Village Voice and Chamber Music Magazine, Gann has been a thoughtful, often provoking, and even, occasionally, a polarizing figure in discourse about contemporary classical music. He’s also been active in a number of other activities, first and foremost as an imaginative composer, a professor at Bard College, and a musicologist who’s published articles and books on a wide range of composers, including minimalists, microtonalists, Conlon Nancarrow, and John Cage. His book on Robert Ashley will be published this fall.

In his blog post, Gann writes, “Criticism is a noble profession, or could be if we took it seriously enough and applied rigorous standards to it, but you get pigeonholed as a bystander, someone valued for your perspective on others rather than for your own potential contributions.”

He’s not the first composer/critic to voice these concerns. It’s fair to say that those who write about others’ music potentially imperil their own. One’s advancement in a career as a creative and/or performing artist often involves blunting their candor and, upon occasion, judiciously withholding their opinions, delicacies which a writer (at least, an honest writer) can ill afford.

Certainly, I haven’t always agreed with Gann’s assessment of the musical landscape. In 1997, I first read his essay on 12-tone composers in academia, in which he likened those in grad programs studying with Wuorinen and Carter to be a wasted generation of composers, like lemmings leaping to their (artistic) deaths. At that time, I was a Ph.D. candidate at Rutgers: studying with Wuorinen and writing a dissertation on Carter! I didn’t transfer or change my topic.

That said, I respect Gann’s formidable intellect and, even when it stings a little, his candor.  I hope that during his “retirement” from criticism, he will find many new opportunities provided to him as a  composer. In the spirit of bygones being bygones, maybe some of them will be in collaboration with ensembles that, back in the day, got a rough review from him!

Our 24 hour news cycle can tend to bombard us information about tragic events. While this can be helpful, it can also become dispiriting and disconcerting.

After news of the shooting in Colorado was announced, I asked Sequenza 21 contributors and community members to share musical excerpts that they find consolatory when a tragedy such as this occurs. Some provided me with video clips via YouTube. Others supplied SoundCloud links to their own pieces, written to respond to the chaos that is all too prevalent in our society.

Contributors: Steve Layton, Judah Adashi, James Stephenson, Rob Deemer, Ken Ueno, Jonathan Palmer Lakeland, James Ilgenfritz, Jerry Bowles, and yours truly.  Tracks follow after the page break: Read the rest of this entry »

We’re saddened to learn of the passing of composer Nathan Brock. Nathan was on faculty at University of San Diego and did post-doctoral research at California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology.

Jay Batzner has known Nathan since they did their undergraduate studies together. He shares a remembrance on his blog.

Here’s a link to one of Nathan’s recent pieces, “Cenotaph,” a flute and cello duo.