On February 19 at the National Opera Center in NYC, the Sylvan Winds present a program of contemporary works for winds and electronics. Featuring a world premiere by the Bosnian-American composer Svjetlana Bukvich, "How many would it take?" by Syrian clarinetist/composer Kinan Azmeh, and works by Allison Loggins-Hull, Phillip Bimstein, Gyorgy Ligeti, Henry Cowell, and the duo Lawson & Merrill (David Margolin Lawson, David Merrill).
We spoke to founding member and flutist Svjetlana Kabalin about the group’s 40+ years in the business, their season, and the upcoming program.
Tell us about the beginnings of the Sylvan Winds. How did the group form?
The group started on the streets of New York City in 1976. After I graduated from Stony Brook University with a master’s degree, one of my classmates, oboist Mark Hill, called me. He said he had just $20 to his name and wondered if I’d be willing to play on the streets in Manhattan, busking for contributions from passersby. We started on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum and then went down Fifth Avenue to play baroque duos under an arch next to an active bus stop.
Then it was on to Broadway. We played in front of the theater where “The Belle of Amherst” with Julie Harris was playing. That was such a fruitful endeavor that we returned to the streets, along with a bassoonist, on July 4th weekend to take advantage of the crowds gathering all over the city for the Bicentennial festivities. Soon after, we expanded to a wind quintet, performing regularly in front of the Florsheim Shoe store on Fifth Avenue (able to take quick bathroom breaks at the St. Regis around the corner) and meeting celebrities like Rodney Dangerfield and Woody Allen as they walked past the quintet.
In fall of 1976, we performed at the reopening of Tavern on the Green in Central Park, the Bronx Botanical Garden, Brooklyn Library, Queens Museum and elsewhere. We were inspired by the St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble concert series at the Church of St. Luke in-the-Fields in Greenwich Village, and so in 1978 we began producing our own concert series at the same historic venue.
A woodwind quintet is such an unusual group of instruments – double reeds, single reed, brass and flute. How did this particular combination of instruments become a common genre of chamber music?
The wind quintet – flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon and French horn - has been around since the second half of the 18th century, after the invention of the clarinet, so its history goes back nearly 300 years. Up until the 20th century, there wasn’t much music composed for this combination of instruments. However, from the 20th century to the present the repertoire has increased dramatically, and there are many wonderful works from which to choose, as well as many interesting arrangements of earlier works, such as Renaissance dances from the 17th century, popular pieces and core repertoire originally written for string quartet or orchestra.
What are the advantages or benefits to performing as a woodwind quintet? The challenges?
It is always a privilege to get together with colleagues to play chamber music. For wind players, it is fun to both fraternize and play beautiful music. But it is also challenging. Unlike string or brass players, who produce sounds in the same way, each of the musicians in a wind quintet produces sounds in different ways. There are only two instruments that are related, the oboe and bassoon, because of the double-reed. Otherwise, the flute, clarinet (a single reed) and horn (a brass instrument) are completely different. So, the challenges are matching timbres, intonation, and especially balances. The flute has the most limited dynamic range and the horn can obviously play very loud, so balance is very important.
The canon of works for woodwind quintet is fairly small, especially compared to that of, say, string quartet. Tell us about some of the repertoire you’ve discovered or created, and how you adapt other works for your instrumentation.
Over the past twenty-five years, we began exploring the quintet repertoire of different countries, which added a new dimension to the wind quintet program and was always very well received. Then, when the Sylvan Winds began partnering with different historic cultural venues throughout the city, the concerts became even more interesting and diverse. We have been fortunate to perform in the Great Hall at Ellis Island, the Eldridge Street Museum, Scandinavia House, and have played every year for the past 13 years at the Hispanic Society Museum & Library in Washington Heights.
We have also always been curious about past composers whose music was forgotten or under-performed. For example, we were involved in uncovering works that were performed by Georges Barrère, a French flutist who arrived in America in 1905. (Envious of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s French wind section, the New York Symphony Orchestra’s music director, Walter Damrosch, brought Barrère along with three other French wind players and a trumpeter to New York to play in his orchestra.) During his time in America, Barrère commissioned over 140 works by Americans including music by the Black composer William Grant Still, and many women composers. These, along with the ragtime music written by young American women at the turn of the last century were the basis for our 2019 album “Music of the Gilded Age”.
Three quite diverse programs make up the Sylvan Winds 2022-2023 season: French repertoire in December, new music with electronics in February, and Spanish dance forms in May. How do these programs, and this season, fit into the mission of the ensemble?
The 2022-23 programs reflect the heart of our mission, creating compelling programs that engage audiences. Chamber music is a powerful form of communication, both for the performers and the audiences. The group is small and nimble enough to engage audiences in many different kinds of venues and with incredibly enriching programs. French repertoire is very near and dear to wind players, because the French Conservatory training developed during the 19th century gave French composers richer palettes of color, inspiring extraordinary orchestral works such as La Mer, Bolero, Daphnis & Chloe, and Afternoon of a Faun. And playing music of French composers in the historic Church of Notre Dame in Morningside Heights that has a large French and Hispanic community, seemed like the perfect way to share this tradition.
We are very excited, as well as humbled, about the program in February with electronics. It is new territory for us, but clearly a music experience that looks toward the future. And of course, we always love returning to the Hispanic Society, and our performance there in May celebrates its reopening after several years of renovation. We’re collaborating with flamenco dancer Eva Conti, Portuguese guitarist Pedro Da Silva, and percussionist Rex Benincasa for this program.
The Sylvan Winds is in its 44th concert season. What’s next for the group?
The group is looking forward to more collaborations with other performers, including our “American Voices” program with Emmy award winning baritone, Kenneth Overton; our “Tango Nuevo” program with bandoneonist Leandro Ragusa and guitarist Federico Diaz; and our collaboration with tap dancer Max Pollak (yes, tap dance!) that began with a “Woodwind Motion” concert for Composers Concordance. We also have some other very interesting programs planned, but aren’t ready to give it away just yet………
