By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Muffuletta.
For those who aren’t familiar with this Big Easy delicacy, muffuletta is a sandwich made with a signature olive salad and mounds of cold cuts, each layer fattier and more savory than the previous one. Made using an entire loaf of Italian bread, the sandwich is assembled, then weighed down – those hand weights have to be used for something – and refrigerated overnight or longer. This is a dish made for a crew, that will consume enough to assure minimal, if any, leftovers. Delicious, not healthy.
How does this relate to the subject at hand? Well, a few years back, Pro Musica, the BGSU College of Musical Arts booster group that sponsors the Wayland Chamber Music competition, would host a buffet after the announcement of the competition winners. I made muffuletta once, and had a request for it the next couple years, until we scaled back the buffet.
Rest assured, with a crowd including many student musicians, there were no leftovers.
Muffuletta is not a dish for these times. It’s a dish for gatherings. If I made one now it’d last a week and I’d have contributed far too much to those COVID 19 so many of us are packing onto our frames.
This came to mind this weekend as I watched the virtual programs announcing the Wayland competition winners on Saturday night and the Conrad Art Song Competition winners on Friday night. Last year’s events, and the hours spend by the musicians preparing for them, were washed away in the early pandemic confusion, as residential students were dismissed from campus, and faculty labored to figure out how to teach courses designed for face to face instruction online. That included those on the music faculty teaching individual lessons.
That was just one of many, and given the toll of the virus, not the most significant, losses. Yet a loss all the same.
In the intervening months, arts lovers like myself have had to make do, and that’s had benefits in some cases – filmed productions of Shakespeare from Ontario’s Stratford Festival was an early boon, and weekend jazz sets from an otherwise empty Village Vanguard in Manhattan.
Never did I feel more the pang of missing the actual, face-to-face event than this weekend. The faculty organizers, Chris Scholl in the case of Conrad, and Nermis Mieses and Brittany Lasch for the Wayland – did well bringing together the virtual events.
The competitors provided videos of their performances, which were then shared with the panels of outside judges. This added a level of difficulty for the performers, as did half hour COVID restrictions on how much time they could rehearse together at one session.
These, as well as the decision by some international students to stay home, certainly played a role in reduced participation, Scholl said of the Conrad.
But at least in terms of the winners, the quality was there.
The Conrad honors the singer and the pianist as a unit. They are required to perform songs with words in French, German, Italian and English, and from a variety of styles, including at least one work by a living composer. The prize money is $1,500 for each member of the winner duo, $1,000 each for second prize, and $750 each for third.
The Wayland competition features ensembles of three to eight musicians in almost any combination, performing two contrasting works. Prize money is $200 for each member of the winning ensemble and $100 each for second place. Also, the winners will be featured in the programming of the Toledo Museum of Art on May 2 and WGTE- Live from FM91 on May 7.
I admit I have a close attachment to each. I covered the event when Dr. Marjorie Conway announced the gift that established the art song competition, and later interviewed her about her ties to music, and how she resumed taking voice training after retiring from her medical practice.
And I knew Doug Wayland. His passion for teaching and students is reflected in his push to establish the chamber competition to give other instrumentalists the kind of experience vocalists and pianists had in the Conrad.
Over the years, my wife and I have attended each event almost every year. They have become a high points of the spring.
The music is great, and the company is great. And there’s the simple details like the seat in Bryan Recital Hall with flowers on it, set aside for the founder, that just can’t be replicated online.
Still we do what we can, and what we must.
The storyline for this year’s competitions was the duo of mezzo-soprano Katherine Pracht Phares and pianist Sandra Coursey who took top honors in the graduate division of both competitions, as team in the Conrad and as part of the ensemble Newphonia along with Claudia Aizaga, flute, David Munro, oboe, and Adam Har-zvi, double bass. All are studying in the Doctorate in Contemporary Music program.
On Friday night, Scholl announced the winners for the Conrad, in both the graduate and undergraduate division, determined by the standing of the singer.
Jhané Perdue, soprano, and Ivan Yumagolov, piano, won first place in the undergraduate division.
Other winners were:
- Leah Tracy, soprano, and Steven Naylor, piano, second prize
- Lindsay Osterholt, soprano, and Yongtong Tan, piano, third prize.
In the graduate division, other winners were:
- Carolyn Anderson, soprano, and Yuefeng Liu, piano, second prize.
- Brianna England, soprano, and Ariel Magno da Costa, piano, third prize.
The program included one song by each winning duo.
The Wayland winners were announced Saturday night by Lasch.
The first place winners were the Armani String Quartet – Cole Habekost, violin, Gene Waldron, violin, Lelauni McKee, viola, and Kamryn McCrory, cello. Lasch said the ensemble achieved the highest score of any ensemble in both divisions.
Second place went to the tuba trio, The Johnson Three – Christian Bush, Anderson Johnson, and Noah Laabs.
The second prize in the graduate division went to the Rosaurum Quartet, a saxophone ensemble – Joshua Tuttle, soprano saxophone, Katherine Campbell, alto saxophone, Carl Ng, tenor saxophone, and Lexi Meltzer, baritone saxophone.
The video of each winning’s ensemble was included in the program.
