By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Beware of the composer with time on his hands – he will compose.
That’s just what Samuel Adler did during the pandemic. Being in his nineties, he had no choice but to hunker in his Perrysburg home. Drawing on the advice of his former teacher Aaron Copland, he composed on a schedule.
Copland told Adler that: “I keep a schedule. Every day I get up at 8:30. After breakfast, I sit down and I compose for three hours.” Copland wouldn’t answer the telephone or be otherwise distracted for those three hours.
“Maybe I’ll get one measure or 20,” he told Adler. “I have to be on a schedule. In the afternoon I can do whatever I want but in the morning I always compose.”
Adler said, “I try to do as much as that during this pandemic.”
And the result? “I wrote 26 pieces in these last two and a half years. … You know, what can a composer do when he’s supposed to stay home? That’s very dangerous because he’ll write music.”
On Sunday (Feb. 27), members of the Bowling Green State University Faculty will present a program of some of those works in celebration of Adler’s 94th birthday on March 4.
The free concert will be in Bryan Recital Hall in the Moore Musical Arts Center at BGSU at 3 p.m.
[RELATED: At 90, composer Samuel Adler reflects on a life in music]
One older piece will open the concert. The cello ensemble, directed by Brian Snow, will perform Adler’s 1965 arrangement of J.S. Bach’s Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue for eight cellos.
The ensemble was supposed to perform the work earlier this month at the Ohio Music Education Association convention in Cleveland, but had to cancel because of a snow storm.
Snow’s wife, violinist Caroline Chin, organized the Adler celebration.
While Adler is cherished for his decades of contributions as a composer, conductor, and educator, “his natural warmth and generosity, however, are a huge part of his legacy and have resulted in friends and champions all over the world,” Chin said in an email.
She and Snow first met the composer at the Juilliard School when they played his duet for violin and cello, “Close Encounters.”
“Both Brian and I remember feeling intimidated at meeting a huge figure in the classical music world. Sam exuded warmth and encouragement. We talked about other contemporary violin and cello duos in our repertory, discussed music in general as well as what was happening around NYC/the world. It felt as if we had known him all along!”
Later when the couple moved to Bowling Green to take faculty positions at BGSU’s College of Musical Arts, Adler and his wife, Emily Freeman Brown, conductor of the Bowling Green Philharmonia, invited them to dinner. Adler sang a lullaby to their 6-month-old son Elliot who was teething.
“Every time I see Sam at BGSU, he is cheering on the music students and faculty and it is quite an amazing thing to see his smiling face at so many of the CMA’s events.”
The proposal to celebrate his birthday met “with much enthusiasm by my colleagues,” Chin wrote. “I’m thrilled to be able to put this concert together and celebrate a great friend to so many people.”
Chin will perform “Duo for Eight Strings” with violist Matthew McBride-Daline, and Snow will perform the solo pieces “Meditation on the Name BACH” and “Scherzo Brillante.”
Other faculty will perform solo works, two of them for the first time. Saxophonist John Sampen will present “Music of Yearning” and clarinetist Kevin Schempf will perform the newest in Adler’s Canto series, “Canto XXIII” for bass clarinet.
Pianist Laura Melton will perform “Six Occasional Pieces for Solo Piano” and pianist Yevgeny Yontov will perform the aptly titled for the occasion “Music for the Young and the Young At Heart.”
Trombonist Brittany Lasch with pianist Robert Satterlee will perform “Two Sides of a Coin.”
The Vivaz Quintet — Lauren Nichols, flute, Martha Hudson, oboe, Abby Cline, clarinet, Mariah Stadel, bassoon, and Nick Culver, horn – coached by Terri Sanchez will play the world premiere of “Wind Conversations for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet in B-flat, Horn in F, and Bassoon.”
Concluding the concert will be four movements from “Of Life and Nature I Sing,” sung by the Collegiate Chorale conducted by Richard Schnipke.
“It’s always the greatest pleasure to hear (my work) especially when it’s done well,” Adler said. “The faculty will do a tremendous job next Sunday because they’re very good.”
This is just a fraction of his pandemic output. He’s also written several pieces for members of the Berlin Philharmonic. He also composed a piece for three bassoons, three clarinets and three flutes for the wind ensemble at University of North Texas where he taught early in his academic career.
He later taught for 30 years at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. He and Brown will travel there this week to attend the premiere of two pieces, one for wind ensemble and one for orchestra, composed in honor of the school’s 100thanniversary.
Adler moved to Northwest Ohio, first to Bowling Green and then to Perrysburg, after retiring from Eastman. He continued to commute to New York City for 20 years to teach at the Juilliard School. Though he said he wouldn’t recommend that commute to most people, “I loved every minute of it.”
After 67 years teaching, he doesn’t miss it. And travel has become more problematic. When a staged work based on a folk story is performed in his hometown of Mannheim, Germany, two days after his birthday, he will send a video greeting. And musicians will send him video recordings of performances.
Still when the Berlin Philharmonic performs two of his compositions in April 2023, he’s hoping to go.
“I’m going to rev up everything I can to get there because that’s a pretty good orchestra.”
But being at home composing was not so much of a burden. “I had a lot of fun writing the music,” he said. “I don’t get lonely.”
He did visit his sister and brother-in-law in Ann Arbor. “And I have Emily,” Adler said. “That’s the most important thing.”
