EMA Artist Interview with Gwendolyn Toth of ARTEK

by Amanda Vail

Welcome to the third installment of Early Music America's series of interviews with EMA Member Artists. This time, we caught up with Gwendolyn Toth of New York City's ARTEK.

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EMA: How did your January 1st concert, "Sing Along with Claudio," go?

GT: We had a fantastic concert! I had some worries that New Year's Day football would make a dent, but the church was full, and many of the audience participated in the singing.

EMA: Can you share what was, for you, the most memorable moment from the concert?

GT: I think it was the very first tutti chord of the Domine ad adiuvandum, with everyone singing. The entire room was ringing. It was indeed a glorious moment.

EMA: You chose to perform "Sing Along with Claudio" in honor of EMA's 25th Anniversary (and we're honored!)--what prompted you to choose this concert?

GT: There've been so many performances of the Vespers throughout the past year; ARTEK had several of them, including memorable concerts in New York City and at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. At both of these concerts, we had what was probably the most complete Renaissance orchestra assembled by any of the groups performing the Vespers. Still, by and large, most all-professional undertakings of the piece used a small number of singers, one-to-a-part on the large psalms--all according to our most recent scholarship.

But, any great masterpiece is often best understood and loved by actually performing it. I wanted to bring that experience to all of our fans - I think everyone should sing the Vespers at some point in their lives, and if ARTEK can put together a giant Renaissance orchestra and a crew of professional singers to lead the way (thanks to my colleagues and friends from Piffaro, Parthenia, and Gallery Voices), why not open it up to the audience to join in?

In particular, I think EMA has been a guiding light for amateur fans of early music, as well as an important resource for professional early music groups. Bringing together these two EMA constituencies (oh, please pardon the grantwriter jargon here!) seemed like the perfect way to celebrate its 25th Anniversary--especially since ARTEK celebrated its own 25th Anniversary last season with its NYC performance of the Vespers.

EMA: Is this concert (or will it become) a yearly tradition?

GT: It is a hard piece to sing. It's not the Messiah, with four-part choruses and melodies that are not too hard to remember for amateur singers. The Monteverdi Vespers requires really high level music reading, the ability to count rhythm accurately, and that highly underestimated ability to both sing and listen at the same time in order to keep the ensemble together. Moreover, early music fans tend to be more adept at counting in half notes--if one counts Nisi Dominus in quarter notes, one will be left behind at the starting gate! I admit my arms were tired at the end of the performance, because I was leading several hundred more people than the 30 or so I normally conduct. (And my feet! Standing two hours in heels...)

At the party afterward, I began to realize the impact the concert had on so many people in the audience. One after another, they all came up to me and begged me to do the same concert every year. "Make it a tradition!" they said. Well, it's a possibility, though I think the audience underestimates the funding needed for the giant Renaissance orchestra, which was a big part of the enormous success of the occasion. This year it was a gift from ARTEK to our audience. For the future... we'll see.

I do think we'll be doing other audience participation concerts for sure. We've had a number of benefit concerts for the Midtown Concerts series that involve 15 to 20 different ensembles, all of which come together to sing and play at the beginning and the end of the concert. We could open that up to the audience as well. I'm always thinking, always plotting for new ways to engage with our fans, who give us so much support, both financially and musically.

EMA: The Midtown Concerts are an amazing undertaking. What was their initial inspiration? What keeps them going?

GT: I was the music director at a large midtown church in NYC for many years. One year we had one of those "weddings of the century" events, which were fairly rare for us. (You know, 50 valets parking cars, a flower budget at least double my yearly salary...) The parents of the bride, knowing that a lot of work had gone into preparing the music for the wedding, asked me to suggest some place to which they could donate a nice chunk of funding. I remembered how, when I had arrived in New York in the late 1970s, it seemed like there were all kinds of small series with opportunities for young ensembles. Also, ARTEK had begun touring regularly with Mark Morris, and I wanted to find a vehicle for us to perform our new repertoire on a more frequent basis in between those tours. And that... was the beginning of the Midtown Concerts.

We have since moved twice, and changed the day of the week from Thursday to Wednesday, but during that time the Midtown Concerts have become an institution, I think. Though government and foundation funders have been slow to really give the series the support it deserves, we have been able to support ourselves with funding from many, many small donations by those who attend and in-kind support from Gotham Early Music Scene. A wonderful trust fund grant (which is running out soon) and the government money only pays for our part-time, woefully underpaid intern, who is the administrator, and the nice brochures we send out twice yearly.

But we have large audiences, and we are now receiving far more applications each year than we can give concerts--some from as far aways as Europe or the West Coast--despite the extremely modest honorarium. We haven't been able to raise that honorarium in many years, and I feel bad about that. Nevertheless, at least we're still a forum for ensembles to try out music and for audiences to hear things they might never have heard before.

Just last month, we had the Dodd String Quartet perform; they played a simply fabulous concert of quartet music on period instruments. They're ready to start major touring and playing around the country, and I hope our series played some part in that. And what a gift for the audience--to hear such intense, brilliant music-making, totally free! I sometimes get these notes on our little donation envelopes that make me feel sad: "I am enclosing one dollar because I have not worked in six months, and this is all I can afford to give." How incredibly generous, to be in that position, but love the music so much as to give even one dollar of his or her precious financial resources. Music is amazing, but people are even more amazing.

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Learn more about ARTEK, and view a list of upcoming concerts, at their website: www.artekearlymusic.org. If you're interested in the Midtown Concerts, you can find a list of upcoming events here.

For more information on Early Music America member ensemble concerts presented in honor of EMA's 25th Anniversary Season, please click here.