Musicians enjoy rare chance to collaborate
It often strikes me when I see a concert artist walk onstage at a performance how poised and calm they seem before they begin to play or sing. Whether seated at a piano or waiting during their musical introduction, their steely focus and patience is something to behold.
It’s not only the possible nerves and anticipation the musician might be experiencing, but what’s gone on behind the scenes to get them where they are that boggles the mind. Besides the decades of training and countless practice and rehearsal hours, there are often hectic performance schedules and lengthy travel agendas to contend with.
Take violinist Tim Fain, who will be playing opening night at Virtuosi Concerts with pianist Michael Boriskin this Saturday, for instance.
Michael Boriskin may not tour quite as much these days, but his schedule is as busy as ever, and the diversity is what makes it especially impressive. He is a piano soloist, prolific recording artist, chamber musician, writer and educator and holds down the artistic director and executive director positions of Copland House, a creative centre dedicated to American musical heritage and to fostering greater public awareness and appreciation of that nation’s composers and their work.
His collaboration with Fain is one Boriskin obviously enjoys. “Tim is a wonderfully dynamic and musical artist. We met while doing a musical project at a summer music festival in Utah. We hit it off and really enjoyed working together. But our schedules go in such different directions — we take every chance to work together.”
Fain, on the other hand, thrives on touring. “I love to play as many concerts as I can and a wide variety of them,” the Curtis Institute graduate said via email. “Whether it’s soloist with orchestra, playing chamber music, or doing recital work, or collaboration with an artist from a different genre… it’s all great.
“Recently I’ve been doing a great deal of touring with my show Portals, in which I explore the yearning for human connection in the digital age with collaborators on screen, including Benjamin Millepied, who directed and choreographed a dance film as the centrepiece of the evening along with a work I commissioned from Philip Glass and parts of Leonard Cohen’s poetry collection Book of Longing… It has been a thrill creating and touring with this… so I do spend a lot of time on the road. But I also just spent the entire month of August at home with my wife and three-year-old daughter, which was a nice change.”
You may not know his name, but you’ve likely seen and heard Fain before, as he appeared onscreen and in the soundtrack of the hit film Black Swan. It was a really memorable time.”
Fain and Boriskin, with input from Virtuosi artistic director Harry Strub, have put together some top-notch repertoire for Saturday’s concert, entitled Charisma. It includes the emotive Franck Sonata in A Major for Violin and Piano, Beethoven’s melody-rich Spring Sonata (which Fain recalls first playing for his Grade 5 class at` lunchtime in the cafeteria) some Brahms and Bach and American composer Pierre Jalbert’s 2010 work, Wild Ambrosia. ” He is a gifted composer with a distinctive voice,” Boriskin said of Jalbert, “He writes very compelling music.”
Boriskin, who also has a broadcasting background, plans to provide introductory remarks at the concert. “I enjoy trying to make the whole concert experience more inviting and casual,” he said. “It leads to better receptivity in listeners and personalizes the experience. This is, after all, a decidedly human endeavour. What I’m doing isn’t merely a job — these things are my passion.”
Between Fain’s love of concertizing and Boriskin’s passion, the audience should be in for a treat. The concert is at 8 p.m. at Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall in the University of Winnipeg. Tickets are $33/adults and seniors, $15/students, $5/ high school, available at 786-9000 or www.virtuosi.mb.ca
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