- Welcome to Kalamazoo Lively Arts.

The show that takes you inside Kalamazoo's vibrant creative community and explores the people who breathe life into the arts.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Support for Kalamazoo Lively Arts is provided by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, helping to build and enrich the cultural life of greater Kalamazoo.

- I'm Shelley Irwin here at Miller auditorium.

On today's show we take you throughout Kalamazoo to meet people challenging the conventions of art and finding creative ways to bring their talents to the community.

- Well, today my conversation is with Igor Cetkovic.

He is the principal cello for the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra.

Thank you so much for talking with me here today.

- Thank you for having me.

and it seems like you're totally immersed in music.

- Yeah, of course I started when I was very young so it's when we do our education of any type of extra activity, like a hobby, it's very, gets very serious, very quickly back in Eastern Europe.

So I would say that this is what I did that I did since I was very, very young and played concerts and traveling around and playing.

- [Kim] And you're the principal cello for the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra.

What is a principal cello?

- Well, that's the, it's the first chair of the cello section and I'm in a way responsible for the cello section.

Before the concerts I would win consultation with other principals, write down the points and make sure some markings are right.

And then during the concert and the concert week I'm just kind of there, just making sure everything works the way it's supposed to work.

And you get to get some souls to play and stuff like that.

- What does a cello bring to an orchestra?

- With the cello it's, we get, in orchestra, we get to play a lot of really beautiful melodies not all the time like the first valence maybe, but when it is our moment, it's always just gorgeous.

But we also get to play a lot of bass notes and we are really but not all of the bass notes 'cause we have double basses.

So we really have this perfect like a middle ground where we get to do a lot of great accompanying, but also beautiful, beautiful melodies.

- I'm wondering, can you play a little bit on the cello here for me so I can hear you live myself.

- I'll just play a scale for you so you can hear the lows and the high sounds.

(soft melodic music) The range of the cello is what really interests me and what I really enjoyed the most.

- In reading about you, I saw that you're, you're an artist with the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra.

What is that and how do you get that?

- Right, it's artist in residence.

- [Kim] Yes, yes.

- That's the position, there's I believe eight of us who do that now, different instruments.

And we are principal players of our sections and we also get to play a lot of chamber concerts for the community here, when a smaller groups, more intimate concerts.

And we also spend a lot of time visiting schools and educating kids about classical music, about what it is to be a musician and about our instruments and a lot of musicians, they have to choose if they're gonna play in the orchestra or do you wanna teach or they want to do like a lot of freelance collaborations.

But I feel like with this job here and with the symphony is that we get in one week we play a Mahler symphony.

Next week we spend a week in schools working with little kids and then we maybe play a small concert at the local brewery and then play a movie.

So it always changes and it's very fast based and I really love it.

- [Kim] From the stage, what does that look like to you when you're looking out into the.

What's your view like from your perspective?

- Well, the view is really great 'cause you, we are usually when playing a symphony regardless of where we are sitting we're kind of in a center of the stage.

So we can always see the entire Miller Auditorium, it's great.

It's not only what you see, it's the whole energy and the whole vibe and those couple of minutes before the concert starts, that kind of electricity.

And that something happening is something is about to happen is always such a great feeling.

And we really miss that.

I know I can speak for all of us musicians.

We really miss having the audience because that's why we do that.

- Can you show me maybe a technique that you use when you play the cello?

- Well, the technique that every younger student, or like a beginners always want to know how to do it is a vibrato I would say.

And it's the way that, how we move our hands to vibrate the note.

(soft melodic music) Just the way that that works is really like you're, I always try to explain it to the students, to the beginners that, is what you do is really.

(soft melodic music) Moving your hand left and right slowly and then gradually, to be faster and they're always fascinated with that, but there's always like one of these things that takes probably a year or more to really feel comfortable doing.

- So Igor, the cello, it's such a huge instrument.

How do kids even learn how to play it?

And are there any interesting facts about the cello?

How old is that cello that you're holding there?

- Well, this particular cello it's one of those that doesn't have a label inside.

So we have to go to luthiers and to get a little bit analyzed more.

But from what I know it's made in the late 1800's and they tend to be very old too.

And there are also some modern instruments that are very good.

But to go to your first question is when you're a little kid you don't play the cello it's bigger than you obviously.

There's I think even a eighth of a cello which is eight times smaller than a quarter and a half size and a three quarter size.

And then you get to this bigger sizes, just depending on how big you grow, how fast you're growing, right?

It's one of those instruments.

when you're a little kid, even if you're having a three-quarter cello, half a cello, it might be bigger than you, on your back, when you're walking around the hallway, it looks pretty funny I would say.

- Thank you so much for your time today.

I really appreciate it.

- [Igor] Thank you for having me.

It's been great talking to you.

- Well, today my conversation is with Sonya Hollins and Sean Hollins and they make for a powerful team.

They're a husband and wife team.

Sean is a graphic artist.

Sonya, I have to look at the card for you, you're a historian, an author and a journalist.

Thank you so much for talking with me today.

- Thanks for having us.

- And you won the Business Arts Award.

So did you have to submit work?

- I wanted to really show how creative he is with arts.

And so I submitted some different book samples.

You wanna get the one, the chicken Cindy.

So what I did was I found books that he helped tell stories and bring their stories to life.

So this one in particular, "Cindy The City Chicken," a woman came in and told us about when she was a little girl she had a chicken as a pet and a reporter of the gazette saw her with this little chicken.

And he said, "I wanna do a story on you."

So she came in and she showed us the news article from the gazette of her when she was a little girl.

And so then at the same time, there was an artist that they had known that they wanted to work with.

And when Sean did the cover, he was like, it's just not telling the story.

So he was able to use the picture from the gazette and the art and put it together to really show this little girl and her chicken and her pet chicken.

So, those types of covers I thought was really creative.

So I entered that one.

I also entered the one he did with the Ladies Library Association and he helped them put their books together of their history and just the way that he was able to create, help them really see the vision of the library as the years have gone on, the way he did art and brought the pictures to life.

It was just a really creative project that was recognized by the Historical Preservation Society as well.

And just even simple, we as the Douglas Community Association 100th anniversary and the story that the book told, he was able to really incorporate a lot of images of the story and just really bring out some of those artifacts and images and bring the story to life in so many different ways.

So it's not just, me helping the client get the story told it's how do we make it visually appealing to anybody who reads it.

Even if there's a kid who's looking at the book and not even reading, it - And you have a son who wrote a book, "Little Eddie Goes To Carnegie Hall."

Now was he, I have to assume that you worked with him, right.

- Well, basically that was a project we did for him.

He's a classical piano player and we wanted to surprise him because his passion has been to play at Carnegie Hall.

So we actually created the book and surprised him before his Gilmore key fest performance about a month ago.

So he had a festival coming up back here in Kalamazoo where he was able to have a full fledge concert, classical right there, virtual concert.

And we presented the book as a surprise in partnership with the public library.

So they basically invited him to come onto their story time to tell kids about his concert.

And they said, well can you stay around for the book we're reading?

And then we surprised them with that book, so he was in shock.

So it was pretty fun doing that for him.

And since then Carnegie Hall has contacted us and they have the book in their bookstore.

- How cool is that, where do you begin?

- Listen to the client.

What is your goal?

Is your goal just to have it for the family or is your goal to have it, for the world?

Once we know that we're able to help you find your audience and try to make a cover that works best.

- This particular one is a paramedic out of Brighton.

And just the title was engaging.

"Doing It With The Lights On."

- Well that wasn't the title he came with.

He came with another title about the exploits of a paramedic.

And I thought, ooh, that sounds like, is it sex?

What's going on?

No, it's just the story of my life as a paramedic.

And I was like, wow, what about doing it with the lights on?

If you really want to have that same appeal to grab someone you're doing it with the lights on.

And it's like, wow, what is that about?

So to take his book, make a cooler title and then bring the ambulance aspect into it and then with his PR make a little postcard with him with the book.

And when he did his book release the town fireman, brought him into the book signing on the fire truck.

So that was pretty cool.

'Cause they were really celebrating his life as a paramedic and all the stories that he had to share.

- And you mentioned creating Season Press Publishing.

Why did you do it?

- I had my business designing.

Sonya had a story.

She was a writer in Battle Creek and choir.

And she was coming across all these famous musicians that were from Battle Creek.

And she observed a funeral and outside the windows who are those people and they share, oh that's one of the artists that had passed on.

So she started gathering all this information from all these artists.

And so we put together this book and then at the time we put together this, her first book for, "Here I Stand," and I thought it was phenomenal.

I was like, this is great.

This is beautiful.

And we went to a book signing and we laid our little books on a table next to other people that had been doing this.

And I was like our book doesn't look too good.

And so we came back and revamped it and we changed it to something that was more shelf appeal.

But again, we were just doing this for ourselves.

That was the whole purpose behind just how we actually get into writing, putting books together and people seeing our project that we did for ourselves.

And it's like, well I got a book that I wanna write.

And that's kinda how it just started to grow from word of mouth.

- What does it mean having this publishing company right here in Kalamazoo?

- We're not only able to help people create a book but to help them have a platform.

So this guy from Battle Creek, he's a column writer and he's writing about the Black Lives Matter movement and all the things that have been going on and how as a black man, he relates to some of those issues.

And he's actually given this book to the governor and his local mayor and they've loved it.

And one person that they've even contacted him to be on a commission locally, to deal with the social justice because of his book and one woman we help do.

And I think she ended up, we did her poetry book for her and I think she passed away eight months after that.

So it was just, it was an opportunity for her to have this project that she had been wanting her whole life to do was to create a book and we were able to help make that happen.

- Well, listen, I wanna to thank you both for talking with me here today, Sean and Sonya.

I appreciate your time and I just see you, you're unstoppable, I can feel the energy.

- And drum roll.

Oh, do we hear the trumpets?

Do we hear the cellos?

No, but we see the music director of our Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra.

Julian Kuerti, glad that you are here.

And what a ride you've been on this past year?

What was the plan?

- One of the things that I invented during the pandemic was to put together little groups out of the orchestra and to have them play music that is written for basically one person or a few people to play with each other.

These are canons.

So basically it's, everybody has the same part, they record the same part.

And then I put them together and I end up doing some of the audio and video editing as well.

So the first thing that I do is I create something that's called a click track.

And so we can listen to that here.

It starts like this.

One, two, three, go.

So that was me saying one, two, three, go.

Why do we need this?

You'll see in a minute, the click track then continues.

And it's actually really boring.

It sounds like this.

(metronome clicking loudly) It's basically a metronome.

What I do then is I send this click track to the musicians who are gonna be playing in this particular piece.

In this case, there were a couple trombones and a tuba.

This is a canon by Robert Schumann that wasn't written for trombones and tuba.

It was written for voices, but I transposed it.

I thought it worked pretty well.

So what they do is then they record their individual parts.

So we'll listen here to a little bit of the audio.

(soft melodic music) So you get an idea of how this piece is now coming together in the audio realm.

- So moving forward, what is to happen under your leadership, under your directorship?

- We have these five digital concert hall concerts that we're recording together for live streaming on the internet.

When that's finished, we're gonna start to populate the entire city of Kalamazoo with little groups, little pop-up groups from the orchestra that might play in your driveway.

They might play, in a secluded little nook between two buildings.

You'll start to hear music all over the place.

As the world wakes up as the spring sets in and the summer starts to come around the corner we're gonna start to be outside.

And we're aiming this summer to present a wonderful summer festival of outside orchestral concerts in the Kalamazoo area.

And this is something that we're all very much looking forward to finally being able to perform for a public.

If I pull up our principal trombone player, you can see here, you can see him clapping.

(clapping loudly) That's the synchronization clap.

And then I put together the video.

(soft melodic music) So I can tell the story visually of what's happening in the music.

And so this is really, for me, it's been a great creative outlet.

I've been able to use my knowledge as a musician to inform the way that I approached the video editing, which is something that I've never done before.

I'm completely self-taught, but it's been something that I've really enjoyed doing throughout the pandemic.

- Are you working on an upcoming premier?

- Thank you for asking our next performance in this digital concert hall series will feature a wonderful young pianist and composer who has written his own piano concerto that he'll be performing with us.

Now today, in today's world, it's quite rare actually to have a composer who also performs their own music.

Back in the time of Mozart or Beethoven, that was the norm.

Mozart would write a piano concerto and he would be the one performing it, usually the next week.

I wanted to talk to you a bit about this concerto and I wanted you to tell me, first of all bring me back to the time when you went to compose it.

- [Michael] The piece actually now was written in 2019, early 2020, finished it.

I was living at the Aaron Copeland house in upstate New York, about an hour North of where I am right now in Copeland's house, where he lived for the last 30 years of his life in Peekskill, New York, a very gorgeous and a real oasis of solitude and calm and serenity.

And so he's got this gorgeous open music studio which feels like many musical masterpieces have been written in that room.

No distractions, no people around.

I had them remove the wifi from the house.

That was my doing just so I can really be try to be present where I was to work on this piece.

- So let me get this straight.

You were sleeping in Copeland's bed and you were playing on his piano when you were writing this piece?

- [Michael] That's right.

I was sleeping in his bed.

I was making coffee in his kitchen.

I was doing ab workouts in his living room.

I was looking at, scouring through all of his books and his manuscripts.

It's an incredible thing that the Aaron Copeland Residency Award, it's called, is doing to preserve this house and not just make it a museum, but to make it an active workspace for living American composers who apply.

And they had this rotation system by who lives there during the year.

And it's one of the most thrilling things I've ever done.

- So Beethoven must have been front and center in your mind as it was in many performing artists minds right in the middle of the pandemic was this 250th anniversary of his birth.

So I expect that you were also working quite intensively with Beethoven at the time.

- [Michael] Yeah, definitely.

First and foremost, in the, in the structure and that it's a three movement work.

The first movement is largely in a similar Sonata form that Beethoven utilizes, and there's a large Cadenza for solo piano towards the end of the movement.

The second movement is this sort of slow movement.

Largo very much inspired by the third piano concerto pretty directly inspired by Beethoven's third piano concerto and specifically those long open pedal markings.

But Beethoven was one of these first composers that specifically marked a very careful and specific use of the pedal - I've known you for such a long time.

I've heard you play so many times and this'll be the first time that we actually get to perform together.

And I really have to say, it's gonna, I'm looking forward to this like nothing else.

So thank you.

- [Michael] Thank you, me too.

on this week's episode of Kalamazoo Lively Arts.

Check out today's show and other content at wgvu.org.

We leave you tonight with another spectacular performance.

I'm Shelley Irwin, have a great night.

(soft melodic music) - [Narrator] Support for Kalamazoo Lively Arts is provided by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation.

Helping to build and enrich the cultural life of greater Kalamazoo.

(upbeat music)