(curious music playing) - [Emcee] Welcome everyone to the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series.

(audience applauding) - It's a real delight and joy to be here with you all I'd like to start with the words of the late, great Wendell Berry "Who makes a clearing makes a wo The true world's Sabbath trees in festival around it.

And the stepping stream, a part of Sabbath also flows pas But its fall made musical, making the hill slope by its fal and still at rest in falling, song rising.

The field is made by hand and ey by daily work, by hope outreaching wrong, by hope outreaching wrong.

And yet, the Sabbath parted, still must stay in the dark mazings of the soil.

No hand may light, the great life broken, make its way along the stemmy footholds of the ant.

Bewildered in our timely dwellin where we arrive by work, stay by Wendell Berry from "Sabbaths" written in 1987.

(audience applauding) Where we arrive by work and stay A lot of the work that I am luck as a musician allows me to be a I'm a bridge between beautiful stages like this, playing for beautiful people lik And I also make music in shelters and clinics and county jails and prisons across Los Angeles.

And in fact, the program that you're about to hear tonight, Dominic and I performed in the Midnight Mission, which is one of the largest 12-step recovery shelters in Skid Row in Los Angeles.

And this piece, this work, this entire program was in fact conceived there not only for that audience of people recovering from homelessness and incarcerat and some of the very worst and most difficult days of their but truly with that audience, because who makes a clearing makes a work of art.

When we pay attention together, when we work and till the field of our mind and focus the lens of our attent that precious gift of attention, we co-create not only the work o the noun of art, but I would actually go further we co-create the verb of art.

That current of connection, that togetherness that we have, it took me a long time to unders what that togetherness of music And I'll just tell you a very qu of one of the first times went to make music in an asylum, a state hospital.

I was playing at the Patton Stat about 70 miles east of Downtown Los Angeles.

And I was a typica classically trained violinist.

You show up, you're super prepar you play at your audience, they you leave, you're the hero, so on and so forth, right?

And so I showed up and I played the violinists version of Mount which is the 15-minute long "Cha by Johann Sebastian Bach.

And it's the first time in my li that I absolutely bombed.

Bombed.

I finished playing and nobody in the audience, 200 inmates at the Patton State were completely silent.

And in the middle of the room, a Black man stood up and he wasn and he wasn't laughing and he sa "Son, don't you know any songs w And the first thing that came to was the Titanic theme song, like "My Heart Will Go On," and then how there could not pos something worse to play in a asy then "My Heart Will Go On."

And so I just blanked, completel And he started singing to me and he sang "Jesus on the Mainli "Jesus is on the main line.

Call him up and tell him what yo If you're down and out and want to get out, tell him what you want."

And it was one of the most humil and amazing music lessons of my because what this man was saying "Don't play Bach."

Or, "Don't play boring ass class written by another dead white gu What he was saying is, "Do you s Do you see me for my stories?

Do you see me for my humanity?

Do you see me beyond the brown j And so the work of Street Sympho is not just to pay attention like that line at the end of "Death of a Salesman," attention must be paid.

It's to pay attention with.

The great philosopher Simon Weil that the purest and most rare fo of attention becomes prayer, the generosity of attention.

The reason why this program is called Book of Hours is to basically give us an antidote from doom scrolling.

The books of hours were rooted in the monastic traditions of the 11th and 12th century Christian monks and mystics, but the idea of these illuminated manuscripts that accompanied the offices of for example, the prayers, like the pre-dawn prayer of Mati or the first light of day called or the evening prayers of Vesper or the Compline at the completion of the day.

There were certain prayers sung by the monks during this time, but then the books of hours became something that regular everyday people started to use.

And in these books of hours, they would illuminate these manu with kind of personal prayers, but they would also throw i appointments for their doctors and messages between friends and their hopes for the day.

And these beautiful illuminated were then taken on by other trad There are illuminated versions of the Persian Shahnameh.

There are illuminated Haggadah that are painted with gold leaf.

The Buddhists, the Zen Buddhists and even the Coptic Christians in Ethiopia, they all had these books of hour And so what you're staring at here on the screen is an illumination created by Ke an amazing artist who is an alumnus of U of M, grew up in Detroit.

And I have to give credit where credit is due to the amazing Christina Hamilto who actually recommended that I reach out to Ken because Ken had also given an amazing Penny Stamps lecture, go online and watch his lecture.

It's amazing.

But during the pandemic, Ken started creating his own illuminated manuscripts that are also plays on Facebook and prompts to ChatGPT.

But he's all painted these with and actual gold leaf and go check out his work.

And so what you're going to experience tonight is a punctuation of attention.

We will play for you music that accompanies the prayers, the songs, the books of hours to guide our attention, meditation with more images, music that tells stories through poems of Rilke, but also the correspondence, the private diaries and letters exchanged between composers.

And I'll close by saying that al is an offering that is truly co- with all of us together in this I am fully aware as a performer that I am the recipient o the greatest gift in the room, which is your attention.

And your attention is exactly what is the most precious resour It's not your money.

It's not necessarily even your time.

It's your attention.

So, I'm the recipient, my colleague Dominic and I are the recipients of this great gift, which is your deep (audio glitching).

So much for having us.

(audience applauding) (audience applauding) (Vijay and Dominic playing) (Vijay and Dominic playing) (audience applauding and cheerin - And for the next piece on the it's very fitting to play Gershw at the University of Michigan.

I mean, Gershwin, here is home to the Gershwin Initiative.

It's home to all of these critical additions of both George and Ira Gershwin' So, what you'll be seeing as we play actually is different quotations from Ger to friends, collaborators, and also teachers as he's writing to them.

And I think there's a wonderful juxtaposition between Gershwin, the music and You see, when we play Gershwin's it's brimming with this confiden but the man himself, he was riddled with self-doubt and this really affected him all He would've achieved great succe from a very young age with "Rhapsody in Blue."

This would've sent him on a rise to meteoric fame.

But even after that, he was still doubting his abilities.

You see, he was never trained in the so-called European school of classical music, so he actually sought out teache There's two very interesting sto One where he went to th great composer, Maurice Ravel.

And when he approached Ravel for Ravel took one listen to him and "Why do you want to be a second when already you're first rate G So, with that, Gershwin went off looking for more lessons.

He even went to Stravinsky, Igor Stravinsky, and asked for l Stravinsky was a little bit more of a literal, realistic man.

So after some begging for lessons, Stravinsky said, "Okay, George, how much money did you make last year?"

And when Gershwin said the numbe Stravinsky said, "No, no, no.

We have this backwards.

I've got to study with you."

So, Gershwin, though, he never g He was always looking for more l And actually, as we're playing the second movement of this particular piece, "The Three Preludes," you're going to see a quot from him written to his teacher, Joseph Schillinger.

And this is right after the completion of his opera, "Porgy and Bess."

It's being premiered, and at the end of the letter, Gershwin writes, "I think I still need more lesso So, he's a lifelong learner, and this really ties a little bi some of the words of Rilke that you had just seen on your screen.

In particular, the ending phrase where he says, "I don't know if I'm a falcon, a or an unfinished song."

And I think that question is som that sort of plagued Gershwin all of his life.

And there's an interesting sort of relationship between Rilke and Gershwin.

You see, these "Three Preludes" would've been premiered in December of 1926, and while they didn't know each it was only 20 days later that Rilke would've passed away.

So the connection between these two individuals, I think, is something more trans And certainly I think that with it's a good thing that he never really answered the question of who he was.

A Broadway composer, a jazz comp a classical composer, opera, who It's really in his genius, and the genius that Ravel and Stravinsky saw, that Gershwin, his voice, he was able to contain it all.

So with that, next, Gershwin's "Three Preludes" arranged for violin and piano by Jascha Heifetz.

(audience applauding) (Vijay and Dominic playing) (audience applauding) (Vijay and Dominic playing) (audience applauding) (Vijay and Dominic playing) (audience applauding and cheerin - So, now we have something very that's about to happen, which is a world premiere, a piece of music that has never been heard before.

You've been just reading these correspondences between Gershwin and hi collaborators and his teachers, and this question of what does classical music mean?

And the truth is there is n such thing as classical music.

It was a Victorian construction.

Beethoven and Mozart and Bach an never heard the term classical.

And so this idea of what does it to create something that is cano was almost a little bit of revisionist history that happened.

Of course, when we talk about lineages of composers, there's a lot of amazing work that we begin to think about.

Who was the lineage that influenced Gershwin?

Who was the lineage that influenced the composer that you're about to hear, the young Vietnamese American Oswald Hunh?

And Oswald and I recently starte a correspondence with each other And a lot of what we talked abou and a lot of what we shared was Poetry of Wendell Berry, poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, poetry of artists and writers from the Vietnamese tradition that Oswald has loved.

And so he's entitled his work, "For What is Holy."

And what I love about Oswald's m and what you're about to hear in this unaccompanied violin wor is this idea of a ghost in the s There is a technique that Oswald where I'll actually come quite c to the bridge of the violin, but use a very, very light bow.

And the sound that I will create is actually a sound that I can't It's a sound that will take its shape and form in a new way based on how nervou based on how big the room is, based (audio glitching), based on how hot the lights are that I'm standing under.

So, you are the very first audience who is going to hear and co-create this work, "Fo What is Holy" by Oswald Hunh.

(audience applauding) (Vijay playing violin) (audience applauding) So, I just want to give you a mo to look at this amazing piece by Ken Aptekar.

Ken spends his time between Paris and New York, and there is an app that he uses that the French use called Docto which sets up you appointments with your doctor.

But he's embedded this in an old prayer calendar from the 11th century.

So, this is just so quirky and fun and amazing.

We're going to close our program come to the compline of our prog with the amazing "Sonata in D Minor" by Johannes Brahms.

And what you might think about B is the big, jowly German dude with the beard staring at you rather unfriendly But when Brahms actually first v his two musical heroes, Robert and Clara Schumann, they hailed him as "the young eagle from the north."

Now, of course, Rober Schumann left an amazing legacy in terms of Brahms' life and his impact on Brahms' life.

But the really famous musician, the much more famous musician in the Schumann couple, was Clara.

Clara Schumann was actually intr to the international stag when she was only 14 years old.

Her name then was Clara Wieck.

She was actually brought out on by none other than Felix Mendelssohn himself to perform at the Gewandhaus to perform Mendelssohn's piano c And when Clara Wieck married Robert Schumann, Clara Wieck's father became absolutely furious and kind of disowned Clara and took away her childhood pian And in a very strange way, the Schumann's lived under this sort of curse from Clara's But when young Johannes came alo something rather tragic had happ in the Schumann's household, which is that Robert Schumann had thrown himself into the Rhine River and then checked himself into an And so Clara had to go back on t to play concerts in order t pay for Robert's medical bills.

And their babysitter was Johanne And at this time, Clara was esse one of the very few pianists pla a evening length concert program on solo piano completely from me One might say she kind of invented the recital.

And so later on, after Robert Schumann died, we explored this idea of composers like Gershwin, even composers like Oswald who sent me sketches.

This idea of a composition, this work of art never comes from a vacuum, but rather it comes from a relat For Gershwin, you could say it came from the relationship with the people he was always trying to impress, his teacher, but certainly his brother, Ira Gershwin.

With Oswald, he and I had talked about this for a very long time to create this piece of music.

And Brahms always sent every single piece of music he wrote to Clara Schumann.

And so what you're going to see as we perform the four movements of this sonata is the correspondence between Brahms and Clara.

They're private letters and then even Clara's diary entr where she's writing about how she received this music, but she was in so much pain when because Clara grappled with a lifelong performance injury.

She had bursitis and tenderness in her shoulder.

She could barely sometimes just she could barely move her arms when she played.

And so at one point, Clara actually makes her daughter and the violinist who she's rehearsing with play this sonata for Clara because she cannot actually bear to sit down at the piano and play it herself.

But eventually, as you'll see in the letters, she brings herself to do this.

So, this is a work in four movem If you would conside possibly holding your applause between the four movements of this amazing work.

And on the screen you'll see the and sometimes the desperatio that you'll hear in the music, but answered, both in the music and in the letters, between Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann.

(Vijay and Dominic playing) (audience applauding and cheerin Thank you, everyone.

Thank you s Thank you.

I want to, while you're applaudi keep applauding for Ken Aptekar.

And for Dominic Cheli.

And for the wonderful Oswald Hu whose world premiere you heard.

And for Wendell Berry, fo Wendell Berry, for Wendell Berry For Rilke.

Thank you.

Advance the slide, yep.

And I also want to thank Christina Hamilton and the amazing folks at the Ann Arbor Symphony for hosting us so warmly.

We have just a little parting thank you encore for you all, which is Johannes Brahms arranged by Jascha Heifetz, a piece called "Contemplations."

(Vijay and Dominic playing) (audience applauding and cheerin (audience chattering)