Sarasota Orchestra: The new wave

Classical music depicts the sweeping crusades, conflicts and plagues of long ago as well as it does the personal romances, adventures and warmth of everyday life. However, its vaulted position among the arts often gives it a misleading and foreboding air of incomprehensibility. This is classical music’s modern conundrum: how to win young new audiences without alienating older generations saturated with the classics of Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms.

The Sarasota Orchestra, under the direction of Anu Tali, is striving to undo this classical conundrum with inventive and new works that expand the conventions of classical music’s rich heritage. In her first full season of programming, Tali is leading a two-night performance Nov. 20 and 21, at Holley Hall, of Heiner Goebbels’ 2007 work, “Songs of Wars I Have Seen.”

A collaborative theatrical and musical mashup, the piece depicts the everyday happenings of women during World War II through the text of Gertrude Stein’s 1945 memoir, “Wars I Have Seen.”

With an intimate setting at Holley Hall, a reduced chamber orchestra, speaking roles for a few female orchestra members, plus Goebbels’ baroque chorales interspersed among jazzy riffs, “Songs of Wars I Have Seen” is rewriting the standard Sarasota Orchestra experience.

“This is a new approach to music-making in orchestra performance history that in general is a new step toward the immersive, where people are a part of it, people can relate to it,” says Tali. “It doesn’t leave you cold.”

Tali has performed the piece several times in London, New York City, Seattle and Barcelona, but feels an added sense of urgency and excitement to bring it to her new home of Sarasota. She views the event as a gateway to offering more challenging works for audiences and musicians alike.

“There’s a lot of variety for me in the music, and you have to stay on your toes,” says RoseAnne McCabe, double bass player and one of the featured orchestra members speaking Stein’s words. “Performing text and music is special and it’s terrifying all at the same time, but there are so many exciting layers that all fit together.”

Cheeko Matsusaka, cellist in the orchestra and also performing Stein’s text, viewed the diverse elements of modern classical work as threads in an intricate and beautiful tapestry. “It’s the first time the orchestra has done something that combines theater and music, and it allows the audience to come in,” says Matsusaka. “I don’t really like to talk in public, but I’m looking forward to this.”

Perhaps the most thrilling and potentially groundbreaking part about Goebbels’ work is that it is an example of modern art’s growing collaborative sensibility. Tali wants to incorporate the recent multifaceted evolution of classical music to add interest and variety to the orchestra’s traditional Masterworks series.

“We classical musicians went through a lifetime’s worth of education, and I think we deserve to express ourselves in a more contemporary manner instead of rigidly performing the classics,” says Tali. “It’s a new time, and we should figure out what our language is today.”

The subject of World War II, usually fodder for sweeping romantic suites and reflective Steven Spielberg movies, may not immediately sound like the best foundation for a transformative piece of classical music. But “Songs of Wars I Have Seen” uses Stein’s diary-style slices of domestic life. These glimpses range from the humdrum (listening to the radio and reciting Shakespeare for entertainment) to the severe (not knowing from where one’s next meal will come). It’s far from a never-ending fermata of terror, but rather a duet in life.

“Stein is writing about mundane things and private thoughts,” says Matsusaka, “but that’s how the work invites you in just to hear the words on top of and among the music.”

This warmth of the everyday, even during the most tragic of circumstances, is also represented musically by Goebbels’ use of the urban sounds.

“Goebbels is a lot of fun because he literally composes just like if you stuck your head out into the main square somewhere in a city like Tokyo or New York City,” says Tali.

This combination of commonplace sounds, accompanied by the composer’s baroque chorales and placed in the confines of the orchestra hall, thaws the misunderstood coldness of classical music into a multisensory experience. It’s this paradox that Tali hopes will become contagious.

“Don’t be afraid of music,” says Tali. “It is a part of us. For me, this performance is part of growing together as an orchestra and together as a society.”

IF YOU GO 
‘Song of War I Have Seen’ composed by Heiner Goebbels
When: 7 p.m. Nov. 21 and Nov. 22
Where: Holley Hall, 709 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota
Cost: $35 to $49
Info: Call 953-3434 or visit sarasotaorchestra.org.