This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Oct. 8, 2012 - In early February 2010, pianist Peter Martin debuted a series of performances at the Sheldon Concert Hall titled “Peter Martin Music LIVE!” The first concert featured Martin performing with renowned jazz vocalist Dianne Reeves, with whom he has worked as musical director for several years.
Subsequent concerts in Martin’s series have featured him in duet performance with longtime friend Jeremy Davenport on trumpet, bassist Christian McBride, Brazilian guitarist Romero Lubambo, New Orleans pianist David Torkanowsky and vibraphonist Warren Wolf; as well as with Martin’s own trio and Inner Circle band, and in solo performance.
But Martin’s relationship with the Sheldon goes back to performances more than a decade ago – and especially to the all-star lineup of New Orleans musicians he organized in late December 2005 to play the Big River Benefit Concert for victims of Hurricane Katrina at the Sheldon.
Now that ongoing partnership between Martin and the Sheldon has reached an even higher level. This Thursday, Oct. 11, Martin will perform a work commissioned by the Sheldon to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the venerable concert hall.
Special notes: “The Present Past” will be performed in the second half. The first will include a new work by Stefan Freund entitled “St. Louis Reds,” a tribute to W.C. Handy's “St. Louis Blues.” The piece will accompany a visual presentation of 100 photographs of The Sheldon. Also premiering will be “Temple Built in Trust and Hope,” written by Sheldon Executive Director Paul Reuter, with texts by Percival Chubb, leader of the Ethical Society when The Sheldon opened its doors in 1912, and Walter Sheldon, the building's namesake. Christine Brewer and the St. Louis Children’s Choir Choristers Ensemble will perform the piece
The piece, “This Present Past,” will feature Martin playing piano in a jazz quartet. In addition, the instrumentation for the piece will include a classical string quartet featuring St. Louis Symphony Concertmaster David Halen and other members of the SLSO, as well as acclaimed vocalist Christine Brewer in one movement.
This past week, I met with Martin for coffee and conversation regarding the upcoming concert. He discussed how the commission to write the piece came about, his good fortune in pulling together the exact lineup of musicians he had hoped for to perform it, his effort to balance the roles of both classical notation and jazz improvisation -- and the key role that the Sheldon and its remarkable acoustics and intimacy played in the composition of “This Present Past.”
“Paul Reuter (executive director of the Sheldon) first approached me a little over a year ago with the idea of writing a piece to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Sheldon,” says Martin. “Of course, I was very excited about the possibility, and I immediately began to go through a few different ideas myself, even before everything became official. I kept coming back to a concept based around some specific instrumentation – and involving some special guest musicians.”
Martin had plenty of experience writing for jazz groups, but had also been classically trained before deciding to focus on jazz and apprenticing under famed pianist Ellis Marsalis at the University of New Orleans. For this piece, he envisioned two groups – one jazz and one classical – and a very special vocalist.
“I was thinking about musical ideas I wanted to explore,” explains Martin, “and came up with the concept of two quartets – one jazz and one a classical string quartet. But I also wanted to have a vocalist featured in one movement of the piece. And I was thinking big, so I decided to sort of put together my ideal list of musicians I’d like to be part of this concert.”
Recently, Martin has worked frequently with famed bassist Christian McBride and drummer Ulysses Owens in a trio format. And to round out the quartet with a saxophonist, Martin immediately thought of his friend Branford Marsalis.
For the classical quartet, Martin thought of David Halen, hoping that, if he was available, he could put together a quartet made up of fellow members of the symphony.
And for the vocalist in the piece, Martin immediately thought of a world-class singer he had just accompanied at the Sheldon: Christine Brewer.
“About the time that the commission was being talked about last year, I ended up accompanying Christine on a couple of songs she sang for a 9/11 memorial concert at the Sheldon,” Martin recalls. “I had always loved her voice, and we had such a rapport at the concert that I thought, wow, if she’s game to try something different and unknown, I really thought I could write something for her that would place her in a different musical environment. So I called her up. She didn’t ask a whole lot of questions. She just said she’d love to do it!”
As luck would have it, everyone Martin had in mind to perform the piece was available. Halen chose SLSO members violinist Helen Kim, violist Michael Chen and cellist Bjorn Ranheim to round out the string quartet, and the lineup was complete.
With the performers in place, the next step was taking the musical concepts and turning them into a finished composition.
Martin was working on several movements simultaneously, but the one that came together first featured Brewer’s vocals. Martin chose Howard Nemerov’s poem, “This Present Past,” as the basis for the lyrics Brewer would sing. And the title of the poem eventually served as the title for the entire piece.
“That movement of the composition was definitely the toughest for me,” Martin says. “I’ve written for vocalists, but never for an operatic soprano. And I was writing something that was not totally classical or all jazz – it had elements of both.”
Any concerns that Martin had in terms of writing for Brewer were put to rest when the two got together at the Sheldon to rehearse the movement for the first time.
“When Christine and I got together at the Sheldon to read through it and rehearse what I had written so far,” says Martin, “it really helped me in a huge way. We tweaked a couple of things in the piece, and she really liked it. And it seemed like all of a sudden, that movement was done. And that was the foundation for the rest of the piece. Once that third movement was done, the others came together.”
The other four sections of the piece were instrumental. The ensemble sections involving both quartets proved to be a new challenge for Martin – in two different ways.
“I wanted the quartets to balance each other, to play together and explore things separately,” explains Martin. “I was familiar with writing for both,” “But I had never put them together. In addition, I also wanted to make sure I balanced the jazz concept of improvisation with the traditional classical method of notating the piece.
“In terms of writing for the jazz musicians, that meant much more notating than I usually would do. With a jazz group, especially for the trio I’ve been playing with a lot, I would just assume if I brought in something I wrote, I’d know I was going to be there in person and could tell them myself what was going on with the music. But in the classical tradition, the piece has to speak for itself through the notation.”
By notating the work as he did while composing it, Martin also hopes to create something that will have a life beyond the debut performance on Oct. 11 – and beyond the specific musicians who will be playing with him at the Sheldon.
“That’s why it’s notated like a classical piece,” he explains. “That way, it can be handed off to a group of good musicians with no explanation and they could pull it off in performance. That took a lot of extra effort – especially in terms of writing for the string quartet in terms of phrasing and bowing. It took a lot more hours than I really expected it would.”
Despite the annotated score for "This Present Past,” Martin also emphasized that he has not forgotten his jazz roots in approaching the work.
“Essentially, it is a jazz piece,” he states. “There is a huge amount of improvisation within the piece. I tried to let each movement flow without putting up barriers. Most all of the improvisation, of course, is for the jazz quartet. But I wanted everyone to have a chance to improvise. So I wrote several sections for the string quartet in a couple of the movements that are basically solos that sound improvised. Again, I wanted to balance the groups out."
As an example of what he attempted to do in writing to balance the the jazz and string quartets, Martin cited the second movement of the piece, “Sheldon Blues.”
“It’s a 12 bar blues in E flat,” he explained. “For the string quartet, I included two choruses that featured them playing with – and also against – each other. I really wrote what I would consider some very unplayable stuff – except I know David Halen and the other symphony musicians will absolutely nail it! It’s probably the most challenging part in the piece for them, but also one they’ll have the most fun with." Martin emphasized that the composition of “This Present Past” was strongly influenced by the venue where it will make it’s debut – The Sheldon.
“I did a lot of the composing of the music right on that stage of the Sheldon when the hall wasn’t in use,” Martin says. “And I’ve had the luxury of playing in there so much that I know what works in terms of the space and the sound. And that had a big effect on the shape of the music.”