Chione Quintet of Minnesota is with me today to talk about their music.
When was the Chione Quintet created and what is its mission?
"Chione had our very first rehearsal in October of 2016, so we are officially 2 years old.
Chione is a Twin Cities-based woodwind quintet comprised of innovative and cross-disciplinary women. The unique and evolving medium provides an outlet to explore and create new sounds while redefining and rediscovering lesser known music. Chione is committed to collaborating with professionals of all genres and creative outlets, with particular interests in commissioning new pieces and performing works by women artists. The ensemble presents engaging educational programs to students of all ages with a particular focus on equal educational opportunities. Throughout each endeavor, Chione aims to reach a wide range of audiences with the hopes of inspiring contemporary and aspiring artists as well as supporters of the arts."
-Susan Miranda, oboe
On the day of the performance, a quintet member spoke extensively about the research involved in finding a piece from a female composer. Can you talk about that?
"An import aspect of Chione's mission is that we perform works by women artists. Believe it or not, there have been many woodwind quintet's written by women, but few are performed. I was recently researching other wind quintets and noticed that most of them had never performed a piece by a woman composer.
Often times we need to do quite a bit of research to locate pieces by women, especially those written prior to 1900. One example is a piece by a Norwegian composer that has become a favorite of Chione, Suite for 5 Winds by Pauline Hall. Our founding flute player, Hannah Peterson Green had located a recording of the piece by a European quintet and immediately fell in love.
A few of us did some research via the internet with no luck in locating the sheet music. We saw that the Bergen Quintet in Norway had performed the piece. I happen to know the 2nd bassoonist in the Bergen Philharmonic, so I sent him a message and he said he would ask the quintet and get back to me. Come to find out, the Bergen Quintet did not own the piece, but had rented it from a local library.
I saw that a quintet in Sweden had recently played the piece, so I reached out to that ensemble via email. They had also rented the piece from a local library that we did not have access to. I finally decided to try to track down a copy through the music library at the University of Minnesota. I was able to locate the piece and see that only 10 copies of Hall's beautiful work existed in the United States. We were able to rent the music which was sent from a library in Maryland all the way to Minnesota for us to finally perform!"
-Susan Miranda, oboe
How does the Quintet decide which arrangements to perform?
"It really depends on what we have programmed for the year! Every year in March we honor women composers by performing an entire performance of works by women. Last March we had the opportunity to perform two of these concerts. We often have pieces in mind that we would like to play from previous research. We have a document where we compile pieces that we would like to perform.
"In addition to our "Honoring Women in Music" concert, we had themes of Latin American Flavors and Springtime in Paris. We were able to choose music written by French composers such as Hedwige Chretien, one of our favorite and very unknown women composers. We also performed a work by Paul Taffanel, which was requested by founding flutist Hannah Peterson Green.
We are currently performing a number of performances representing Classical Minnesota Public Radio as Class Notes Artists. We are traveling to Elementary schools, performing musical stories. Last year we performed 35 Story Time programs in libraries throughout SE Minnesota. For these performances, there are a minimal number of quintets written with narration. We were lucky to gain a fantastic bassoonist, Alexandra Berndt this year who previously played in a woodwind quintet in Boston called Vento Chiaro. That ensemble commissioned composer Justin Casinghino to compose One Hen, a true story about a little boy named Kojo, written for woodwind quintet and narration. This is a relatively new piece, so had Ali not joined our ensemble, we would not know about this fantastic piece!
We also have had composers reach out to us requesting that we perform a quintet that they have written. We plan to do a call for submissions of quintets written by women in the next few months. We are looking forward to adding some new or unknown works to our repertoire!"
-Susan Miranda, oboe
The Quintet performed at the 2017 Saint Paul Winter Carnival Beer Dabbler. What was the ambiance and environment like during that performance? Has there ever been a time when the functionality of an instrument has had to be improvised?
"This was such a unique and fun performance for us! We performed on a stage in the Lee and Rose Warner Coliseum at the MN State Fairgrounds. It was definitely one of the larger spaces we have ever performed in, and attendees of the festival meandered about as they listened. It was fun to get immediate feedback from the crowd--usually we have to wait until a piece is completely finished before we know if the audience liked it! The large space did require some extra amplification with microphones, and we definitely had to work hard to hear ourselves and one another. The acoustics of a space can sometimes be challenging like this, and occasionally we will make adjustments to how we are arranged in the space to mitigate any issues. Mostly we just have to listen carefully and be ready to adjust the volume we're playing at very quickly!"
-Allison Akin, horn
As far as functionality goes, we have all learned to be very flexible, something that classical musicians aren't always accustomed to. Playing in interesting or challenging venues has helped us to become a better ensemble. It has helped us listen better, or watch each other, helping to learn each others' visual cues when we can't hear very well. Last year was a tough year for wooden instruments, especially when paired with numerous performances in dry and often cold libraries. Our clarinetist, Weily and I had our instruments crack due to the varying climates that we played in during our tour. So yes, functionality can be compromised, you just need to hope that it's not too bad to where you can't finish out a performance!
-Susan Miranda, oboe
Last question, will the Quintet have any upcoming performances?
"We are currently on an elementary school tour with Classical Minnesota Public Radio. We are thrilled to bring our story time program to school throughout the Twin Cities and a few in greater Minnesota. In October we have about 20 story time performances in various elementary schools. We will also share two performances of our musical stories at Toddler Tuesday at the Mall of American on Tuesday, October 16th. These performances will be free to the public! Our performances can be found on our Facebook page, as well as our website, www.chionequintet.com. We are also in the planning stage for our 3rd annual quINTENS!VE Chamber Music Camp which will likely be held during the end of July to the beginning of August. This is one of our favorite times of the year when we get to work with students from all over Minnesota in a chamber music setting."
-Susan Miranda, oboe
via GIPHY
Thanks for Joining me.
Thanks for having us.
