Imani quintet stepping outside chamber music’s comfort zones

By Diana Nollen

The Gazette

Imani Winds is taking a giant leap outside the box with “The Anatomy of a Box: a sonic painting in wood, metal and wind.”

The 25-minute piece by Stefon Harris, co-commissioned by Imani and Hancher Auditorium, will have its world premiere Friday at City High School in Iowa City. The concert begins at 7:30 p.m.

Improvisation provides the challenge for the five-piece woodwind quintet, formed in 1997 in New York City.

“None of us learned to improvise in school; any way we've been exposed to it has been outside of school,” says Toyin Spellman-Diaz, 36, of Queens, the quintet's oboe player. She also teaches in the pre-college division of the Manhattan School of Music, where the group's members met as college students.

“(Flute player Valerie Coleman) had the idea of putting together a wind quintet of musicians of color,” Spellman-Diaz says. “She wanted us to go as far as the world would take us. ... I thought we were just getting together to read some music!”

The other voices in the group are Mariam Adam, clarinet; Jeff Scott, French horn; and Monica Ellis, bassoon.

The ensemble has multiple missions, Spellman-Diaz says.

“The main thing is to expand the repertoire of the wind quintet. The wind quintet is a standard chamber music formation, but it's rapidly evolving in the 21st century, and we wanted to have some sort of stamp of where the wind quintet is going. We want to change the sound and change the way people perform together, to have that radiate to all the different forms of chamber groups,” she says.

“The way we perform is very much more on the interactive side. We think that just sitting in your chair and staring at your music is not the way to convey what the composer had in mind with the way he or she wrote the music.”

Harris' piece, however, takes the group outside its comfort zone.

“We've been working with all these people who have been encouraging us to do some improv, but Stefon was the first to teach us,” Spellman-Diaz says. “He wrote into the music how we should improvise in rehearsal. He has a whole method for teaching us. ... He's laid out a structure that's easy theatrically for us to improvise over.

“Taking that first step - taking that leap - is really exciting, and I gotta admit, a little scary. But it's really rewarding. The product is going to be exciting for the audience to listen to.”

Harris, 36, a composer, jazz musician and vibraphone player from Sayreville, N.J., met with the players long before sitting down to write the piece.

“We talked for a very long time about where they're going as an ensemble, where they came from, their mission,” he says. “The task for me was to figure out how to break down and explain the anatomy of improvisation,” he says.

“For me, creating music is not about creativity, it's the process of discovery,” he says. His inspiration came from the log drums in his music room.

“They're little boxes with music in them,” he says. “I would write down the notes coming from the box, created a pattern, then went to the piano and mapped out every harmonic possibility that would fit on top of this box. I created a harmonic palette to draw from and play in different keys.

“With music there's always something that holds it together,” Harris says. “With Beethoven's Fifth, there a motif at the beginning that holds the piece together. I reversed the process, taking the thing often hidden - the DNA - and highlighted that.”

He'll join the Imani Winds in Friday's concert on vibraphone and marimba, and won't be standing still. That's one of the reasons he likes his mallet instruments.

“I can dance a lot, move a lot. Movement is a critical part of translating my emotion into sound,” he says.

FAST TAKE

What: Hancher presents Imani Winds with Stefon Harris

When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 25

Where: Opstad Auditorium, City High School, 1900 Morningside Dr., Iowa City

Program: “Red Clay Mississippi Delta” by Valerie Coleman; “Homage to Duke” by Jeff Scott; “Quintette” by Jean Francaix; “The Anatomy of a Box: a sonic painting in wood, metal and wind” by Stefon Harris (world premiere)

Tickets: $16.10 to $28 at Hancher Box Office in Old Capitol Town Center, Iowa City, (319) 335-1160, 1-(800) HANCHER or www.hancher.uiowa.edu

Information: www.hancher.uiowa.edu/events/imani.html