Mariam Adam of the Imani Winds

May 28, 2009

Dr. Kent: My next guest on the show is a musician, of course. On the fourth part of every show we feature authors of sound and we’ve got the Imani Winds up ahead. I’m going to play a little piece by them, by Ravel, this is Le Tombeau De Couperin, I’m not very good at French. It’s by Ravel, beautiful piece by Imani Winds. We’re going to listen to that, and then we’re going to talk to the clarinetist.

(music)

Dr. Kent: What a gorgeous rendition of that. And it’s my honor now to speak to a member of the Imani Winds. I’m speaking with Mariam Adam. Are you there?

Mariam Adam: Yes, I’m here. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Kent: What a gorgeous sound. Tell me first about that Ravel piece.

Mariam Adam: Well, it’s a piece that was originally for piano and then rearranged by Ravel himself for the orchestra, and that’s probably on of the more well known versions of the Le Tombeau De Couperin, and it was a piece that was actually dedicated to his friend that had fallen in the first World War. But then it was transcribed for the wind quintet by a horn player actually. And it’s one of the few pieces that has transcribed well for the wind quintet, and is written in such a lush way that you don’t often get to hear these five instruments. So I think for that reason alone it has an appeal to every type of listener, classical, contemporary, and even some people hear a little bit of the jazz element in the movements.

Dr. Kent: Yeah, that’s a fascinating thing about your music is that it’s got a real edge to it of, it’s got the jazz in it. We’re going to listen to some piet solo later, and you’ve got a whole bunch of different elements coming together in all of your music.

Mariam Adam: Yep, that’s our M.O. (laughter) Have to put in a little bit of everything.

Dr. Kent: Tell me about the group. Where do you guys play? You’ve got all these things going on, and of course something that’s very fascinating about the group is you’re all African American players. Talk about all of that.

Maiam Adam: Yeah. Imani Winds is a group that definitely looks the way that we do for a reason. Valerie the flutist had the name of a group before she even had the members of the group about 11 years ago and I knew her from summer festival out at Aspen. We moved to New York at the same time to go to grad school, got this group started, had no idea where it was going to go, although she always says that she did, and I believe it. But the group started out as African American, Latino musicians in classical music, one, to give the composers a similar background of voice. Another reason to give younger players that look like us role models that we feel we didn’t necessarily have growing up on our instruments. And also to really give a new direction to chamber music, and maybe a little bit of evolution of what chamber music is coming to. You know, we’ll always have the classic pieces like Ravel, and for us classic pieces also mean Milton and Carter and things from the 1940’s and 50’s. That’s about as recent as we get for the great works. But that led Imani Winds to take a path that was, one, educational, as well as slightly groundbreaking just for the reason that there weren’t many wind quartets out there doing what we do, and having two composers in the group, and think that is really the unique trump card that we have. That we have two composers who don’t just transcribe things, they write original works, and they’ve had us as their guinea pigs for many years, so they’ve gotten quite good at it. It has allowed us to expand into many different genres and bring it to our audiences. And there’s always a little bit of something for everybody on our program. And the places that we end up playing.

Dr. Kent: And on your website, imaniwinds.com, that’s i-m-a-n-i winds.com, there’s some incredible information about your group. And the bio page is just an incredible collection of folks. A number of awards, the degrees like you said, the composers, the incredible jazz and classical performers. What’s it like to play in such a small group with so many fantastic people?

Mariam Adam: Well, it’s wonderful. It really is wonderful. I think because we get along. People see that, and it comes through in our music, and I think that is also a rare thing that people say in chambers, in the groups, is that we have fun on stage, we have fun with the music. Everybody is really kick butt on their instruments. It’s a technical term. So we have a lot of freedom because of that, and not a lot of restrictions. Also, when it comes to our proper on stage, and we have stage etiquette, but also we speak to the audience and we allow them to respond to us, and we try to break down that wall that has been the stigma of classical music concerts. So we’re at Carnegie Hall and Alice Kelly, and all the big halls of New York, and all the big venues across the state. But we definitely want to celebrate the joy that we have in music and bring that infectious energy to other people. And that’s not something you get to see all the time, and I think that’s why we’ve had the longevity that we’ve had, because we love doing what we’re doing, we know we’re very lucky, to be a full time touring wind quintet. But we also work very, very hard with it, and that includes getting up at 8:00 in the morning, 7:00 in the morning, to go play for little kids in schools in every city that we visit, to bring this love of music to them.

Dr. Kent: It really is extraordinary also, for me, I have a background as a composer, and I went to Stonybrook, which I know you’re horn player did. You have a specifically, a commissioning project that’s aiming for people that wouldn’t necessarily be writing this kind of music, and featuring, well talk about that a little bit.

Mariam Adam: Yeah, the Legacy Commissioning Project started out as a commissioning project to celebrate being ten years together, same people. And it’s really evolved into a mission and a movement to get new music into the chamber music repoirtoire, especially for the woodwind quintet, because there’s a lot of woodwind quintet pieces out there, but they’re not all very good. And because people don’t have a group to write for a lot of the time, and to experiment with, they tend to write in a very similar style. So we’re getting composers like Jason Moran who is an incredibly, eclectic avant gardi and yet contemporary and down home swinging jazz pianos. And then you have Stephan Harris, who is also just multi talented. Percussionist, vibrafonist, composer, band leader, and Tanya Leone. Simoncho Hin is a ute player from Palestinian background. And these are all people who come from completely different angles but we’re forcing them, essentially, to write for us. But with the idea that they get to collaborate and we get to come back to them and say look, this is an amazing idea, why don’t you expand on this. Or, guess what, this doesn’t work. So we have feedback with the piece, and that is also to ensure that the piece is going to have legs beyond the premiere, and beyond this first world premiere that would happen. Because a lot of times that’s what would happen with commission pieces and then you never hear about them again. And we want to make sure these pieces stick around, so that they’re written well and that the person who’s writing kind of outside of their norm, ends up feeling comfortable in it, and successful.

Dr. Kent: Absolutely. I encourage everybody to go check out imaniwinds.com. I love your last album, and we’re going to play a track from that coming up ahead, Liver Tango from Master Piazzolo, which is a very brave piece to play, and it’s an incredible version of it. Are you working on any new recording projects?

Mariam Adam: Absolutely. We always have a couple in the pipeline, but one of them right now is going to be the Legacy Commissioning project pieces. We have one by Alvan Singleton. We have the piece by Jason Ran, we have a piece by Stephan Harris coming up soon. We also have a great piece that was part of the commissioning project by Roberto Sierra that’s written for string quartet, plus wind quintet, which I think is going to be a new genre. I’m so excited about it. I love the sound, I love the power that we get with these two groups together. And Valerie Coleman, our flutist, also wrote a piece to go with the concerts, with this collaboration of the string quartet. So we’re going to be recording that. We have a wonderful piece by Bucky (inaudible) who wrote (inaudible) for us called (inaudible) over Havana, and we might be putting out things in singles. But we also have a couple albums that we’ll put together from these Legacy Commissioning project pieces. And there’s always something new on the horizon, so yes, please get into our website and check out Alejandro. So we’ll probably be near somewhere near somebody soon. We’re all over the place.

Dr. Kent: Well I love it, incredible music. I hope to talk to you again after some of these CDs come out. It’s great stuff, and keep doing it.

Mariam Adam: Absolutely, and make sure you check out the Christmas album that we had, that’s the one that keeps giving back every year.

Dr. Kent: Oh, Ill bet, I’ll beat it does, yeah.

Mariam Adam: It’s great fun.

Dr. Kent: No Christmas songs here, but I want to play the song from their last Grammy nominated album, and this one’s called Libra Tango from Aster Piazzolo. Thank you so much for chatting with me, Mariam Adam.

Mariam Adam: Thank you for having me.

Dr. Kent: And the website again is imaniwinds.com. Go check out their music. It’s amazing stuff. So we’re going to listen to the whole track called Libra Tango from Aster Piazzoli, by the Imani Winds.

(music)

Dr. Kent: What a beautiful piece. I’m going to cut it off right there, but if you want to listen to more go to imaniwinds.com. That’s a piece called Libra Tango by Aster Piazzola, as performed by the Imani Winds. Check them out. It was such an honor chatting with Mariam Adam about her group, and her performances on the clarinet. And earlier in the show today we talked to Paul Austin. I could have talked to him for several hours about his riveting stories from the ER. And before that we talked to John Gilmore about his memories of Marilyn Monroe. And at the very beginning of the show, of course, was the incredible, inspirational story of Missy Jenkins, who not only survived a school shooting, but she’s starting to really get her story out there into the world, and she changes so many people’s lives with it. Well, have a great week, today is the first day of spring, and I hope you have a great one, and pick up a good book in the meantime.

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