BOY COMPOSER GOES FROM METALLICA TO MOZARTBudding composer, Wirral schoolboy Marco Galvani, is writing music for a leading classical string trio.Sixteen-year-old Marco from Prenton, a guitarist in a heavy metal band, generally prefers Metallica to Mozart. But he was so impressed with a concert at last year’s Two Rivers music festival that he decided to give classical music more of a chance.The performance by the acclaimed string trio, Ensemble Epomeo, so inspired Marco that he began to write his own music for them. John Clark, Head of Oxton-based independent Birkenhead School which Marco attends, heard of his efforts and contacted Festival organisers.Now Marco has had an initial meeting with the Ensemble’s cellist, Ken Woods, and has been told that the trio may consider including some of his work during this year’s Festival, either as a workshop or even as part of their concert programme in May.“He was very helpful and made several suggestions which I’m starting to incorporate,” said Marco, who is working on two compositions – a light-hearted, three-minute piece and a more serious string trio.A Year 11 pupil at Birkenhead School, Marco is an all-round talented musician. As well as playing guitar in the heavy metal band, Serpentia, with three school mates, he also plays piano and clarinet. He sings in the school choir, plays in the school orchestra and jazz band and also does easy listening solo gigs, singing and playing the guitar.“Last year’s concert by the Ensemble really opened my mind to classical music,” added Marco. “I was sitting on the front row and the music was so intimate. It really made a big difference to me and motivated me to try writing for small groups of strings.”
- The Two Rivers Festival is an annual event hosted by Birkenhead School and aims to bring top musical performers to Wirral. As well as Ensemble Epomeo, this year’s festival, which takes place from March to May, includes concerts from the Tallis Scholars, Kathryn Rudge and James Baillieu, and Emily and Catherine Beynon. (www.tworiversfestival.co.uk)
Ends Notes for Editors
- Birkenhead School, at Beresford Road, Oxton, is Wirral’s oldest and only selective independent school.
- The school is now co-educational and, with a new nursery opened in 2006, educates children from three months to 18 years.
- It has a strong musical tradition. Past students include Howard Skempton, one of the nation’s most important composers of experimental music; Graham Vick, internationally-acclaimed opera director, and Lord Tony Hall, Chief Executive of The Royal Opera House.
- The school hosted a visit by HRH, The Earl of Wessex , earlier this year to help start its 150th year.
- Bookings for an anniversary celebration concert in the school grounds with Vasily Petrenko and the Liverpool Philharmonic can be made via the school’s website.
For further information contact: Denise Mullen , 07801182252, denise@owlpr.co.uk ; Kathryn Hulme, 01204 303904, or Mary Butterworth at Birkenhead School, 0151 651 3007
(That’s not Ken’s “real” cello)Switching cellos on a short rehearsal schedule can pose a number of challenges. In this case, the cello (a pretty nice one) hadn’t been played at all in many months, and at the first rehearsal it felt incredibly stiff and unresponsive. I couldn’t get anything to speak on the lower two strings that first night. I can hardly think of a piece that depends more on effortless precision of attach than the Beethoven Trio we’re playing this week- trying to rehearse that music when I had to play with elephantine effort amidst a panorama of squwks and whistles to get anything out is not fun. String instruments can be temperamental creatures- if they are feeling neglected and unloved, they’re certainly let you know.
(A promo photo of the trio, with Ken holding someone else’s cello)There are other challenges- pitch is the most obvious, and string trio is the most demanding medium for tuning. Far easy to switch cellos for solo playing or orchestra work than for small chamber ensembles.However, the most challenging thing is to find ones own sound and voice on an instrument that may have very different properties to your regular axe. After a couple of days of near-constant playing, this instrument is opening up, and I’m finally starting to feel like I can hear my “self” when I play it. Really, I should be encouraged by how fast it all goes- from day one where no sound comes out at all, to day two where I’m just focusing on getting the notes to speak reliably, by day three, I’m actually beginning to get some colors and tone.Anyway, I try to accept the challenge for what it is, to take it on the chin in those early rehearsals when I can’t stand the sound I’m making and to have confidence that we’ll get there by concert time. I’ve dealt with these challenges many times before- see 
(Why so serious- because Ken never gets to play on this cello)
Kenneth Woods, who will perform with Trio Epomeo in a June 6 preseason fundraiser for the Newburyport Chamber Music Festival, has received the Aspen Fellowship as both a cellist and conductor. He’s toured and recorded extensively as a cellist, and bounces between England and the United States in a mad schedule of performances with the Surrey Mozart Players and the Oregon East Symphony, among others.He’s also the principal conductor of the Lancashire Chamber Orchestra in England, which he led in a performance of Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 sandwiched between a week-long residency at Festivale d’alla Musica da Camera d’Ischia in Italy and a quick six-date US tour with Epomeo. After that, it’s back to Guildford and the Surrey Mozart Players and Stratford-upon-Avon and the Shakespeare Proms festival, where he will conduct the Orchestra the Swan. Yes, he’s on the road a lot.But it hasn’t always been Schumann and Shostakovich all the time for the cellist and conductor. In fact, he was a pretty serious rocker during his teens and college years. He blames it on Brian May, specifically, on Queen’s “News of the World” album ‑ yeah, the one with “We Will Rock You.”He was 12 years old. He bought a guitar and played in a rock band, in addition to studying cello, through high school. It was fun stuff that he fully intended to ditch for more serious, longhair pursuits. But by the time he unpacked his bags at Indiana University in the mid-‘80s, where he would study cello performance, he ended up playing in two successful regional rock bands: The Watchmen, an acid-funk band, and the Screaming Yardvaarks, both of which imploded just as they were attracting the attention of A&R guys, both of which never lasted long enough to put out a proper album.The latter achieved “somewhat legendary status” in southern Indiana with the single 
(Mount Epomeo from the Covo dei Borboni, home of Ischia Chamber Music Festival)Of course, we’re called Ensemble Epomeo because the group came together here on the slopes of Mount Epomeo, the stunning volcano at the heart of Ischia, during last year’s festival. Our original mission was just to play one piece- the Schnittke String Trio. What an unbelievable piece to start with! As last year’s festival drew to a close, David, our violist mentioned that, given how well the rehearsals for the Schnittke had gone, we might actually have the makings of a trio and suggested we try to organize a few more concerts.All three of us have played in a lot of groups over the years, so we all were more than aware of what the odds are of a group of three players, no matter how good and no matter how simpatico, being or becoming a “real” string trio. The odds of failure are pretty high. Still, if you’re lucky enough to play with good colleagues to fail is to still be pretty good, so we all agreed to give it a shot.For me, the reason I was hesitant and the reason I decided to give it a shot is one and the same- the fact that we’re dealing with string trio, which I think of as by far the most challenging genre in chamber music. It’s more exposed than a quartet, the parts are more difficult (composers mostly think in four voices, so in trio, somebody is almost always playing 2 parts at once), and the repertoire is slanted towards the most difficult corners of classical music- big Mozart, early Beethoven and Schubert. Having just done Schnittke, there is no guarantee Beethoven will also click.On the other hand, I’ve played in wonderful quartets and piano trios where we had enough time and opportunity to have a good run, find a sound and cover some repertoire. I’ve been pining for another quartet for over 10 years now since Masala finished up, and had ruefully assumed that ship had sailed, and had never really thought about string trio, but now that we’re at it, I’m excited to explore the genre. There are some advantages to this genre over string quartet and piano trio. It’s amazing how much calmer rehearsals feel with 3 than with 4 musicians, and how much easier it is to play when all 3 instruments are string instruments, as opposed to 2 strings and a 9 foot cannon called a Steinway.We’ve been doing some concerts here and there throughout the year, but this week has been our second big immersion since last year, and we’ve got a busy month or so of concerts in the UK and USA coming up. There are two things in particular I am enjoying- first, the repertoire. We’re playing the astounding trio of Gideon Klein, the last work he finished before he was shipped to Auschwitz, and the Krasa Dance for Trio, also composed at Teresenstadt just before his deportation. More and more, I hesitate to mention the circumstances surrounding the composition of these pieces because I don’t think they need any special sympathy or consideration as pure music. These are major, major masterpieces. I’m sure that had Klein lived he would have been one of the most important figures in 20th c. music, on a par with Bartok, Shostakovich and Stravinsky.I’m also enjoying the different ground rules that come with being in a group. Often at festivals, the rehearsal dynamics are alarmingly similar to the dynamics of an orchestra rehearsal. Expect good preparation, insist on accountability, but on the other hand, work in broad contours, don’t micromanage or nitpick, and try not to pick at scabs. In a “real” group you all agree that we’re not just focusing on preparing a given work, but on creating a shared concept of sound and interpretation- investing the next concert while preparing this one.What this really means is that we do a lot, a lot, a lot of tuning work. I’m like a pig in shit doing all this intonation work. As a conductor, one has to remember you can only do so much tuning before revolt breaks out. Even then, the institutional dynamics of orchestra rehearsal mean that tuning work often feels (in spite of the best of intentions from the conductor) corrective and sometimes adversarial and punitive. The focus ends up being on the result. Also, with all but the best orchestras, there are always bound to be one or two unsolvable problems in a wind section…In chamber music rehearsals, the focus is on the process, and in particular on giving everyone a chance to understand the harmonic function of what they are playing. That means you’re not just getting things to sound “not out of tune,” but on getting to understand, at a very microscopic level, how each composer works with notes, intervals and chords. I can’t think of a better reason to call three musicians a group (other than the groupies).