ELIZABETHTOWN/LAKE PLACID — Trillium Chamber Players perform two concerts this weekend featuring Schumann’s profound song cycle “Dichterliebe” on the first half of the program and “Cascade,” avant garde jazz, on the second half.
Saturday’s 7 p.m. concert is at the Hand House in Elizabethtown, and Sunday’s 2 p.m. concert is at St. Eustace Church in Lake Placid.
The last song cycle Timothy Mount played was Franz Schubert’s “Winterreise,” which some considered the greatest song cycle ever written.
“I found this singer in Lake Placid, Tom Stork, and I think we’re going to do the Schubert again sometime, but before we did, I wanted to try the ‘Dichterliebe,’ which is another one of the great song cycles but a little bit different the way it is written,” Mount said. “The piano part is very important. It’s not that hard, but interpretatively, I found it challenging because I literally have to pay attention to every note that I play because there are all kinds of internal melodies and things going on.
“In fact, the piano plays a very important role in this cycle, more so than in the Schubert ‘Winterreise.’ Many of the songs end with just piano playing for quite a while — the singing stops, and the piano just keeps going on with some of the themes, sometimes new material, sometimes reminiscing from previous songs. So it’s a fun piece for the pianist.”
Stork relocated to Lake Placid from the Washington, D.C., area a few years ago.
“He’s sung with me on a couple of other concerts. He’s a lot of fun to work with. His German is very good, he’s got a big voice, but he’s able to pull it back in those places that he needs to in the song cycle,” he said.
“He’s very involved in the St. Eustace Church … They have a nice piano, and of course, the Hand House … has a very nice piano, too. That’s always the challenge, I think, that not everybody appreciates. For pianists, we never get to play our own instrument like everybody else. You got to get in there. You got to get used to it. You got to rehearse in the place where the piano is. Every piano is different. Sometimes they’re good. Sometimes they aren’t,” he said.
The second half of the program features John Blevins on jazz trumpet and Toby Couture on keys. Mount heard them perform at Capisce Coffee and Espresso Bar in Lake Placid.
“I said, ‘Well, this would be a crazy juxtaposition of works on this program,’ but I thought it would be a lot of fun,” he said.
SERENDIPITY
Born in Flint, Michigan, Blevins grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana. At Indiana University, he majored in trumpet performance and jazz studies then moved to New York City in 2009, where he lived for 15 years.
Blevins picked up a Grammy Award by chance when he was living in Brooklyn.
“I was home one day, and my friend called me — another trumpet player, a guy named Brandon Ridenour, who played with Canadian Brass and lots of great people, an amazing musician. He called me and said that they needed someone last minute to join, like, a mini-orchestra that was being recorded for Esperanza Spalding’s album called ‘12 Little Spells.’ So I just hopped on over there and went to the recording studio in Red Hook, I think they were in,” he said.
“We spent the day there. It was really, just one part of that record, and then I found out the next year that she had won the Best Jazz Vocal Grammy for that year, so that was cool, yeah. I feel like after a certain amount of time, it’s just, like, you’re lucky to be at the right time at the right place and be able to be available for something. Even a small part on something like that was pretty exciting. It was very beautiful music.”
A NoHo encounter landed Blevins on Spike Lee’s radar.
“I did a musical at the Public Theater. Toward the end of the run, Spike told us that he wanted to record the music. He also produced the album of the music, then he used one of the songs from the musical,” he said. “We made, like, a music video together with him. He used the video almost like a commercial for this clothing company called Moncler.
“It was fun to be in a recording studio with Spike Lee and him kind of give his two cents on the arrangements and stuff. We shot his music video in front of the Plaza Hotel with him and his team and everything. They had us all decked out in Moncler. It was fun, and the song is great. It was a song called ‘Brave (Suffering Beautiful).’ It’s gorgeous, kind of reggae-influenced song. The show was called ‘The Total Bent.’ It’s sort of related to that quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when it says the arc of the universe bends toward justice, or something like that.”
Two years ago, Blevins relocated to Keene when he took a job at the Lake Placid Elementary School.
“I started out as a trumpet player and guitarist, and I’m still a trumpet player and a guitarist. Along the way, I got experience doing lots of freelance work on trumpet like creative projects and commercial music and theater work and became a recording engineer and producer,” he said. “I started to play other instruments and write a lot of music and arrange a lot of music. I was always teaching in some capacity and just continued teaching more and more as a teaching artist for elementary-school age kids in Brooklyn. I really enjoyed, and it kind of inspired me to get a state certification and find more of a full-time position.”
At Lake Placid Elementary, Blevins teaches general music for grades K-5; band for fourth and fifth grades; chorus for third, fourth and fifth grades; and runs the Guitar Club for fourth and fifth grades.
“So beginning band, which is fun. It’s like going back to my roots where I started playing music as, like, a trumpet player in Indiana,” he said.
Blevins is pleasantly surprised that he’s performing a lot again in his new home.
“I have two young kids, and my youngest was born in 2023, so kind of like following COVID and the birth of my two kids, like, I wasn’t playing as much. We moved here, and I’ve just started to play again. There’s a rich, kind of big community of musicians and artists up here. I keep meeting new faces and stuff, and I keep playing and trying to say yes to things,” he said.
INSTAGRAM
Toby Couture found Blevins’ music on Instagram.
“He saw that I lived up here, and he had recently moved back here after growing up here but being away for years. I got offered an opportunity to play weekly at Capisce Coffee in Lake Placid, so I asked him to play with me, and then we played that gig all last year and kind of worked up this duo project. So now, we’re going to do this concert to highlight some of that,” Blevins said.
“Cascade” will feature original music composed by the duo solo and together.
“Probably a little bit more my original music and then a couple of Toby’s, but all original pieces, all rooted in jazz improvisation and styles,” he said. “He will be playing electric piano and acoustic piano, and I will be playing trumpet with electronic effects. It’s music for improvisation. It’s a challenge, in some ways, to play this style of music with just two musicians. It changes sort of the roles that we have in terms of keeping the form of the song and making it happen, sort of.
“He and I have written a lot of music and played a lot of music that relies on drums and bass being part of our rhythm section, so without those instruments, it really changes what we have to do to make it sound good and feel comfortable for each other.”