By ARIADNE WILL
Sentinel Staff Writer
Sisters Madalyn Parnas Mӧller and Cicely Parnas are used to performing together.
And the COVID-19 pandemic has created a new opportunity for the two, who will be performing in a prerecorded concert for the Sitka Music Festival 6 p.m. Feb. 11.
Called Duo Parnas when playing together — both sisters also have solo careers — Madalyn plays violin and Cicely plays cello.
“This is one of our first virtual concerts that we’re presenting as Duo Parnas,” Madalyn told the Sentinel. “It’s a collection of prerecorded pieces that Cicely and I have put together.”
The two are presenting a variety of pieces for Sitka Music Festival audiences, three of which have been arranged by the sisters.
“There’s going to be some premiers on this show, there’s going to be one of the landmark pieces for violin and cello by Zoltán Kodály,” said Artistic Director Zuill Bailey.
Running about 80 minutes, Cicely said the concert has something for everyone.
“Two of the pieces are my own arrangements of Bach and Saint-Saens,” she said in an email. “Another piece is a brand-new work for cello and piano that was a Christmas present commission for family friends.”
Cicely Parnas and Madalyn Parnas Möller make up Duo Parnas. (Photo from duoparnas.com)
The concert is a part of the fall/winter concert series put on by the Sitka Music Festival. Concerts have been released once a month since October, and are free to audiences. The Feb. 11 concert will be the second-to-last in the series.
“(We’re) just giving folks a bit of music during this pandemic winter,” said Kayla Boettcher, executive director of the festival.
Bailey said he considers both sisters a part of the Sitka Music Festival’s “Alaska family.”
The two have participated in many of the festival’s events, including the Sitka International Cello Seminar and the Winter Classics series in Anchorage, as well as the summer music festival.
The two — now in their mid-twenties — were first invited to participate in the festival as teens, which Bailey says was “unheard of” in the festival’s history.
“They are the quintessential example of all things good that are going to come out of this very unique year,” he said. “My goal was to inspire them to think with their exceptional talent to put a program together for us that would show the people who’ve been around a little longer than them what people are dealing with, in fusing what we’ve learned during this time.”
This online format is different from what audiences may be used to, but Cicely said prerecording the performance has provided the sisters with new musical opportunities.
“We were able to take advantage of the technology available to us to do things like have Madalyn play both the violin and piano parts on one piece,” she said. “And I collaborated with a music producer to write a genre-bending song that incorporates synthesizers and stringed instruments.”
But even with its perks, prerecording has presented new challenges for the musicians.
“I think that one of the biggest changes since the pandemic started is that we’re all recording ourselves so much more than we used to,” Madalyn said. “When you prepare for a performance you have to practice performing, and when you prepare to do a recording, you have to practice recording.”
She said that for her, this looked like integrating recording with her usual practice time. This was also a different kind of recording from those she was making before the pandemic.
“It’s important to remember that this is the type of recording that’s never been done before,” she said. “This is not the type of recording that’s supposed to sit on a shelf until you want to take it out and listen to it, but actually something that people are interacting with and visually engaged with.”
Madalyn has been flying to Cicely’s home in Minneapolis to create the Feb. 11 concert.
“We’ve been doing all our recording together,” Madalyn said. “This is my second trip to Minneapolis to do these recordings, but we’ve had a lot of distance recording and distance discussion to flesh out the process.”
The concert will be available at sitkamusicfestival.org beginning at 6 p. m. Thursday, Feb. 11. The password to the performance is SITKA. It is sponsored by Venneberg Insurance, the Atwood Foundation, and Alaska Airlines.
