By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer
In the Uncommon Music Festival, the term “uncommon” applies not just to the music, organizers say.
“We wanted to come and perform music that was less often heard or had never been heard before,” said Ariadne Lih, one of the organizers and performers. “This is certainly an uncommon place and we were inspired by this place to present pieces that we wouldn’t get a chance to present in other places, and really dig into them and give them a platform to be heard.”
Uncommon Music Festival singers, from left, Ariadne Lih, Sylvia Leith and
Will Doreza rehearse Tuesday afternoon at St. Peter’s By-the-Sea church.
(Sentinel Photo by James Poulson)
The festival was founded several years ago by vocalists Lih and Nate Barnett. Lih is a soprano, and Barnett, a tenor. In a concert series that starts here Thursday, the two will be joined by Sylvia Leith, a mezzo-soprano; baritone Will Doreza and two instrumentalists – organist and pianist Jacob Reed and Joshua Stauffer, who plays guitar and theorbo.
Five free events are scheduled.
7 p.m. Thursday – Theorbo recital by Stauffer at St. Peter’s by the Sea church. (A theorbo is similar to a lute.)
7 p.m. Friday – “A Pleasant Thought, Organ Meditations by Price and Sweelinck,” with Jacob Reed playing the historic 1844 Kessler organ at Sitka Lutheran Church.
2 p.m. Saturday – “Music for Sitka, Alaska,” a vocal ensemble concert at St. Peter’s.
7 p.m. Saturday – Nature Music, at the Sitka National Historical Park, where vocalists will sing as they walk through the trees, and the audience walks with them.
1 p.m. Sunday – Women in the Church, a celebration of women and faith throughout history, featuring female composers. Rev. Julie Platson selects the readings.
The series is characterized by performance of pieces commissioned by the festival and works that fit well with the performers and the place, Lih said. But it is also about continuing to build connections in the community and with the land, she said.
“Every year we’ve had wonderful artists join us to come to Sitka and make music with people here,” Lih said. “Every year we’ve come back the festival has grown and our relationship to the people and the land has deepened. It’s been a tough two years not coming back to Sitka – we are just overjoyed to be back.”
The history of the festival goes back to 2015, when Nate Barnett, a recent Yale University graduate in music, was a Sitka Fellow on the Sitka Fine Arts Camp campus. During his summer fellowship, he wrote “The Good Day” for a quartet of singers and a string quartet.
“Except we didn’t have a cello, so Roger Schmidt played trombone on the cello part,” Barnett said. “And it was really fun. Rhiannon (Guevin) sang soprano, Andrew (Hames) sang bass, Lauren Wild played violin ... Ellie Schmidt screened a film.“
The concert turned out to be special in several ways, leading Barnett to take the step of organizing a festival.
“I think there was just this energy at that concert,” Barnett said. “So many people came and were interested in the creative work we were doing that was frankly quite unusual, and it made me realize that this was a place that would be really welcoming to all sorts of new ideas.”
He approached Lih, a soprano and fellow music major at Yale, about taking the idea further.
“We had sung together in various choirs, and I had performed a very beautiful piece by Nate,” Lih said. “We both liked each other a lot and had a lot of respect for each other’s intelligence, and he convinced me. Since then we’ve been working together to make this happen every year with just a couple of exceptions.”
The two spend time in the selection of composers and music, which this year will include a commissioned piece. Lih said the festival may feature pieces audiences are not familiar with, but that is less of a focus than it was in the festival’s earlier years.
“It just makes more sense to us to select pieces not on the basis of what they aren’t but on the basis of what they are, which is pieces that deserve to be heard, and are going to feel meaningful for our ensemble, in this place,” she said. “Also that audiences will enjoy.”
“There are a lot of wonderful composers from the 20th century and now who are not white male composers and we tend to try to spotlight their work – that kind of music,” Barnett said.
“It’s fair to say when you attend our events you will hear music that is by women, Black people, queer people, Asian people – much more than on average concert programming,” Lih said. “That’s just an important value to us as a festival.”
“Yeah,” agreed Barnett.
