Photo by Sian Richards
Alison Mackay is the recipient of the 2013 Betty Webster Award for her contribution to orchestral life in Canada. She has played violone and double bass with Tafelmusik since 1979 and is the creator of a number of multi-disciplinary and cross-cultural programs for the orchestra. Her creations have toured around the world and her Galileo Project has been “honoured in Australia with a Helpmann Award for distinguished artistic achievement, and by the International Astronomical Union with the naming of an asteroid, “197856 Tafelmusik.” I interviewed her in January, 2015.
James Strecker: The first of your multi-media creations I was fortunate to see was The Galileo Project and I got the feeling that you like to dive into an era or world and create from within it with a sensitivity to its many dimensions. I won’t use the term creative process, but is this what happens or is it something else?
AM: First of all, thank you so much for your interest in the Tafelmusik special projects! Yes, after the basic concept for a project is chosen, I spend a long time listening to repertoire and reading about cultural history in the University of Toronto library. For instance, I knew that our House of Dreams concert would be about painting and music in the 17th and 18th centuries, but beyond this I hoped to find a thread to give the concert more cohesion and focus. After doing quite a bit of reading about key players in the world of baroque art dealers, I began to see a pattern emerge about private collectors who also had musical connections and I decided to try and give our audience members a taste of the experience of being guests in the homes of art and music lovers.
Because I was able to choose five homes from the period that still exist today, we were able to forge partnerships with each of the present-day owners/administrators and we were able to go and take photographs of original rooms. Then we acquired high resolution images of the paintings that were originally in the rooms (all now in museums) and digitally put them back on the walls of the rooms. The final step was to put musicians playing live into the rooms, so that it would be possible to experience an amazing painting by Watteau at the same time as hearing the latest music by Handel.
JS: What kind human connection did you sense with the composers and with the authors of the texts recited in The Galileo Project?
AM: The composers and the scientists whose texts were recited in the concert represent the kind of striving of the human spirit that Galileo mused on in his Dialogue on the Two World Systems when he spoke about the written word and by extension written music being able to communicate important ideas and profound creations across barriers of time and place. At the same time, the fascinating detail of what scientists and composers ate and wore, what kind of paintings they loved and what kind of bequests they made in their wills helps us to enter their world in a more personal way and form an impression of their everyday lives. It’s fun for the musicians and the audience alike, I think, to feel this connection to the rich tapestry that the music we love is a part of.
JS: Is one correct in imagining that you changed in how you see life as a result of creating The Galileo Project and your other productions, or were these creations more of a continuum of who you already are?
AM: I have definitely changed! It’s been so energizing to work on these projects with my amazing colleagues and so inspiring to come in contact with theatre designers, scholars and scientists around the world. These projects are very much the product of the internet age since it’s now possible to immediately identify and correspond with experts around the world in many fields. My world view has been opened up tremendously and I am very humbled by the generosity of so many people who wanted to contribute knowledge or images to the projects.
As you can imagine, it’s very thrilling to have a chance to meet some of these people in our travels. For instance, in our recent tour of the Galileo Project to the U.S. there was a man in the audience at Penn State who was the co-founder of the Hubble Heritage Project and he was thrilled to see some of his own beautiful images of the night sky in the context of the performance.
JS: For productions like House of Dreams, the Tafelmusik musicians must memorize nearly two hours of music, so what is the impact on the individual and group by having to play without scores before them?
AM: Memorizing whole concerts of music has had a huge effect on our orchestral life. The countless hours people spend alone or with two or three colleagues working on sections of pieces; the experience of being able to communicate on stage without the barrier of music stands; the possibility of moving around while playing to be in the prime position for the ensemble needs of each piece -these aspects have all made us grow musically and become closer as friends. As you can imagine, there was a lot of hesitation about taking on such a huge task the first time we did it for the Galileo Project, but now we are busy memorizing our third programme, with all the music by Bach, and the musicians are so enthusiastic about the freedom we all feel in the end being able to perform in this way.
JS: I’ve always found visiting the homes of composers –Beethoven, Schubert, Haydn, Brahms and, more relevant here, Handel-to be both a thrilling and a profound experience. Could you tell us how it felt to give music a geographical location in the European houses you chose as well as a connection to specific paintings of the period?
AM: I completely agree that there is something very moving about being in the little study where Handel composed his oratorios or seeing where he slept in his red four-poster bed. I find it even more moving to perform a piece of music in the church or hall for which it was riginally written. We had that experience this summer playing the Bach Magnificat in the St. Thomas church in Leipzig.
JS: Speaking of buildings, what do each of Trinity-St. Paul’s and Koerner Hall do for the music you are playing there? Which do you prefer, or does it depend upon the music?
AM: Koerner Hall is a beautiful venue with gorgeous acoustics, particularly for the larger orchestra we have when we play Beethoven. But I think Trinity-St. Paul’s will always be our first love for baroque repertoire. The sound in the renovated space is incredibly beautiful and the seating in the hall makes us feel such a close connection with our beloved audience.
JS: The blurb for your new work, -J. S. Bach: The Circle of Creation -creation asks, “Who are the baroque artisans – the papermakers, violin carvers, and string spinners – who helped J.S. Bach realize his genius?” and one assumes that the answers will be revealed in May of 2015 when the work premieres. This sounds like a fascinating project, so please tell us about the work and how it developed.
AM: The Circle of Creation examines Bach’s material world and all the things that had to happen between the moment a musical idea came into his mind to the point of an actual performance for the public. So we take it step by step, first learning about the family of paper makers in a tiny Bohemian village in the NW corner of the Czech Republic who supplied Bach’s paper for five years -this is known because of research into watermarks in paper- and how the paper was made. We learn about how Bach made his ink and began composing by ruling lines on a page with a five-pointed “rastrum” to make manuscript paper. We learn about the Leipzig instrument makers who worked with Bach to create his instruments and we actually see a cello being created, specially by Quentin Playfair, from the plain cut wood to the finished instrument. This process will unfold while Christina Mahler and Allen Whear play some of Bach’s most exquisite music for solo cello. We’ll see amazing footage of gut strings being made from sheep intestines and the inner workings of harpsichord jacks. We’ll also learn about the financial aspects of musical life in Leipzig -the tax base which provided the funding for instruments, salaries and housing for the town musicians, and the debt which the city owed to highly-taxed Jewish merchants at the famous Leipzig trade fairs.
I’ve been enormously grateful to the Bach Museum in Leipzig for helping me with this project with images and advice. And while we were orchestra-in-residence at the Bach Festival in Leipzig last June, we spent a day filming the streets and buildings that Bach would have known. I’m hoping that the audience will be able to have a sense of what it was like to be a music lover in Bach’s Leipzig.
JS: What were your feelings about Bach at the outset of your career and what are they now?
AM: Bach has been my favourite composer since I was a child, long before I knew many of his works or anything about period performance. And now, the more I learn bit by bit about his music, the more astonished I am at his range of emotions and the complexity of his writing. Bach is especially rewarding for double-bass players because he writes more complex and interesting lines than any other composer of the time. You always feel that, as well as being a foundation for the orchestra, you are also a melody player in dialogue with every other player.
JS: I can’t leave without knowing what the initial inspiration was in each case for The Galileo Project, House of Dreams, and J. S. Bach: The Circle of Creation. What kicked each project into gear?
AM: The idea for the Galileo Project was proposed by eminent astronomer and long-time Tafelmusik supporter Dr. John Percy of the University of Toronto. He and the Dominion Astronomer Dr. James Hesser were part of the organizing committee for the Canadian activities of the International Year of Astronomy which marked the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first use of the astronomical telescope. These two amazing scientists and wonderful friends had enjoyed some of our earlier narrated Tafelmusik concerts which had placed our repertoire in a historical context and they thought that we might like to experiment with the world of 17th and 18th century astronomers.
The Galileo Project was our first experiment with memorizing the music and staging the concert with a theatrical set and lighting design and when I saw the emotional impact that the combination of music, words and images had, I thought it would be very exciting to do a show about baroque painting. And set and lighting designer Glenn Davidson, projection designer Raha Javanfar, and stage director Marshall Pynkoski made such a wonderful team that I wanted to work with them again.
With the third project I thought it would be wonderful to be able to immerse ourselves in the music and world of Bach and at the same time introduce the audience to the way our instruments are built and how they work with each other in the orchestra.
JS: Any idea what your next projects will be?
AM: Our next project is the creation of a coffee house in the year 1740, which will magically transform back and forth from a cafe in Leipzig to one in the Syrian city of Damascus. Both of these important trade cities had a rich culture of coffee-house life where stories were told, music was performed and the daily newspaper was read aloud to patrons. We’ll have a guest ensemble of Arabic musicians and two narrators -there’s a great deal known about the social context for coffee drinking in both cities, so I think it will make for an interesting script.
JS: You have been with Tafelmusik for thirty-five years –congratulations- and I wonder what developments and changes you have perceived in the personality of the orchestra over that time. How have you developed as a result of being part of Tafelmusik?
AM: Yes I’ve been unbelievably lucky to be part of this wonderful ensemble for so long. We’ve had great opportunities for recording, touring and interesting projects since the beginning, but I think as the years have gone on there has been tremendous artistic and musical growth. Each musician in the ensemble has so much to offer in terms of knowledge, wisdom and performance, and Jeanne Lamon has been so wonderful at keeping the whole cohesive but allowing others to have strong opinions and make their contributions. For me personally it’s been a tremendous time of artistic growth because I was given so many programming opportunities.
It’s an exciting time as we discern our new path, seeking a new leader, and it will be fascinating to see what adventures the new person will take us on.
JS: Is it true that Tafelmusik has been nominated as the most magical band on the planet?
AM: Not that I know of! There are so many magical bands on the planet! But we did have an asteroid named after us, “197856 Tafelmusik – and that was very exciting!”