At the Marion Opera House (2012)

CelloBello

The first performance presented by the Jesselson/Fugo Duo was in October 1981 in Marion, SC at the Marion Opera House. Similar to other buildings of the age throughout SC and the south built with the same moniker, this functional two story brick classical revival structure in downtown Marion was more of a municipal activity center than it was an opera house. As it did the year it opened in 1892, this facility has annually hosted as many criminals as music performances, as many bakery and butcher shop customers as operas, and served as many community citizens stricken by home fires as it has patrons of theatre and visual art openings. While its modern manifestation is a civic center where meetings and auditoria events are held, it has served a great variety of common good capacities over the decades.
I was so struck by the analog between impact that the Jesselson/Fugo Duo has had on music audiences over their 30 year history and the impact that the Opera House as had on Marion County’s citizens for 120 years, that I decided to let my impressions of the place impact and influence my own conception of the work these fellows asked me to write for them celebrating their 30th anniversary. So, each of the work’s three movements has a very specific former public use of the Opera House as its title and inspiration.
For a number of years a very important civic event in Marion was held at the House–The Pink Tea. It was at the pink tea that Marion selected its annual participants who would be sent to represent the community at a debutante fashion event in New York City. The first movement of my new duo for Bob and Charles is inspired by the formality and etiquette for which this tea was locally famous. Early in the Opera House’s history a part of the main floor was devoted to an almost old-west-style courtroom and jail. Persons accused of every conceivable crime were tried in this courtroom and many of them served time in its long-gone jail cell behind the “bench.” A lament for the Duo, both laconic and sarcastic, is the a result of my imagining what such an occurrence might have been like in this portion of the Opera House. Marioners tell me that the firehouse that was also in a part of the ground floor saved many a burning building in Marion in the early years of the 20th century, and what better way to capture the madhouse of volunteers rushing to a town blaze from the old-fashioned fire station than with a circus march. The Duo presents the march, complete with a few surprises, to close the piece as its third movement.
Tayloe Harding

Subjects:

Tags:

AUTHOR

CelloBello

CelloBello founder Paul Katz is known to concertgoers the world over as cellist of the Cleveland Quartet, which during an international career of 26 years made more than 2500 appearances on four continents, in all of the music capitals, great concert halls and music festivals of the world. As a member of this celebrated ensemble from 1969-1995, he performed at the White House and on many television shows including “CBS Sunday Morning,” NBC’s “Today Show,” “The Grammy Awards” (in 1973, the first classical musicians ever to appear on that show,) and was seen in “In The Mainstream: The Cleveland Quartet,” a one hour documentary televised across the U.S. and Canada.

Mr. Katz has received many honors, including the American String Teacher’s Association “Artist-Teacher of the Year 2003;” Indiana University’s “Chevalier du Violoncelle,” awarded for distinguished achievements and contributions to the world of cello playing and teaching; Chamber Music America’s highest honor, The Richard M. Bogomolny National Service Award, awarded for a lifetime of distinguished service in the field of chamber music; and an Honorary Doctorate of Musical Arts from Albright College. Mr. Katz served for six years as President of Chamber Music America, the national service organization in the United States that has in its membership virtually all of the country’s 600 professional chamber music ensembles, as well as hundreds of presenting organizations, music festivals and managers. As an author, he has appeared in numerous publications and wrote the liner notes for the Cleveland Quartet’s three-volume set of the complete Beethoven Quartets on RCA Red Seal.

Mr. Katz has appeared as soloist in New York, Cleveland, Toronto, Detroit, Los Angeles, and other cities throughout North America. He was a student of Gregor Piatigorsky, Janos Starker, Bernard Greenhouse, Gabor Rejto and Leonard Rose. In 1962 he was selected nationally to play in the historic Pablo Casals Master Class in Berkeley, California and was a prizewinner in the Munich and Geneva Competitions. Of special interest to cellists are his recordings of the Dohnanyi Cello Sonata for ProArte Records and the Cleveland Quartet’s recording on Sony Classical of the Schubert two-cello quintet with Yo-Yo Ma. The Cleveland Quartet has nearly 70 recordings to its credit on RCA Victor, Telarc International, Sony, Philips and ProArte. These recording have earned many distinctions including the all-time best selling chamber music release of Japan, 11 Grammy nominations, Grammy Awards for Best Chamber Music Recording and Best Recorded Contemporary Composition in 1996, and “Best of the Year” awards from Time Magazine and Stereo Review.

In September of 2001, Mr. Katz joined the faculty of The New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, following five years at Rice University in Houston and twenty years (1976-1996) of teaching at the Eastman School of Music. He has mentored many of the fine young string quartets on the world’s stages today including the Ariel, Biava, Cavani, Chester, Harlem, Jupiter, Kuss, Lafayette, Maia, Meliora, Omer, Parker, T’ang and Ying Quartets. One of America’s most sought after cello teachers, his cello students, in addition to membership in many of the above quartets, have achieved international careers with solo CD’s on Decca, EMI, Channel Classics and Sony Classical. They occupy positions in many of the world’s major orchestras including principal chairs of orchestras such as Detroit, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Oslo, Norway and Osaka, Japan, and are members of many American symphony orchestras such as Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, National Symphony, Pittsburgh, Rochester and St. Louis.

Mr. Katz has been a participant at many of the world’s major summer music festivals and schools including twenty years at the Aspen Festival, Marlboro Festival, the Yale Summer School of Chamber Music, the Perlman Music Program, Yellow Barn, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival in Germany, ProQuartet in France, Domaine Forget, Orford, Toronto Summer Music, and the Banff Center for the Arts in Canada, the Steans Institute of The Ravinia Festival, The Heifetz Institute, and is a Director of the Shouse Artist Institute of the Great Lakes Chamber Festival. His hundreds of master classes worldwide include many of the major music schools of North and South America, Europe, Israel, Japan and China. Mr. Katz frequently sits on the juries of international cello and chamber music competitions, including the Leonard Rose International Cello Competition, the Gyeongnam International Cello Competition in Korea, and the international string quartet competitions of Banff, London, Munich, Graz and Geneva.

Paul Katz currently resides in Boston, MA with his wife, pianist Pei-Shan Lee.

Mr. Katz plays an Andrea Guarneri cello dated 1669.

See More From the Author