Arts Alive San Antonio

BY JASMINA WELLINGHOFF, Editor

Donald Mason arrived in San Antonio to take the job of executive director of the Classical Music Institute just before the pandemic.

“I got to witness just one concert before we had to cancel the rest of the season,” said the Midland, TX, native who spent most of his professional life in Lexington, KY. “That was Beethoven’s 250^th anniversary, so it was really unfortunate.”

But he was glad he landed in San Antonio. Growing up in Texas, he knew that the San Antonio-Austin area was “really pretty.” Also, I came here in 2016 for a venue managers conference and I saw the new Tobin Center,” he said. “I loved the Tobin and I really enjoyed San Antonio. I thought, if I ever moved back to Texas, I want to be in San Antonio.”

When CMI offered him the job of executive director, he did not hesitate to accept it. What appealed to him is that CMI was both a performing and an educational organization and he felt that San Antonio supports the arts “in a heavy way.” The fact that the nonprofit was also a resident company of the Tobin, was a big selling point. “It’s one of the best venues in the country, it’s a gem,” he said.

For many San San Antonians, however, CMI is a bit of a mystery, rarely spoken of or written about in public. Founded in 2009 by musician, composer and firefighter Paul Montalvo, as the Chamber Orchestra of San Antonio (COSA), the organization did not have its first concert until 2012, but after that first one, it kept on playing, keeping chamber music alive in the city for years. It filled the gap between the big symphony concerts and the small quartets and quintets that were and still are quite active in San Antonio.

One interesting thing about COSA is that its musicians come from all over the world – Spain, Romania, Bulgaria, Japan, S. Korea, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and, of course, the USA, with only a few who live in San Antonio. The guest conductor for this season, Gemma New, hails from New Zealand while the resident conductor, Leonardo Pineda, is from Venezuela. Musicians from different countries and cultures, all speak the same “language.”

“Quite a few of our musicians are from Venezuela,” Mason pointed out. “They got their start through El Sistema, which is a Venezuelan state-sponsored music education program that puts instruments in kids’ hands, supports private lessons and gives them opportunities to play. The idea behind it is that these students will not become just better musicians but will develop work habits and discipline that will make them more successful in life.”

In fact, the motto of the massive program is “Music for Social Change.” Many former El Sistema students have grown up to be music leaders across Europe and the Americas. It sounds like San Antonio audiences have been missing out on a great opportunity to hear high-level musicianship right in our neck of the woods. In fact, Rick Frederick, the director of Resident Company & Community Engagement at the Tobin, said the CMI concerts were his favorite. Today, a number of these musicians reside in this country.

Named “Forbidden and Forgotten,” the 2021-22 CMI season started last November and will continue in the upcoming months. The season name refers to composers who “have been forbidden like in Nazi Germany or in Russia, or exiled, but also the forgotten ones,” explained the executive director.

“There are pieces that are rarely performed, and some that are very difficult to perform, but also, few music organizations play in the chamber style very often. So, it’s usually either the big symphonies or small quartets, and the middle ground doesn’t get covered as much,” noted Mason. “It gives us an opportunity to play repertoire you won’t hear anywhere else.”

The format of the CMI season is also a bit unusual. As mentioned, there’s one concert in November and one in March, and then “we head into our typical CMI Ascend Summer Programming, when our faculty artists come to teach and play a slew of shows.”

This year’s spring concert, “DON’T FORGET (US) AMERICANS,” is scheduled for March 5, with a bunch of others following up in June. In keeping with the theme of the season, the March concert will be devoted to three, little known American women composers: Lori Laitman, Gloria Coates and Florence Price.  The June festival opens with “RUSSIAN-ARMENIAN AFFINITY” on June 11, featuring compositions by Dmitri Shostakovich, Edvard Mirzojan and Elena Firsova. This concert sounds very promising. While Shostakovich is famous, the other two are not, though Mirzojan is a highly respected Armenian composer who liked to integrate his people’s folk melodies into his work. He also studied in Russia.

Another all-female concert is “FEMME FANTASTIQUE” (June 16) spotlighting Slavic women composers such as Sofia Gubaidulina (Russian/Tatar), Sylvie Bodorova (Czech) and Dora Pejacevic (Croatian).

And there’s a lot more, including music By Kurt Weill, Paul Hindemith, Erwin Schulhoff, Arthur Bliss, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Joseph Holbrooke, and others. Altogether, the June concerts present an incredible opportunity to hear music new to our ears!  The concerts will take place in a number of different halls around the city. To see the entire lineup, go to www.cmi-sa.org. Things may change some next year, with the concerts distributed more evenly throughout the year.

In addition to performances, CMI also emphasizes music education through several programs, such as CMI ASCEND, a two-week intense learning for students ages 8-18, as well as a newly established CMI Teaching Artist Fellowship Program, that bridges the gap between education and performance for advanced students who will get to perform alongside the faculty pros. (June 11-25). Physically, the ASCEND classes take place at the Edgewood ISD Fine Arts Academy. Mason indicated that the goal is to expand the educational effort to a year-round program.

So, is he a musician, too, in his spare time? We asked.

“I am a vocalist, I sang in an A Cappella choir in high school. I also do ‘Hamilton’ reciting (rap),” he said. In fact, his recitative skills will be on display at the Mayor’s Ball on Jan. 29, in honor of Dream Week. But he likes many music genres, including jazz – Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Coltrane – and he mentioned composers such as Mozart, Shostakovich and Paganini.  

And he has a straightforward advice for people who claim not to understand classical music.
“People feel like they need to educate themselves in order to enjoy classical music. I would like to challenge that. Do yourself a favor and just go to a concert. Let the music hit you. See how you feel about classical music after that experience.”