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PACIFIC NORTHWEST POWERHOUSE

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By DAVID GORDON DUKE

The German conductor is having a major impact in Seattle and Vancouver

Early music has become an enduring success story in the Pacific North-west. Organizations in Portland, Seattle, Victoria, and Vancouver now give listeners sophisticated offerings of considerable diversity.

One central player in Seattle and Vancouver is a fairly recent arrival on the scene. Alexander Weimann has become an agent of productive change in both cities as music director of the Seattle Baroque Orchestra and Vancouver’s Pacific Baroque Orchestra.

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Born in Munich in 1965, Weimann was widely educated, studying organ, church music, musicology, theater, medieval Latin, and jazz piano. In his twenties, he taught at Münchner Musikhochschule and developed a considerable reputation in Europe as a harpsichordist and organist. He’s worked with top ensembles such as Tragicomedia, Cantus Cölln, the Freiburger Barockorchester, the Gesualdo Consort, Ensemble Arion, and Les Violons du Roy, and has been featured on more than 100 recordings.

Matthew White, countertenor and artistic director of Early Music Vancouver, is familiar with both the European and the North American early-music performance scenes. He first encountered Weimann years ago when they performed together, and they renewed their acquaintance when both lived in Montreal.

White notes a personal dimension to Weimann’s relocation to Canada: Weimann had met, and was to marry, Chloe Meyers, a baroque violinist from Western Canada.

Family life became increasingly important to Weimann and White as their careers

progressed. White was based in Seattle for a few years and then

moved north to take up the reins of Early Music

Vancouver. Weimann’s performances for that organization made a tremendous impact on Vancouver audiences, and he and Meyers—who

have three children—wanted to be closer to her family in the West. Meanwhile, Marc Destrubé had decided to step down as conductor of the Pacific Baroque Orchestra.

Destrubé was the founding director of the ensemble in 1990. It initially operated as its own organization but maintained close ties with Early Music Vancouver. Under Destrubé’s confident leadership, it became a bulwark of the historically informed performance movement in western Canada. Weimann became the ensemble’s artistic director in 2009 and began making subtle changes. Meyers became PBO concertmaster, and Weimann instituted new artistic directions. He sought out interesting music from little-heard composers while re-committing to masterworks. His creation of programs that flowed as a single, unified whole proved fresh and appealing to Vancouver audiences.

Administrative change followed. The PBO became a “division” of EMV. It maintained its identity with a regular series of concerts but participated in large-scale events under EMV’s auspices, including a Baroque Orchestra Mentorship Program in cooperation with the University of British Columbia. The Canada/ U.S. border notwithstanding, the urban Pacific Northwest—roughly from Eugene, OR, north to Vancouver—has a distinct sense of identity. Weimann became known to other early-music groups in the region, and his success with the Pacific Baroque Orchestra did not go unnoticed.

August Denhard, a lute, baroque guitar, and theorbo player, is executive director of Early Music Seattle and has been with the organization

Alexander Weimann directing Seattle Baroque Orchestra.

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for some eighteen years. First known as the Early Music Guild, EMS has an institutional history fairly similar to that of Early Music Vancouver. “It was started in 1978,” says Denhard, “by amateurs who became enamored of traveling musicians who could demonstrate how things ‘used to be done.’ The Seattle Baroque Orchestra was a professional offshoot of the Guild, then operated independently, but a few years ago it made sense for us to re-incorporate.”

After SBO’s founding directors, violinist Ingrid Matthews and harpsichordist Byron Schenkman, departed, “We had a two-year period of guest directors, and Alex emerged from that pool as someone who hit on all cylinders for us,” says Denhard. “He was far and away the first choice of the players, based on his superb musicianship and his devotion to music, which just shone out at every moment. I think musicians are the first to get that, and our board certainly agreed.” Just as in Vancouver, Weimann’s work has had a real impact.

“He’s been here for three years: word of mouth in such a small musical community is very important, and there has been mounting excitement.”

How has Weimann adapted to his new home on the West Coast? “Well, I used to make fun of the BC car license plates where it says ‘the most beautiful place on earth,’” Weimann says. “As your question correctly implicates, my home town Munich or my later adopted homes Berlin and Montreal are all cities

of the arts and in particular music, so moving to the West Coast held for me anticipation, but also a certain amount of concern. Now, when it comes to everyday living—after overcoming the fact that one needs to make a lot more money to have a decent time—I understand why so few people ever would move away from the Pacific Northwest, or if they do so, why they would come back sooner or later in their lives. It is indeed a very blessed spot.”

Alexander Weimann conducting the Seattle Baroque Orchestra and soloist John Lenti in the world premiere of

Aaron Grad’s Concerto for Electric Theorbo, Strange Seasons.P

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Not that there aren’t certain artistic accommodations that are part of the bargain, says Weimann. “As for the professional aspect, as I get older, I understand more and more that quantity is not what counts, and while there may be a little fewer cultural activities than in other places, namely the East of the continent, I have found the highest quality here, and a group of significant people who share my passion and are striving for the best.”

His artistic persona combines deep scholarly knowledge, remarkable musicianship, and an especially wide perspective. “He has such broad tastes,” says Denhard. “He initially presents as a very

serious, old-style conductor, but when you work with him, you realize he wants to know about everything! Alex addressed the board recently and emphasized that new music is just as important as old music. He’s even been known to play jazz!”

Weimann’s broad tastes were amply demonstrated last season in Vancouver. There were classics by Bach and Handel: St. John Passion to end Vancouver’s summertime Bach Festival and a fine Messiah in December. And there were other more exotic projects, including a remarkable afternoon of 18th-century opera arias from Russia. “Russian White Nights: Opera Arias from 18th Century St. Petersburg” featured Quebec soprano Karina Gauvin in a co-presentation with Vancouver Opera.

The new-old music connection alluded to by Denhard played out in the last two PBO seasons. Weimann and his PBO musicians essayed two seasons of “New Music for Old Instruments” concerts as part of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s annual New Music Festival. The crowd-pleasing highlight was a duo improvisation (on Gershwin!) for piano four hands with Weimann and VSO music director Bramwell Tovey showing off with outrageous good humor and spectacular verve. Weimann has explored new-old connections in Seattle as well, none more explicit than the fall 2017 world premiere of a concerto for electric theorbo by Seattle-based composer Aaron Grad.

It’s all an intrinsic part of Weimann’s artistic curiosity. “I have no inhibition calling the ‘early-music’ community my family, or home, where I grew up and the basics of my sense of musical aesthetics were formed, for example, by playing and hearing Renaissance and Baroque organs all over Europe. I also have never felt Berührungsangst, or fear of contact, when it comes to instruments outside the box of period performance practice.

“After all,” Weimann continues, “musical instruments are, as indicated by the name, just tools, or vessels to help an idea to become sound, or a spirit to become matter, and in the end, I believe beauty and truth are rather found in a subject’s soul than in its material reality.”

Alexander Weimann conducting the Pacific Baroque Orchestra in J.S. Bach’s Magnificat with, from left, sopranos Molly Quinn

and Danielle Sampson, mezzo-soprano Meg Bragle, tenor Aaron Sheehan, and baritone Jesse Blumberg. P

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An eagerness to collaborate is another aspect of Weimann’s West Coast success. At EMV, White has actively pursued a regional strategy that takes shows on the road to multiple Northwest centers, using performers drawn from around the region. And he’s been prepared to broker some very interesting relationships. One of the highlights of last summer’s Vancouver Bach Festival was a performance of St. John Passion featuring soloists from Gli Angeli Genève, the PBO, and the semi-professional Vancouver Cantata Singers.

In addition to St. John Passion, the Vancouver Cantata Singers collaborated with Weimann in Handel’s Theodora and Messiah. “For these projects,” says VCS artistic director Paula Kremer, “I met with Alex first, and while sitting at his harpsichord, he would play through parts of the score, sharing his intentions, interpretations, tempi, and what he found to be most interesting in the form of a certain chord structure, text painting, or dissonance. He is a gracious collaborator, open to my thoughts concerning the voice and singers, and open to discussions of how vocally to approach text, phrase, and articulation. Once the choir is prepared, the singers are handed over to Alex’s direction, and what fun we have!

“We are left with a fresh new experience of a traditional or even iconic work. When he conducts, Alex conveys a deep understanding of the work— historically, musically, and spiritually. When he jumps in and plays along, finding new flavors of Baroque improvisation from his jazz roots, his overall performance and leadership transcends anything we have heard in the past.”

Denhard echoes Kremer’s words about Weimann’s modus operandi, noting that rehearsals carefully explore multiple options. “Get him together with four or five people at rehearsal and he will have very deep conversations about music and meaning,” says Denhard. “The musicians can never predict the tempi which will emerge in performance, and they love that.” He discovered an online discussion that sums up the Weimann experience. “Two musicians were writing back and forth and the question was, ‘Who’s conducting?’ ‘Weimann.’ ‘Well, buckle up!’”

White agrees. “There are many musicians who value accuracy and adherence to the rules as they see them, which is fine, but there are few who manage to infuse their music making with as much risk taking and unexpected possibility as Alex. When he is leading, it is basically impossible to sit back and relax, either as a musician or as an audience member. His complete commitment to being in the moment means that when things get going, you need to strap yourself in. This is not to say that he doesn’t value accuracy. I have rarely seen a more efficient rehearsal technique. It is just that when the preparation is done and the show has begun, he has the imagination, energy, technique, and guts necessary to make magic happen, if it is in the cards.”

In the cards for the 2018-19 season are further examples of Weimann’s eclectic, effective programming strategies. The Seattle Baroque Orchestra starts out with a showcase concert for SBO co-founder Schenkman in a program of favorite harpsichord concertos. Next is a reading of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater with Seattle contemporary dance company Whim W’Him and then Messiah in the spring.

In Vancouver, the PBO started in August with two performances at the Bach Festival: “Zimmerman’s Coffeehouse and Garden” and another project with the soloists of Gli Angeli Genève, J.S. Bach’s Trauer Ode, BWV 198. The PBO’s regular season will wind up in April 2019 with a further collaboration with the Vancouver Cantata Singers, performing Handel’s Coronation Anthems and Marc Antoine Charpentier’s Te Deum.

“We are very lucky that Alex has decided to make the West Coast his home,” says White. “He is making a material difference to the quality of our cultural life in the region, and I am so happy to be a part of helping him realize his aspirations here. Long-term professional partnerships are rarely successful if the partners don’t, at a basic level, feel inspired and strengthened by one another somehow. After more than fifteen years of working together, I am happy and privileged to say that I continue to be routinely surprised and excited by how Alex programs and performs.”

David Gordon Duke contributes reviews and essays to The Vancouver Sun and American Record Guide. He is academic coordinator at the School of Music, Vancouver Community College, and teaches at

the University of British Columbia.