Talking with Sasha Callahan and Leo Eguchi about the Willamette Valley Chamber Music Festival

 

A great way to stimulate your sensory palette will be brought to you by the Willamette Valley Chamber Music Festival where you can sample terrific wines and hear exquisite music in the barrel room of three exceptional wineries. Over three weekends from August 4 to August 20, the WVCMF blends great works by Dvořák, Beethoven, and Mozart with contemporary pieces by Composer-in-Residence Kareem Roustom, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw, Malian composer Hawa Diabaté, and Kenji Bunch. The theme for this year’s festival centers around the idea of home and belonging.

Performers on this year’s WVCMF roster are the festival’s founders and artistic directors, violinist Sasha Callahan and cellist Leo Eguchi, along with violinist Megumi Lewis, and violists Charles Noble, Bradley Ottesen, and Kenji Bunch.

To find out more about the WVCMF and what will be uncorked this year, I talked with Callahan and Eguchi on the grounds of Reed College before a Chamber Music Northwest concert. Here is our conversation – edited for clarity.

How did you come up with the idea for this festival?

Leo Eguchi – It was after we were married, and I started coming out to Oregon where Sasha’s family lives. I caught the wine bug. I would sneak off by myself and do some tastings. I noticed that the level of the wine was on par with anything in the world, and coupled with the incredible food scene in Portland, it was just lacking one more element: music. The way our festival integrates the wine and the music if very special.

You probably didn’t know if anyone would come to your festival when you launched it. It must have been scary!

Sasha Callahan – Yeah!  It was! We scoped out some wineries that had potential, and on our very first trip to pitch the idea, we visited J. Christopher Wines, but they didn’t have their tasting room finished. So they brought us to their barrel room, and since I brought my violin with me, I played it and we thought that it sounded great in that space!

Eguchi – Sasha and I have been starting things since we entered the professional world. Even while we were finishing grad school at Boston University, we started a chamber orchestra, which was a great experience. With the Willamette Valley Chamber Music Festival, we could bring together interests of ours, and reconnect with family.

Callahan – Chamber music is intimate and conversational. At the heart of what I really love about making this kind of music is finding the connections between people. To play in a winery barrel room feels like everyone is there with us.

How did you come up with the idea of working with living composers?

Callahan – It was an idea right from the very beginning. Our first season was small – just three concerts over one weekend. Kenji Bunch was playing with us and we featured his music in our concerts. We love to play new music, and we feel that playing the great masterpieces of the literature paired with the music of our time makes the concerts more relevant. You will hear the Beethoven and the Mozart differently, for example.

So at first we called up old friends. We had our wish list with Gabriela Lena Frank and Joan Tower. We thought that they might be too busy, but they said yes! It was incredible, and it adds so much to the festival environment where people roll up their sleeves and are ready to help. Joan Tower helped us to arrange chairs, and we told her to relax with a glass of wine, but she said, “No, you guys are working. I’ll work with you!.”

Eguchi – We’ve built a vibrant community, and the composer element of the festival has made it stronger.  The world premiere of Kareem Roustom’s Syrian Folk Songs at Appassionata Estate/J. Christopher Wines. It’s a string quartet of four Syrian folk songs from Kareem – written for the festival. The four movements of the piece reflect different regions of Syria.

Sasha and Kareem’s wife studied at Rice University. Kareem called me out of the blue one day to ask if his daughter could study cello with me. We had heard his music and held it in high regard. We have premiered several of his works in the Boston area. I have a solo commissioning project called Unaccompanied, which has an immigration theme. Kareem contributed to that. So when we were putting the festival together for this year, Kareem felt like the natural choice. Kareem is based in Boston and teaches at Tufts University, and this summer, he is also composer-in-residence at the Grand Teton Festival and will travel there right after the world premiere of his piece with us.

Callahan – We will do several of his pieces at the festival. The idea of home and homeland are central themes for the festival this year. Kareem has talked about being uprooted from his homeland in Syria, is a part of his DNA.

Tell us about Hawa Diabaté.

Eguchi – She comes from a long line of musicians in Mali, and we will do her super vibrant and joyous quartet called Tegere Tulon. This piece is for strings, but there is a lot of clapping, and rhythmic drumming.

Sounds great!  And you paired that with Dvořák.

Callahan – Dvorak’s American Quintet is less well-known than his American Quartet, but written during the same period when he was here in the U.S. That piece will feature violists Charles Noble and Bradley Ottesen.

The following week at Sokol Blosser Winery, we will open with Prayer, a beautiful meditative by Ukrainian composer Vasyl Barvinsky. We will follow that with Kareem’s Letters Home. That program also includes Caroline Shaw’s Plan and Elevation. She is very interested in architecture, so it is a musical exploration of vantage points of a home.

Eguchi – A home for music!

Callahan – Then a late Beethoven string quartet, his String Quartet No. 12 in E-flat Major, Op. 127. He goes into the depths of humanity in a personal way. We thought that was an expression of an inner sanctuary.

Okay, we’ve covered the first two concert series. How about the last one?

Eguchi – That will take place at Archery Summit. We will play Kareem’s Quartet No. 1: Shades of Night. It’s like an illustration for all of the Arabic words for “night.” There are many words about the shades of night.

Kenji Bunch’s Songs for a Shared Space – written for our String Quartet in Boston. This will be the West Coast premiere. This piece is a reflection of what happened during the pandemic, when multiple generations were living in Kenji’s home. The negotiations that take place – what’s for dinner, what movie or show to watch online.  All these family intersections.

Callahan – We close out that concert with Mozart’s final quartet, his No. 23 in F Major, K. 590. It is a very optimistic and joyful piece, but he wrote during a difficult time in his life.

Wine and music… how do you see them fitting together?

Eguchi – When I get excited about music or I drink a wine that I love, it triggers a lot of things in the same place. We don’t have to look at them so differently.

Callahan – Both wine and music will reward you richly if you pay attention in the moment.