Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 10, 1991 TAG: 9103080719
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By JEFF DeBELL STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"A library doesn't need a dome to be a good library," said the school's vice president for admission services, "but having the dome takes it to the next level. The Kandinskys take us to a new level as an institution. We wouldn't be the same place without them."
The Kandinskys are violinist Benedict Goodfriend, cellist Alan Weinstein and pianist Elizabeth Bachelder. As members of the official resident trio of Roanoke College, they have a place to teach and to practice their art, which is chamber music of a high order, and they serve as paid faculty members.
In return, the Kandinskys take the name of Roanoke College wherever they go. That may be as near as the Roanoke Civic Center auditorium, where the trio performs March 18 with the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra, or as far as Gainey Center chamber music festival in Owatonna, Minn., where it appeared last summer.
On campus, the Kandinskys lend strength and prestige to the music faculty and serve the campus in a variety of other ways as well. They turn up in English or civilization classes to explain the musical side of, say, transcendentalism. They perform for the trustees.
Weinstein plays harmonica with the school pep band, and Goodfriend occasionally performs "The Star Spangled Banner" on solo violin at home basketball games. Bachelder is in demand as an accompanist for vocalists and other musicians.
Last year, the Kandinskys conducted a successful on-campus chamber music weekend for high school students from the Southeast.
"We undoubtedly will end up with some of those students here," Mike Maxey said. "The chance to study with one of the Kandinskys can attract kids who may not have been attracted otherwise."
The college is grateful. A component of its $75-million 1992 fund-raising campaign is a $1-million fine arts endowment for the support of the school's resident artists, among others.
"When you have that kind of an asset you want to do all you can to help," said Ben Case, the school's vice president for resource development.
The Kandinskys aren't just good for the college. They're good for the image of chamber music in general. It has a reputation for stuffiness, but the Kandinskys are about as unstuffy as people can get without breaking a law.
At a recent picture session, for example, a photographer asked them to lie on the floor with their heads together and their feet pointing outward like the spokes of a wheel. That's an improbable circumstance for your basic highbrow musician, but the Kandinskys serenely complied.
Of course, they steadily cracked wise on the general subject of three adults spending a rainy February afternoon together on the floor of a college recital hall. With the Kandinskys, nothing is sacred. They are plenty serious about their music, but they have lots of fun while making it - often at the expense of each other.
During a recent rehearsal, Weinstein listened to Goodfriend's suggestions for a passage of Beethoven, then turned to Bachelder and said, "This is an historic moment. He had a good idea."
"You always say that," Goodfriend replied. "It means I have a lot of ideas, right?"
"I said `good,' " Weinstein dryly rejoined. "The operative word is the adjective."
"We're kind of like a noisy family," Bachelder said. "Some of the most laughing I've ever done has been with these two. We know one another's Achilles heels and we step on them abundantly."
Bachelder, whose friends call her Liz, was born in New York City. She began her training there and made her debut at Carnegie Recital Hall in 1958, when she was a mere 9 years old.
She attended all-girl Hunter College High School, then moved on to Rochester's prestigious Eastman School of Music for undergraduate and graduate degrees including a doctorate.
The pianist began teaching at Roanoke College soon after the couple moved to Virginia in 1981, when her husband, Allen Bachelder, accepted a teaching position at Virginia Tech and a seat in the trumpet section of the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra. In 1985, she joined two string players in forming the Olin Trio, a faculty chamber ensemble named for the visual and performing arts building at the college.
Weinstein succeeded the Olin's original cellist in 1986. He's a product of Chevy Chase, Md., the lone musician in a family of architects, and he insists he chose the cello because he gets to sit down while playing it. He studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Eastman and Boston's New England Conservatory of Music.
At the conservatory, "Bendy" Goodfriend was his roommate and accomplice in a more or less bohemian lifestyle.
Weinstein has driven cabs in Boston and played in a theater orchestra in Germany. He's a blues and jazz fan who plays guitar, bass and harmonica in addition to cello.
When Ray Charles performed Quincy Jones' "Black Requiem" with the Roanoke Symphony in 1988, Weinstein sat in on harmonica with the singer's combo.
"It was one of the highlights of my life," said the 34-year-old musician. He is the husband of actress and Virginia Tech faculty member Patricia Raun.
Goodfriend, the trio's newest member, was born in Rochester but the family moved away before his second birthday.
"I wasn't there long enough for the dark weather to affect my personality," he said. The son of a college chemistry professor grew up in Williamsburg, Richmond, and Bangor, Maine. He trained at the New England Conservatory and the Shepherd School of Music at Houston's Rice University, where he studied with Sergiu Luca.
Goodfriend spent one summer with a chamber orchestra in Heidelberg. The next summer, he returned to Europe as a street musician to see if he could make enough money to survive and return to the states. He did, though there were a few hairy moments with local authorities. Once, having traveled all night, he looked so scruffy that Swiss border guards refused to let him into the country.
Goodfriend is married to Roanoke Symphony violinist Jane Wang.
He came to Roanoke College in 1987 when the incumbent Olin Trio violinist left and Weinstein invited his friend to consider replacing her.
"He said there was a trio that might make a go of it," Goodfriend recalled. "These things are always unpredictable, even when you know the people, but it seemed to click right off the bat."
He and his colleagues advance several reasons for the group's success, including similar musical tastes and the personal compatibility that is vital when artists spend so many hours together.
"We're not reserved in saying how we feel about this or that," the 33-year-old violinist said. "We have similar senses of humor and they coexist somehow with the real seriousness of what we're trying to express."
The trio's approach is to painstakingly work out each composition, trading ideas and experimenting musically until they arrive at an interpretation that is both acceptable to themselves and within the scope of the composer's intentions as far as they are known.
"We are interpretive artists," Weinstein said. "It's like we have a telephone line to those great composers. . . . It's great to be able to convey the emotions they wrote about to an entirely different world."
The Kandinskys share a love for those works of the mid- and late 19th century that place a premium on the expression of emotion. That's not to say they are lockstep Romantics. A brand new piece by composer Milton Granger, formerly of Hollins College, is on the program for the group's concert Saturday night.
It was after Goodfriend arrived in 1987 that the one-time faculty group transformed itself into what he calls a "serious" trio. There were quick results. As early as 1988, music reviewer Seth Williamson was crediting the trio with "impeccable balance" and writing that audiences "may be excused for wondering when this group is going to get a recording contract."
The Kandinsky is able to attract guest artists of the caliber of Paul Cortese, former principal violist with Milan's La Scala Orchestra, who will perform with the trio Saturday. In the fall, Metropolitan Opera soprano Dawn Upshaw is to appear with the group.
The trio takes its name from Wassily Kandinsky, Moscow-born founder of abstract expressionist painting. The musicians admire the artist's work and use it in their logo, but they chose his name for practical reasons too.
"It's foreign, it has three syllables and it sounds good with `trio,' " Bachelder said.
Bachelder is by common agreement the most organized member of the self-managing trio. Goodfriend calls her the "sanest" Kandinsky. Although the administrative duties typically overlap, she tends to handle press releases, correspondence, grant applications and the like.
Weinstein is good at working the phone. Goodfriend does most of the speaking from the stage during performances, sometimes exhibiting his sense of humor in the process.
That sense of humor is renowned among the Kandinskys' wide circle of friends and admirers. Goodfriend calls it "Monty Py-thonesque." Weinstein says his friend is "from Mars."
Kandinsky concerts draw several hundred, which is respectable for chamber music in the area, and attendance is growing. Audiences typically include traditional chamber enthusiasts, a sprinkling of painters, actors, other musicians and even a few swells from the Grandin Theatre and V magazine party circuits.
The trio rehearses in Bachelder's Olin Hall office/studio, working at least three hours daily plus nights and weekends when a performance is approaching. It gives about 20 concerts a year, three quarters of them out of town.
Outreach is important to the Kandinskys. They have a touring-artist grant from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and a grant from the Presser Foundation of Bryn Mawr, Pa., for taking chamber music into Appalachian communities where exposure to the form typically is limited.
"You feel like you're an ambassador for the music," Weinstein said.
Last summer, the trio did a two-week residency in Minnesota that included a performance at a factory of the sponsoring Wenger Corp., maker of music equipment. Commenting on the superior acoustics there, Goodfriend told the audience he was used to playing in music halls that sounded like factories but not in factories that sounded like music halls.
In the fall, there was a residency in Colorado Springs that included performances, master classes and even appearances in high school English classes, where the Kandinskys related music to literature for the students. The trio has performed in Canada, Florida and other Southeastern states. If the trio has its way, there will be more such appearances in the future.
"We'd like to take it as far as it'll go," Bachelder said.
THE KANDINSKY TRIO
UPCOMING PERFORMANCES\ 8 p.m., Saturday
Olin Hall, Roanoke College With guest artist Paul Cortese, viola
Program: Piano Quartet, Gustav Mahler Piano Quartet in C Minor, Johannes Brahms "Suite of Dances," Milton Granger\ Tickets: $5. For reservations, call 375-2333 weekdays between 1 and 4 p.m. Tickets also are available at the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra office, 111 W. Campbell Ave.\
8 p.m., March 18
Roanoke Civic Center auditorium With the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra\ Program: Concerto for Piano, Violin, Violoncello and Orchestra in C Major, Op. 56 ("Triple Concerto"), Ludwig Van Beethoven.
Tickets: Limited seating available. For information, call 343-9127.
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by CNB