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One Canon, One Community
The Amadeus Concert Series uses music to create solidarity: A canon is a melody, a song with layered parts that join in at regular intervals, combining to create a rich sound. The entrances of the different parts may be varied to suit the moment, as can the pitch and the tempo.
This is probably the best description of what The Amadeus Concert Series of Great Falls has become ?a canon that includes all ages, all backgrounds and all ethnic groups; a canon that draws people together for no other reason than they are able to appreciate beautiful music.
This group's canon consists of community concerts at local churches and libraries, and outreach performances at retirement communities. It includes forums to educate adults and visits to local schools to work with the students in the music departments.
Maury Brown, of McLean, and Scott Wood, of Alexandria, have helped shape Tim Rowe’s original creation.
Brown recalled the time he was at the Kennedy Center in the company of the great jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. The two men were watching a concert involving inner-city children who were studying jazz.
“He turned to me and said, 'Education is really great as far as math, geography, science and history goes, but there is also the education of the soul, and that is where music comes in ?educating the soul,'” Brown said.
This, Brown explained, is why The Amadeus Concerts Inc. has its Side-by-Side program with the local schools.
“We are adding to their aesthetic well-being,” he said.
The goal is also to eventually become involved on a regular basis with THEARC in southeast Washington, D.C., and the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in northwest Washington, D.C.
Brown, who is vice president of the board, has been involved directly with the Amadeus Series for four years. Before he retired, he worked in the Agency for International Development. He had also taken classes from Rowe both at the McLean Community Center and the Smithsonian Institution. Members of the Amadeus Concerts who had seen Brown in Rowe’s classes asked him to come on board.
“I didn’t want to raise money so I became involved in programming. But, of course, I found I did have to do some fundraising, but I still spend most of my time working with Mr. Wood on programming,” Brown said.
And Brown makes it clear that his favorite part is the Side-by-Side concerts.
“What I love most is going to the schools and seeing the children, their mouths open in wonder; to see the little kids with the musicians and watch their faces fill with their admiration for the violinists or cellist that they’re sitting next to. They will never get an opportunity like that again,” Brown said.
He is also very excited about the outreach programs that take the orchestra into retirement homes such as Sunrise at Tysons Corner.
Yet another program Brown is proud of is the “Insider’s Guide to Music” classes that Wood teaches.
Like each of their concerts, these classes are followed by a party that gives the students a chance to meet with the musicians.
“We like to have the audience feel like they’re part of the family. This is really important to us,” Brown said.
Brown said Amadeus is slowly branching out and already goes into Reston, Falls Church, Maryland, Arlington and Fairfax.
Future programs, Brown said, include a Valentine’s Day jazz concert at the McLean Racquet Club and a free performance of an Easter “Messiah” with five church choirs and a singalong at St. Luke Catholic Church in McLean.
“We get concerts each year from outside of the district. We have people from New York, Israel, Boston, nationally known groups of people. Each year our concerts get raised one more level of artistic ability, and we are able to keep expanding,” Brown said.
Wood is the artistic and executive director and conductor of the Amadeus Orchestra. He explained that Rowe founded the series in 1981 in Great Falls.
“He was a music scholar and a lecturer, a kind of a Renaissance man,” Wood said.
Both Wood and Brown indicated that it was Rowe the man, his dedication and his talent, that drew people to not only to his project but to the man himself.
The group was first called the Great Falls Concert Series. The intent, Wood said, was to bring a variety of music to a small group of people in Great Falls.
“Over the years it grew and attracted a wide audience. We became more ambitious and put on larger productions. Ten years ago, they changed the name to The Amadeus Concerts Inc. What gradually evolved over the years was an organization which was a concert presenter and which has its own resident ensembles, which makes it pretty unique,” Wood said.
In addition to the concert series flagship, The Amadeus Orchestra, there is also the Amadeus Virtuosi, a baroque ensemble.
“Then we also have guest artists that we are bringing in for all sorts of different things. We offer a very wide range of music. Obviously, we are centered on the classical, but we have done classical jazz, 'The American Songbook,' early Broadway and an operetta. So that’s unusual,” Wood said.
Four and a half years ago, the concert series and its members were thrown into a crisis when Rowe took his own life. The decision had to be made whether to allow Rowe’s dream to die with him or to continue it. The decision, Wood said, was to continue what many felt was the best and most important part of Rowe.
Wood spoke of the importance of community in that legacy, of expanding and growing.
“This is a way of bringing people together. Music is certainly the main focus, but we also see it as a way of creating community that has not communicated in any other way. ... All we’re asking is for people to enjoy the finest pieces of musical art ever created,” Wood said.
Like Brown, Wood is very excited about the Side-By-Side program. This has included everything from nursery rhymes to music from “Pirates of the Caribbean.”
“The beauty of it is the presentation of the sound. If you’ve never felt sound around you, you can never appreciate it,” Wood said.
Other programs Wood mentioned included a lecture series at the McLean Community Center and performances in local libraries as well as the retirement homes.
“Our concerts have become a social event in the best of terms,” Wood said.
Wood indicated the result was a musical feast for all tastes, everything from opera to chamber music, to the Silver-Garburg Piano Duo from Israel, to a performance of Camille Saint-Saens' “Carnival of the Animals.”
“It’s just an amazing group, especially for a small community organization, and amazing variety of music and ensembles,” he said. “... We have our very loyal supporters, but we’re not just keeping it in the neighborhood. We have some things in Maryland and D.C., in other counties. It’s really a matter of balancing our focus. We are definitely a local and small organization, but on the other hand, we don’t want to keep a good thing to ourselves.”
Contact the writer at ecarlton@timespapers.com
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