Chamber music: It doesn't get more intimate than this

McCoy Chamber music is a very intimate form of music says Janelle McCoy, artistic director of the newly formed Chamber Music Society of Southwest Florida.

Imagine listening to a trio or string quartet perform music in your living room or bedroom. That's what chamber music is like: three instruments or a small ensemble, usually performing in a small setting.

"Imagine yourself, when you hear a jazz trio, in that environment," McCoy says. "You're in an intimate space, and everyone is focused on the music, if you're in a real jazz bar. It's like that. When you're close to jazz, the rhythms are so infectious, the music can go a million different ways. It's the same way with chamber music.

"In the broadest sense, the word chamber is a derivation of the word chambre, which is French for room. So chamber music means room music, or salon music."

In chamber music, the instruments share equal importance. If there's a singer, the voice is considered another instrument. "It's not just a voice being accompanied by instruments," McCoy says. "They...have equal voice, it's a team effort. That's what makes it so exciting. When you go to a chamber music concert, it's almost like a soccer game, or a football game, or basketball; one person is handing off the ball to another, and it's the whole team that comes together to score.

"The violin, for example, has the melody, and suddenly another instrument has the melody, so the violin takes a back seat, or plays another melody. So it's this constant back and forth, where you're passing the importance back and forth to each other, the importance of what's going on melodically, or the reaction to what's just happened."

Chamber music groups generally don't have a conductor, so the performers have to be in wordless communication with each other, watching and listening to each other as carefully as possible.

On Monday, Jan. 28, at 7:30 p.m. Mc- Coy will perform in the chamber society's premiere concert in the Foulds Theatre at the Alliance for the Arts (10091 McGregor Blvd., Fort Myers) along with cellist Adam Satinsky and pianist Bella Gutshtein.

"Because I breathe, I'm a wind instrument, per se," McCoy says. "The cello has strings and the piano has strings too, no breath required. So they have to watch for my breath, they have to breathe with me, even though they themselves don't breathe with their instruments. That's the level of communication you have to have.

Laitman "And I think for the audience, the person sits so close to the musicians too. When you go to a large auditorium and listen to an orchestra, and sit far away, it's easier to be passive. But when you're listening to chamber music, you're so close, and there's so much going on in front of you, you actually become an active participant. You're as much a part of it. To the point that you can feel the vibration of the cello strings in your body. It's that close. You can't not react to it. It becomes very personal, when you're in that kind of setting."

McCoy has performed with worldclass orchestras such as the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, with conductors Robert Spano, Donald Runnicles and the late Robert Shaw, with bassist James Morris and sopranos Dawn Upshaw, Andrea Gruber and Christine Brewer. She made her Kimmel Center debut as Maddalena in "Rigoletto" and her Aix-en-Provence debut accompanied by Robin Bowman.

At the Foulds Theatre on Jan. 28 she, along with Satinsky and Gutshtein, will be performing "The Seed of Dream," a cycle of songs based upon Avraham Sutzkever's poems. Sutzkever lived in the Vilna ghetto and became a resistance fighter, running covert operations against the Nazis. Composer Lori Laitman set the poems to music. Laitman has also composed works using the poems of Mary Oliver, Thomas Lux, Dana Gioia, Emily Dickinson and William Carlos Williams.

"A poem is like a mini-film or a play, and I am like the director," Laitman told Mc- Coy in an interview. "This ability to present my interpretation of a poem through music is quite thrilling. ...I...read many poems, but it was the work of Avraham Sutzkever that amazed me. I thought his poems were absolutely breathtaking. The language was so powerful and beautiful, and the fact that he was able to create poems of such beauty while hiding from the Nazis was also a source of inspiration."

Four of the poems were translated by C.K. Williams, and one by Leonard Wolfe.

The poems are heartbreakingly chilling, yet also filled with hope. The first, "I Lie in This Coffin," describes his experience of hiding in a coffin from the Nazis.

"He's in a room where he's not supposed to be," McCoy says. "So he hides in a coffin. He's trying to maintain his calm, yet he channels this image of his dead sister, who died years ago. Imagine the different emotions going through his head. And Lori Laitman, being such an amazing composer, can communicate with two different instruments, piano and cello, and I'm considered the third instrument. Those are three different levels of emotion and color that she uses to convey what's going on."

In another poem, Sutzkever talks about seeing a cart full of shoes taken from Jews killed in the Holocaust, and spying his mother's shoes, 'her Sabbath pair.'" Another song, one that McCoy finds emotionally challenging to perform, talks about the death of the poet's infant son.

"When the son was born, the Nazis came to his house and put poison in his bottle and made him feed it to his baby," McCoy says. "How does a person deal with that? The poem's poignant, as emotionally poignant as it gets."

"I wanted to swallow you, child,/To taste the future waiting for me./Maybe you will blossom again in my veins," Sutzkever writes, calling his child "the seed of dream."

The cycle ends with a poem called "No Sad Songs Please," which reaffirms life and ends on a note of hopefulness.

The Chamber Society's motto is: "New music. New Home. New audiences." The concerts will all focus on music of the last 100 years, and McCoy hopes to draw in new audiences for the music. She's priced the tickets at $20 and the concerts run just over an hour. In future concerts, the musicians will also talk to the audience in an informal manner about how they approach music and their work.

"It's a good way to get a taste of something they would like, at a reasonable price," McCoy says. "We want to bring the music to the people so they understand that they can access this music. It's not just for people in tuxes and evening gowns, of for rich people, it's for everybody, because music is a common language. I want to be an ambassador for this kind of music. I think maybe people just need the right introduction."