Zachary Moen looks on as master violin maker Gregg Alf gives Moen's copy of the Ole Bull del Gesù a final inspection. (Photos by the writer.)

On Monday afternoon at Alf’s Prospect Street studio in Ann Arbor’s Burns Park, Moen and Alf allowed The Chronicle to bear witness to the first sound check of Moen’s second violin. It’s a copy of a famous instrument made by Joseph Guarnerius del Gesù (1698-1744), and played by Norwegian violinist Ole Bornemann Bull (1810-1880) – the Ole Bull del Gesù.

After coaxing the first notes out of the violin, the verdict from Alf on his apprentice’s work: “It’s an incredible D!”

For non-violinists: That doesn’t translate to D-plus as a letter grade … D is the name of the second string from the left.

Crafting a Violin: Not a Woodworking Job

The ground floor of Alf Studios, where the sound check took place, looks like a living room, not a woodshop. The shop is on the second floor.

Gregg Alf adjusts a sound post.

While Moen is upstairs applying a final coat of polish – before stringing up his Ole Bull – Alf demonstrates to The Chronicle the adjustment of the sound post of another already-strung violin.

That’s accomplished by inserting a metal tool through one of the F holes – the elongated holes in the top of a violin, which get their name from the appearance of an italic F – and nudging the wooden post that’s wedged between the top and bottom of the instrument.

Alf notes that with the spring weather and the changing humidity, the instruments are “breathing” – it’s a moving target to adjust them. But you still adjust them, he says, because “you want them sounding their best.” After testing out the effect of the sound post adjustment, Alf observes that he’s accomplished an improvement by moving the post to one side by “the width of a pencil mark.”

Alf then reflects on the nature of his work. “People think of it as a woodworking job,” he says, “but that’s like saying that writing is a drawing job.”

“Sound has meaning,” he concludes.

If You Wish to Make a Violin From Scratch …

Writing the old-fashioned way with a pencil, of course, does eventually involve drawing letter shapes. In the same way, making a violin does unavoidably involve working with wood. The steps to making a violin are chronicled in detail on Moen’s blog, “Diary of an Apprentice Violinmaker.”

Even a cursory look at any of Moen’s blog entries makes apparent that the approach to crafting the violins in Alf’s studio is done in a methodical, painstaking way. Moen took things beyond the usual pain in electing to make his madder lake pigment for his varnish from scratch. On Oct. 2, 2009, he wrote [emphasis added]:

For readers who aren’t violin makers, madder lake is a red pigment made from the roots of a madder plant and is often used for the red color on violins. This pigment will, if I am successful, be used to add the red color to the varnish on my violin. There is, of course, plenty of madder lake around the studio that I could use, but I wanted the experience of making my own.

The five steps to that experience stretched over 11 days. Here’s how it starts: “The first step is to combine the madder root with potash in water and heat the mixture at 40-45 degrees Celsius for 36 hours.” Even at that, Moen does not take astronomer Carl Sagan’s famous admonishment completely to heart: “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch … you must first invent the universe.” [A video containing Sagan's quote at time code 0:22 is available on YouTube.]

Tuning the New Fashioned Way

While Moen puts the finishing touches on his Ole Bull, Alf’s sound adjustments on other instruments eventually require a tuner.

Zachary Moen tunes up his Ole Bull using an iPhone.

But locating one in the studio proves to be a challenge. There is somewhat of a flurry of activity in the studio, explains Alf, because he is leaving for China the following day. And Moen is leaving for Norway.

So in the course of contending with the myriad logistical challenges of travel, and completing work before the trip, the tuners have temporarily gone missing.

When his assistant eventually locates a device, Alf bows the instrument that he’s checking and guesses: “I’m sharp, right?” The answer: “You’re about 441.” The frequency of middle A is 440 Hz. So Alf is right – a bit sharp.

When Moen brings down the Ole Bull to string it up, it’s apparent that his approach to tuning is not the same as his approach to varnish – he uses an iPhone with a free tuning application. “I do everything the old fashioned way, except tuning,” he explains.

Moen’s law practice could be seen as a melding of old-fashioned approach to new-fashioned subject matter. His background in intellectual property law allows him to provide services to entrepreneurs in creative endeavors – artists, writers and musicians. He recently provided commentary on National Football League trademark issues related to the New Orleans Saints use of “Who Dat?” for Lucy Ann Lance’s radio show Business Insider.

Why Is Everybody Leaving?

What draws Alf to China and Moen to Norway?

"It's a small world." Gregg Alf holds the symbolic prize for the violin-making competition in China – there's also cash. Solar power allows the globe to spin on its own.

Alf is serving on the jury for the first ever violin-making competition in China, which takes place in Beijing, starting May 5. Alf is heading to China early for two reasons.

First, he’s going to enjoy some hiking and cycling there before the judging begins. Second, he’s going to use that time to acclimate himself to the time change – it’s not the best idea, he says, to step off the plane and immediately try to evaluate a couple hundred different instruments.

Also violin-related is Moen’s trip to Norway, which hinges specifically on the copy of the Ole Bull del Gesù he just completed. A prominent violin maker, Christophe Landon, has invited all violin makers across the globe to make a copy of the famous instrument and bring it to Oslo as part of the celebration of Ole Bull’s 200th birthday.

Although the violin-making project is organized around a playing competition – the Menuhin Competition for violinists under age 22 – the Ole Bull celebration is just that. It’s not a competition. The original instrument will be on display during the celebration, which will culminate in a concert using some of the violins made for the occasion.

Gregg Alf tests out Zachary Moen's Ole Bull for its first sound check.

Some of the most prominent violinists of the world will be there to try out the instruments, Moen’s among them.

Moen’s itinerary calls for him to visit some other Norwegian cities on his trip, but he’ll also be spending some of the time with the instrument, watching musicians react to his Ole Bull.

The reaction from Alf after bowing the Ole Bull for the first time can fairly be described as enthusiastic: “It’s an incredible D! The D is just amazing! … I want to open, loosen the G up a little bit, but you know, it’s just brand new …”

Editor’s note: In the sound file included with this article, the tone at the beginning is from Moen’s iPhone tuner. The file splices together samplings from different points in the test, and concludes with the reaction from Alf and Moen [.mp3 file of violin sound check].

An Orpheum Bell rehearsal: On bass, Serge van der Voo; vocals sung through a gramophone horn, Aaron Klein.

I’m wedged in the corner of a west side Ann Arbor basement amongst a jumble of musical instrument cases. The cases belong to the six musicians of Orpheum Bell. There’s more than one case per musician – they each play an array of different instruments. During a break in the rehearsal, I have to ask: What is that? It’s a Stroh violin, “spelled like the beer,” explains Annie Crawford.

The rehearsal is geared towards a CD release show at The Ark on Dec. 4. I’m soaking in the sounds of the basement practice mostly because of that CD, the group’s second – “Pearls.”

Serge van der Voo had sent along a review copy of the CD to The Chronicle. In a world of MP3 files flung around the Internet, a physical CD is an awfully clunky way to deliver musical data. But when I unfolded the heavy card stock CD cover into its 16-inch total length, I noticed one of the folds was not exactly uniform and regular – not the way you’d expect if a machine had produced several thousand of them.

An even closer examination revealed that the print quality was not the laser-like rigid perfection that a modern digital printer delivers. Which is not to say it was sloppy. On the contrary. It was more like trace-evidence that human hands had played a role. Who were these people with the apparently handcrafted CD case? To get some insight, I had crammed myself back amongst those instrument cases in the corner of a basement for two hours.

The CD cover was imprinted with artwork and text by a hand-fed cylinder letterpress. And now it’s imprinted with my musical memory of that two hours of rehearsal. It’s upon that physical artifact that I will hang the pleasant recollection of an evening spent listening to live music played by some extraordinarily talented musicians.

Orpheum Bell: Music and Words

The music of Orpheum Bell is self-described as “country and eastern.” The country elements are easy enough to pick out: banjo, bass, mandolin, violin.

But Laurel Premo’s style is not the ostentatious metallic ringing banjo typical of some American country music. Instead, it is an almost muted strum that can still tickle forth individual notes from her open back 5-string. And Annie Crawford’s Stroh violin, with its metal horn, projects a sound a bit different from a country music fiddle.

Merrill Hodnefield (standing) and Laurel Premo, playing the dobro.

The eastern influences come partly from the Stroh violins, but more from Michael Billmire’s accordion. And based on their sound, it’s on occasion easy enough to imagine that Orpheum Bell is a band of gypsies. The tracks that feature Merrill Hodnefield’s musical saw are just a little bit spooky.

Part of what makes it difficult to slot Orpheum Bell into a convenient musical slot is their use of variation in tempo – all driven by van der Voo’s bass, whether he’s bowing it, plucking it, or whacking its body with the palms of his hands.

During rehearsal, at the conclusion of one tune – which included lyrics about the Cayahoga River – Premo remarked that it was “rubato-ish.” It seemed to pull them along, she said.

What Orpheum Bell has achieved musically with this new CD “Pearls” is consistent with the poetry of Aaron Klein, who’s responsible for most of the lyrics and much of the music.  It’s not surprising that songs collected together under the title “Pearls” have water imagery woven throughout.

Take the first track on the CD,”What If No Sparrow Fell,” which includes a line that I would like to imagine was inspired by standing at Argo Dam and looking first south, and then north along the Huron River: “The river’s skinny but the pond’s so wide …” It’s hard not to point out that the Huron connects Orpheum Bell at least indirectly to Ann Arbor’s recent history – van der Voo’s wife, Kirsten Elling, is the daughter of Liz Elling, who swam the length of the river in the summer of 2007.

In “Sparrow,” water also can be found in the tears that flowers “wept by the bandshell as the rain swang wide.”

Starting with the bass at 12 o'clock and going clockwise: Serge van der Voo, Merrill Hodnefield, Laurel Premo, Annie Crawford, Michael Billmire, Aaron Klein. (Photo by the writer.)

And I would again like to imagine a specific local Ann Arbor connection that might have inspired the lyric – the Westpark Bandshell, not so awfully far from the west side basement where Orpheum Bell rehearses. (I was raised on a literary tradition that doesn’t place much stock in author intent or inspiration – Klein’s text is mine now, to hear how I like. You can ask him if you want, but I’m not going to.)

Between the first and the last tracks, fountains, lakes, oceans and harbors populate the landscapes that Klein describes.

And on the last track of the CD, “Don’t Let On,” it’s one of the CD’s numerous flowers that ties into the watery thematic flow: “The rose whispers from the deep well/ Don’t need more water, but I could use some more light.”

But it’s not all flowers on this CD: “Every garden needs a weed” is the wisdom offered by “New Hearse for Hastings.” And it’s that idea, I think, that captures the aesthetic of Klein’s gravelly voice – accentuated in its gravelly glory when he sings through a gramophone horn – contrasted with the pretty vocals of Orpheum Bell’s female singers.

It’s a reminder that actual people, not robots, provide the manual musical labor that makes for the pleasant sounds we’re hearing.

Printing the CD Cover: A Collaboration

Manual labor also produced the CD cover that van der Voo had sent to The Chronicle – labor shared across several shoulders. He and his wife, Kirsten Elling, used an old 1950s-era hand-fed cylinder letterpress to print the designs, using copper plates that Geoff Innis had prepared.

Jim Horton whose hand-fed cylinder letterpress was used to print the CD covers, gets his first look at the results. (Photo by the writer.)

Innis, who works for  Perich Advertising + Design, had the plates made by Owosso Graphics, located in a Owosso, Michigan.

The calligraphy on the old bank check design that forms the back of the CD cover was rendered by Kelly Burke – someone Aaron Klein had randomly met at a local art supply store.

The check itself was designed with help from Bob Hohertz of the American Society of Check Collectors.

The letterpress used for the printing sits in the basement of Jim Horton, along with several other old presses and type-setting gear. Horton teaches studio art and printmaking at Greenhills School and Hollander’s School of Book Arts.

Van der Voo indulged a request from me to see the press. And that meant he drove me out to meet Horton where he lives near Waters and Wagner roads, amongst a woods that boasts some pawpaw trees.

Kirsten Elling and husband Serge van der Voo operated the press during printing of the CD cover. (Photo by Geoff Innis.)

When van der Voo handed him a copy of the CD, Horton was getting his first peek at the finished CD cover. He was clearly satisfied with the output from his press.

He discerned a spot with slightly non-uniform ink distribution – and was delighted. It seemed to be exactly the desired effect.

Horton explained that the 1,000 or so copies of the CD cover that Orpheum Bell had printed were pushing the limits of what the press was designed to do, which was to make proofs of newspaper pages before a proper press run.

Recording the CD: An Ethic of Realism

Orpheum Bell’s CD was recorded, mixed and mastered by Jim Roll at his Ann Arbor studio, Backseat Productions. I phoned him up to ask about the “Pearls” recording, and any special challenges posed by Orpheum Bell’s commitment to less-than-modern instruments – Stroh violins, gramophone horns and the like.

Roll talked about the philosophy of his approach to recording: “The ethic of the studio is realism as opposed to modern production,” he explained, “so, they [Orpheum Bell] were a good match.”

Michael Billmire (trumpet) and Aaron Klein (guitar) take a break during the Orpheum Bell rehearsal. (Photo by the writer.)

Achieving that realism entails backing the musicians off the microphones a little bit, Roll explained, “to make sure you can hear the room.” The idea, he says, is to leave “the grit and the reality” there on the recording.

Roll had mixed, but not recorded, Orpheum Bell’s first CD, “Pretty As You,” which was done live with no isolation of individual tracks. For “Pearls,” Roll explained, the bones of each song – bass, guitar and vocals – were recorded live, with other instruments like violins and accordions added later. But they never record to a click track (a metronome), Roll says, to make sure that variations in tempo can come across.

Towards the end of the basement rehearsal, Orpheum Bell goes through the track from “Pretty As You” that bears the same title as the whole CD – it’s planned as their final number at the CD release show at The Ark on Dec. 4. And the discussion at the rehearsal focuses on the question of tempo – do they want to finish it that way? Van der Voo concludes: “I’m happy to end on that pace.”

Michael Billmire bends the notes of his trumpet to his will. (Photo by the writer.)

Serge van der Voo is a blur on bass. (Photo by the writer.)

A group of girls dance to the music of Enter the Haggis at Thursday's Sonic Lunch, a free weekly concert series in Liberty Plaza.

Balloons, bubbles and the sound of bagpipes filled Liberty Plaza in downtown Ann Arbor last Thursday, as the Celtic rock band Enter the Haggis drew a crowd of people with soup and sandwiches in tow for the season’s first Sonic Lunch, a free, weekly outdoor concert series.

As the band warmed up – playing practice notes on their guitars and bagpipes – people filled the seats along the perimeter of the plaza, located at the corner of Liberty and Division. Some came wheeling their bikes, carrying helmets and water bottles. Many pushed strollers or strolled in holding the hands of small children (hands that soon grasped ribbons tied to blue and green balloons – signature colors of the Bank of Ann Arbor, the event’s main sponsor). When the built-in seats filled up, people rested in folding chairs or sat directly on the cement ground.

Enter the Haggis, a Toronto band, consists of Trevor Lewington (vocals, guitar), Brian Buchanan (vocals, fiddle, keyboards, guitar), Craig Downie (bagpipes, harmonica, whistle, vocals), Mark Abraham (bass vocals) and James Campbell (drums). They played songs from their new album “Gutter Anthems,” which was released in March, as well as some older tunes. The crowd clapped and tapped their feet along to “Minstrel Boy,” “Gasoline,” “Noseworthy and Piercy” and “Cameos” –  songs ranging in topic from lost fishermen to the environmental impact of fossil fuels.

The band members performed with energy and humor, bantering with each other between songs. Introducing one piece, Downie took on a somber tone and announced, “Here’s a song about ghosts.”

“It’s not really the right atmosphere here, Craig,” Buchanan said.

Downie paused to study the tree branches swaying above his head. “The ghosts of squirrels,” he continued. “That once occupied these beautiful trees many years ago.”

As the band played, their mix of rock and Celtic string and wind instruments reverberating through the plaza and out onto the street, people passing by paused to listen. Soon, the concrete wall surrounding the plaza was full of onlookers, their sandwiches and fruit salads on their laps, their heads bobbing in time with the bass.

Although most of the people there at least tapped their feet to the music, the children danced full out. A giggling group of kids grasped each other’s hands and skipped in circles in front of the band, the ribbons holding their balloons winding together with the motion. Someone took out a bubble bottle and wand, and soon the children were chasing after the translucent orbs, reaching out to pop them.

19-month-old Ada Stoica is captivated by the bubbles that Leah Pillars is blowing, during Thursday's Sonic Lunch at Liberty Plaza.

The woman with the bubble solution, Leah Pillars, noticed 19-month-old Ada Stoica sitting with her mother and crouched near the girl to blow bubbles specifically for her. Stoica watched, looking transfixed, and eventually broke out into a grin.

Ada’s mother, Dana Stoica, said she came because she wanted to entertain her daughter with cultural activities. “These guys, I like them a lot,” she said of Enter the Haggis. “So much variety in their music, and the pipe was the cherry on the top.”

Bob Miller, a Plymouth resident and friend of the band, also identified the diversity of sound in their songs as part of their appeal.

“Their music is such a mix of different sounds from song to song,” Miller said. “There’s something for everybody.”

Tracy Unger and her sister Janice sat in the sun near the band. Tracy Unger explained that the two of them lived near Detroit and came because they’re fans of Enter the Haggis.

“It’s nice being outside for once,” she said. “Not in a dark club or a bar.”

“It’s really nice seeing the people walking by just stop and listen,” Janice Unger said.

Balloons in the colors of the Sonic Lunch sponor, the Bank of Ann Arbor, festooned Liberty Plaza on Thursday.

In addition to the Bank of Ann Arbor, other Sonic Lunch sponsors include 107one FM, the Ann Arbor Area Chamber of Commerce and Perich Advertising + Design. The radio station had a booth set up selling T-shirts and CDs and distributing Bank of Ann Arbor balloons.

Rhonda Foxworth, Bank of Ann Arbor’s assistant vice president and marketing manager, said this is the third year the bank has held the outdoor concert series (although it’s only the second year it’s had the name Sonic Lunch). Sonic Lunch begins at 11: 30 a.m. and will run every Thursday (except for the week of the Ann Arbor Art Fairs in mid-July) until the end of August.

Foxworth said it started as a movement to “bring music back to downtown Ann Arbor.”

“Our president, Tim Marshall, loves music,” Foxworth said.

The Ann Arbor Area Chamber of Commerce handles the logistics with the city, while 107one FM contributes the media needed and Perich Advertising + Design takes care of the posters, signs and other promotional materials, Foxworth explained.

“It’s a good thing for the bank,” Foxworth said. “We’ll keep doing it bigger and bigger every year if we can.”

Matthew Altruda, who manages the band The Macpodz, helped book the bands for the event. The lineup for future Sonic Lunch Thursdays includes Laith Al-Saadi, The Ragbirds, and Altruda’s Macpodz, along with many others. The next concert on June 11 will feature Jill Jack. (Get the complete listing of bands on the event’s MySpace page.)

“I absolutely loved putting it together,” Altruda said of the lineup. “I hope we really have a good turnout.”

He added that the concert series offers “wellness through dance” for kids. He explained that some of the children dancing in the plaza earlier were Ann Arbor first graders on a field trip.

As for Enter the Haggis’ performance, Altruda said he loved it. “They were incredible,” he said. “I really hope the Ann Arbor community responds to people working so hard to get good music here.”

About the writer: Helen Nevius, a student at Eastern Michigan University, is an intern with The Ann Arbor Chronicle.  

Yo-Yo Ma asks a question of Eric Tinkerhess, a cellist from Community High School, during a master class session at Hill Auditorium on Saturday. On piano is J Bennett, and Jacob Joyce was playing violin. The three teens form the Trio Animando. (Image links to larger version.)

Oftentimes here at The Chronicle we cover wildly different events within the span of a few hours. And equally often, it ends up that seemingly different things – like classical music and a language competition – have all sorts of connections we never imagined.

And so it was on Saturday, when we observed first a master class taught by cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble at Hill Auditorium, followed by a statewide Japanese Quiz Bowl at the University of Michigan Modern Languages Building, just behind Hill. Both events were attended by several hundred people, and both had communication at their core.

But only one of them talked about vomit, and that’s where we’ll begin.

“Channeling crazy”

Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble were in Ann Arbor this weekend for two performances, on Friday and Saturday nights. But they also spent two hours on Saturday giving a free performance and master class, working with a trio of Pioneer and Community high school musicians as well as an ensemble from the UM School of Music. The event was coordinated by the University Musical Society‘s education department.

Wu Tong, a member of the Silk Road Ensemble, listens to applause for his solo performance on Saturday morning.

The program began with two stunning Silk Road performances. First, Wu Tong played a solo on the sheng, a traditional Chinese reed instrument. The song was at turns soulful and rambunctious, and later Ma told the audience that this was the first time the Silk Road performers had heard this piece. “It’s just mesmerizing,” he said.

The entire group then joined Azerbaijani singer Alim Qasimov and his daughter, Fargana Qasimova, in a richly textured piece from the opera ”Layla and Majnun.” [The New York Times describes this work in a Feb. 27, 2009 article here.]

But the main part of the two-hour session focused on students, beginning with a trio from Pioneer and Community high schools.

When introducing the trio, Joe Gramley – a UM assistant professor who is also a member of the Silk Road Ensemble – talked briefly about how music was a form of communication, a theme that echoed throughout the event.

Jacob Joyce, J Bennett and Eric Tinkerhess – the Trio Animando – performed a portion of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2 in e minor, Op. 67 (II. Allegro non troppo). “Wow,” said Ma, as the applause faded following their performance. “That’s all we have to say. Wow.”

Colin Jacobsen, a violinist with the Silk Road Ensemble, and Yo-Yo Ma give students J Bennett (on piano) and Jacob Joyce (on violin) some advice about their performance.

It turns out that wasn’t quite all he had to say, and for the next 30 minutes or so he and some other members of the Silk Road Ensemble pushed the three younger musicians to take their music to a much crazier place.

This is where the vomit comes in.

When asked to describe what the piece meant to him, Eric Tinkerhess said “craziness.” Why crazy? Because Shostakovich had composed the music during World War II, as a tribute to a friend who died in a Nazi concentration camp. It’s a powerful piece, and Tinkerhess said he tried to play it “like a madman.”

Colin Jacobsen, a violinist with the ensemble, said that when channeling craziness, you have to be very specific in how you’re playing crazy. He recalled how he once performed the same piece for an audience that included a friend of the composer, who afterward told him that this particular part of the piece was “like vomiting.”

Part of the audience at Hill Auditorium on Saturday before the master class with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble.

Describing the performance of Trio Animando, Jacobsen said, “It sounded a little vomity, but I think it could be wildly exaggerated.”

After the trio played that section again, Yo-Yo Ma picked up on the visceral aspect, saying their performance should feel physically awkward, lurching – and as they played yet again, Ma walked among them making loud and quite realistic sounds of someone hurling. They’re trying to achieve a “group vomit,” he said later. “It’s hard to do.”

Ma described the need to have a “toolkit of craziness – sometimes it’s a tank division, sometimes it’s the bones rattling.”

He also playfully teased the teens, prompting Tinkerhess to talk about what “Breakin’ Curfew” meant to him. “Rebelliousness,” he said. And … well, let’s just say that sitting in front of a crowd of strangers, family and friends, it’s hard to describe too vividly just exactly how “rebelliousness” takes place.

The second portion of the master class focused on a UM School of Music Ensemble: Sarah Frisof on flute, Jean-hee Lee on violin, Nicholas Hancox on viola, Sam Livingston on percussion, and Nick Finch on cello. They played “Encaenia” by Paul Dooley, who’s working on his masters of music at UM. The Chronicle was unable to stay for this portion of the event, however, as we were off to observe a different kind of communication take place.

Two students from Emerson School consult during the finals of the statewide Japanese Quiz Bowl.

“I heard you say no, but you’re gonna learn anyway”

By the time we arrived at the 2009 Japanese Quiz Bowl next door, the morning’s preliminary competition had ended and a few hundred students, parents and others packed the large lecture hall awaiting the finals. For 16 years, this annual event – hosted by the UM Center for Japanese Studies and Japanese Teachers Association of Michigan – has highlighted the language and culture of Japan. For the Japanese language learning community, this is a very big deal.

It’s a marketing opportunity, too: In the hallway outside the lecture hall, tables were set up selling all sorts of Japanese food, clothing and other items. Wizzywig, an Ann Arbor store located on South State, was there with Pokemon figures, stuffed animals, keychains, Hello Panda cookies and more.

T-shirts were among the many Japanese-related items for sale at the 2009 Japanese Quiz Bowl.

Another vendor had a selection of T-shirts – one featuring what looked like a beefy sumo wrestler, another with the phrase “Japanese, please!” (in Japanese, of course).

There’s a frenetic energy in a room full of kids amped up for competition, and things were running a little late. To kill some time, one of the organizers – who told the crowd he taught Japanese to kindergartners – asked if they wanted to sing a song. Several people shouted, “No!” which prompted him to say, “I heard you say no, but you’re gonna learn anyway.” And so he led the audience in a song about the sounds that animals make, perhaps a Japanese version of “Old MacDonald.” At least that’s our best guess.

Two teams from Emerson School in Ann Arbor get ready to face off during the elementary finals at the 2009 Japanese Quiz Bowl. But first, a sound check.

As this was happening, others were setting up the microphones and buzzer system used during the finals (QuizMachine was the mechanism of choice). The buzzers emitted a brittle electronic yap with an accompanying light, which seemed slightly unsatisfying but certainly sufficient to identify the person who buzzed in.

Finally, the first two teams were called to the front, each with four members, all eight from Emerson School in Ann Arbor, all eight wearing light blue T-shirts with a big white E on the front.

Though one of the organizers had told the audience, sharply, that they were not to take photos or notes or to record the proceedings in any way, on pain of having their entire school disqualified next year, no one seemed to care that The Chronicle was both taking photographs and copious notes.

Among the things we noted were the rules:

• Team captains play the Japanese equivalent of Rock/Paper/Scissors to determine which team goes first in the team consultation round.
• In the consultation round, teams are given 30 seconds to come up with the answer, which is given by the team captain. If they’re wrong, the other team gets a chance to answer.
• During the toss-up phase, anyone can buzz in. If you answer incorrectly, anyone from the opposing team gets a chance.
• The final portion of the quiz – visual questions – is a variation of the toss-up phase, with questions related to visual prompts projected onto a screen.

Not everyone in the audience was riveted by the competition.

As one of the organizers said, “It’s all very exciting.”

So what kinds of questions were these elementary students asked? We’d love to tell you, but we’re afraid of disqualifying our team next year, should we in fact decide to start a Japanese language school. You never know.

However, we can safely say that one of the Emerson teams won the match – we hope to report all local winners in the comment thread when we get the results. In addition to Emerson, the Ohara Language School in Ann Arbor had a large contingent competing, with students who attend  Clague and Tappan middle schools, and Saline and Pioneer high schools.

We could only stay for one round, but this story doesn’t end there.

As we exited the Modern Languages Building, we noticed two of the members of the Trio Animando – Tinkerhess and Bennett – being interviewed by a reporter and photographer from Community High School’s student publication, The Communicator. We look forward to reading their report.

A reporter and photographer from the Community High School student newspaper, The Communicator, interview Eric Tinkerhess (right) and J Bennett (second from left), two of the three members of Trio Animando.

But the story doesn’t quite end there, either.

As we walked around the back of Hill Auditorium, members of the Silk Road Ensemble were emerging from the back entrance. And there was Yo-Yo Ma.

Had we been more communicative, we might have asked him what was in the blue folder he held. Or where he was headed – off to lunch? Back to his hotel room for a nap? But no, we merely watched  as he bid farewell to his companion and started walking north on Thayer. Solo.

At the Ann Arbor School for the Performing Arts, Stephanie Weaver, Ken Kozora and Angela Martin-Barcelona with instruments donated to the Horns for the Holidays program.

Horns for the Holidays still has a trickle of donations coming in – apparently, a lot of people clean out their closets after the new year, and sometimes they uncover an old instrument that’s gathering dust. Four such instruments – a violin, viola trumpet and flute – had been dropped off at the Ann Arbor School of the Performing Arts, and last week The Chronicle headed over there to meet with the man who started this project 12 years ago, Ken Kozora.

Kozora was there to pick up the instruments, adding them to the 50 or so others already donated since the drive began Dec. 1. Though it started in the Ann Arbor schools, this year Horns for the Holidays included Ypsilanti, Manchester and Chelsea as well.

The idea is to give instruments to kids who can’t otherwise afford them, Kozora said. In Ann Arbor, the district provides instruments free of charge for one year, but after that students must rent or buy their own. That can be a barrier to some, he said, since even used instruments can cost several hundred dollars.

Since the program started, Kozora has teamed with Ken Michalik, a music teacher with the Ann Arbor Public Schools, who identifies kids that need donated instruments. Now Kozora also works with teachers in other districts – each one serves as a point person for finding students in their schools.

Kozora traces his own interest in music to a trumpet someone gave him as a kid. “It was the most wretched horn you ever saw in your life,” he says, laughing, “but I practiced five hours a day.” Kozora says that’s not what caused him to start the program – he actually forgot that he’d been given a donated trumpet until several years after launching Horns for the Holidays. He was being interviewed for an article and was asked about his own musical past – when he remembered how he got started, he said he began crying. Most people have deeply personal relationships with their instruments, he said.

“Music changes people’s lives,” Kozora said. “We all know this – that’s why we’re involved.”

Kozora told The Chronicle that he hopes to expand the program to eventually include lessons and even an orchestra. That prompted Stephanie Weaver, executive director of the Ann Arbor School for the Performing Arts, to suggest having a party in their space, where kids could perform using the donated instruments they’d been given. “We love having parties here,” she said.

Despite its name, Horns for the Holidays also accepts donations of stringed instruments like this viola, and it accepts donations year-round.

The School for the Performing Arts was one of several drop-off locations – since October, it’s been based in the basement level at 637 S. Main, a former buggy factory and the same building that houses the Firefly Club. The school has a scholarship program that subsidizes music lessons on a sliding scale, so Horns for the Holidays was a good fit.

The Ann Arbor Arts Alliance is acting as a host for the program – the alliance’s nonprofit status allows donations to be tax deductible. That’s important for cash donations, too, which Horns for the Holidays needs to help repair some of the instruments it receives. Sometimes repairs cost as much as the instrument itself, Kozora said.

In fact, he thinks of Horns for the Holidays as a recycling program, in a way. He worked in music stores for several years, and felt that a lot of the things he sold would just end up in landfills. Then one day, as he was waiting to hear about a job offer for music store manager, something clicked – and the idea for Horns for the Holidays “just came to me,” he said. “I almost think of it as a spiritual moment.”

Almost everyone has a connection to a favorite type of music, and many can trace that connection to their years as a teen or a young adult. Music critic Whitney Balliett put it this way in The New Yorker: “The music that teenagers like penetrates their bones.” It’s as if we stop discovering new music at some point in our lives and continue to explore the music we already love.

For me the music that captured my soul was the jazz of the late 1930s and early 1940s. As a teenager in Detroit I grabbed at every chance to hear the popular music of the time at concerts, in movie theaters, and especially on the radio. My changes increased when I went into service and was stationed first near New York City and later near Los Angeles. The little money found in my pockets paid for prowling the jazz haunts of those two great cities.

Years later, after service and college, I discovered that my tastes had changed. Now, instead of the mostly ensemble recordings of the big band era, I was more interested in the small group records of the same period. Though the big band sounds were deep in my “bones,” the recordings of Teddy Wilson & Billy Holiday and the small groups of Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Lionel Hampton soared into my heart and head as well. I marvelled at the exquisite solos and the virtuosity of interplay in the small group sessions. So I looked at the whole period with different eyes (and ears!), reaching the conclusion that something extraordinary had gone on. I certainly enjoyed and appreciated the jazz of the ’50s and on, but the earlier period stayed with me.

A special period for jazz that this book will examine began in the summer of 1939. The Great Depression was pretty well over. Records were selling briskly and jukeboxes hummed. The airwaves throbbed to jazz. The general public knew the names of more jazz musicians than they ever had before or would since. Hundreds of bands criss-crossed the land. Jazz had moved out of the back alleys and into Carnegie Hall. War was approaching – but in the USA it was to a boogie beat. The period ended abruptly three years later when America’s entry into World War II and a musicians’ recording strike coincided.

Popular music in this three-year period was exceptional in quantity, quality, and diversity. William Gottlieb wrote in his book, “The Golden Age of Jazz,” that the late ’30s through the ’40s was “the only time when the most widely-acclaimed music was the best music.”

Sounding a similar note was S. Frederick Starr. In his review of Gunther Schuller’s “The Swing Era,” Staff suggested: “For sheer excitement and creative ferment the years 1930-45 have no equal in the long history of jazz. In that period jazz attained the highest level of enduring art and at the same time gained mass popularity.” Record producer John Hammond praised the musicians who played on the superb Teddy Wilson & Billy Holiday sessions: “It simply was a Golden Age; America was overflowing with a dozen truly superlative performers on every instrument.”

Many of the great jazz performers were active during the three years 1939-42, from the New Orleans veterans to the young musicians who would take jazz into its next phase. In “Since Yesterday,” author Frederick Lewis Allen said that the period “…accompanied the sharpest gain in musical knowledge and musical taste that the American people had ever achieved.”

People all over the world had become enthralled with this vital and distinctively American art form. While the dance bands were drawing crowds, jazz was noticed by scholars both here and in Europe.

The music was in flux. In 1939 many jazz writers insisted that only the New Orleans style, improvised by small groups, was worthy of the name “Jazz.” They decried swing bands as imposters. Three years later, others insisted that bebop was the only jazz, and that big bands were as old-fashioned as Dixieland. Leaving a precise definition of jazz to each reader’s choice, this book will be broadly inclusive in its approach.

Was there truly a “Golden Age” of jazz? Some insist that there was and that it ended in the late ’20s with the Louis Armstrong Hot Five and the Bix Beiderbecke-Frankie Trumbauer records. Others might argue that it didn’t begin until the 1940s with Charlie Parker or the 1950s with Miles Davis.

We think that the period covered in this book was “a” golden age and we have organized it around 55 recordings to illustrate the point. These are not offered as the 55 best records, but rather to show the styles and repertoires of key jazz groups and artists. Most are available in modern formats.

Editor’s note: The following is a sampling of the 55 records discussed in “A Golden Age of Jazz Revisited: 1939-1942″:

• Erskine Hawkins, “Tuxedo Junction”
• Fats Waller, “Squeeze Me”
• Count Basie, “Lester Leaps In”
• Muggsy Spanier, “Dipper Mouth Blues”
• Billie Holiday, “The Man I Love”
• Cab Calloway, “Pickin’ The Cabbage”
• Louis Armstrong/Sidney Bechet, “Coal Cart Blues”
• Artie Shaw, “Star Dust”
• Woody Herman, “Blue Flame”
• Gene Krupa, “Let Me Off Uptown”
• Ella Fitzgerald, “I Got It Bad”
• Stan Kenton, “Adios”
• Lu Watters, “Muskrat Ramble”
• Benny Goodman, “Why Don’t You Do Right”

Programs for the 7 Mondays at 7 carillon concert.

A beautiful end-of-summer evening, a holiday weekend, a free outdoor concert by a world-class musician – it all came together on Labor Day for the final 7 Mondays at 7 carillon recital at UM’s Burton Tower.

Several dozen people showed up to hear Steven Ball play songs ranging from Ravel’s La Vallee des Cloches to a Wizard of Oz medley, as children played in the Ingalls Mall fountain and students strolled by.

Like many of the folks sitting in folding chairs or on blankets around Ingalls Mall, David and Marilyn Cummins brought a picnic dinner to eat before the show. They said they came to the concert just to get out of the house and do something. “Then we’ll know we’ve had a holiday,” Marilyn laughed.

“And the price is right,” David added.

Before playing his final piece, Ball emerged from the tower to collect audience suggestions for an improvised selection, and invited people to come up and watch him play. That was a special treat – typically, carillonists don’t let the public into the inner sanctum during a performance.

Carillonist Steven Ball picks up audience suggestions for his final improvised song.

More than a dozen people made the trek to the tower’s 10th floor, an open-air spot except for the Baird Carillon “keyboard,” which is in a small enclosed room (decorated with a few plastic bats). Huge bells along the walkway form the bottom tier of two octaves of bells that rise above in gradually decreasing size. It’s a deafening place to be during a performance, but the views of Ann Arbor and UM’s campus can’t be beat.

If you didn’t catch this concert – or even if you did – you can hear Ball play regularly at the Michigan Theater, where he is the staff theater organist. Tonight, he’ll be accompanying the silent film “Battleship Potemkin.” The show starts at 7 p.m.

Marilyn and David Cummins enjoy a pre-concert picnic at Ingalls Mall.

Steven Ball gives a tour of the Baird Carillon atop Burton Tower.