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Boston Globe
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Gary Karr, virtuoso who elevated the double-bass, dies at 83
Mr. Karr's idea for it was different. He made the cumbersome bass soar, sing, and leap as if it were a violin, becoming one of few bassists in history to successfully pursue a career outside an orchestra. He played transcriptions of Johann Sebastian Bach's cello suites in such a way that they sounded as if Bach had the double bass in mind all along. He performed Niccolò Paganini with virtuosic agility and a lyrical tone worthy of the 19th-century violin virtuoso himself. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up His tone was clear and well-defined, full of vibrato in late romantic works, and eschewed the muddy murkiness typically associated with the bass. Advertisement Mr. Karr was 'the virtuoso who has almost single-handedly given the double bass widespread credibility as a solo instrument,' music critic and broadcaster Robert Sherman wrote in The New York Times in 1981; Mr. Karr's bass 'sings with all the richness of the cello, the warmth of the viola and the agility of the viola,' Time magazine wrote in a 1968 profile. Major composers including Gunther Schuller and Hans Werner Henze wrote double-bass concertos for him; he performed as a soloist with some of the world's leading orchestras -- the Chicago Symphony, the London Philharmonic, the Montreal Symphony, among others; he made some 93 recordings; and he influenced generations of bass players at the New England Conservatory of Music, Juilliard, and other institutions. Advertisement All of it was most unusual, a fact that Mr. Karr took in stride with modest pride and undying devotion to his unwieldy bass. 'People expect so little when I come out to play the instrument that, when I do show something, even if they are only a little bit impressed, the contrast between what they had otherwise expected and that which they witness is marked enough, they think they are being enthusiastic,' he said in an episode of 'Camera Three,' an anthology series about the arts, that aired on CBS in 1969. That was only seven years after Mr. Karr's breakthrough at a televised performance of Leonard Bernstein's 'Young People's Concerts,' in which he played Ernest Bloch and 'The Swan,' usually a staple of the cello repertoire, from Camille Saint-Saens' 'The Carnival of the Animals.' 'Gary is already at the age of 20 a master of this instrument,' Bernstein said when introducing him at the concert in April 1962. 'His instrument is a madly difficult and an unusual one for solo playing.' Mr. Karr's groundbreaking approach opened up possibilities previously undreamed of, inspiring dozens of bass players, including Larry Wolfe, the assistant principal double bass of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and a former student of Mr. Karr's at the New England Conservatory. Wolfe had seen that concert with Bernstein. 'All of a sudden I said, 'that's what the bass can do.' It was crucial to me,' Wolfe said in an interview, adding that the instrument 'could play with musicianship, personality, control. Make a statement.' Advertisement Mr. Karr's mastery of a difficult instrument -- 'the strings are very, very thick in comparison to the others,' Mr. Karr told CBS, and 'the pressure we have to exert is enormous' -- was often noted by critics. He attributed his physical capacity to athletic abilities inherited from his father, a former semiprofessional baseball player. Mr. Karr 'manages the instrument's technical problems better than most anyone around, yet, more important, he wants us to take the bass seriously as a musical tool,' Bernard Holland wrote in the Times in March 1986, reviewing a recital of Edvard Grieg and Robert Schumann transcriptions by Mr. Karr. 'In both, one felt the range of these transcriptions -- in emotion, dynamics and tessitura -- and felt them with little sense of compromise,' Holland wrote. 'Mr. Karr makes mistakes in intonation, but they emerge as justifiable chances taken in the name of expressivity.' A singing tone was essential to Mr. Karr. 'The bass, to me, is an opera singer,' he said in a 1993 interview with music journalist Bruce Duffie. 'The bass, to me, is the voice that I wish I were. I am a frustrated singer.' Gary Michael Kornbleit was born on Nov. 20, 1941, in Los Angeles to Joe Kornbleit, who worked in a shoe store and also played the bass in dance bands, and Miriam (Nadel) Kornbleit, who played the oboe and English horn in the California Junior Symphony and in movie studio orchestras. His mother's family had emigrated from Russia around the time of World War I, and her father was an important early teacher for Gary. In 1944, the family changed its last name to Karr. Advertisement Gary Karr told the BBC in the 1981 documentary 'Amazing Bass' that he had come from 'seven generations of double bassists.' He studied double bass at the University of Southern California with Herman Reinshagen while playing as a soloist with area orchestras in the early 1960s, and he attended Juilliard under the tutelage of famed bassist Stuart Sankey. His instrument -- once thought to be a rare Amati -- was given to him by the widow of the great double bass virtuoso and conductor Serge Koussevitzky. Mr. Karr became a Canadian citizen in 1997 and retired to Victoria, where he taught at the conservatory and resided with his lifelong partner and accompanist, pianist and organist Harmon Lewis. He was diagnosed with inoperable cancer earlier this year and gave his final public performance in March at the opening of the Gary Karr Library in Toronto, where he played Pablo Casals' 'El Cant dels Ocells.' Mr. Karr leaves no immediate survivors. He often engaged in restrained self-mocking at the lowly status of the bass, even as he rebelled against that stigma. 'We've been around a long time,' he told Duffie in 1993. 'It's about time we had a little bit of attention.' This article originally appeared in
Chicago Tribune
08-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Lynne Turner, CSO harpist since 1962, retires from the orchestra
You could say Lynne Turner's Chicago Symphony Orchestra career really began in 1956. That year, she made her debut with the orchestra, the winner of an audition call to headline its Young People's Concerts. Turner, then 14, played Handel's Harp Concerto in B-flat in four concerts that March. Covering Turner's win, a Chicago Tribune society writer described her as a 'pretty, vivacious miss' who was 'equally at home on a bike or roller skates, and likes nothing better than to spend a Saturday afternoon exchanging feminine chatter with school girl chums.' 'I suppose that was her way of reassuring readers that I was still a normal teenager,' Turner recalls, with some amusement. Normal, sure, but Turner grew up around an abnormal amount of music. Her father, Sol Turner, was a first violinist in the CSO; her mother, Evelyn, a pianist. According to the same Tribune article, her older sister, Carol, was accomplished enough on the violin to join the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the CSO's prestigious training ensemble. Meanwhile, Turner's baby brother, Richard, followed in her footsteps: After his own Civic tenure, he went on to become principal harp in the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra for 45 seasons. Before those Young People's Concerts, Turner wasn't gunning for an orchestra career, per se. But she now thinks of those performances as a catalyst. She also passed through the Civic Orchestra, then, in 1962 — the same year she became the first American to win the International Harp Contest — she joined the CSO itself. Turner's 63-season tenure with the orchestra ends with concerts at Ravinia on Aug. 9 and 17. 'For most of my life, the schedule of an orchestral musician has been the guiding rhythm — rehearsals, performances, travel, and, of course, practicing, which requires many hours each and every day,' she told the Tribune over email. 'But now, I feel a quiet pull toward a different kind of rhythm — one that makes space for more freedom, more spontaneity and perhaps a few surprises.' Life in the CSO has only gotten more bustling in recent decades. The orchestra often tops lists of the busiest American orchestras, calculated by the number of performances, rehearsals and other on-the-clock engagements. But playing under Fritz Reiner, the music director who hired Turner, brought its own intensity. Leading the CSO from 1953 to 1963, Reiner was a brutal taskmaster, the ensemble's musical excellence coming at the cost of some musicians' favor. Turner, however, fondly remembers the year she played under the Hungarian conductor's exacting baton. 'Maestro Reiner had a reputation for being intimidating, but on a personal level, he was very kind to me,' she says. 'There was an intensity and clarity to his leadership that brought out the best in all the sections of the orchestra. I understood from the very beginning that my performance had to be at the highest possible level. Anything less simply wouldn't do… In many ways, it shaped the way I approached my craft for the rest of my career.' Said craft is highly specialized. Today, second harpists are usually hired out as a freelance position and rarely part of permanent orchestra rosters. In repertoire that calls for more than one harp, the second harpist needs to be carefully attuned to the principal's sound in addition to their own. As Turner puts it, 'there's often an element of echo, shimmer, or color reinforcement in harp writing… and when the partnership clicks, it adds a real richness and depth to the texture of the ensemble.' That's easier said than done, according to Julia Coronelli, Milwaukee Symphony's principal harpist. '(Lynne) has a very signature sound that I've never heard anybody else recreate,' says Coronelli, who frequently sits next to Turner as a substitute in the CSO. 'I do think it's harder to play second harp in a lot of ways. You have to place everything with the principal player. That's very hard because of the immediate attack of the string.' The CSO's reputation as a world-class interpreter of Gustav Mahler's symphonies — which require supersized ensembles — means that Turner can be heard on the majority of the CSO's defining Mahler recordings. After joining the orchestra on its recent tour to the Mahler Festival in Amsterdam, Turner sought out the orchestra's 1971 recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 8 with then-music director Georg Solti. She was electrified all over again. 'It has been described as one of the greatest recordings of the 20th century, and I would agree,' Turner says. 'There was a sense among all of us that we were part of something momentous. The scale of the piece, the forces involved, the acoustics of the hall… It all added up to something unforgettable and enduring.' Another favorite CSO album, from 1976: David Del Tredici's 'Final Alice,' featuring soprano Barbara Hendricks and conducted by Solti. In that premiere recording, excerpts from Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland' tumble through a kaleidoscope of orchestral color. 'It was such a bold, imaginative work — wildly inventive and completely unlike anything else in the repertoire,' she says. Though not recorded, Turner likewise treasures the memory of accompanying Chicago Symphony Chorus members in Benjamin Britten's 'A Ceremony of Carols,' for treble choir and harp. For that performance, Turner worked closely with Margaret Hillis — not only the founding director of the Chicago Symphony Chorus, but the first to break the CSO podium's gender barrier. 'Margaret Hillis was an undeniable presence: commanding, insightful and absolutely wonderful to work with. She had a deep musical intelligence and a real sense for shaping a performance in a way that brought out its emotional core,' Turner says. In Coronelli's eyes, Turner has been a pathbreaker in her own right. According to CSO records, just a little over a dozen women had been in the orchestra before her tenure. At the time she was hired, Turner was one of just three women in the ensemble. 'Obviously, she had to be really strong to do that,' Coronelli says. Today, about 40% of the orchestra's membership are women. That progress is thanks, in part, to pioneers like Turner. 'Today, the CSO reflects a far broader range of voices and identities, and that shift has been both meaningful and necessary,' she tells the Tribune. 'I'm proud to have witnessed — and been part of — that evolution.' Four musicians are retiring from the CSO this year — including assistant principal trumpet Mark Ridenour, who was acting principal of that section between 2003 and 2005, and violinist Joyce Noh, who became the first Asian woman to join the orchestra when she was hired in 1979. Upon their retirements between the 2024/25 and 2025/26 season, harpist Turner and principal trombonist Jay Friedman will be the longest-serving CSO musicians in history, having both joined the orchestra in 1962. Hired in their early 20s by the legendary conductor Reiner, few audiences have known a Chicago Symphony without them. Look for a story about Friedman in an upcoming edition of the Tribune's A+E section.
Chicago Tribune
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Glenview native wins Ruth Bader Ginsburg's son's 'emerging artist' music contest
Glenview native Oliver Talukder, who plays oboe for the Opera Philadelphia Orchestra, is musically inspired by everyone from Lady Gaga to Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. His closest brush with celebrity, however, came when he recently won a recording contract from the son of late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Talukder won the 2025 Emerging Artist Competition, hosted in May by Chicago-based Cedille Records, founded in 1989 by James Ginsburg, and the Zell Family Foundation. Talukder won over the judges by playing oboe, English horn, flute and piccolo in a nearly 30-minute performance at the Spertus Institute Feinberg Theater in Chicago. 'We had brilliant performances all around, but what made Oliver stand out was an innate musicality and imagination in his musical choices—both in terms of what he played and how he played it,' noted Ginsburg. 'He has a knack for communicating to and really communing with the audience. You could really feel it.' The connection is intentional, Talukder says. 'Whenever I perform—even when I'm preparing for it and thinking about the pieces—I always put myself in the shoes of the audience,' he said. 'I'm always looking at new ways to engage the audience. I like playing music I like listening to, so that impacts how I play.' Ginsburg explained that the contest, open to musicians under age 35 who are from the Chicago metro area and have never appeared on a commercially-released album, is part of his record label's mission to bring Chicago's wealth of classical music talent out into the world and accessible to listeners. 'There are so many artists who have made their recording debuts on the label,' he noted. 'As we were starting to work more with these artists in building their careers, we got to thinking: Why don't we help the next generation of wonderful Chicago classical musicians or ensembles be noticed by having a competition and making the grand prize their debut recording?' Ginsburg's relationship with classical music was cultivated by his mother, the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 'She was, to quote a phrase, 'notorious' for her love of classical music, particularly vocal music and opera,' he said. 'Music was always playing in the house. My mother discovered my love of classical music as a listener when I was a toddler and really nurtured that, taking me to Little Orchestra Society concerts in New York and later the Young People's Concerts with the Philharmonic. Pretty quickly I graduated to the New York City Opera at the Met. The love of music was something Mom very much encouraged.' This inspired Cedille Records' creation of the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Fund for Vocal Music, which helps fund recordings by vocal artists. Since it was announced in 2022, seven such albums have been recorded, Ginsburg said. Talukder's introduction to classical music was a familial one as well: his two older brothers picked up instruments in elementary school. At the age of 7 or 8, while attending his eldest brother's performance in a Midwest Young Artists concert, Talukder heard the sound of his future. 'I listened to this piece they played—'Scheherazade,' by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. It has a lot of great, gorgeous oboe solos,' Talukder recalled. 'After the concert, I went up to my brother and asked him what that instrument was. To my surprise, he said that was the oboe. That's when I fell in love with the oboe.' Talukder went on to play the instrument, as well as the English horn, in the Chicago Youth Symphony for four years. A 2020 graduate of Maine East High School in Park Ridge, Talukder played tenor sax in the school's Jazz Band and flute and piccolo in the marching band. He was one of two Maine East musicians selected to perform for a production of 'In the Heights' at the Illinois High School Theatre Festival in 2019. 'Any musical activity at school, I was involved in somehow, in some capacity,' Talukder said. 'I loved it so much. The environment felt like my second home.' In the summer of 2019, as a touring member of the prestigious Carnegie Hall National Youth Orchestra, Talukder played oboe at the Royal Albert Hall in London—the very place where, in YouTube videos, he had watched and admired major orchestras performing at the BBC Proms classical music festival. 'It was a full circle moment,' Talukder said. 'I was so inspired by those orchestras on YouTube and now I could be the next generation, inspiring people, connecting with them. That was the moment I decided I wanted to go around the world, spreading music, spreading joy.' A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Talukder was awarded first place in the 2022 Midwest Double Reed Society Competition and named Outstanding Instrumentalist in the 2024 Sphinx Orchestral Partners Audition Competition. He was granted tenure with the Opera Philadelphia Orchestra as second oboist in late 2024. Talukder will head into the studio to begin recording his first album this fall, he said. He'll become one of the roughly 80 recording artists and ensembles that have made their debut with Cedille Records, Ginsburg said. There are currently about 200 artists on the label, which has earned 36 Grammy nominations and eight Grammy Awards, according to the company. Talukder says his debut will be 'very Chicago-centered' while paying tribute to his parents and 'the cultural threads that define who I am,' he said. His upbringing in Glenview is an important part of this, he noted. 'I talk a lot with my friends about 'the village,'' Talukder said. 'I talk about this because my dad is from Bangladesh and he literally grew up in 'the village' in a very basic house. The thing that helped him grow up was the community. I think the community in Glenview is something that really allowed my general upbringing and my musical upbringing to flourish …. I think my roots in Glenview keep me grounded. Even when I move to a new city, I always think about that.' The next Emerging Artists Competition is scheduled for 2029, when Cedille Records marks its 40th anniversary, Ginsburg said.
