Sunday, May 18, 2025
7:00 PM
On WCRB In Concert, the ISQ, founded in 2019 at the Juilliard School, performs the music of Haydn and Mendelssohn at The Breakers Mansion in Newport, RI.
Adrian Steele, violin
Phoenix Avalon, violin
Devin Moore, viola
Joshua McClendon, cello
Joseph HAYDN String Quartet in C Major, Op. 20, No. 2
Felix MENDELSSOHN String Quartet No. 5 in E-flat Major, Op. 44, No. 3
This concert was originally recorded on July 17, 2024.
Check out Newport Classical's upcoming season.
Newport Classical's Director of Artistic Planning spoke with Kendall Todd about his first encounter with Newport Classical, what role music plays in the Newport community, and his highlights of the 2025 Newport Classical summer festival season. Listen with the audio player above, and read the transcript below.
TRANSCRIPT:
Kendall Todd I'm Kendall Todd from WCRB, and I'm talking with Trevor Neal, who is the Director of Artistic Planning for Newport Classical. Trevor, thank you so much for your time today.
Trevor Neal Thank you for having me, very excited to talk with you today.
Kendall Todd What is your first memory of Newport Classical?
Trevor Neal My first memory of Newport Classical was actually as a performer. I opened the 50th anniversary of the organization under the previous auspice of New Port Music Festival. And I was hired to actually begin the process of, how can I put this, diversifying the festival. I was the first Black person to ever perform on The Breakers stage. So that was quite significant. And I knew that this place was special from that day. The audience here is just absolutely tremendous, their giving of their time and of their appreciation of any artist who comes here and performs. But my first memory was the summer of 2017, the 50th anniversary at the Breakers.
Kendall Todd What is it like to perform at the Breakers?
Trevor Neal I mean, it's really unlike anything that we have in this country. And, you know, my previous training as an opera singer, I performed on some of the biggest stages, some of the smallest stages the country has to offer as well as overseas. So to come to the Breakers in a space that is actually quite large for someone's summer cottage home, but for a performance space is fairly intimate and to have the opportunity to perform in that intimacy and bring the patrons into the program was quite fascinating for me. Not to mention It's the Breakers Mansion. I mean, if you've never been there, it's a phenomenal place. Just really out of this world. So it was always a pleasure and a joy to perform there.
Kendall Todd What does performing in these beautiful historic mansions like The Breakers do for the music that a regular concert hall wouldn't?
Trevor Neal I think that really the uniqueness of a lot of these spaces are firsts in the country. A lot of our venues that we use in the summer are firsts. We use the Colony House here, which is the original state house for the state of Rhode Island, a key point a lot people don't know. We make use of the Elms, the Breakers, Rosecliff, Chinese Tea House. We also do some outdoor performances as well at Blythewold and Castle Hill. And I think what really draws people to this is just the uniqueness of Newport itself. We market the locality of where we are as being a part of the experience. So I think it's more so the experience, a lot of the time, more so than it is the repertoire being played on stage, although that is a plus, and people do find that to be very important for their time while they're here with us.
Kendall Todd I imagine there are probably some unique challenges to putting on concerts in these historical homes, too.
Trevor Neal There are, there are. It's not a traditional theater, so there's no fly space. We have to completely load in everything, from the chairs that patrons sit in, the bars for the drinks that people enjoy during intermission, to the stage. And we also have a phenomenal working relationship with Yamaha Artist Services and Yamaha Piano Services out in New York, which has been going strong for nearly 40 years now. They provide all of our pianos for the festival at no cost, which is a phenomenal thing to be able to do. I also have a production manager who really takes hold of each venue and can build and form a stage based on the size of ensemble that's performing and the capacity there. So there are some learning curves, especially if you're not used to this type of presenting. Some of my colleagues across the country have their own venues, performing arts centers or smaller theaters that they're able to just kind of run themselves, and... Well, the theater runs itself. They just show up, turn on the lights and do a performance. There's a little bit of a unique challenge, especially in the festival setting, to be able to pull that off. But we do it quite well and we kind of have it down to a T now.
Kendall Todd As you mentioned, there are also concerts in other community spaces. I think I saw the Newport Art Museum, the Cliff Walk. Why is it important to you to bring this music out into the community and into Newport?
Trevor Neal I think one of the big things that this organization kind of lacked before I got here or my colleague Gillian arrived here was that there was really no presence of the festival in the community. And one thing that we wanted to do was present a series of free community concerts to regular ordinary people who may be passing by a park or stopping by Newport Craft for a quick pint of beer, and they run upon a phenomenal classical music ensemble performing for free. And I think that's a great way not only for us to be in the community, but for people to really get connected to classical music who've never been connected to classical music before.
Kendall Todd As the Director of Artistic Planning for the festival, what are some of the concerts that you're excited about this summer?
Trevor Neal Yeah, I actually brought four concerts that I'm very excited about. One of them is a project by soprano Karen Slack called "African Queens." We are one of the initial co-commissioners of this project, one that I am personally very pleased about. Karen is a very good friend of mine. So when her manager came to me with this project, I was like, "Absolutely." It's really going to be a compelling even of music and storytelling that's going to showcase the bold connections of newly composed works by some of today's leading composers. And the project really circles around these seven extraordinary African queens who were rulers, warriors, visionaries, and their stories have long been marginalized or forgotten in the West. So this gave us a great opportunity to just kind of dive in and give our patrons something that's both historical and musically sound.
And then -- that's on July 12th -- on the 17th of July, Paliver Strings. It's a phenomenal vibrant artist-led ensemble, which is something we have recently gotten into in the last few years. This used to be strictly a piano and string quartet or string trio festival and we've really expanded what we can offer here. So the chamber orchestra component, we have two that will be here, Paliver is one of them, and they'll bring a program of mostly newly commissioned works, or new commissions. In particular, one called "ḥawwāsh," which is a work by Kareem Roustom. It was inspired by the rhythms of traditional Arab line dance, which I found fascinating. And it also includes their own arrangements of Bartok's Romanian folk dances, Kinan Azmeh's Syrian dances, which is, if you don't know Kinan Azmeh, he's a phenomenal composer and clarinetist. And some additional works to honor the power of the folk tradition. I think that's gonna be a really fascinating concert and feature a lot of music that our patrons are not really used to and exposed to.
Another concert that I'm just over the moon about is the Attacca Quartet, which really pushes our bounds. We've presented Brooklyn Ryder before, so I know our patrons are ready to make that leap, but what makes this program cool is that it's another co-commission for us by a composer named David Lang, who I was just speaking with about a month ago at the conference I was at. He's very thrilled to come bring this program here. The remainder of the program will be some strings quartets by Bartok and Mendelssohn which really complement that new commission.
And finally, this is someone who I had the opportunity to perform with when I was a performer at Newport Music Festival then. Sara Davis Buechner, phenomenal pianist, a trans pianist. And I find it very important to be able to present people from a plethora of different backgrounds. And Sara is a very good friend of mine as well, and so it's going to be a pleasure to have her back here. She's going to bring a program that really pushes the gamut of new, forgotten, and some of the core canon pieces that really make up what we do in classical music. Very thrilled for that. That's going be July 8th at Castle Hill in Newport. Those are some of my favorites. We close with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, which is always a favorite of mine. Leila Josefowicz will be here. We'll present Jessica Vosk in two nights of phenomenal musical theater repertoire with Mary Campbell Mitchell. And so, yeah, it's gonna be a thrilling summer season.
Kendall Todd Yeah, scrolling through all of the concert listings for this summer, every one, I was like, "Oh, that's cool. Oh, that's cool. Oh, that's cool."
Trevor Neal They're really cool. And also one that's really kind of a sleeper right now that I really hope more people show interest in is an ensemble called Tallā Rouge, who, it's a duo viola ensemble, Cajun-Persian. One identifies as they/them, one's a lesbian, like their whole vibe is very cool. And what we're doing is working with the Newport Art Museum to kind of have a linear exhibit during that performance. Our patrons will be able to enjoy the first half of the concert, take intermission to kind of go through the exhibit and see some of the pieces, have a conversation about it and then enjoy the second half of concert afterwards. So that's going to be a very special, small but very special event.
Kendall Todd That's really cool. Is the art curated to go with the concert as well?
Trevor Neal It is.
Kendall Todd What is some of that going to look like?
Trevor Neal Who knows? I'll find out once I show up. [Laughing]
Kendall Todd [Laughing] You and everyone else. That sounds so cool.
Trevor Neal That's right, that's right.
Kendall Todd A viola duo too is pretty unusual.
Trevor Neal Exactly. I, you know, I've really taken a liking to the viola. As someone with an opera background, I came into this job with ideas, obviously. I was a jazz trombone major in college and switched my major to opera, so I had some chamber music experience already coming to the job. But I always loved the cello, but the viola has always been a huge curiosity to me. I make it a point to really explore their repertoire and do a lot of listening to professional violists who are really at the top of their game. One to become more familiar with the repertoire but also to just really expand my appreciation for the instrument. I think that our patrons are going to come along for the ride and also enjoy this experience as well.
Kendall Todd Yeah, definitely. When you are looking at like the breadth of curating the whole festival, where do you start? What do you begin with?
Trevor Neal I begin with meeting with all of our manager stakeholders in New York City for a conference called APAP. That's pretty much where all of my business for the festival happens. And some of the chamber series, I try to do those kind of as I'm going throughout the year to plan for the next chamber year. But for the Festival, it's pretty much all planned at APAP. I take about 60 meetings while I'm there, over the course of five days. And out of those 60 meetings, I come back here and take about two months and weed through the different program proposals and opportunities for Newport Classical. And we kind of start setting some things in motion to move from there. My big thing is just diversity in options, not necessarily diversity in skin color, you know, just I want our patrons to have a plethora of options to choose from. One thing I like to always say is that classical music is a living art form. It continues to live, and if we treat like it's dead, it's going to die. By being fun and taking risks and being exploratory, and... I think it has really proven good for our organization.
Kendall Todd Yeah, it's really interesting programming. It looks really cool and I'm sure will sound really cool too.
Trevor Neal Yeah, it does. And you know, I think what it also does is, I was just at the CMA conference a few months back and one of the things that most people said is that they're just blown away by our ability to break outside of the traditional mold of chamber music presenting. And I think it's encouraging a lot of those presenters to also do the same thing, which is industry-wide going to be a really good thing for our art form and good for longevity.
Kendall Todd What does it do for your audience to have all of these options at their disposal?
Trevor Neal You know, as I told you before, this festival was traditionally a piano and string quartet, a string trio festival. And they mostly performed only Romantic music from the classical canon, presenting some up and coming American artists, but mostly Russian or Slavic musicians. They did that for about 25 to 30 years. And I think what's different is that people who come to our concerts now see themselves on stage, one. I think that's important. And number two, they hear themselves on stage, which is also equally important. They're also having to get the opportunity to hear some of the most professional and polished and technically and musically sound musicians in the industry today. And I think- well, not think, I know that there's a massive appreciation for that, particularly for those who are lifelong festival goers who've been going to our festival for 30, 35 years. This transition has really reinvigorated their love for what we do, and also reinvigorated their ability to increase their planned giving for us every year, which I also think is important. People want to support something that is exciting and new and fresh and creative as long as it's good. That's our focus, is always my focus, is to make sure that we're presenting quality ensembles and music here in Newport.
Kendall Todd What can you tell me about your commissioning initiative?
Trevor Neal We started this commissioning initiative just commissioning one piece during the summer festival season. That's now expanded into our off-season and we have more than just one opportunity to do a commission. But our in-house commissioning initiative is where we are the sole commissioner of a piece by a composer of our choosing, and all of them write a piece based on a historical element of Newport. It can be anything that they want to write about. Stacy Garrop, our inaugural commissioner, wrote about the lighthouse at Castle Hill. It's a phenomenal piece. Curtis Stewart wrote a piece called "The Gilded Cage," which explored kind of the, hmm, some of the things we don't see behind the closed doors of the ultra wealthy. We commissioned the piece last year by Clarice Assad, where she explored the female ghosts of Newport, which was really interesting. And this year, we have an indigenous composer out of Canada named Cris Derksen, who wrote a piece called "First Light," and explores the story of a young native boy who, at first light, made his escape from Newport. And it kind of tells the story about how the slaveholders were looking for him. They put out all these flyers saying they're going to make you rich if you can help them find their key servant. It's kind of depressing, but it's also uplifting because he got away, you know? But I'm very excited for that. Cris is a phenomenal composer and she truly has her own musical voice. And she sent me just kind of a MIDI copy of this new piece a few days ago and I was absolutely in tears. I mean, it's gonna be a very, very moving piece. And performing that is Galvin Cello Quartet, which-- unfortunately that concert is sold out, but we do have a wait list. So if there's anyone listening who's interested in that concert, please, please, please send us your name and join the wait list and if we can get you in the door we surely will.
Kendall Todd It's great that it's sold out. That's awesome.
Trevor Neal Absolutely, absolutely. We have about half of our inventory sold out right now, so... Really bucking the trends of the rest of the industry. It's just how you present it, you know? It's just, how are you presenting classical music at your organization? We choose to present it in a way that is accessible and varying and in a place where we can still see growth in the art form. So we're very excited for it.
Kendall Todd Awesome. And you have a couple of artists in residence this summer as well, right?
Trevor Neal Yes, we have five, a cohort of five artists in residence, they're called our Festival Artists. I listen to and hire these artists individually and they form a piano quintet for our summer season. I program up to nine concerts for them. If you were to go through some of our programming online, most of the concerts that have kind of generic names like "Musical Love Triangle," those are Festival Artist concerts that I program as well. They're always a great group of young professional musicians. And this year is going to be a super group. I mean, I really outdid myself this year. I don't know how I got so lucky actually, but it's going to be a phenomenal group of emerging professional musicians who will be joining us this summer.
Kendall Todd How do you find these artists?
Trevor Neal Some of them I see at APAP and Showcase. Some of the them I talk with managers at YCA or CAG and see who they have that's exciting, up and coming, who would like an opportunity. And sometimes, you know, I'm just out, kind of strike up a conversation with an artist, ask them to send me some materials and I hire them that way. I like to be all encompassing and not just focused on those who are managed, because you really miss out on a lot of phenomenal talent when you don't consider those who're unmanaged.
Kendall Todd Yeah. It sounds like a fun part of your job.
Trevor Neal It is. It is, it is. I mean, that's what has kept me here. This is my, this will be my sixth festival this year. So this is really what has kept me for six years and for hopefully six years more.
Kendall Todd Yeah. I want to ask you about something that you mentioned at the very beginning of our conversation, which is that you were the first Black person to perform on the stage at the Breakers. What was that moment like for you?
Trevor Neal I certainly had some nerves. There was a little bit of a shake-up at the organization, because there was the thought that the organization would now prioritize DEI efforts over what they had come to know and love. And one of the things that I did when I was offered the job of artistic planner here was to get out into community, our musical community, and show them that a focus on DEI is not a bad thing. It's all inclusive, actually. It's not excluding anyone. It's just bringing more people into the fold and making sure that everyone is given the same equal opportunity. And for those who really heard me, they get it now, they understand. And I really wish that that was something that would have been around when I did perform because that obviously does kind of affect your performance when you're on stage. You're opening the 50th anniversary of a storied music festival, and you just happen to be a color that they're not used to seeing perform on the stage. So it was really both eye-opening, but a great experience to be the person where they learned that this is okay, that nothing's gonna, the world's not gonna end. I did a phenomenal set of Aaron Copland's folk songs, so, you know, something that they could connect to, that they knew, and a lot of those people are really, really dear friends of mine now. And we go to dinner dates and shows and I know their grandkids, et cetera. And so it's really been a full 180 here at the organization for me personally.
Kendall Todd That's wonderful. I am just curious how Newport Classical is facing this particular political moment, with your focus on expanding the definition of classical music.
Trevor Neal Absolutely. That is a great question because other people are asking us the same thing. And, you know, it's, we're going to continue the forge ahead with our programming and our philosophy behind programming. We have a very, very supportive and dedicated board of directors here who are wholly standing behind us in this time. And our donors also have, many of them have increased their gifts, which is very encouraging. So it's obviously quite mind-boggling for me as someone in the industry, with many friends who are running organizations across the country who have to deal with this, and don't quite have what we have here, and are now trying to figure out how they're going to make that really cool project that they had coming in work without a $20 - 25,000 grant from the federal government, so... We don't have any problems in that area yet. But like I said, we're gonna keep forging forward, doing what we know is right. And yeah, keep living.
Kendall Todd Amazing. Trevor Neal, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.
Trevor Neal Thank you, Kendall.