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[ARTS]
All in the Family
Chamber Music Northwest’s artistic director
passes love of music to new generations
by Elizabeth Schwartz
David Shifrin could say he owes everything to his mishpocha
(extended family). The world-renowned clarinetist is also a
professor at the Yale School of Music and artistic director
of Chamber Music Northwest, Portland’s summer chamber
music festival. His official bio is studded with more notable accomplishments
than we have room to print, but suffice it to say
Shifrin has worked with some of the world’s finest musicians,
including Emanuel Ax, Wynton Marsalis, and the Guarneri and
Emerson String Quartets.
It was Shifrin’s distant relative, Argentinean-American film
and television composer Lalo Schifrin, best known for writing
the Mission Impossible TV show theme, who first encouraged
Shifrin’s musical interests (the two families spell their surnames
differently). Shifrin explains, “Lalo Schifrin’s family emigrated
to Buenos Aires, and mine moved to New York. When Lalo
first came to New York in the late 1950s, he opened the phone
book and found my grandfather, who had the same name as
his grandfather. So Lalo called us and we invited him over for
Shabbat.”
Schifrin encouraged Shifrin’s parents to get their son his
first clarinet, an instrument he describes as “the chameleon”
for its versatility and adaptability. Shifrin spent weekends with
Lalo’s family as a teenager after Lalo moved to Beverly Hills,
CA. In the 1980s, when Shifrin moved to Los Angeles himself,
he maintained ties to Schifrin and his family. In 2005, Shifrin
commissioned Dances Concertantes for Clarinet and Orchestra and
another work for clarinet and strings from Schifrin. The two
works were released on the Aleph label in 2006 as Shifrin plays
Schifrin.
As Shifrin approaches his 32 nd summer as artistic director of
Chamber Music Northwest, he takes a moment to reflect on his
tenure with one of Oregon’s most established summer festivals.
“In 1981, when I became artistic director of CMNW, I was 31
years old,” says Shifrin. “At that time, CMNW seemed to have
enormous promise and potential. The musicians who played
there recognized what a great fit Portland was for chamber
music … We had the resources to produce concerts at the very
highest level, which attracted both musicians and audiences to
Portland in the month of July, the best weather anywhere, and
friendly welcoming audiences who were very happy to have us.”
As an artistic director, Shifrin focuses on CMNW’s administrative,
artistic and financial concerns. But Shifrin does more
than oversee CMNW; he is also one of its regular performing
artists. This summer he’ll play at least six different works over
the festival’s five weeks, including Stravinsky’s A Soldier’s Tale,
Schubert’s Shepherd on the Rock, clarinet sonatas by Poulenc
and Brahms, and a newly commissioned work from Portland
composer David Schiff. In any given season, Shifrin performs in
roughly a third of the concerts at CMNW, and freely admits to
the occasional difficulties inherent in juggling his performance
and administrative duties.
“You have to allow a certain time to prepare for both, and it’s
always a challenge. The switch has to be turned on for public
speaking or performing or sitting at a desk.”
“It’s important to bring music to the next
generation, especially when music isn’t
prevalent in public schools.” David Shifrin
14 JULY 2012 | OREGON JEWISH LIFE