Spreading the Classical Music Word: San Antonio’s Agarita Thinks Beyond the Concert Hall

Steven Brown·
MusicSan Antonio
·

Agarita performs in typical concert venues, just as any musical group does. But the San Antonio chamber ensemble has other options.

The quartet can welcome listeners into its own home: the Agarita Loft in San Antonio’s Southtown, which serves as a concert space, art gallery, lecture hall and rehearsal studio. Or the group can hit the road with its Humble Hall, a 27-foot trailer that serves almost as a concert hall on wheels—enabling Agarita to carry a portable stage, instruments and a sound system to parks or wherever an audience might be. A performance employing the mobile setup “acts almost like it’s a popup concert,” violist Marisa Bushman says.

“We do advertise them,” Bushman explains, “but usually half of our audience is caught by surprise. They might be taking a bike ride on the Riverwalk and hear music, and come and sit down for 25 minutes. It’s a fun way to connect with our community, and get the word out not only about Agarita, but about classical music.”

Spreading the word about classical music is Agarita’s ultimate goal, wherever it goes. Founded in 2018, the group matches a venerable chamber-music template, namely the piano quartet: Its members are pianist Daniel Anastasio, who doubles as artistic director; violinist Sarah Silver Manzke; violist Bushman; and cellist Ignacio Gallego. But that doesn’t hint at the range and flavor of the group’s concerts.

“We’re programming some of the most profound works in the entire literature, and we’re programming pieces that were written yesterday for us,” Anastasio says. “So we’re giving variety, and we’re trying to meet the audience where they are as 21st century listeners.”

When Anastasio plans out each concert, he says, “I’m thinking very consciously about … how it feels for the audience at every moment. We feel that’s been lacking in traditional concerts, where maybe they program…a big classical piece or two, and you’ve got to sit through maybe 40 minutes of a work by Beethoven or Mozart without much context or insight other than the music itself. So we’re programming (single) movements of things, we’re programming shorter works, we’re talking between pieces. Our shows are no longer than 75 minutes and have an intermission. We like to keep listeners as engaged as possible.”

All the group’s concerts are free, eliminating another potential barrier. And the recipe includes one more key ingredient: collaborators, as Anastasio calls them. The group has hosted instrumentalists, singers, dancers, poets, artists—even a glassblower. That lets Agarita’s musicians “be inspired by our local talent,” Anastasio says, and “it gives the audience more entry points aesthetically for understanding the music and interpreting the music. … We feel like it brings people in. It makes our concerts more interesting than your average classical music experience, where it’s only music.”

Agarita will join forces with San Antonio’s Olmos Ensemble, a quintet formed in 1994 by members of the erstwhile San Antonio Symphony, on Jan. 25. The groups want “to highlight the modern era in a unique way,” Anastasio says. Mixed ensembles of piano, strings and winds “are a special combination in chamber music,” he adds, but many works for them have been neglected. The musicians will correct that by showcasing a few examples, such as Aaron Copland’s vital, crisp but hardly familiar Sextet. Turning to present-day composers, they will perform a work for ensemble and spoken word: My Twentieth Century by Martin Bresnick. The musicians themselves take turns reciting poet Tom Andrews’ text, which swings between whimsy and seriousness. One stanza muses:

I wasted three years on geometry in the twentieth century.
I was anesthetized through most of the twentieth century.
I loved Kawasaki in the twentieth century.

Spanish guitarist Pablo Sáinz-Villegas will return to San Antonio and Agarita on March 9. “We’ve had him the past two years, and he has made an incredible impression,” Anastasio says. “He has consistently drawn our largest audiences.” Bushman adds that the group has discovered a kinship with him.

“When we met with Pablo and played our first concert, we didn’t realize how much we aligned in the ethic of bringing music to the people and making music accessible,” she says. “He has a nonprofit that brings free music to underserved communities.” And when Sáinz-Villegas steps onstage, “he talks to the audience. He makes them feel as if they’re part of the concert. He has a beautiful spirit to him. On top of that, in a majority Hispanic community like San Antonio, he looks and sounds a lot like most of the people in San Antonio, which I think is really important. We don’t see enough of that in classical music.”

The musicians have yet to nail down the program, Anastasio says, but Sáinz-Villegas gravitates toward “things from his own culture—Spanish music and Spanish-influenced music. When you see someone playing an instrument that’s popular in their own country, it automatically provides a sense of warmth.”

Agarita’s collaborators May 3 will be two singers, an organist and, last but not least, the venue: the Chapel of the Incarnate Word, whose reverberant acoustics will chime in alongside the musicians. The sanctuary is “not only majestic to look at, but majestic in its sound and echo,” Bushman says. “It’s a magical place.” In past visits, she adds, Agarita has situated itself in spots ranging from the center of the main floor to the organ loft in the rear to out-of-sight nooks.

The program will center on the world premiere of Shivers of Byzantium by Ethan Wickman, professor of composition at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Wickman is “fascinating,” Anastasio says.

“He’s trained in conservatories, but he’s very interested in Middle Eastern music and Turkish music,” Anastasio continues. “He went to Turkey and studied the oud (a relative of the lute), and he’s a virtuoso on that instrument. He has a band here, Viatorum, that specializes in music from the Middle East, Turkey, Iraq and Iran—those styles and those modes. The piece he’s writing for us is inspired by that style.” But, Anastasio adds with a laugh, “We have no idea how the piece sounds yet.” Agarita will spotlight the singers in other works, too, because “voices sound angelic in that chapel.”

The Grammy-winning Imani Winds will join Agarita on June 21-22. “We’re going to have a mixture of the jazz and classical worlds,” Anastasio says. The program will highlight “the spirit and soul of that group, which is not just a purely in-the-box classical wind quintet.” The group’s clarinetist, Mark Dover, will arrange a 1970s soul tune—a new domain for Agarita.. “There’s going to be some improvisation, and there might be a Moog or different kind of synthesizer onstage that I’ll play to make things sound a little different—get into the soulful, R&B vibe,” Anastasio says.

Arab American poet Naomi Shihab Nye, who teaches at Texas State University, and San Antonio dancer Tanesha Payne will also take part. “Some of the messaging on that program will be about unification and peace,” Anastasio says. “To include Naomi felt like a no-brainer, because her poetry speaks to those themes all the time. Just reading her poetry is so healing. That’s something I think Imani’s musical choices also do.”

The group’s Loft schedule includes concerts March 26-27, and the plans for Humble Hall include stops at the Guerra Library and Cortez Library on Jan. 11. And the quartet has yet another project: Agarita Inspires, its educational arm. That will take the musicians into 51 San Antonio schools by the time the school year is done, Bushman says.

“That’s become a really important part of our missions,” she explains. “It’s free to schools, which is a big benefit for a strained system. … We present musical concerts that reinforce what (the students are) learning in the classroom at the time.” Last year, the group brought in five University of Texas at Austin music students as partners, aiming to launch “a wonderful army of other educators who play instruments, who can talk to students about what they’re doing and relate to what’s happening in the schools.”

Naturally, sustaining all this requires Agarita to think beyond the music. “Like any nonprofit, we’re raising money for everything that we’re doing,” Bushman says. “We’re lucky to have sponsors. We’re constantly trying to raise money to support our mission.”

-STEVEN BROWN

 

Steven Brown

Steven Brown is a Houston writer who has been classical music critic of the Houston Chronicle, Charlotte (N.C.) Observer and Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel.