As founding members of the Grammy Award-winning Parker Quartet, Daniel Chong and Jessica Bodner have already cemented their place in Boston’s classical music history. Now, they’re adding another notch as co-artistic directors of the Concord Chamber Music Society.
As the organization enters its 25th season, the two are set to bring with them an inspiring vision for the future of chamber music in the greater Boston area. The society’s two new co-artistic directors joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to share what’s in store for the upcoming season. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.
Arun Rath: Congratulations to both of you for this — this is very exciting. We’re big fans of chamber music and new music on All Things Considered, so we’re very excited about this.
Jessica, let’s start off with you. Talk about how this feels to be taking on this kind of responsibility at this time in the organization,
Jessica Bodner: Yes. So, Wendy Putnam is the founder of the Concord Chamber Music Society. She’s also been, for a long time, a violinist in the Boston Symphony, and so it is so incredible how she has built this over the last 25 years. And it’s understandable that she’s ready to move on to a different time in her life.
We’re just so thrilled to be able to enter working with this organization at this time. We’ve been performers our entire lives, and we’ve worked with plenty of presenters, but we’ve never, of course, been on the presenting side ourselves. It’s a wonderful new challenge and a new complete world for us to explore.
Rath: And Daniel, pretty much the same question. How does it feel?
Daniel Chong: Well, it feels excellent. You know, I’m really excited about this. We’re used to being on stage — and to be offstage and to still serve listeners and serve communities in a way that, I think, is a bit broader than simply being the communicators of great music. I think that’s a challenge that both Jessica and I are really looking forward to. And we’re really passionate about thinking creatively about this role and connecting with the Concord community and the communities of Greater Boston.
Rath: The two of you have been performing together for over 20 years — it’s crazy how fast 20 years can go by — in the Parker Quartet. Talk about how that experience might inform the ethos of the Parker Quartet, how that might inform your approach and vision.
Bodner: Yes. Well, we’ve been developing programs as members of the Parker Quarter for — like you say, this is our 22nd season. We’ve had a lot of experience thinking about what might be effective, what might be a great way to communicate with audiences in many different kinds of situations.
But then, we’ve also had wonderful experiences meeting and playing with so many other musicians, going to plenty of concerts, becoming aware of so many exciting voices that are ready to be on the stage today.
I think kind of merging our experience of programming in the Parker Quartet, but also merging that experience with just, in general, being a citizen of the musical community and bringing in so many different kinds of voices that really represent what is so exciting about what’s happening today.
Rath: There are people like me who are already devoted — but it seems like you’re able to get in new audiences, or access to new audiences. What’s your approach to that? How are you bringing in the fresh blood?
Chong: You know, I think one of the greatest things about being a human being or a musician is simply just the relationships that we have, the relationships that we hold close to us and the relationships that we may not have developed to a deep relationship yet, but something that can be explored and can get there at some point.
I think for the Quartet, having been in the Boston area for so long, we look forward to using those partnerships that we’ve built over this time and seeing what kind of creative possibilities they can bring to this series.
Rath: You’ve both talked about the transformative power of chamber music. I’m wondering if you can talk about how that’s been transformative for you, personally. How has it transformed your life?
Chong: I think, as a musician, playing chamber music is one of the most comprehensive ways of being a musician. Because, at the beginning, you have to bring your best playing as an individual, but it goes well beyond that. You need to collaborate. You need to react. You need to adapt. You need to be spontaneous and ultimately foster an environment with your collaborators of inspiration and spontaneity.
When that sort of clicks — when you create that dynamic, when you create that atmosphere — I think music comes alive in a way that is truly special, a way that can be unpredictable, can be thrilling, and at times so cultivated that the refinement of the music can really shine through.
Bodner: You know, when you’re playing chamber music, the moment of true collaboration and when the only thing that you’re worried about — not even worried about, that’s just happening — is just pure expression in that moment. I think that for us, chamber music and collaboration is addictive in that way because it’s just a feeling that you can’t really get, or that we can’t get, in so many other ways.
I feel that audiences can really feel this and can feel the sincerity and the exploration and the excitement that a true collaborative spirit brings. That’s something we think about and explore every single day as performers and also as teachers. This is something that we do that we try to instill in our students to always be searching in this true spirit.
Hopefully, this is something that — well, actually, we very much plan to bring this kind of spirit to the way that we work inside of CCMS and to excite audiences by spreading this love and by really showing it [at] every single concert — whether we are playing in that concert or whether it’s just the people that we bring in and how those people embody that in their own way.
