Chatter, a local nonprofit that focuses on performances that combine contemporary and classical music, is gearing up for its August programming, hosted by the Albuquerque Museum.
Violinist and conductor David Felberg is the co-founder and artistic director of Chatte and has worked as a featured soloist with The Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra, New Mexico Philharmonic, Albuquerque Philharmonic, Palo Alto Philharmonic and the Balcones Orchestra. The August concert series marks the fifteenth year of collaborations between Chatter and the Albuquerque Museum.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Did you want to talk about some of the history of the [Chatter Albuquerque Museum] performances?
We’ve been doing this for quite a number of years. Basically it’s an addition to what we usually do. [The concerts] are typically in conjunction with an exhibit at the museum. We do the four concerts on successive Thursday nights and we try to program things that go along with the exhibition. Sometimes it’s tricky — it stretches our programming chops, so to speak.
What specific exhibits will be paired with the performances?
Just as an example, they’re having an exhibit from the Philadelphia Art Museum 1776 to 1976. There’s a lot of diversity in that exhibition. So, we’re doing some string quartets by a diverse array of American composers. We sort of just riff off of those particular things.
I wanted to ask about Carla Bauckholt. I know “Double Exposure” is the translation.
Sometimes on the third Thursday it’s really crowded so we’ll have stations throughout the museum in which we have little solos being played. This is a piece that I’ve been playing now for a couple of years. It’s basically bird sounds and it’s like I’m having a conversation with the birds in their language. We do this one outside in the amphitheater area. I’ll be on stage and we’re going to hang speakers and violins from the trees. I think there are 11 separate tracks of birds and I’ll be having my musical conversation with those birds throughout the amphitheater area. It’s a really cool piece.
I was also thinking about multimodality and I saw, if I’m not mistaken, on Aug. 15 is Andy Akiho’s “Stop Speaking” with a computer generated voice?
Yeah, I think [with a] snare drum. Our percussionist is doing that one in a different part of the museum. Hopefully we won’t get in each other’s way. It’s a big place, but yeah he’ll be spread out there as well.
How did the collaboration start?.
Our regular thing we do is Saturday and Sunday morning performances every week for 50 weeks a year. One in Santa Fe and one in Albuquerque. We’ve been going at it since the early 2000’s.
We’ve done everything from Mayan art to high heel shoes to French Impressionism and everything in between. We’re just trying to respond to the exhibitions and it’s been a real fruitful collaboration. It’s been something we really look forward to every year.
Are there any other performances or exhibitions that are favorites of yours?
We have a late night series on the first Friday of every month and we do a lot of multimedia-type things there. That program is on the website. It’s kind of a mix of some acoustic and electronics. We’re doing a piece by Gavin Briars called The Sinking of the Titanic, which is a really interesting piece with string quartet accompanied by lots of different sounds including recordings of people that were on the Titanic. It’s sort of a collage of things. Those are our 9 p.m. concerts.