Elan Trio

The Oberlin-based Élan Trio, composed of pianist Phyllis Chen ('99), flutist Claire Chase, a senior from Leucadia, California, and cellist Kivie Cahn-Lipman, a senior from Mount Vernon, New York, recently took first place at the prestigious Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition, held annually in Pasadena, California. Élan's winning performance pieces were George Crumb's "Vox Balaenae" and a trio by Franz Joseph Haydn.

The Coleman Auditions for Young Chamber Music Ensembles began in 1947 (renamed the Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition in 1982), and has become a nationally-acclaimed competition for young non-professional musicians. Held annually in late April, the Competition offers an opportunity for musicians to perform before a panel of nationally chosen judges for four prizes totalling $11,200. According to its literature, "The Competition has evolved from a local Southern California affair into a highly respected national and international event with most of the competitors coming from the major music schools across the country."

Many Coleman Competition winners have gone on to become widely acclaimed artists, including Oberlin's own eighth blackbird and the Miró Quartet.

"The competition experience itself was great," says Cahn-Lipman. "It's a real pleasure to meet musicians from all over the country--a constant reminder of how small the music world is. There were 15 other groups there and I knew at least one member of maybe half of them. The staff at Coleman was very friendly and helpful, especially with the Crumb piece, which requires lights and amplification. Coleman took care of all of that for us, and all we had to do was sit down and play--a real treat."

"Competitions are always a gamble," says Chase, "and this one was, without a doubt, an enormous gamble. Often the results of competitions have just as much to do with what the judges ate for lunch that day as they do with the technical or artistic specifics of a particular performance. The variables that go into a decision are innumerable, and a performer can control relatively few of them--among those things within our control are concentration, preparation, and simplicity of intention. By focusing on those things you channel all your weight and energy into the performance. This is wonderful when it happens. It makes you care less about the results than about the music itself."

"Coleman was our first real venture into the world outside the Oberlin community and Phyllis's apartment in Chicago," says Chase. "We've done so much isolated playing without feedback in the past six months, we had no idea what to expect, in many ways."

Both Cahn-Lipman and Chase say the preparation for this competition was tough. "The fact that Phyllis was at Northwestern last semester made it a pretty stressful experience," says Cahn-Lipman. "Almost every week from the end of January through the end of April, either Phyllis came to Oberlin or Claire and I went to Chicago. We'd stay for a weekend, rehearse all day, and generally barely make it back in time for classes Monday morning, spending the rest of the week making up missed work. A lot of faculty members were very generous with their time in giving us brief coachings over the course of the semester, including Peter Rejto, Marilyn McDonald, Michel Debost, and our official coach, Kathy Chastain."

"We made a decision at the beginning of the year that the group was a priority, and that at all costs, we were going to make it happen," says Chase. "While it hasn't been easy, I don't think any of us have regrets. We worked very, very hard. We knew the Crumb piece from years of playing it in different venues around Oberlin, but the Haydn was brand new to us as a group. Our three instruments--flute, cello and piano--are so incredibly different that the process of creating blend, shaping lines, matching vibratos, handling intonation issues and articulation quibbles was intense and slow at times, but always revealing, different, and challenging. We put in a lot of grueling, long hours, but it paid off. We felt comfortable at the competition--it was more of a celebration of all the work we'd put into it."

The Los Angeles Times review from Tuesday, May 2, 2000, had this to say about Élan's performance at the winners' concert: "The threesome ... played George Crumb's haunting Vox Balaenae with solid and expressive technique, imposing in both musical and theatrical conviction."

"Chamber music is just the greatest thing," says Cahn-Lipman. "In orchestra playing, a cellist has to think about blending. The individual personality of the performer gets discarded in favor of group sound. Solo playing doesn't usually interest me, but playing in a trio with two other distinct personalities is great fun. You just feed off each other."

"The three of us share a commitment to new music," says Chase, "and to music of traditional eras, and we share tastes in programming new and old music, creating venues for interesting concerts of unusual combinations of pieces. Most importantly, we're all dreamers. This is rare, and wonderful. The three of us can sit in a restaurant or bar and brainstorm until the cows come in, and we're all three crazy enough to make some of those wild brainstorms actually happen."

"Élan literally means 'the mad dash to the end'," continues Chase. "When all is lost, when the world is sinking in around you, there's always that final step that you can dare to take. That's élan. There were a lot of excuses for us to quit, many times along the way, but we didn't. We made the final leap, and I'm proud of the group for having the guts to do it."