Vision and Dedication

The Lower Makefield Society for the Performing Arts celebrates its 27th season of outreach in Bucks County.

By: Amy Brummer

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ELIZABETH PITCAIRN


   When Mary Borkovitz started the Lower Makefield Society for the Performing Arts in 1978, the only thing she could offer performers was a space to play.
   A former music teacher with a fondness for recital and chamber concerts, Ms. Borkovitz wanted to bridge the need for performance venues in the region with her desire for more arts outreach in the community. Taking advantage of a free room with good acoustics in Lower Makefield Township’s new municipal building, she planted the seeds for a cultural series that has both stayed true to her original mission while transcending her hopes for its future.
   Nearly three decades later, concerts still take place in the community room, now outfitted with a Steinway piano purchased by the Society in 1985. And, with grants from the township, local businesses and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, LMSPA has attained the funds to compensate its performers as well as build the program to encompass visual and theater arts.
   Now entering its 27th season, the Society is poised to widen its regional scope, and will change its name to the "Bucks County Performing Arts Center" in the coming year.
   "We voted to change the name so that we wouldn’t limit ourselves to Lower Makefield," Ms. Borkovitz says. "We felt that we would have more visibility by widening our scope to be a resource not only for our own community, but throughout Bucks County."
   But in keeping with Ms. Borkovitz’s interest in recital performances, LMSPA will open their fall season with a concert of duets by violinist Elizabeth Pitcairn and pianist Marcantonio Barone Sept. 12. While both musicians have played concerts for the Society in the past, it will be their first collaboration.
   Ms. Pitcairn, a Tinicum Township native, will open with the Ciccona from the Partita No. 2 in D Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach. In considering a program for the concert, Ms. Pitcairn, who has been studying the violin since age three, chose a piece that was important to a soloist’s repertoire but one she had never performed.
   The LMSPA concert will be her debut of the piece, which she will play on her 1720 "Red" Stradivarius violin. The fabled violin, which Ms. Pitcairn has owned since 2000, was the inspiration for the 1999 movie The Red Violin, the score of which Ms. Pitcairn has played to sold-out audiences.
   As a student at Temple University’s Center for Gifted Young Musicians, Ms. Pitcairn made her solo orchestral debut at age 14, and has gone on to perform as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra and at the Marlboro Music Festival with members of the Guarneri and Juilliard string quartets. Currently a Los Angeles resident, she is a faculty member at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music and was featured on solo violin for the film score of the 1992 movie Far and Away.
   Ms. Pitcairn describes herself as an emotive player who expresses herself both through her music and verbal communication with the audience. This allows her to give people insight into a piece by explaining its history or composition as well as providing a window into how it affects her personally.
   "I know how to relate to an audience," she says, "and I feel a collaboration between my performance and the audience being there. An audience feels my emotions, I don’t try to hide it. I think I am pretty open as a player. Sometimes I feel like tears are going to come to my eyes, or the hair on the back of my neck tingles, and I think that comes across."
   That sensitivity is key to the Sonata No. 9 for violin and piano by Ludwig van Beethoven, which she will perform with Mr. Barone. A frequent performer with the Lenape Chamber Ensemble, the Philadelphia Orchestra Chamber Music Concerts and the Delaware Chamber Music Festival, Mr. Barone is the assistant director and head of the piano department at the Bryn Mawr Conservatory of Music.
   He explains that the Beethoven piece is one of the biggest sonatas for violin and piano, not only for its length, but for its emotional scope and range.
   "It is a very dramatic work," Mr. Barone says, "and interesting that Elizabeth has chosen to play solo Bach on this program, because the way the Beethoven opens suggests some of the sonorities of the Bach solo sonatas. It starts with the violin alone, and then the piano enters with an equally grandiose statement of the same material, and once we hit the body of the first movement, we are off on a very exciting adventure."
   They also chose to include Sonata for Violin and Piano by Leos Janacek, a composer Mr. Barone laments is not performed more often in the United States.
   "He was younger than Dvorak but equally important in the development of a Czech national style," Mr. Barone says. "One thing I always sense in Janacek’s music is his interest in the rhythm and the cadence of the Czech language, specifically the Moravian dialect of the Czech language informs all of his melodic writing. So as you hear this sonata, it is as if you are hearing a conversation."
   Over the course of the season, the Society will feature a program by flutist Thomas Meany and classical guitarist Michael Simmons Oct. 17, the Chinese American Philharmonic Nov. 14, and the concerts will be accompanied by exhibitions of pottery by Joyce Inderbitzen and photographer Jay Shin, respectively.
   On Nov. 20, Streets of Gold, the culmination of a dance residency program by Vanaver Caravan Dance Music Company, will be presented at the Pennsbury High School auditorium. In conjunction with the school district’s "Community to Classroom" initiative, designed to bridge professionals and students, the LMSPA has been sponsoring the week-long residency for the past seven years.
   It has proven to be so popular with the students that the school district has not only added dance to its curriculum, but they also underwrite some of the costs of the program.
   "I can’t tell you how thrilling that was," Ms. Borkovitz says. "Who would have ever thought it would turn out so well? When you put your foot on a road, if you stay with it long enough, you never know what possibilities are out there."
Elizabeth Pitcairn and Marcantonio Barone will perform at the Lower Makefield Society for the Performing Arts, 1100 Edgewood Road, Yardley, Sept. 12, 3 p.m. Admission costs $12, $10 seniors and students, $5 under age 13. For information, call (215) 493-3010.<</i>br>