Violinist Vijay Gupta ready to share the power of music as Music Worcester artist-in-residence

WORCESTER — The way acclaimed violinist, social justice advocate and MacArthur "Genius" Grant recipient Vijay Gupta envisions things, "it will be quite a robust residency."

Gupta will be Music Worcester's second educational artist-in-residence with activities taking place during the 2023 calendar year starting in March.

"I'm truly very excited and honored to be coming to Worcester," Gupta said

His visits will include large-scale concerts (including with the Worcester Chorus) and more intimate recitals, speaking and giving master classes to Worcester Public Schools students, rehearsing and performing with Worcester Youth Orchestras at its 75th anniversary concert, and serving as a coach for Music Worcester's Young Artist Competition participants.

But he said the "cornerstone" of his residency will be performing and participating in songwriting workshops with inmates at the Worcester County Jail and House of Correction in collaboration with the community-based initiative OpporTUNEity. Gupta will take part in weekly Friday livestream Zoom sessions with inmates when he is not in Worcester.

In Los Angeles where he lives, Gupta is founder and artistic director of Street Symphony, a nonprofit organization providing musical engagement, dialogue and teaching artistry for homeless and incarcerated communities in Los Angeles. He has been recognized for his “dedication to bringing beauty, respite, and purpose to those all too often ignored by society while demonstrating the capacity of music to validate our shared humanity.”

"My mission in LA is not only to create world class experiences of art but transformational experiences for communities," Gupta said during a recent telephone interview from California. "To share the power of music with people."

Power sharing principles

His residency in Worcester will be based on similar power sharing principles, although he acknowledged that "every community is different. Worcester is not Los Angeles. I'm very aware of that."

Gupta said he's looking forward learning more about Worcester. "I'm thinking of my residence as an experiment, a laboratory for my hypotheses if you will," he said.

During the 2018-18 concert season (Music Worcester's 160th anniversary), pianist Simone Dinnerstein was Music Worcester's first-ever- season-long educational artist-in-residence. Performance elements included a series of recitals and concerts and Dinnerstein brought her "BachPacking" program to Worcester Public Schools and gave recitals for individual school music programs.

Music Worcester — which puts on concerts year-round, oversees the Worcester Chorus, and has several outreach programs — has hopes its Campaign 2025 with a goal of raising $5 million will include having annual artist residences starting in 2027.

Meanwhile, Gupta said he started talking with Adrien C. Finlay, executive director of Music Worcester, pre-pandemic around 2018/19 about being the organization's second educational artist-in-residence.

Gupta had met Boston Brass trumpet player Jeff Conner at a music festival in Colorado where they performed together. Boston Brass had performed as part of Music Worcester's season in 2018 and visited several local schools. Gupta said Conner told him that "You'd (Gupta would be) be a great person to work with Music Worcester."

"Following our amazing inaugural educational residency with pianist Simone Dinnerstein during the 2018-2019 season, we started discussing what the next engagement could be," said Finlay. "What type of instrumentalist or vocalist might we seek? What genre(s) might we want represented, classical or jazz or folk (just to name a few)? What artist could inspire and assist Music Worcester to connect with its community even more? Violinist Vijay Gupta soon became the focus of our discussions," he said.

"Vijay's artistry takes him around the world as a most sought-after violinist. His engagement work is well-documented as a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, and his strong interest in connecting Music Worcester with historically underrepresented communities will anchor his residency year. Finally, he has already challenged us to make sure that his work in Worcester is not a series of one-off efforts, but rather becomes integrated into our existence as a pillar of the Greater Worcester arts and culture sector for years to come," Finlay said.

Embracing a new audience

Music Worcester has received lead funding from the National Endowment for the Arts for Gupta's residency in the amount of $10,000, Finlay said.

Finlay envisions that Gupta's residency will witness Music Worcester welcoming new audiences to its regular venues, bringing educational programming into new spaces and locations, and featuring Gupta in all types of public performances.

Gupta said he came to Worcester for the first time last October. He met with Music Worcester, visited Burncoat Arts Magnet School and with OpporTUNEity, and started getting to know Worcester, he said.

One place he immediately got to see was Mechanics Hall, where he will be performing during his residency.

"Mechanics Hall is legendary. It was legendary to me already as an acoustic venue, but I didn't know the history and the fact that this was a literally a hall made by the hands of people who lived in Worcester. That was very special," Gupta said.

He also accompanied the Worcester Chorus to New York City in October where it joined the Masterwork Chorus from New Jersey in performing Verdi's "Requiem" in Carnegie Hall. "The choir was very wonderful," he said.

Gupta grew up in the mid-Hudson Valley of New York, a son of parents who had immigrated from Bengal, India,  in the 1970s.

"I was taught music was really sacred," he said, based on seeing through his parents the adulation that classical concerts in India were given.

At age seven Gupta enrolled in the pre-college program at the Juilliard School and at 11 he performed solo for the first time with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

But speaking of Carnegie Hall — as we just were — an experience that helped define Gupta as a citizen-artist who is aware of the place of art in society occurred even earlier.

When he was six he was a member of a group being taught the Suzuki Method of playing violin by Louise Behrend. The children got to play at Carnegie Hall, but the next week Behrend had them performing in a children's chemotherapy ward at a hospital.

"I will never forget that. What it was saying — 'Sure you performed in Carnegie Hall, but it's not the only place your music can land,'" Gupta said.

Gupta holds a BS in biology from Marist College (‘05) and an MM in violin performance from the Yale School of Music (‘07). He was briefly on track to becoming a medical doctor, and his studies showed "the impact of music on the brain. I saw that music could be something that literally rewired the brains of people, particularly people who had some traumatic injury or stroke."

In 2007, at 19, Gupta joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, and served as a member of the First Violin section. He has appeared as a guest concertmaster with the Los Angeles Opera and the Philharmonia Orchestra of London, and is an active recitalist, soloist and chamber musician.

Gupta is also a citizen Artist Fellow with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and a 2018 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellow. His wife is the composer Reena Esmail. Several works by Esmail will be performed during Gupta's Worcester residency.

Gupta said he resigned from the LA Philharmonic in 2018 "to run Street Symphony full time and develop other models around the country."

Street Symphony

In LA, Gupta said he was always struck by the fact that the concert halls are close to Skid Row.

"I questioned what my role as an artist is in a world where there is so so much pain," he said.

He got to know Nathaniel Ayers, a Juilliard-trained double-bassist whose mental illness left him homeless in Los Angeles. Ayers is the subject of the movie "The Soloist" starring Jamie Fox.

For his part, "I started the experiment," Gupta said of founding Street Symphony.

Street Symphony is entering its 12th year and has given over 1,500 performances, he noted.

Gupta's first performances in Worcester as Music Worcester's artist-in-residence will include a March 2 concert with Chester Englander, who plays the Hungarian instrument the cimbalom, a concert dulcimer. The concert, titled "Mirror/Lens," will be at 7 p.m. March 2 in the Prior Performing Arts Center at the College of the Holy Cross.

Gupta said he has performed with Englander on several occasions. The program will include reflective works written for cimbalom and violin by Hungarian composer György Kurtág and Arvo Pärt, as well as works by Kaija Saariaho, Reena Esmail, and J.S. Bach. The concert is a co-production of Music Worcester and Holy Cross.

In May his engagements will include working with the Worcester Youth Orchestras and its 75th anniversary concert. "They are an excellent program, truly."

He'll also return to Burncoat, "which is going to be great."

In Mechanics Hall at 7 p.m. on May 10, Gupta will give a recital titled "When the Violin" in collaboration with dance artist and choreographer Yamini Kalluri.  The recital will include works by Bach and Esmail.

Gupta said he will also perform the program from the Mechanics Hall recital at the Worcester County Jail and House of Correction.

Later in the year there are visits in the works for September and November, and concert is being planned for November with Gupta and the Worcester Chorus in Mechanics Hall. The chorus may be performing works specially written by Esmail.

Full details of Gupta's schedule were not available at the time of writing this story.

At the Worcester County Jail and House of Correction he'll be working with "people on the inside and also re-entry," Gupta said. The songwriting workshops will culminate in performances by inmates for family and friends.

"I've found music to be tremendously impactful to people in shelters, jails, and it brings it to life in a way that's separate from the concert hall," he said.

"So often music has spoken to part of our experiences that words can't penetrate, (but) with these workshops we have an opportunity to articulate some vision of their lives."

Gupta will be visiting the Worcester County Jail and House of Correction to work with inmates in person as well as remotely over a 12-week songwriting cycle in the spring and in the fall. He would like to incorporate some of their pieces into his Worcester performances and share the stories that accompany each.

Melissa Martinos, CEO and founder of OpporTUNEity, said  "I met Vijay for the first time in the Fall; his passion for this work, creative energy and brilliance left a long-standing impression. We have planned a handful of watershed events that will shift the musical landscape in the Worcester community."

As a leading advocate for the role of the arts and music to heal, inspire, provoke change, and foster social connection, Gupta believes "anyone of any background can be a performer and not just a spectator."

For more information go to musicworcester.org.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Violinist Vijay Gupta is new Music Worcester artist-in-residence