{"id":38577,"date":"2022-04-08T01:57:22","date_gmt":"2022-04-08T08:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=38577"},"modified":"2022-04-08T11:01:06","modified_gmt":"2022-04-08T18:01:06","slug":"beckows-music-will-live-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2022\/04\/08\/beckows-music-will-live-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Beckow\u2019s music will live on"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joan Beckow, left, Wendy Bross Stuart, centre, and Jessica Stuart, during a visit a few years ago. (photo from Jessica Stuart)<\/em><\/p>\n

Acknowledging that the music world is \u201ca fickle one in which skill, talent and ingenuity do not necessarily result in widespread acknowledgement or musical reach,\u201d Jessica Stuart said Joan Beckow\u2019s \u201cmusic deserves to be heard. It deserves to be performed and played for many generations to come, and it is more than good enough to stand next to the work of Leonard Bernstein or Stephen Sondheim.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stuart and her mother, Wendy Bross Stuart \u2013 accomplished musicians in their own right \u2013 are co-directors of the Joan Beckow Project. Stuart is also project manager and producer of the project. Arts administrator Rosie Callaghan handles many of the behind-the-scenes details.<\/p>\n

Beckow passed away on Jan. 13, 2021, at age 88. She was a close family friend of the Stuarts, and she and Bross Stuart collaborated professionally for more than 40 years. Jessica Stuart grew up surrounded by Beckow\u2019s music, both because her mother and Beckow had worked together and because Stuart has performed a large body of Beckow\u2019s work. The seeds of the Joan Beckow Project were planted in 2015, when Stuart discovered that none of Beckow\u2019s music was available online and almost none of her choral or musical theatre music had ever been professionally recorded or transcribed. Beckow gave Stuart her blessing for the project.<\/p>\n

Beckow started her career with a music degree from the University of California at Los Angeles. At UCLA, she composed six original musicals for the theatre department, where she collaborated with her friend, Carol Burnett. Beckow was resident composer and music director for the Stumptown Players, out of San Francisco, and, when she graduated, she started composing for Holiday Theatre L.A.<\/p>\n

Eventually, Beckow found her way to Vancouver, where she worked with many theatres as a composer and music director, including the Playhouse, Carousel and Belfry theatres, as well as with the Shaw Festival. With Bross Stuart, she composed several musicals and, in 2002, It\u2019s All in the Song<\/em>, a summary of Beckow\u2019s work, premi\u00e8red at the Chutzpah! Festival.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Joan Beckow, right, with Carol Burnett, in 1958. (photo from Jessica Stuart)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Beckow\u2019s resum\u00e9 also includes a degree in music therapy from Capilano College, where she was faculty for 10 years. And, over a 25-year period, she wrote original material for the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver\u2019s Gotta Sing! Gotta Dance! theatre program for youth.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of the reason I think it\u2019s so important to record Joan\u2019s work for the first time, is that, although her pieces have a natural beauty and intuitive sound, on paper (literally, the musical scores), her pieces look very complicated,\u201d Stuart told the Independent<\/em>. \u201cMany of her songs cycle through multiple musical keys and several time signatures in one piece and I strongly believe that, if we want choral directors, vocalists and instrumentalists to choose this music to perform, they need the chance to listen and fall in love with it first.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beckow wrote hundreds of compositions, and Stuart and her mother started talking about song selection long before the project officially started.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow does one sum up a composer\u2019s career in one album? Well, we decided that we couldn\u2019t, so we made it a double disc,\u201d said Stuart. \u201cOne disc will focus on Joan\u2019s musical theatre material, and the other will focus on her classical and sacred music, including many pieces set to text from the Jewish liturgy. There will be 22 pieces in total.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also part of the project is a 25-minute documentary, directed by Stuart\u2019s father, Ron Stuart, in collaboration with editor Carlos Coronado.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe applied to the Canada Council for the Arts, to the Concept to Realization program, in which we were able to define the scope of our project activities to include more than just an album recording,\u201d said Jessica Stuart. \u201cWe wanted to tell the story of Joan\u2019s life, culminating in the present-day recording of her debut album, albeit posthumous.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to the Canada Council support, the project has received support from the Ontario Arts Council and from Beckow\u2019s son, David Beckow. But such undertakings are expensive. This one involves 30 musicians, and recording sessions in both Vancouver, where Bross Stuart lives, and Toronto, where Stuart is based.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven with the arts councils\u2019 generous contributions, this massive undertaking still requires more financial support and, with some of this music having waited 70 years to be recorded for the first time, cutting corners is not an option we\u2019re willing to consider,\u201d writes Stuart on the Indiegogo fundraiser page.<\/p>\n

As part of the project, Beckow\u2019s songs have been \u201clush[ed] out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJoan wrote most of her pieces for piano and voices, and the piano accompaniment always felt very orchestral, so adding strings, woodwinds and percussion felt completely natural and somehow brought even more emotional levity to the pieces,\u201d explained Stuart. \u201cThe arrangements were done by Wendy and I, separately, but then requiring approval from each other before signing off. We agreed that these arrangements needed to keep a focus on Joan\u2019s actual writing, instead of letting our imaginations run too wild, and we stuck to that. The results are quite wonderful!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Joan Beckow, in the late 1950s. (photo from Jessica Stuart)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As for the vocal contributors to the project, Stuart said, \u201cThe main consideration here was about getting the right voices for the right pieces. Wendy hired the personnel involved in the musical theatre portion of the album, which took place in Vancouver at Bryan Adam\u2019s recording studio, the Warehouse.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first conceived of this project,\u201d she said, \u201cI recognized that Joan\u2019s classical and sacred music somehow had a kinship with jazz in terms of harmony, so I was eager to get the material into the hands of some of my favourite jazz musicians and improvisers based in Toronto. When choosing the personnel in Toronto, I went for both classical and jazz musicians, and even arranged a few pieces with sections earmarked for improvised solos. As suspected, not only did the music lend itself exceptionally well to improvisation, but Joan\u2019s music had the Toronto jazz scene completely enamoured, and kind of in a tizzy, which was a real pleasure to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Stuart\u2019s longtime favourite Beckow pieces is \u201cDwelling Places.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJoan once told me that she never wanted a harmony to simply exist as an ornament to a melody \u2013 that a harmony should be able to stand alone even if the melody were removed,\u201d explained Stuart. \u201cThat, to me, is a profound idea, and I\u2019ve always admired the myriad moving lines Joan was able to work into one piece concurrently within the accompaniment and vocal parts of her work. These lines lead you emotionally from one place to another, seamlessly, and all of sudden you have goosebumps and don\u2019t even know why.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlso, whether Joan was setting her own lyrics, or else poetry by Dorothy Parker, or else Jewish liturgical text, like \u2018Dwelling Places,\u2019 to music, she had an incredible gift for being able to mirror spoken cadence and intonation within her melodies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stuart continued, \u201cA new favourite of mine, though, discovered through the process of working on the Joan Beckow Legacy Project, is what I refer to as her \u2018instant Christmas classic,\u2019 called \u2018A Christmas Wish.\u2019 This is a song that stands up next to \u2018Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire (The Christmas Song),\u2019 and you can\u2019t help but to imagine Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra\u2019s voice all over it. And I\u2019m sure we\u2019re all aware of the long-standing tradition of Jewish songwriters creating the best Christmas music, so it\u2019s time we added a female composer\u2019s take to the mix!\u201d<\/p>\n

For anyone wanting to know more about the Joan Beckow Legacy Project, there are regular posts on Facebook and Instagram. To contribute to the project via Indiegogo and watch a short video about it, visit igg.me\/at\/joanbeckowlegacy<\/a>. There is a six-level range of incentives for donors, from a personal social media shoutout for a $25 gift, to a personal thank you in the liner notes of the album \u2013 and all the goodies of the prior levels \u2013 for a $1,000 contribution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joan Beckow, left, Wendy Bross Stuart, centre, and Jessica Stuart, during a visit a few years ago. (photo from Jessica Stuart) Acknowledging that the music world is \u201ca fickle one in which skill, talent and ingenuity do not necessarily result in widespread acknowledgement or musical reach,\u201d Jessica Stuart said Joan Beckow\u2019s \u201cmusic deserves to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38666,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[788],"tags":[4242,21384,7387,21382,21383,8397,1719],"class_list":["post-38577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-history","tag-indiegogo","tag-jessica-stuart","tag-joan-beckow","tag-legacy","tag-ron-stuart","tag-wendy-bross-stuart"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}