The San Antonio-based ensemble Viatorum combines western classical instrumentation with the classical sounds of Middle Eastern culture to create music that narrows divides, bridges gaps, and endeavors to spread the infectious joy that it continually brings to the players.
TPR's Classical Connections welcomed the ensemble into our studio for a live performance, to share their story, and preview an upcoming concert on Dec. 12 at UTSA Southwest. Listen in the audio player above to hear the music and interview. An edited transcript of the talk is below.
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Barry Brake Live from the Texas Public Radio studios. You just heard the ensemble Viatorum on KPAC's Classical Connections. Gorgeous, gorgeous music. And it sounds like it's got an interesting story and you're about to hear it. 7:30 p.m. Monday, December 12. That's just, you know, next week, ten days from now or so at the Southwest School of Arts, they're performing live. Ethan Wickman, the oud player and spokesman for Viatorum, well-known San Antonio composer. Welcome back to Classical Connections.
Ethan Wickman Great to be back, Barry. Thanks for having us in.
Barry Brake Now, the last time we talked about you on the air was in context with the San Antonio Philharmonic, where your work was being premiered. This is a little bit different from that.
Ethan Wickman It's part of the double life I lead. So, yes, I don't know whether my day job is composer or an oud player, but I have another identity!
Barry Brake Oud, that's O U D, the old fashioned kind of guitar. It looks like a little renaissance kind of looking thing, except Middle Eastern.
Ethan Wickman That's right. The oud is actually... it's like the grandfather of the guitar. So the son of the oud would be the lute, and then the son of the lute is the guitar.
Barry Brake One big happy family! And we've got Berk Agar playing the guitar. Andrew Bergmann playing bass. Rachel Woolf playing flute, and percussion is Peter Breithaupt, and on cello, it's Christina Trongone. Well, this is classical connections, and we're talking about Viatorum. We'll talk a little bit more about Viatorum and how you guys came to be right after this next piece of music. Tell us a little bit, Ethan, about what we heard and what we're about to hear.
Ethan Wickman So the the piece we first played is a piece written by a guitar player, Berk, It's a work entitled "Alchemist," which I don't know that I'll speak for Berk entirely, but part of it is when we were deciding to name ourselves a few years ago, one of the one of the contenders was Alchemy. And I think maybe Berk was a little sore about the name we chose, and so he decided to memorialize it in a piece!
Barry Brake One way or another!
Ethan Wickman Exactly. And so that's "Alchemist," a really beautiful piece that Berk wrote during the pandemic. The next piece we're going to hear is a work called "Labyrinth," which is one of the works I composed. And it's kind of a journey through, I mean, different key areas, but also different feelings, different moods, and it features. We try to feature all the members of the group in this piece.
Barry Brake Original classical music by San Antonio composers, and you're hearing it on classical connections live from the Texas Public Radio Studios, Monday, December 12th at the Southwest School of Arts. It's when they're appearing all the information is at Viatorum.net. Here they are with "Labyrinth."
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Barry Brake Original classical music on KPAC. And you're hearing it live from the Texas Public Radio Studios here in downtown San Antonio. The ensemble is Viatorum, who gamely agreed to come in and perform live on the air with us for a year today. They're appearing next Monday, not this coming Monday, but Monday, December 12th, 7:30 p.m. at the Southwest School of Arts. All the information is available at Viatorum.net. I'm looking at the name Viatorum. I can't decide whether it means "way of despair" or possibly "life of bulls," but...
Ethan Wickman You're really, really close Barry, let's leave it at that! [laughs] So, you know, deliberating of the name is so very important. And as a composer, of course, it's what frames the art in people's minds. And so I think the frame we would want people to have about Viatorum, a it's a Latin word that means "the travelers." And so, you know, we thought about when we were first forming a few years ago, we thought, you know, what was all the music or other regions that might have comprised the Roman Empire, for example? We started out playing a lot of Mediterranean music. As an oud player, certainly there's a lot of Arabic repertoire that we were playing, but we realized, as so many of us are composers, Berk has written for us, Andrew has written works, works for us as well that so it's it's a lot of original music, but with the accents that are inherent, that are idiomatic to these instruments.
Barry Brake Love it. And a lot of this kind of, you know, I think for a lot of classical listeners, that great project that Yo-Yo Ma did where he like traveled the Silk Road, he was a traveler as well and just picked up all of this interesting stuff. And, you know, anyone who loves a fajita will tell you that the conjunction of different cultures creates richness and creates vitality.
Ethan Wickman Absolutely. And, you know, part of this is, is that we take so much joy in promoting the music of others. But also music history is rich with examples of of sounds that have crossed the globe. I mean, it's very, very complex, and so we hope that this music brings joy to others as it does to us.
Barry Brake Okay. Well, tell us a little bit about what's happening Monday, December 12th, at the Southwest School of Arts.
Ethan Wickman Well, this is momentous and a couple of reasons, first of all, we're performing down there as a group. It's also being put on by the UTSA School of Music, who is promoting and sponsoring this program. UTSA is now has partnered with Southwest School of Arts, so that's actually part of the UTSA campus. And so this is the first School of Music concert to be held in there. So it's Viatorum's first program there, but it's the School of Music's first as well.
Barry Brake So terrific. And that's next Monday, December 12th. All the information is at Viatorum.net. How about one more piece? Tell us what we're going to hear.
Ethan Wickman So this is actually not an original work. This is a work called Caparsko Oro. It's a traditional Macedonian folk dance. And the Horo Dance is a dance where people kind of gather in a circle. And this is work that we took an original melody and we really adapted it to our ensemble. So you'll hear certainly those influences in it, but you'll also hear some original counterpoint in harmony and also give space for each of the members to do some improvisation as well.
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