A thinned Vermeer

Cellist Marc Johnson does some work on his own

By Doug Hubley

MARC JOHNSON: a soft spot for Maine audiences

“Music in the summertime tends to move into the beautiful places,” says cellist Marc Johnson, speaking from one such place: the house in Cushing that is his refuge from real life in Chicago.

Johnson, 54, is one of roughly a zillion musicians who summer in Maine’s more charming precincts. His habit dates from 1974, when he joined a string quartet contemplating its second year in residence at Rockport’s Bay Chamber Concerts series. Today, the Vermeer Quartet is one of the nation’s best-respected chamber ensembles, known from appearances at nearly every major festival, a record catalogue that includes a 1996 Grammy nominee, and tours that touch five continents.

Performances in July mark the 28th year in Rockport for Johnson, violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi and Mathias Tacke, and violist Richard Young. But this year, for the first time, the quartet won’t stay the whole season in Rockport. In fact, the Vermeer Quartet is spending only two weeks of the summer together.

Trouble in Vermeer City?

Nah. “This is not a warning bell or anything like that,” Johnson explains. Instead, like many old married foursomes, the Vermeers decided that time apart now would improve the time they spend together later. It’s been “28 years of waking up every morning and looking at the same three faces,” Johnson says. “We just came to a point where we needed a little more time off from each other than we conventionally get.” So, aside from two Rockport performances, one in Machias, and a week in Santa Fe, the four will pursue their own projects and reconvene in the autumn.

Even when the quartet is going full tilt, each member has plenty going on elsewhere. Johnson, for example, teaches at Northern Illinois University and performs on his own. And his Maine idyll certainly won’t be idle. On June 29, he helps open the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival, joining festival Artistic Director Lewis Kaplan and other luminaries at Brunswick High School for an evening of Schubert. (Please see concert listings for complete festival information.)

At the Rockport Opera House, where the Bay Chamber season opens July 6, Johnson appears twice, sans quartet. On July 12, he joins clarinetist James Campbell, violinist Ann Robert, Bay Chamber resident pianist Leonard Hokanson, and his own daughter, violist Kirsten Johnson. The centerpiece is the Quartet for the End of Time, written by Olivier Messiaen in a Nazi prison camp. For a Baroque program on Aug. 16 and 17, Johnson belongs to a high-powered ensemble featuring violinist Joseph Silverstein and Thomas Wolf, a flutist and Bay Chamber’s co-founder and director.

Both Vermeer programs at Rockport include, as guest artist, Guarneri Quartet violist Michael Tree. The July 26 program features quartets by Haydn and Beethoven, and with Tree, Mozart’s G minor quintet. On the following evening’s program are a Mendelssohn quintet and Shostakovich and Bartok quartets.

Johnson plays the Machias Bay Chamber Concerts series, which is affiliated with Bay Chamber, twice in July. The Vermeer date, on the 24th, features works by Haydn, Beethoven and Smetana. But the July 10 series opener has special significance for the cellist. Johnson appears with a pianist, a second cellist and a violist — his wife Katherine Johnson and their daughters Nicole Johnson and Kirsten Johnson, both professional musicians. The family last played there 10 years ago, Johnson says, and at his Machias appearances ever since, people have asked how his kids are. This year the locals can see for themselves.

Marc and Katherine Johnson have an additional reason to hang around Rockport. An educational program that they created, Bay Chamber Concerts: The Next Generation, is in its 11th summer at the Opera House. Founded to keep Bay Chamber players’ kids out of mischief (the Johnson daughters are alums), the program now consists of chamber music workshops exclusively for Maine teenagers. The 70 or so participants pay only a $35 registration fee, with the Bay Chamber fundraising machinery defraying the bulk of the costs.

The 18 faculty members include the Johnsons, Bay Chamber guest artists, and Maine musicians. “There are very good programs for kids in the state of Maine,” Johnson explains. “But we can reach kids that in some cases [the others] can’t, just because this doesn’t cost anything.”

For Johnson, BCC:TNG helps repay the debt of gratitude to Maine that he and the Vermeers have amassed over the years. The queries about the Johnson daughters in Machias illustrate the kind of enduring relationships that develop between summer musicians and their listeners. “I think they take it a lot more personally” than audiences on the regular circuit, Johnson says.

Which is why the Vermeers are making the extra effort to return to Rockport this year. “This is our home stadium,” Johnson says. “There are people who have probably heard the Vermeer Quartet play more than 100 times. And that’s one of the really gratifying things about this festival, that we have this relationship with people in the audience that’s gone over three decades.”

“The audience is really like family,” he adds. “We decided that we wanted to play one week here just to see everybody.” n

Doug Hubley can be reached at doug.hubley@worldnet.att.net.