The Score | Nadia Boulanger, Center Stage

Did nearly every influential classical musician in the early twentieth century study piano or composition in Paris with Nadia Boulanger? Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Elliott Carter, Philip Glass, and Astor Piazzolla are just a few of the students of the polymath, who was also an accomplished conductor, organist, lecturer, and music critic. Boulanger had lasting influence on a whole generation of musicians, yet cellist Mina Fisher, a member of the Minnesota Orchestra from 1979 until her retirement in 2012, thought a wider public ought to know about her, so she wrote Nadia. The play debuted at Minneapolis’s MacPhail Center in September, with actress-singer Christina Baldwin in the title role. Steven Epp directed, and the play featured Fisher’s own Bakken Trio—Fisher plus violinist Stephanie Arado and cellist Pitnarry Shin—performing “music that energized Nadia—music of her mentor Fauré, of her sister Lilli, of ‘the teacher of us all, Bach,’ and what Nadia called her own ‘worthless songs.’ ” During her research, Fisher spoke to several Boulanger students, including former Minnesota Orchestra Music Director Stanislaw Skrowaczewski.