Two ‘ultra-musicians’ will premiere works atop mountain

LAWRENCE – Sure, it’s beautiful atop Mount Elbert at 14,439 feet, the tallest peak in Colorado. But that is not the main reason Stephanie Zelnick, University of Kansas School of Music professor, is heading there in September. She and a partner will give a concert on the mountaintop, premiering two new pieces for clarinet duo, as part of her long-term research project on how altitude affects wind musicians.

Last summer Zelnick and her Summit Duo partner Lauren Jacobson played a pair of mountaintop concerts at Colorado’s Mount Bierstadt (14,065 feet) and Mount Audubon (13,229 feet). This year, they will bring a videographer, a ski patrol member for safety and their own audience of about 10 friends who will climb with them.

When Zelnick, a New Jersey native, won a job in the Boulder Symphony in 2007, she quickly realized that the altitude (Boulder’s elevation is 5,430 feet above sea level) affected her playing.

“I've always thought about how that affected my performing, especially playing places like the Central City Opera, which is above 9,000 feet,” Zelnick said. “When I moved to Kansas, I kept my orchestra jobs out there. And driving back and forth, I started thinking a lot about the physiology of living at a low altitude and playing at a high altitude. So I started researching the high-altitude effects, and there is not a lot on it for a clarinetist. I published an article in our clarinet journal on it, and that has become part of the book I am writing.”

Zelnick said the project’s tentative title is “The Ultra Musician.” In addition to a handful of physicians, she has interviewed a number of extreme athletes, including several free divers, ultra-marathon runners and hang gliders, trying to suss out their methods — both physical and psychological — for most efficient breathing.

“I realized that by training in harder conditions than those in which we actually need to play, we can optimize our performing in normal conditions,” Zelnick said. “We have so much we can learn as musicians from what these people are doing.”

Zelnick said she and Jacobson will stop intermittently to make notations of how they are feeling and performing as they climb from the trailhead to the summit of Mount Elbert.

At the top, the duo will premiere two pieces.

“For this year, we have commissioned two works,” Zelnick said, “one by a composer from the Navajo Nation, Tyler Yazzie. It just seemed right to get pieces from composers with pre-colonial ethnic backgrounds because a lot of what we were playing up on top of these mountains is from Europe. It seemed weird: Why are we not getting voices from here? So we have this great clarinet duo that she wrote for us .... We also have a piece by a premier composer down in Oklahoma. His name is Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate. ... He transcribed one of his pieces that was originally for clarinet and Native American flute.”

Zelnick said the Summit Duo plans to publish its video of the concert on YouTube soon after it is recorded in September.

“One of the reasons we're taking a videographer with us is so then everyone can actually enjoy a concert on top of the mountain from their living room,” she said.