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Curtain Call: JBO's O’Shaughnessy to expand Baroque music offerings in 2023 By Jim Flint Dec 23, 2022 03:15 AM A A Jefferson Baroque Orchestra Artistic Director Morgan O'Shaughnessy practices the violin at his home in Hawaii in advance of JBO's first concert of the 2023 season in Ashland on Jan. 15. Courtesy photo The Jefferson Baroque Orchestra performs at a recent concert. It kicks off an expanded 2023 season on Jan. 15 at First Congregational United Church of Christ in Ashland. Courtesy photo For a guy who is especially passionate about everything Baroque, Morgan O’Shaughnessy’s musical interests are not confined to the period or even to classical music in general. His feet are also firmly planted in the present, performing modern electronic music and playing Irish tunes. And he has never hesitated to work outside the world of music when necessary. “I consider myself to be a professional dish-washer,” he said. “I absolutely love working in kitchens. I find as much art and expression in a stainless-steel, three- sink basin as I do in a Bach cello suite. I am also learning JavaScript and React to become a front-end web developer.” Music alone may not always pay the bills. O’Shaughnessy, a resident of Pahoa, Hawaii, lived in the Rogue Valley for four years in the early 2010s. He still has connections here, currently serving as artistic director of the Jefferson Baroque Orchestra, which launches its 2023 season Jan. 15 with a concert at First Congregational United Church of Christ in Ashland. He was born in Arcata, California, and raised in Gasquet, a small unincorporated community 18 miles northeast of Crescent City. Between the ages of 7 and 15, he attended the Saturday music academy at Humboldt State (now Polytechnic). “It was in the forest, essentially,” he said. “That means everything to my artistic soul, being from a quiet, natural rainforest. The forest is my oldest and best teacher, and it is an important element in the roots of my musical being.” He became the artistic director of JBO when he was living in Los Angeles. At the time, he had a burgeoning career as a union film score musician and as a violist in UCLA’s VEM String Quartet. He also had a full-time teaching studio gig with 45 students. “Five years into that career the pandemic hit and all of that work vanished,” he said. “So, I moved to Hawaii and put down roots—home, garden, strong local community, all the things that are difficult or impossible to have in your 20s and 30s in LA.” He is the only child of a teacher and an engineer. “They were most dedicated to my learning,” he said. “I was allowed to be anything I wanted to be, but I was not allowed to quit music…‘until after you’re a senior in high school.’” An early musical experience made a big impression on the young Morgan O’Shaughnessy, influencing the direction his interest in music took him. Martin Hayes, regarded as one of the most significant talents to emerge in the world of Irish traditional music, flew into Crescent City to perform at the middle school auditorium. “There was one of those Crescent City storms where the rain comes in sideways,” O’Shaughnessy remembers. The musician was 45 minutes late for the concert because the weather delayed his arrival. When his plane finally landed, he went directly to the venue. “He walked straight in from the taxicab to the stage, busted out his violin, and started playing. I was mesmerized, and all my early violin playing is founded on a marriage of his and Itzhak Perlman’s sounds.” Violin is O’Shaughnessy’s original instrument. But he has branched out. Considerably. “Viola and nyckelharpa (a Swedish keyed fiddle) are my home instruments,” he said. “I use an Ableton Push 2 controller for all of my modern electronic music compositions, and a viola da gamba for casual playing with friends.” He also has academic proficiency on bagpipes, cello, bassoon, and keyboard, as well as advanced training in atonal sight-singing, linear music analysis, and structural theory. Those skills and interests stem from his early musical experiences as well as from his university studies. In earning his undergraduate degree at San Francisco Conservatory, he learned conducting and advanced musicianship from Sonja Neblett. “Back in the day, she also taught our very own Paul French (recently retired SOU music professor and artistic director of Southern Oregon Repertory Singers).” Conducting class at the conservatory included score study and conducting a random ensemble of whatever instruments were represented in the class. “And that was mostly upright pianos played by non-piano majors,” he said, “which was excellent training in learning to be really clear, because untrained piano players are very difficult cats to get to, uh, go ‘plink’ at the same time,” he laughed. It was in the fall of 2011 when O’Shaughnessy moved to the Rogue Valley. He needed a change after finishing his conservatory degree program during which he had taken many extra credits. “I was completely full, and needed to process what I had learned in a quiet place before graduate school.” JBO and the Rogue Symphony Orchestra were his first gigs in the valley. “It was not at all enough money to make a living, but both made me very wealthy in non-monetary terms — friends, cultural experiences, transcendent musical expressions, and a few extraordinarily talented students. It was a very rich time in my life,” he said. As the artistic director of JBO he is not, technically, a conductor. “As a Baroque orchestra, we predate conductors as a matter of historical practice,” he explained. The composers JBO plays wrote during a period before conductors had been “invented.” “As artistic director, I decide what we’re playing. I work with the board and Abi Wilensky, our capellmeister (the person in charge of the orchestra), to produce the rehearsals and concerts. I took over as AD in the fall of 2019.” JBO under O’Shaughnessy had two concerts before the pandemic arrived and effectively canceled the better part of two seasons. O’Shaughnessy was in the thick of the music scene when he lived in the Rogue Valley. He played with the RVSO, the Chamber Players and Rep Singers. He performed at the Green Show, was an OSF understudy for violinist Aaron Moffatt for “The Cocoanuts,” worked as a session musician for record producer Sylvia Massy, and played in just about every Irish fiddle pub scene in the valley. JBO musicians play on “original” instruments. Stringed instruments use gut for strings and have lighter bows. Wind instruments are made of wood, feature fewer keys and are generally quieter. Brass instruments are played without valves and feature modular systems of crooks and have extra plumbing that can be added in order to play in different keys. “It’s really analog in a wonderfully earthy way,” he said. “And what do you get with that earthiness? Dirt, worms, thorns, sure, but also beautiful flowers and richly sweet fruits.” There are both challenges and rewards in that environment. “These fickle, cantankerous, ornery things are so difficult to get to sound good. But when you do…chef’s kiss!” he said. He likens listening to a JBO concert as an act of time travel. “Conveying that to our audiences is my job,” he said, “and it is what I consider both the greatest challenge and the most interesting reward.” JBO features works of composers primarily from the late 17th through 18th century. “The programming that I will be doing in the coming years will explore those boundaries as we radiate outwards from continuing to perform a core of standard classic Baroque works, such as Brandenburg 6 we played at our last concert, or the Vivaldi ‘Gloria’ we’ll play at one of our upcoming concerts.” Vivaldi is one of O’Shaughnessy’s favorite composers from the era. “He wrote so much music for his students,” he said. “I lived in Venice on and off in my early 20s and came to hear his music as a ‘map’ of the city. Listening to it now, I am transported back to those days, lost among the labyrinthine streets and canals, transported by the beauty of the light and water. It is certainly my happy place.” He looks forward to performing a “bucket list” work in 2023, “The Elements” by Jean-Fery Rebel, an innovative French Baroque composer and violinist. JBO will perform the piece in the third and final concert of a new series for kids and families at the ScienceWorks Hands-On Museum in Ashland. The three-part series will explore music and technology through an 18th century lens and will be highly interactive. The Jan. 15 concert, kicking off the new JBO season, will showcase the work of composer (and violinist) Maddalena Sirmen, a student of Venetian composer and violinist Giuseppe Tartini. Pieces by two other Tartini students are also on the program — works by Pietro Nardini and Carlo Compioni. O’Shaughnessy discovered Sirmen’s music during a graduate performance seminar at UCLA, where he earned a Master of Music degree and DMA. Sirmen’s string trio number 6 was his final project for the class, learning how to perform it in a historically accurate manner. Tickets are $20 at the door or available for advance purchase on the JBO website, jeffersonbaroque.org. What’s next for JBO? “We are undergoing a period of transformation,” O’Shaughnessy said, “away from doing only large-scale concerts to more frequent offerings in smaller venues. “Our goal is to create much more music in our community — the series at ScienceWorks, chamber music concerts in libraries and art galleries, season concerts in Medford, and an expansion of showcase concerts to wineries in the region. All of that is in the works for next year.” During such an ambitious season, there may not be much time for dishwashing. Reach writer Jim Flint at [email protected] .