No sleep till Bruckner

UV CLUB Gentlemen of NUCO's future is so bright, they gotta wear shades.

"The 6am to 7am slot has yet to be claimed," Russell Rolen says with a laugh. He isn't a junior manager at White Hen assigning graveyard shifts. The cellist, a second-year doctoral student at Northwestern's School of Music, is filling the bill for the inaugural Music Marathon. Rolen and other members of the Northwestern community have organized the 26-hour, student-run event to raise money for the People's Music School in Uptown. Around 100 individuals have volunteered for the concert that lasts from 8pm on Friday 1 to 10pm on Saturday 2; it will be broadcast in its entirety via webcam.

Headlining acts are new-music patrons dal niente and Gentlemen of NUCO, both of which will put their own spins on that art-rock favorite of young academicians, Radiohead. Local icons such as pianist Anthony Molinaro, harmonica player Howard Levy and saxophonist Fred Hemke kick off Friday night, and on Saturday evening the Northwestern University Chamber Orchestra caps it all off at Pick-Staiger with Bruckner's Fourth. A fiver gets you into any one of the opening night's attractions; the rest of the marathon has a free-will donation system. (Funding also comes from performing Northwestern students, who could play in any time slot but had to pledge $100 to reserve it.)

The idea sprouted in November, when Rolen, 31, was in his Evanston studio brainstorming with a fellow student about how NU could reach out to the community. The idea of a 24-hour cello concert was suggested, but Rolen wanted to involve an even larger swath of performers, with two extra hours tacked on for main attractions. For the Washington-state native who's spearheaded the marathon, raising money for the People's Music School was a no-brainer. The 33-year-old school serves 500 students a year and is the only tuition-free community music school in the country—exactly the kind of nonprofit org Rolen wanted to help. "I'm not saying we're going to bankroll their entire operating expenses for a year, nor raise hundreds of thousands of dollars," Rolen says. "But we will rake in enough to make a tangible impact."

People's founder, Rita Simo, has said in interviews that, while she hears a lot about "democracy" in the American vernacular, it's never used in terms of music education. Dal niente conductor Michael Lewanski agrees: "The People's Music School is the kind of organization that does the work that public education should be doing—provide free music lessons to anyone who wants them," he says. The Yale graduate, who describes the upcoming dal niente set as a "little bit of spectralism, little bit of complexity, little bit of art rock," thinks music is inaccurately advertised in elementary schools as only a precursor to other things: It makes you a math whiz, it teaches discipline and teamwork, etc. "My God, music should be taught for its own sake because, frankly, it's one of the awesomest things in human life," he says. "And I'm also hilariously bad at math, so it didn't work for me in that regard."

While People's executive director, Bob Fiedler, says the school, which operates on a $500K annual budget and owns its own building, is "pretty stable and secure," Rolen sees music education hit hardest in large cities. Consider Juilliard, for instance; it's dropping its training program in New York, which benefited poor minority children. "As a student myself," Rolen says, "I've got to encourage other young students to get involved and stay in music."

The music starts Friday 1, 8pm at Regenstein Hall.

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