When Mark Fraser took over as executive artistic director of Mohawk Trail Concerts after co-founder Ruth Black stepped down in 2014, he did so with pride and pleasure.
“Here was this concert series that started out in 1969 as an unofficial event and burgeoned into a pretty major concert organization,” Fraser said.
This year, Mohawk Trail Concerts at the Federated Church, Main Street (Route 2) in Charlemont, celebrates its 50th season. It eventually became a nonprofit and hired an executive director — Black’s husband, violinist and composer Arnold Black, became its head and she worked with him in the early years. Then, when he died in 2000, she took the helm until 2014, when her health began to fail. She died in 2015.
Fraser said it all began when the Blacks were visiting friends, along with other New York City musicians, in Hawley.
“Arnie and Ruth saw this little white church in the middle of Charlemont and asked each other why they shouldn’t offer to play at one of its services,” Fraser said.
The church said “yes,” and the Blacks fell in love with the acoustics in the quaint little wood-framed sanctuary, Fraser said. The couple got to know famed choral composer and conductor Alice Parker Pyle, who enlisted Arnold Black to play a Handel sonata during a summer Sunday service. Ruth Black, a pianist, asked about playing chamber music there and it began the following year.
“It just took off from there,” Fraser said.
He said Arnold Black would invite his friends and colleagues to play music at the church, and before too long, the summer concert series was holding a free dress-rehearsal concert on Friday nights and the actual concert on Saturday nights.
“It went on every summer,” Fraser said. “The nonprofit was working hard to raise money and write grants. It has been doing that since, and it receives major gifts and contributions.”
A few years before Ruth Black died, Fraser said audiences started to decline, but when he took the helm, that began to turn around.
“We had a really strong board and I had a lot of energy,” he said. “It has really taken off in the last four years. We’ve seen a lot of full houses.”
The church seats 175, and Fraser said there are typically 100 or more people at every summer concert.
Only the second director of Mohawk Trail Concerts, he said he wants to see the nonprofit grow and stay strong for another 50 years. Though Ruth Black took over after her husband died, Fraser said she had really served as co-director from the beginning.
A cellist, Fraser began playing for the summer concert series in 2010. When Ruth Black asked him to consider becoming director, he said he felt comfortable accepting because he had run several concerts before.
“It was a good time in my life to take on something like this,” he said. “I had a good deal of experience, and we both thought I was a good fit.”
Fraser said the a few of the biggest changes he’s seen since he became the executive artistic director include moving from a theme-based concert series to a musician-driven one and adding concerts to the six that had been established.
“Ruth would pick a theme and then try to find musicians to fit,” he said. “I engaged groups and individual musicians to play together, so over time they began to mesh. It became a homogenous, unified group.”
Fraser said there used to be six summer concerts and that was it for the year. Now, there are seven concerts and a couple more in the late summer, early fall.
“We hold concerts six weekends during the summer, as well as one free concert on the Fourth of July,” he said.
Fraser said several musicians who have performed in the past will return this year to celebrate the 50th season, including Joan Morris and Bill Bolcom.
Looking ahead, He said musicians will premiere works of Arnold Black on July 6, and on July 27 during the closing concert, cellist Adriana Contino, who grew up in Amherst, will perform an arrangement of his songs.
Fraser said Mohawk Trail Concerts has received a lot of support from local cultural councils across Franklin County and beyond, and in some towns, there are two tickets to concerts that people can check out of libraries.
He said each concert costs $25 per person, but Mohawk Trail Concerts finds ways to make sure everyone can attend, no matter their financial situation.
“The best thing about chamber music is there’s a real connection between performers and the audience,” Fraser said. “There’s not a bad seat in the house. Everyone is close to the performers. It’s also the kind of music that applies to the intellect, engages the mind.”
He said that’s especially true of chamber music because each musician has a voice that can be heard and understood through his or her instrument.
“That all comes together, and then there’s also a collective voice of the whole,” he said.
Fraser said musicians breathe together, perform together, and build a rapport with audiences.
He said audiences get to experience “fine music in an informal setting.”
Fraser said Mohawk Trail Concerts is always looking for volunteers — ushers, people to work in the box office or people to bake cookies — who get to hear the concert they work for free.
“We definitely find ways to make the concerts accessible to everyone,” he said.
Fraser said the churc h is air-conditioned, so it is comfortable all summer, no matter the weather, humidity or temperature.
From the beginning, he noted Mohawk Trail Concerts has been a community project. In the early years, the owner of the local general store, Henry Avery, whose son Dennis studied flute at Oberlin, was on the board. Villagers helped park cars, provided punch and cookies for intermission and put up musicians, who played for little or no money.
The founding musicians always encouraged new composition be performed by musicians from near and far. “We wanted no taint of elitism,” Arnold Black would tell those involved. At the first concert, the musicians proudly introduced a Strad and a Guarnerius violin, a Strad and a Montagnana cello, after which one of them held up his viola and proudly announced, “Montgomery Ward,” to a roar of applause.
Lack of air conditioning on humid summer nights in the church left audiences sweaty and stuck to the varnished pews. After benefits in New York raised the funds for air conditioning, musicians and audiences were thrilled, and the pews were refinished.
Fraser, a founding member of the Adaskin String Trio, which has performed for Mohawk Trail Concerts, said Arnold Black’s wide range of musical associations and his warmth allowed him to draw to the “acoustically astonishing church” in a welcoming hill town performers of stunning accomplishment, including Arnold Steinhardt, Carol Wincenc, Joel Krosnick, Gil Kalish, Robert and Nicholas Mann, Robert Bonfiglio and more.
As much as the accomplished performing artists, the creative programming has also drawn audiences over the years, he said. In the past, there was an all-Telemann program billed as a “Telemannathon,” and opera arias emceed by Kevin Rhodes, music director of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra. Mohawk Trail Concerts also celebrated local poets Archibald MacLeish and Richard Wilbur, who read their poems set to music composed by Ezra Laderman and Arnold Black.
This is the fourth year Mohawk Trail Concerts has presented individual instrumental soloists at the Franklin County Jail and at a Greenfield after-school music program, Musica Franklin. Musicians have also performed free noon-hour concerts at Arms Library in Shelburne Falls.
Fraser said he has been one of those performers and has enjoyed it very much. It said it is quite fulfilling.
“It’s wonderful to bring chamber music to an underserved population,” he said.
Saturday, June 22, at 7:30 p.m.: A Baroque Evening with Yuri Namkjung on violin; Alice Robbins on cello and gamba; Gregory Hayes on harpsichord.
Saturday, June 29, at 7:30 p.m.: The Adaskin String Trio with Emlyn Ngai on violin; Steve Larson on viola; Mark Fraser on cello – works of Beethoven, Dohnanyi, Jean Cras.
Wednesday, July 4, from 4 to 5 p.m.: Free family jazz concert with Kimaya Diggs, vocalist with her combo.
Saturday, July 6, at 7:30 p.m.: The Newman-Oltman Guitar Duo with The 3 Bs: Bach, Black and Brouwers.
Saturday. July 13, at 7:30 p.m.: An Evening at the Opera with Tundi Productions
Saturday, July 20, at 7:30 p.m.: Amy Burton, soprano; John Musto, piano; special guests William Bolcom and Joan Morris.
Saturday, July 27 at 7:30 p.m.: Masako Yanagita on violin; Adriana Contino on cello; Estela Olevsky on piano.