It was in my high school typing class that her name first came up. Then this Midwesterner with college degree fresh in hand would finally meet Mademoiselle at her fourth-floor Paris apartment on the Rue Ballu. Her interview began with “What have you done?” Her one word to my naïve response, a round “Zéro.” And how might she have responded to the many, many who studied with her before and after me?

Discovering Mademoiselle has continued. Thursday evening at St. Paul’s Church, Brookline, Winsor Music’s “Nadia Boulange Salon” brought back memories. I recalled her asking with unusual tact what I thought of Aaron Copland—and she did not mean his music. Along with Copland, one of the most famous of her students who came from all over the world, Winsor Music’s season opener, creatively (if not coincidentally) programmed a baker’s dozen. The majority of composers were American and recognizable to most. The evening’s thoughtful selections would show Mademoiselle mentoring a host of personalities taking vastly different directions in music. What did she teach? Her criticism of my earliest harmony exercises: “Don’t be clever like Hindemith, be natural.” (How ever did she know I had taken theory courses with one of his students?)

Planning their program led with the idea of “What it was like to be in the salon” on what has become Place Lili-et-Nadia-Boulanger. Their mostly upbeat celebration of the renown pedagogue’s birthday came just one day and 139 years later. The concert’s design following familiar patterns came with contrasting sets, the first one framed with women from India and Poland around the American composers. Moving from classical idioms to popular, enclosed in the second set came the Boulanger sisters. Winsor Music particularly showed its distinctive personality by its arrangements of the song-centered concluding set—and with the four instrumentalists.

Much-admired Boston standouts Rane Moore and Gabriela Díaz, along with New Yorker guests Mikael Darmanie and Aaron Trant, united as though they had been together for more than this encounter. In their salon setting, clarinetist Moore underlined our country’s eclecticism, not only crossing genres but also by noticeably breathing classical into jazz. Pianist Darmanie could be described in much the same way, yet with a certain subtlety of style. Tellingly, sweeping the multifarious corners of newer concert hall repertoire, violinist Díaz underscored the wondrous mixing in the “Boulangerie.” Trant on drumset meshed as if a regular with Winsor Music. 

Even with a few programming curiosities, inside the pretend ninth arrondissement apartment perhaps a “Mes cheris!” from Mademoiselle for Winsor Music’s for a happy belated birthday.

Less familiar names sampling Nadia Boulanger’s wide international reach, British Indian espionage agent Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan, in a tribute to her father, a Sufi mystic, and Polish composer of Lithuanian descent, Grażyna Bacewicz, her music emblematic of Poland. From France, Michel Legrand, composer of film and television scores, and of course, Mademoiselle herself who eventually gave up composing and sister Lili, who was the first woman to win the Grand Prix de Rome. Just a few of countless others from the “Boulangerie” in Winsor Music’s salute, though, vibrantly showed—not explained—an unparalleled influence Mademoiselle had on centuries of musicmaking.   

Boulanger commissioned a 26-year-old Copland for one of her concerts, his crafted Nocturne providing glimpses of his distinctive expression, Díaz-Darmanie duo beautifying it. Woody Herman asked a 31-year-old Bernstein to write for one of his Herds, which broke up before they could perform the work. All the better, Riffs from Prelude, Fugue and Riffs just razzamatazz, Moore-Darmanie giving into it. The ages of composers in Winsor Music’s programming further caught the eye: Extase from Nadia age 14, her song in an arrangement for clarinet and piano, Moore-Darmanie relating it as openly expressive; and Trio for Violin, Clarinet and Piano from Gian Carlo Menotti age 85, Moore-Díaz-Darmanie posing it as ageless. The same three players verified Lalo Shifrin’s “Central Park Variations” as a jazz-inflected classical work.  The very short variation III “From Five Fancies for Clarinet and Piano Four Hands” with Díaz now on secondo, its momentary angularities stunningly in this performance. Moore shifted to toy piano to accompany Díaz in a pleasant Glass work, “Modern Love Waltz.”

Along with the Bernstein, the second set with Trant on drumset went a little off track with wacky covers of hits by Legrand, Joe Raposo, and Burt Bacharach—Díaz cued the room for the vocal refrain “sha la la la” (“Baby, It’s You). Arrangements of songs by the Boulanger sisters meant more memories. Allons voir sur le lac d’argent, in a violin, clarinet, and piano rendition, revealed the artistically prone Nadia, while Le Retour, in a clarinet and piano arrangement, illustrated the imaginative writing of younger sister Lili.

David Patterson, Professor of Music and former Chair of the Performing Arts Department at UMass Boston, was recipient of a Fulbright Scholar Award and the Chancellor’s Distinction in Teaching Award. He studied with Nadia Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen in Paris and holds a PhD from Harvard University. He is the author of 20 Little Piano Pieces from Around the World (G. Schirmer).  www.notescape.net