Chelsea Music Festival

Can you taste Bach or smell Villa-Lobos? Melinda Lee Masur and Ken-David Masur think so.

For the fifth edition of their small but enticing Chelsea Music Festival in New York, the couple once again brought together musicians, composers, visual artists and a head chef to create multi-sensory delights.

Hear, see and taste

"It's a sumptuous blend of various categories," said the event's co-director Melinda Lee Masur, who is also a pianist and festival performer.

The focus in 2014 was on music from Brazil and Germany, including compositions by Richard Strauss, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Brazil's most popular art music export, Heitor Villa-Lobos.

The German chef Hinnerk von Bargen was this year's culinary artist in residence. He listened to a lot of music ahead of the performances to get inspired for the dishes he would make. The festival's last concert, for example, drew on Brazilian jazz.

"The food that you use in connection with that has to be colorful and lively. It definitely can't be stuffy," said von Bargen, who is currently the head of the Culinary Institute of America in San Antonio, Texas.

One of his dishes for the concert was fried bananas. It may sound a bit plain, but it all comes down to the recipe. He soaks the bananas in buttermilk, then rolls them in tapioca flour before seasoning them with cinnamon, sugar and sea salt.

Of classical and catering

However, the Masurs' concept of stimulating all of the senses creates big logistical hurdles for the festival.

"Integrating the culinary aspect meant we had to become our own catering service and have our own kitchen - that took a ton of work," Ken David Masur said.

Ahead of a concert with the Stuttgart boys' choir collegium iuvenum, a lovely roasting smell had spread throughout the rooms of the St. Paul Lutheran Church. Since the works by Beethoven, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy were "classically oriented," von Bargen says he settled on a menu featuring Midwestern classics.

He described the main course, a pork loin roast with beans, as "a classic dish that you would have found there 300 years ago. It's especially prevalent in Wisconsin and shows a lot of German influence."

Around 100 people attended the concert by the Stuttgart boys' choir in the cozily illuminated neo-Gothic church. They heard finely sung choral music in the first part, followed by "Voices of the Winds," a New York premiere by Brazilian composer Felipe Lara that blends the sounds of the human voice with wind instruments. After the concert, the attendees got to enjoy von Bargen's creations.

Points of access

But Melinda Lee Masur stresses that music remains at the center of the event with "other forms of art such as painting or food creating points of access to the music." The Chelsea Music Festival focuses on chamber music, a genre she says could especially benefit from that approach.

"A lot of people think, 'Oh God, I don't understand it. I can't go to that,'" Masur says, explaining that their interdisciplinary approach is intended to allay such concerns.

Some evenings, the small number of guests seemed to bear out the reservations Melinda Lee Masur described. That was true for an evening of chamber music in the auditorium of the New School, a compact modernist building by architect Joseph Urban. Germany's Amaryllis Quartet performed alongside local musicians and singer Adrienne Pardee in a program ranging from Brahms to Schönberg. For Lieder by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, contemporary German composer Aribert Reimann created an artful side program, embedding the songs in contemporary sounds.

Discovering Chelsea

The festival's programs are challenging, the artists somewhat unknown, and the locations rotate. That makes for difficult marketing but an intriguing experience. So far, though, the sponsors, including a number of German companies such as Lufthansa, BMW and Radeberger, are along for the ride.

"We want to discover Chelsea. There are so many small places we knew nothing about, and we've lived in New York for a long time," says Ken-David Masur.

The 2014 festival took place at eight venues - churches, galleries and museums.

The Masurs invest just as much detail-oriented care in selecting their concert venues as they do in arriving at fitting concert programs. Personal considerations come up along the way - for instance, by way of this year's thematic focus on Brazil and Germany. It's not just a nod to soccer fans, but, says Ken-David Masur, "My parents met each other in Rio de Janeiro."

Masur, however, was born in Lepizig. His famous father, Kurt Masur, was head of the city's renowned Gewandhaus Orchestra for years. Masur Sr. was among a number of courageous and prominent East Germans who prevented the city's Monday Demonstrations from turning into a bloodbath ahead of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Later, Kurt Masur would be appointed head of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, taking his family with him. Son Ken-David attended a German school there, and the Masurs' home near the school remains part of their estate today.

Like father, like son

Ken-David Masur's wife and festival co-director, Melinda, says her husband "has wonderful parents who love and support us - musically and personally."

Music is a frequent topic of discussion, but Kurt Masur, whose health is fragile, has yet to make it to Chelsea for the festival.

The star conductor's son is following in his father's footsteps. Ken-David Masur serves as a conductor in San Diego and was recently named the assistant conductor for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

"When it comes to the regular season, I ask my dad: Have you ever done this stuff? Let's talk about it," Masur says, adding that organizing his own festival offers plenty of reasons to call home, as well.