PAUL FREEMAN, MUSIC DIRECTOR THOMAS DE WALLE, GENERAL MANAGER THE DELIGHTS OF ‘DIVERSITY’ BY JOSEPH MCLELLAN | SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON POST | THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2001 “We are in for a treat,” promised Virginia Williams, filling In his note on his brassy, bluesy, energetic An in for her absent son, the mayor, Tuesday evening in the American Port of Call, Adolphus Hailstork ignores the chicagosinfonietta.org Kennedy Center Concert Hall. ”This, she added, “is a music’s descriptive qualities and says it is about “the different kind of music.” interval of a major seventh and the cascading, synco- The program, performed by the Chicago Sinfonietta pated theme that grew out of it.” Perhaps, but in per- with conductor Paul Freeman and a variety of guest formance it called to mind a bustling scene with motor 312 236 5429 f artists, was titled “Symphonic Diversity.” With one rhythms, traffic jams, horns blowing, trains roaring by spectacular exception, the Concerto for Steel Pan and and other sounds of a busy city. Orchestra of Jan Bach, the concert featured com- The program built to a climax with Alberto posers of African-American or Hispanic ancestry. And, Ginastera’s exotic, high-energy dances from the ballet true to Williams’s promise, it was one of the most “Estancia,” music that rises to a concluding frenzy 312 236 3681 p unusual programs in the Washington Performing Arts comparable to Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.” Society’s season. For contrast, the program included two of the less bois- As exemplified in this program, symphonic diversity terous classics of African American symphonic music: usually involves a lot of percussion, muscular rhythms George Walker’s gently elegiac Lyric for Strings and William and an array of sounds never imagined by Beethoven Grant Still’s “Afro-American” Symphony. During the Still or even Rimsky-Korsakov. In one piece, Encuentro: work, narrator Danny Glover read three poems by Langston Suite de Danzas Yucatecas by Victor Pichardo, the Hughes. The result was emotionally powerful, but at a cost; orchestration included conch shell, wooden box, tor- the spoken words overshadowed the music to the point of toise shells, donkey jawbone and other folk instru- serious imbalance, except for moments when the music ments, played by drowned out the speaker’s voice. “THIS,” SHE ADDED, “IS A the five-member DIFFERENT KIND OF MUSIC.” Sones de Mexico REPRINTED BY CHICAGO SINFONIETTA Ensemble. ©2001 THE WASHINGTON POST COMPANY The Bach concerto offered a technically brilliant and sometimes witty solo by Liam Teague on the metallic percussion instrument heard in Caribbean steel bands. What it does best is shimmer,an effect that was sometimes submerged in the orchestral sound. It had the audience laughing loudly during a comic dialogue (or debate) with 88 WEST RANDOLPH STREET SUITE 1601 CHICAGO, IL 60601 1 a flexatone in the orchestra’s percussion section, and it concluded with a dazzling display of speed. MUSIC EXCELLENCE DIVERSITY PAUL FREEMAN, MUSIC DIRECTOR THOMAS DE WALLE, GENERAL MANAGER LIVING THE DREAM: EXCELLENCE THROUGH DIVERSITY AT THE CHICAGO SINFONIETTA BY CHESTER LANE | MAY · JUNE 1997 chicagosinfonietta.org Presenting a rich variety of symphonic music to a days was almost like being at war. The relationships diverse community is increasingly the goal of American you developed were very strong and long-lasting. symphony orchestras. Few of them, however, have put People felt a kinship to each other. And when some- that idea into practice as successfully as the Chicago body died, especially in circumstances like those, it 312 236 5429 f Sinfonietta, an ensemble of 40 to 50 musicians that was tough.” plays in Orchestra Hall and in the west suburb of River Like Rougeau, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Forest. Its board, its playing roster, and its audience black man who appreciated the contributions that are all permeated with ethnic variety. And the story of Jewish Americans had made to the civil rights move- how the Sinfonietta’s Martin Luther King concerts took ment. King had, in fact, paid tribute to his “Jewish 312 236 3681 p on an extra dimension this year begins with the brethren” in a speech soon after three civil rights work- ecumenical ideas of Paul Freeman and Weldon ers were slain. So when the Chicago Sinfonietta was Rougeau, the orchestra’s African-American music looking for a way to bring the city’s black and Jewish director and president. communities closer together – an idea proposed by one Long before he earned a Harvard law degree and of its board members, Seymour H. Persky – the orches- became an attorney, Rougeau was a dedicated civil tra’s Martin Luther King concerts in January seemed rights activist. His activism had gotten him expelled like the “ideal slot,” according to Freeman. “We would from the public university he was attending in his salute Dr. King and have as part of the program a native Louisiana. memorial to the three civil rights workers,” he says. ITS BOARD, ITS PLAYING And through CORE,a “At first I couldn’t find the catalyst, because I didn’t ROSTER, AND ITS AUDIENCE national civil rights know what music to perform. Fortunately, one of the ARE ALL PERMEATED WITH group, he had met cantors in Chicago, Albert Mizrahi, sent me the Yizkor ETHNIC VARIETY. Michael Schwermer, Requiem by Thomas Beveridge. Tom is minister of a young Jewish man music at a church in northern Virginia, and his requiem from New York whose idealism had brought him to the combines the Jewish and Christian liturgies.” Freeman Deep South to work on voter registration drives. In selected about half of the work, inviting Mizrahi and 1964, soon after Rougeau came to Chicago to resume the choir from Anshe Emet Synagogue to perform with his schooling at Loyola University, he learned that the Sinfonietta at Orchestra Hall on Martin Luther King Schwermer, along with another Jewish worker named Day, January 20, 1997. On the second half of that 88 WEST RANDOLPH STREET SUITE 1601 CHICAGO, IL 60601 1 Andrew Goodman and an African American, James concert the orchestra combined with the 200-voice Chaney, had paid the ultimate price for their activism: Apostolic Church of God Sanctuary Choir, performing they had been murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi. gospel selections arranged by Alvin Parris. The previ- “The shock was a personal one for me,” says ous day at Rosary College, the orchestra’s other venue Rougeau. “Being in the civil rights movement in those in River Forest, Morton Gould’s orchestral Revival: MUSIC EXCELLENCE DIVERSITY 2 · Fantasy on Six Spirituals and Aldolphus Hailstork’s Epitaph (In Memoriam: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) were performed in place of the rafter-raising gospel songs. MAY | JUNE 1997 MAY Both concerts filled out the “freedom” theme with Copland’s Lincoln Portrait, narrated by actor Paul Winfield, and Beethoven’s Leonora Overture No. 3 (composed for PAUL FREEMAN DIRECTING THE CHICAGO SINFONIETTA AT ORCHESTRA HALL SYMPHONY the opera Fidelio, an impassioned statement about political imprisonment and deliverance). And both con- Since last fall, Freeman also directed the Czech certs ended with an emotionally charged audience joining National Symphony Orchestra, and he speaks with the orchestra and chorus in “We Shall Overcome.” pride about the “cross-pollination” of musical cultures Unlike many orchestras, the Sinfonietta performs a that this is helping to bring about. This season he Martin Luther King program only every two years, the involved both of his orchestras in a two-CD recording LIVING THE DREAM idea being to avoid any predictable routine. This year’s project devoted to works of Sowerby. Freeman brought far-from-routine MLK concerts exemplify an approach in two Czech soloists for the Sinfonietta’s Carmina to programming that has been the hallmark of Burana performances in March, and the chorus used in Freeman’s leadership. An African-American conductor that concert, the Northern Illinois University Concert who put together a pioneering series on black com- Choir, will reprise its efforts with the Czech orchestra poser for Columbia Records in the 1970’s, he has in Prague next season. nonetheless brought to the orchestra’s programs African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians make up a highly eclectic mix of 43 percent of the Sinfonietta’s board of directors, 24 THE DREAM WAS TO FILL home-grown artistry and percent of its playing roster, 50 percent of its soloists, AN ARTISTIC NICHE IN THE European classics from and 35 to 40 percent of its audience. A commitment to COMMUNITY, WHICH WAS several centuries. diversity has attracted the financial backing of the TO PERFORM REPERTOIRE The February con- Chicago Tribune and Marshall Field’s, a major depart- FOR MID-SIZED ORCHESTRA. certs, for example, fea- ment store chain. And the Sinfonietta recently tured the world pre- received a two-year, $120,000 grant from the Joyce miere of Chicago composer Kimo Williams’ Two Foundation for its audience-broadening efforts. This is Gether. Commissioned as a Sinfonietta auction “pre- good news for an organization that has performed sig- mium” in honor of a couple’s 38th wedding anniver- nal service to the City of Chicago but is only now, after sary, it shared the program with works by jazz great a decade of operation, seeing the end of the deficit Thelonius Monk, 17th-century Italian Girolamo tunnel. “In the first three years,” says Freeman, “we Frescobaldi, and two Europeans from our own century, accumulated a deficit that we have paid down over the Maurice Ravel and Rodion Shchedrin. And Freeman past six and a half. Now that we’re in our tenth year, has espoused such under-performed American com- we hope to burn the mortgage.” posers as Leo Sowerby (1895-1968), whose Symphony “When I started the orchestra ten years ago,” No.