Montage few black women are showrunners, espe- she exclaims, excited to expand the charac- “I do think theater is church. It is a space cially considering her lack of television ex- ters’ lives but also to put Memphis on the we gather in—the people on stage are our perience. “It’s extremely scary,” she says— screen in a positive light. pastors for that moment and they’re up on but she’s hoping for more. Yet Hall cannot imagine leaving theater a pulpit and they are preaching a kind of Though The Hot Wing King closed early due behind. It’s the place where she can create story,” she says. “I am spiritual. But while I to the pandemic, Hall is now in discussions the worlds and tell the stories she wants, don’t go to church every Sunday, I do go to to turn that into a series as well. “Yeeeeeees,” the ones she believes can change America. theater every Saturday.”

plains, “is both an extremely rational, ana- The Power of Unreason lytical art, and also a fundamentally irratio- nal one. And at the end of the day, its power Composer Paul Moravec’s soulful music lies not in its reason, but in its unreason, its by lydialyle gibson emotion.” That’s why the “freedom” motif works even if listeners don’t consciously register that they’ve heard it before. “Mu- eep in the second half of Sanctu- sun comes out,” says Moravec. “There’s this sic plays directly on our central nervous sys- ary Road, an oratorio by composer emotional opening-up—this is the spiritu- tem,” he says. “It’s primordial.” He pauses for Paul Moravec ’80 based on sto- al anchor of the entire piece.” The rest of a moment. “You know, Darwin had the idea D ries from the Underground Rail- the ensemble joins the soprano soloist, and that song preceded speech in human devel- road, the heart of the whole piece seems to the aria resolves into what Moravec calls a opment, that our distant ancestors sang to crack wide open. In an aria titled “Rain,” “freedom” motif threaded throughout the each other before they could speak words.” an enslaved woman summons a downpour oratorio. When it washes over the waning Song began speaking to Moravec at a very (“Come down Noah’s Ark heavy”) to scat- seconds of this song, listeners have heard young age. He was six, growing up in Buf- ter her pursuers as she flees north to free- variations of it a few times already at piv- falo, when the Beatles appeared on The Ed Sul- dom. The melody begins with a poignant otal moments, and its repetition here is sud- livan Show in 1964. Their irresistible cool, and minor chord, and then, as the lyrics build denly, powerfully moving. his older sisters’ excitement, bowled him and begin to soar, and the singer imagines That’s the idea, says Moravec, who teach- over. “I got a tennis racket and pretended herself free and dancing in the rain, the mu- es at on and to play it left-handed,” like Paul McCart- sic brightens into a major key. “It’s like, the won a Pulitzer Prize in 2004. Music, he ex- ney. His formal music training began in first grade, when he learned to play the recorder, and, later, the pi- ano, but most important was singing in an Episcopal cathe- dral choir. “From eight, nine, 10 years old, I was a little profes- sional musician, sight-reading pieces, performing on Sunday,” he says. “It was wonderfully rigorous and nourishing.” Soon, he began writing songs for gui- tar, and then , and by high school, he’d decided he wanted to be a composer. “It was like, ‘Now I just have to figure out how to do it.’” At Harvard, he concentrated in music, sang with the Har- vard-Radcliffe Collegium Mu- sicum, and worked as a teach- ing assistant to legendary music professor Elliot Forbes (“It was fun. I was basically his piano accompanist”). He won a Prix de Rome arts scholarship Paul Moravec and spent the year after gradu- ation at the American Academy

50 July - August 2020 Photograph courtesy of Adelphi University

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage in Rome (“I just composed music all the time and walked around the city. Rome was a whole other education in itself”). After that came a doctorate in music from Columbia. Moravec’s body of work, spanning nearly 40 years, is prodigious and difficult to sum- marize. “Polystylistic,” is how he puts it. He’s written oratorios and operas—most recently, 2013’s The Shining, based on the Ste- phen King novel—but most of his work is instrumental and abstract. Sometimes it is inspired by place: Albany, Rome, Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, the Montserrat monas- tery in the mountains of Catalonia, the auro- ra borealis in northern New Hampshire. He has set to music the letters of soldiers and their loved ones from the Civil War to Viet- Calling All nam. In May, as a response to the pandemic, the nonprofit OPERA America brought to- gether more than 100 singers by video for a Harvard Authors! virtual performance of Moravec’s 2016 com- position “Light Shall Lift Us.” He won the Pulitzer for , a five-part chamber work for violin, , piano, and clarinet that unfolds as a medi- tation on Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. A demanding and complex work—sometimes sprightly, sometimes contemplative, closing with an ecstatic rush of sound—it largely Advertise your book in our tracks the emotional trajectory of Prospero, the melancholy sorcerer-prince who finds happiness and hope in the play’s final act. Holiday Reading List Three years later, Moravec revealed that Prospero’s trajectory mirrored his own: suf- THE DEADLINE IS: SEPTEMBER 14, 2020 fering from severe clinical depression in the Reach 260,000 Harvard alumni, faculty, and staff in the 1990s, he had undergone electroshock ther- Harvard Author’s Bookshelf November-December 2020 issue of Harvard Magazine. Your book apy. It changed his life—and maybe saved it. That experience remains central to his ad will include: a book jacket photo, your name and Harvard class year, work, “the sand in my oyster, so to speak,” and a short description–totaling 8 lines of text. Your ad will appear he says. “As a composer, I try to make beau- both in print and online. For information about pricing and ad tiful things. Everything else radiates from specifications, go to: harvardmagazine.com/hauthors, contact that. And joyous things too, because in my experience, the alternative is too awful. It’s Gretchen Bostrom at 617-496-6686, or e-mail [email protected]. too appalling.” He began work on Sanctuary Road in 2016. It is the second in a three-part series of large-scale American historical oratorios. Do you own a vacation rental in The first, 2008’sBlizzard Voices, told the story New England or the Tri-State area? of the “Children’s Blizzard” that devastated the Great Plains in 1888. The libretto bor- rowed from the poems of Ted Kooser, which had incorporated actual words from survi- vors. For Sanctuary Road, Moravec worked with librettist Mark Campbell (his collab- Place an ad in the September-October issue and reach Harvard orator on The Shining, “Light Shall Lift Us,” alumni, faculty, and staff looking for driveable destinations. and other works), who adapted the writ- DEADLINE: JULY 15, 2020 (Your online ad can start today!) ings of William Still, an African-American Call: 617-496-6686 | Skype: hmagclassifi eds | Email: classifi [email protected] businessman, (please turn to page 54) TURN TO PAGE 61 TO BROWSE OUR CURRENT RENTAL LISTINGS

Harvard Magazine 51

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage historian, and conductor on the Under- to premiere at Carnegie Hall this summer, it something grounding about that connec- ground Railroad in Philadelphia. “I think has been postponed to November because of tion, which has survived world wars and this is very moving, and very American in the pandemic. “Knock wood,” Moravec says. holocausts and genocides and all the hor- a way, the idea of ordinary people caught Which reminds him of one last thing, re- rible things that have happened in the last up in extraordinary circumstances and de- garding the sand in the oyster and the gift 300 years. We still have it. And that connec- scribing them in their own plain speech: the of music in an upside-down world. “You tion to a tradition and the actual sound”— most harrowing, incredible, astounding nar- know, one thing that’s kind of remarkable: Moravec pivots to his piano, fingers cascad- ratives, with suffering and courage and joy when I play a Bach fugue, my fingers are do- ing across the notes—“it’s not an abstract and celebration—all these extreme human ing what Bach’s fingers did 300 years ago,” thing. It’s sound waves, and it’s still here. emotions.” (The work premiered at Carne- he says. “There’s this very physical, viscer- Music is essential to the fabric of who we gie Hall in 2018, and was released on CD this al connection between me and a past com- are as human beings. And even if we’re not past spring.) The third oratorio in the series poser, a very great spirit and imagination. aware of it, it’s still there.” Like that motif is A Nation of Others, set during a single day And particularly in a time of extreme anxi- woven through the arias in Sanctuary Road, on Ellis Island in 1921. Originally scheduled ety and uncertainty and disruption, there’s “it still resonates.” Seriously Goofy Comedian Karen Chee finds her voice. by jacob sweet

hen Karen Chee ’17 was “And I was like, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’” a child, her parents proved An outgoing, bossy, and precocious definitively that TV was child growing up in Foster City, Califor- W bad for her. During a Jeop- nia, she had another interest that would ardy broadcast, Chee’s mother had her count last longer: writing. Around the time her how many times producers cut to different detective work fell through, she wrote a shots. Each change, her mother said, sapped story about her grandfather that was so one’s ability to focus. Chee counted, and the long, her teacher felt compelled to call number was astounding. “I was completely home and inform her mom. convinced by the argument,” she says. In the Though TV comedy wasn’t a staple of dentist’s waiting room, she would train her the Chee household, laughter was. “We gaze away from the TV, desperate to preserve have a bunch of family members who are brain function. very silly, funny people who joke around,” As a writer for Late Night with Seth Meyers on she says. “And so in our house, people Karen NBC, her fear of television has long faded. laughed constantly.” She remembers sit- Chee Now she often appears herself, mostly on ting in her bedroom, listening to the muf- the recurring segment “What Does Millen- fled sound of her parents’ conversation, wait- joke, she’d write it down. She’d look up her nial Late Night Writer Karen Chee Know?” in ing for her mother’s laugh to cut through. favorite shows on the movie database site which Chee, the youngest writer, attempts In eighth grade, Chee discovered comedy. IMDb, find their writers, and watch other to identify ’80s and ’90s cultural touchstones First, it was Whose Line Is It Anyway?, recom- projects they’d worked on: an ad hoc com- (the PalmPilot, Garbage Pail Kids, MC Ham- mended by her drama-class teacher. Then, edy education. She was especially obsessed mer) and fails spectacularly. The Office, pointed out by a classmate. When with late-night television. With her grand- Comedy wasn’t always on the radar for her brother brought home DVDs of The Col- pa, she watched David Letterman, Conan Chee. A first-grade devotee of theCam Jan- bert Report and The Daily Show from the library, O’Brien ’85, and Johnny Carson. sen and Encyclopedia Brown mystery series, she her world changed. “I didn’t know political Encouraged by her drama teacher, she was first set on becoming a detective. That satire was fake, and I didn’t know television also started performing improv comedy. “I year, looking for undercover work, she de- comedy was a thing,” Chee says. “It felt like was really bad at acting,” Chee says of her signed a business card—with a self-portrait, my brain had exploded.” early days. “And really bad at improv.” She a phone number, and her home address— To grapple with the unfamiliar content, “broke” constantly, giggling at jokes on stage and dropped it in mailboxes around the she took copious notes. She noticed that that were supposed to be taken in . neighborhood. When her mother found each episode of The Office began with a short, But she loved it: the playful atmosphere, the out, they went house to house to retrieve off-topic intro and how the show’s writers way that improv had rules and a structure, them. “And then I realized as you get older, established each character with a unique, but that all the dialogue was made up. “That the detective stories get scarier,” Chee says. unvarying perspective. When she liked a was really exhilarating,” she says. “I think

54 July - August 2020 Photograph by Bridget Badore; photograph opposite by Lloyd Bishop/NBC

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746