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Sunday, October 3, 2010, 2:30 pm – Dominican University Monday, October 4, 2010, 7:30 pm – Symphony Center For the Common Man Chicago Sinfonietta Paul Freeman, Music Director and Conductor Harvey Felder, Guest Conductor Fanfare for the Common Man ............................................................................Aaron Copland Neue slavische Tänze (Slavonic Dances), op.72 no.7 (15) ........................Antonín Dvořák 7. In C major - SrbskÈ Kolo Fire and Blood, for Violin and Orchestra .............................................. Michael Daugherty 1. Volcano 2. River Rouge 3. Assembly Line Tai Murray, violin Intermission Sundown’s Promise (for Taiko and Orchestra) ................................................. Renée Baker I. Company Song VII. Transcendence II. Wa ( peace/balance) VIII. No Mi Kai (Drinking party) III. Wabi IX. Chant IV. Sabi X. Sitting V. Pride XI. Walking VI. Enkai (Banquet Feast) XII. Learning to see the Invisible XIII. Shime (Ending of celebration) JASC Tsukasa Taiko, Japanese drums and Shamisen Nicole LeGette, butoh dancer On the Waterfront: Symphonic Suite from the Film ............................ Leonard Bernstein Lead Season Sponsor Lead Media Sponsor Sponsors Bettiann Gardner Please hold your applause for a brief silence after each work. This will help everyone to enjoy every note. chicagosinfonietta.org facebook.com/chicagosinfonietta Chicago Sinfonietta 1 THE MAESTRO’S FINAL SEASON These 2010 season-opening performances mark the beginning of a season of transition as our beloved Founder and Music Director Paul Freeman takes the podium for the final time. Throughout the year Maestro Freeman will be conduct- ing pieces that have become personal favorites of his, many of which he probably introduced to you, our audience. We will also be sharing some of his compelling life story and reprinting some amazing photos from the Sinfonietta archive. We hope you enjoy this season-long look at Maestro’s career, and encourage every- one you know to join us in celebrating his many accomplishments. The Early Days Paul Douglas Freeman was born in Richmond, Virgin- ia, on January 2, 1936. His father ran a produce shop. He grew up in modest circumstances in the American South in the middle of the twentieth century--diffi- cult beginnings for any African American. “Growing up in segregation in Richmond ... to have fulfilled my personal dreams and to have helped to found an entity [the Chicago Sinfonietta] that brings dreams to others, even I sometimes can’t believe what we’ve done,” Freeman told the Chicago Sun-Times. Eleanor roosevelt with a young The dream began with Freeman’s music-loving Maestro Freeman-1955 family. Symphony orchestra concerts on the radio and weekly broadcasts from New York’s Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, and the NBC Orchestra were required listening for all twelve Freeman siblings as were music lessons when they grew old enough to handle them. Freeman started piano lessons at age five, and he soon took up the clarinet as well. He took clarinet lessons at Richmond’s Armstrong High School while still in elementary school and took lessons at Virginia State College in Petersburg while in high school. One of the stories Paul shares is about the first time he ever heard an orchestra perform as a child in his hometown of Richmond. He and his mother were directed to sit in the colored section of the theater, or as he likes to refer to it, the “peanut gallery”. His conducting debut came at age 14 or 15, when his clarinet teacher fell ill and was unable to conduct the Armstrong school band for its scheduled performance at a PTA meeting. Freeman stepped in as a substitute. “Although the ministry was an earlier career interest, a maestro was born that evening,” Freeman wrote in a letter quoted in the book Black Conductors. More about Paul in the next program book. 2 Chicago Sinfonietta PROGRAM NOTES PROGRAM NOTES ( c o n t.) “You compose because you want to somehow into a talented violin and viola player into tools for men’s service. It was a new virtuosic triple stops, while the orches- summarize in some permanent form your and gaining a position with the Bohe- music, waiting for the composer . to give tra explodes with pulsating energy. The most basic feelings about being alive, to set mian Provisional Theater Orchestra for it communicable form.” composition alternates between repeated down... some sort of permanent statement most of the 1860s. patterns in 7/4 time and polytonal pas- about the way it feels to live now, today.” I. Volcano sages that occur simultaneously in — Aaron Copland Originally written for piano 4-hands, Before coming to Detroit, Rivera lived in different tempos. It concludes with an and modeled after Johannes Brahms’s Mexico City, surrounded by volcanoes. extended violin cadenza accompanied by It would be unthinkable not to include Hungarian Dances, it was Brahms himself Fire is an important element in his murals, marimba and maracas. Aaron Copland on a concert dedicated who recommended Dvořák to the music which depict the blaze of factory furnaces to the experience of the Common Man. publisher Fritz Simrock. With the first like erupting volcanoes. Volcanic fire II. River Rouge Through his orchestral, ballet, and film set of dances published in 1878, Dvořák was also associated with revolution by At the Ford River Rouge Automobile scores he pioneered what is commonly became a household name and Simrock’s Rivera, an ardent member of the Mexican Complex, located next to the Detroit agreed to be the American sound in clas- publishing house earned a great deal of Communist party. He saw the creation of River, Rivera spent many months creating sical music. One of his most memorable money. This prompted the composition the Detroit murals as a way to further his sketches of workers and machinery in works, Fanfare for the Common Man, was of the second set (op. 72) in 1886 and a revolutionary ideas. The music of the first action. He was accompanied by his young composed in response to a commission full orchestral version of all of the dances, movement responds to the fiery furnaces wife, the remarkable Mexican painter Frida from conductor of the Cincinnati Sym- with orchestrations by Dvořák himself. of Rivera’s imagination. The violinist plays Kahlo (1906-1954). She lived in constant phony Eugene Goossens. In 1942, with Unlike the Brahms’s Hunarian Dances, the US entangled in the Second World Dvořák did not literally quote any folk War, Goossens engaged 18 composers tunes. Rather, he used the harmonies and to create fanfares to galvanize the public rhythms in the folk tunes of his native and to give them hope. All of them were Czechoslovakia to craft his own original premiered during the 1942-43 season, pieces. Instantly appealing in their tunes but only Copland’s has remained in the and dazzling in their bold orchestration, standard repertory. the deft craftsmanship of these pieces almost slips by unnoticed. The fanfare is so familiar, even the most uninitiated classical music listener has Michael Daugherty, drawing much of heard it at least once. This makes it dif- his inspiration from popular culture, has ficult to analyze the piece to understand written a vast number of works for the why it is so memorable. What is striking orchestra that refuses the elitisms and is the leanness of his musical materials. exclusivity often associated with clas- Opening with several strikes from the per- sical music. With pieces including the cussion, the silences are as crucial to the Superman-themed Metropolis Symphony, work as any of the notes. The unforgetta- an opera about Jackie O, and Dead Elvis ble melody appears first in the trumpets, for a bassoon playing Elvis-impersonator, soaring above the timpani and bass drum. Daugherty has created works that engage Through the next two minutes the work the “common man”. Written in 2003, Fire alternates between percussion and brass, and Blood, a concerto for violin and carefully developing the theme in the orchestra, is no exception. most gradual and seemingly inevitable ways. The Fanfare for the Common Man is In 1932, Edsel Ford commissioned the one of those works of art that is so clear, Mexican modernist artist Diego Rivera so moving, and so direct that it seems to (1886-1957) to paint a mural representing have always existed, as if Copland tran- the automobile industry of Detroit. Rivera scribed a deeper musical truth rather than came to Detroit and worked over the next creating it from scratch. two years to paint four large walls of the inner courtyard at the Detroit Institute Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances, op. 72 were of Arts. Considered among his best work, widely popular and, along with the first Rivera’s extraordinary “Detroit Industry” set of dances, largely responsible for his murals have inspired me to create my gain in notoriety as a composer. Born own musical fresco for violin and orches- in 1841, Antonín Dvořák was the son of tra. It was Rivera himself who predicted a working class family; his father was the possibility of turning his murals into a butcher, innkeeper, and professional music, after returning from a tour of the zither player. His musical talents were Ford factories: “In my ears, I heard the clear from a young age and he was wonderful symphony which came from encouraged to pursue them, developing his factories where metals were shaped 4 Chicago Sinfonietta Chicago Sinfonietta 5 PROGRAM NOTES ( c o n t.) pain as a result of polio in childhood and III. Assembly Line Wh>&ZDE͕Dh^//ZdKZ a serious bus accident at age 18 in Mexico Rivera described his murals as a City. Many of her self-portraits depict the depiction of “towering blast furnaces, suffering of her body. During her time with serpentine conveyor belts, impressive Rivera in Detroit, Kahlo nearly died from a scientific laboratories, busy assembly miscarriage, as depicted in paintings such rooms; and all the men who worked as “Henry Ford Hospital” and “My Birth.” them all.” Rather than pitting man D^dZK&ZDE͛^>^d^^KE The color of blood is everywhere in these against machine, Rivera thought the :ŽŝŶƚŚĞLJĞĂƌͲůŽŶŐĐĞůĞďƌĂƚŝŽŶŽĨĂŶŵĞƌŝĐĂŶŽƌŝŐŝŶĂů͊ works.

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