2021 SEASON AMERICA AWAKENS

Aaron Adolphus Hailstork AN ON- DEMAND PERFORMANCE APRIL 30-MAY 2 . 2021

Spring is in the air, the light of awareness is dawning, change is within reach, growth is on the horizon, and pride lends a bounce to one’s step. Please join Maestro Wes Kenney and the Fort Collins Symphony for an evening of American composers and themes. This streamed virtual concert features two of ’s compositions­— the enduring American anthem, , and a coming-of-age story, The Tender Land—and composer Adolphus Hailstork’s jazz/blues/Black gospel-inspired Church Street Serenade. Pre-recorded at the Fort Collins Lincoln Center, this concert is available to stream at your leisure over the weekend of April 30-May 2.

TheAmerica Awakens concert is dedicated to the memory of Leabelle R. Schwartz

The FCS is deeply grateful to the following concert donors The Lincoln Center Support Guild . Roberta Mielke . Dr. Peter Springberg Season Concert Sponsors City of Fort Collins Fort Fund . Colorado Creative Industries . National Endowment for the Arts Dr. Ed Siegel . Dr. Peter Springberg SEASON 2020-2021 AMERICA AWAKENS PROGRAM Repertoire

On-Demand Streaming Concert April 30 - May 2 . 2021 Recorded at the Fort Collins Lincoln Center

WES KENNEY, CONDUCTOR

Aaron Copland Appalachian Spring: Ballet for Martha (1900-1990) Complete Chamber Orchestra Version

Adolphus Hailstork Church Street Serenade (b. 1941)

Aaron Copland, Arr. Murry Sidlin The Tender Land Suite 1. Introduction 2. Laurie’s Aria 3. Love Duet 4. Stomp Your Foot 5. Daybreak Will Come 6. Hire a Stranger 7. Promise of Living Laurie: Amy Maples, soprano Ma: Patricia Goble, mezzo-soprano Martin: John Carlo Pierce, Pa: Wes Kenney, bass

The America Awakens Concert is Dedicated in Memory of Leabelle R. Schwartz Donors: Kara Holstrom & Warren Diggles . Wes & Leslie Kenney . Mary & Paul Kopco . Roberta Mielke Sharyn & Larry Salmen . Stephanie Stern & Daniel Curran . Kathleen Warnecke

Signature Concert Sponsors THE LINCOLN CENTER SUPPORT GUILD . ROBERTA MIELKE . DR. PETER SPRINGBERG 2021 Season Sponsors

Dr. Ed Siegel

Dr. Peter Springberg

With Special Thanks to Our Performance Hall Partner: The Fort Collins Lincoln Center SEASON 2020-2021 AMERICA AWAKENS MUSICIAN Roster

First Violin Cello Piano Nina Fronjian, Concertmaster Becky Kutz Osterberg, Principal Joshua Sawicki Mary Gindulis, Assistant Concertmaster Joseph Howe, Assistant Principal Mary Evans, Principal Beth Wells Bennett Stucky Yi-Ching Lee Assistant Conductor Second Violin Bass Jeremy Cuebas Christine Menter, Principal Forest Greenough, Principal Librarian Sarah Whitnah, Assistant Principal Colton Kelley, Assistant Principal Ethan Hecht Evan De Long Flute Personnel Manager Jean Denney Norman Menzales, Principal Jean Denney Viola Clarinet Production Manager Ethan Hecht, Principal Kellan Toohey, Principal Kevin Wolfgang Kyla Witt, Assistant Principal Erin Napier Bassoon Margaret Miller Tom Bittinger, Principal

The Sounds of Change

2021 On-Demand Streaming Concerts With gratitude to our generous sponsors who help keep your Fort Collins Symphony playing - Thank you!

America Awakens Signature Concert Sponsors 2021 Season . Media Sponsors THE LINCOLN CENTER SUPPORT GUILD ROBERTA MIELKE . DR. PETER SPRINGBERG 2021 Season Business Sponsors

Destination Justin Holcomb by Design Piano Tuning bell-law.com dellenbachsubaru.com dbdtravel.com fortcollinsnursery.com garyhixondesigns.com valpak.com garyhixondesigns.com [email protected] 2021 Season Sponsors Dr. Ed Siegel

Dr. Peter Springberg

With Special Thanks to Our Performance Hall Partner: The Fort Collins Lincoln Center SEASON 2020-2021 AMERICA AWAKENS CONCERT Soloists

Amy Maples Laurie - The Tender Land Soprano Amy Maples is a Tennessee native who Specialty roles include: Cunegonde (Candide), Adina currently resides in Golden, CO. Performing with (L’Elisir d’Amore), Gilda (Rigoletto), Linda (Linda such companies as the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, di Chamounix), the title role in (Lakmé), Lucy (The Alabama Symphony Orchestra, Brevard Symphony Telephone), Thérèse(Les Mamelles de Tiresias), Mabel Orchestra, Bangor Symphony, Orchestra Kentucky, (The Pirates of Penzance), Dorinda (Orlando), Susanna Ohio Light , and Piedmont Opera, Ms. Maples (Le Nozze di Figaro), Pamina (Die Zauberflöte), Tuptim has made her mark as both a concert soloist and an (The King and I), Cosette (Les Miserables), and Christine opera performer. She has been a featured artist with (The Phantom of the Opera). Maples received a MM in Opera Theatre of the Rockies, Opera Colorado, Opera Voice Performance from Florida State University and Fort Collins, the Colorado Springs Philharmonic, and a BM in Voice Performance from Lee University. Z the Colorado Chamber Orchestra. John Carlo Pierce Martin - The Tender Land

American tenor Dr. John Carlo Pierce enjoys an European television and radio, and can be heard on international reputation for beautiful sound and incisive the EMI recording of Zemlinsky’s Der Traumgörge, acting. He has held contracted positions with the opera conducted by James Conlon. His solo recording, Songs theaters in cities of Cologne and Mainz, Germany. He of Wintter Watts, was recently released on Centaur appeared as a guest at the Spoleto Festival in Italy, the Records. Pierce holds a Master of Music degree from Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Aargau Festival the Eastman School of Music and Doctor of Musical in Switzerland, and in opera houses across Germany. Arts degree from the University of Connecticut. He Dr. Pierce’s repertoire features leading roles in is currently Associate Professor of Voice at Colorado by Mozart, Rossini, and Donizetti, and stretches State University, where he teaches lyric diction, opera from the Baroque to new works. He has appeared on history, and applied voice. Z

CONCERT Dedication

TheAmerica Awakens concert is dedicated in Schwartz, professor of music and founder/conductor memory of Leabelle ‘Lea’ R. Schwartz who passed of the Fort Collins Symphony Orchestra. In 1963, Lea away on January 13, 2021. Lea grew up on a farm in founded the Women’s Symphony Guild, now known as northeastern Kansas where she learned the value of hard the Friends of the Symphony. The Schwartz’s partnership work and an appreciation for living in harmony with the and work to create and support classical music in Fort land. She was an excellent student, a stalwart protector of Collins set the stage for what is today a top-notch regional her three younger siblings, and a devoted daughter who orchestra and thriving cultural arts community. was as equally adept at helping her mother can vegetables In addition to her work with the Guild, Lea taught at and helping her father herd cattle on horseback. Foothills Gateway and co-founded the Women’s Resource Lea was passionate about classical music. Throughout her life Center. After earning her MBA, she worked in marketing she performed in choruses, played piano, and picked up the cello communications for NCR, AT&T and Symbios Logic. She later after her high school orchestra leader recruited her for her excellent opened her own public relations firm, Point Public Relations, musical ear, strong hands (farm work), and tall stature. and continued working until the age of 80, capping a long and After earning the first of two master’s degrees, she accepted successful career. A devotion to those she loved, hard work, and a job to teach at CSU. There she met and later married Will making a positive impact were hallmarks of Lea’s life. Z SEASON 2020-2021 AMERICA AWAKENS PROGRAM

Notes By Dr. K. Dawn Grapes

Aaron Copland Appalachian Spring: Ballet for Martha Date of Composition: 1944 Duration: 25 minutes

What is it about Copland’s music that evokes such U.S. art music community. feelings of nationalism and nostalgia? Some would point to the composer’s use of open intervals of fourths and Several years earlier, Martha Graham, renowned fifths, which emblematize the wide-open spaces of the dancer and choreographer, had approached Copland American West. Others note his incorporation of folk- with a commission for a new, modern ballet. Separated tunes and hymns, sometimes only in fragments, which geographically, the two collaborated through written add a familiarity for listeners. There is also a certain correspondence to create Appalachian Spring. Copland indefinable quality about his music that is—simply responded with a work for thirteen instrumentalists, a Copland. Aaron Copland (1900–1990) was born to group small enough to fit into the performing space at Lithuanian-Jewish immigrant parents in Brooklyn, the Library of Congress where the work was premiered. where he grew up. Yet his music is so associated with Later the composer would re-orchestrate the piece for rustic Americana that he has been deemed the “Dean of American full orchestra, but there is something about this first chamber- Music.” His most popular works seize upon themes and scenes like instrumentation that is especially evocative of the ballet’s reinforcing this portrayal and include titles such as , Billy narrative. The story simply tells of a revivalist preacher and a the Kid, , Fanfare for the Common Man, and young couple whose wedding in the then-Pennsylvania-wilds of course, Appalachian Spring. All of these compositions, and heralds a promising future. Graham and legendary dancer Merce indeed, the majority of Copland’s most well-known works, were Cunningham performed lead roles. The production, in terms of composed in the 1940s when World War II brought together both dance and music, claimed a new American vision for modern much of the country. Perhaps then, Copland’s unique style ballet. Glistening string lines and lilting winds highlight the score, has ingrained itself into our nation’s memory as music linked which features a middle section of variations on the Quaker hymn, to American themes, resulting in a collective perception of “Simple Gifts.” The future was bright not only for the newlyweds his music as uniquely American. Regardless, in 1944, the year in the ballet: Copland received a Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Z Appalachian Spring premiered, Copland was the darling of the composition the following year.

Adolphus Hailstork Church Street Serenade Date of Composition: 2005 Duration: 7 minutes

Aaron Copland and Adolphus Hailstork (b. 1941) University, Hailstork studied composition at the have several things in common: both were born and Manhattan School of Music. Afterward, when nearing raised in New York—Copland in the city and Hailstork the end of two years serving in the U.S. Armed Forces, upstate, both showed musical talent from an early Hailstork was unsure of what his future should be. age, both studied at the Conservatoire Américan at Following the assassination of Martin Luther King, he Fontainebleau in France and with the great pedagogue noted that the great Civil Rights leader was referred Nadia Boulanger (though some forty years apart), and to as Dr. King, which inspired the young composer many of their most popular compositions draw on to pursue his own doctoral degree in composition American musical themes. Yet their life journeys and at Michigan State University. He then went into professional paths were quite different. Hailstork grew academia, teaching at several universities. Just recently up surrounded by music in Albany, NY. He sang in he retired from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, the choir at the local Episcopal cathedral, played in his VA. Dr. Hailstork has received commissions from some school’s orchestra, and became a proficient organist. of the most prestigious professional orchestras, opera After receiving his first degree in music theory from Howard companies, and academic institutions in the United States, and his compositions, which number in the hundreds, are relevant and the years, audiences enjoyed headliners such as Louis Armstrong, timely. The U.S. Marine Band performed Fanfare on Amazing Cab Calloway, Bessie Smith, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Ella Grace for the January 2021 inauguration ceremonies of President Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Nat King Cole. It is no wonder Joseph R. Biden, and one of his newest pieces, A Knee on the Neck then that Dr. Hailstork imbued Church Street Serenade with for soloists, choir, and orchestra, is a tribute to George Floyd. a jazzy, bluesy style. In 1953, the iconic institution closed. In Church Street Serenade for string orchestra was composed to 1982, as the area surrounding the venue was being razed for new celebrate the re-opening of the Attucks Theatre, located on Church development, the Attucks Theatre was placed on the National Street in Norfolk. One of the oldest thoroughfares in the city, Register of Historic Places. The City of Norfolk and the non- Church Street was the main commercial artery for Norfolk’s Black profit Crispus Attucks Cultural Center joined forces to renovate community. The locale provided shopping, professional services, the historic building. In 2004, the doors re-opened once again to and entertainment in the segregated city throughout the first half new audiences and performers who celebrate both the history of of the twentieth century. Anchoring the strip was the Attucks the “Apollo of the South” and the promise of new musical legends Theatre. Designed by Black architect Harvey N. Johnson in 1919, in the making. Z the art deco building served not only as a concert venue, but also as a movie theater, with independent office spaces attached. Over

Aaron Copland, arr. Murry Sidlin The Tender Land Suite Date of Composition: 1954/1996 Duration: 21 minutes

America of the 1950s was a very different place than that of Dwight D. Eisenhower was cancelled. Copland, even though of the 1940s. Gone were the New Deal politics of Franklin he had solidly gained a reputation as the undisputed leader of Roosevelt and the shared patriotism of the World War II years. American art music, surely was taken aback. In this light, it seems Instead, the United States grappled with its new role as a world as if Copland and his librettist Erik Johns (Copland’s one-time superpower grounded in a mighty military-industrial complex. partner who wrote under the name Horace Everett) purposefully The Soviet Union, which stood as an ally in the fight against use The Tender Land’s simple story and graceful musical lines to Nazi oppression, was now enemy number one, and communism highlight a distance between the ugliness of Washington politics became the maligned philosophy against which America must and the potential quiet beauty, introspection, and struggle of protect in a Cold War that would last for decades to come. Even everyday Americans going about their lives. Aaron Copland’s music was changing. His Piano Quartet (1950), Orchestral Variations (1957) and Piano Fantasy (1957) are works When The Tender Land finally received its premiere by the demonstrating the composer’s experiments with serial and abstract in 1954, the production was not a critical musical techniques. Some scholars have argued this shift was the success. The built-in intimacy, intended for television cameras composer’s way of distancing himself from his association with that would beam the show directly into America’s living rooms, folk-like themes and audience accessibility, which in elite circles did not translate well onto a vast stage, nor did it conform to was associated with the goals of communist Socialist Realism. the expectations of what an opera should be. While Appalachian Spring had ushered in a new kind of American ballet, it seems that Yet Copland never really stopped composing in his Americana New York audiences were not yet ready for a new kind of American style. In 1952, he received a commission from the NBC Television opera. Some attendees, however, were profoundly affected. Several Opera Workshop. Inspired by stories of Southern sharecroppers female composers in the audience connected with the character of and photographs of rural Americans in their everyday settings, he Laurie and her effort to reject a pre-determined path. Further, some conceived an opera that gazes upon one 1930s midwestern farm scholars have noted a connection to those in the gay community, family and the two strangers who change their lives. During the citing the need to leave home in order to find one’s own true self. course of the story, daughter Laurie falls in love with one of the Copland revised the opera in 1955 and later arranged an orchestral outsiders on her graduation night. Together they dream of eloping. suite of music from the show, but it was not until the 1980s and But in the end, the strangers go on their way, and Laurie leaves the 1990s that the opera gained a new understanding and popularity farm, looking for a different life all on her own. Copland’s music is on stage, suggesting that perhaps it was simply ahead of its time. intimate, almost fragile in places, and in some ways the production In 1996, Murry Sidlin arranged the suite for soprano, tenor, and feels more like a theatrical drama with singing than a historical the same thirteen instruments that Copland used in his original opera. NBC cancelled the production. No explanation was given, Appalachian Spring, bringing an intimacy to the orchestration that but it may have had to do with the perception of Copland’s politics. matches the aesthetic of the opera and providing a nod back to Since 1949, the composer had been included on intelligence Copland’s compositional heyday. Z lists of persons with communist connections or sympathies. In 1953, while composing The Tender Land, he was called before the Senate subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations to explain his past political associations and to defend his loyalty to the United States. That same year, Fort Collins Symphony Program Notes a planned performance of Lincoln Portrait at the inauguration © 2021 K. Dawn Grapes