Symphonic Statements
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Symphonic Statements Orchestras and composers are ymphony orchestras aren’t taught to be rugged, though that’s what responding to world events with new Swas required of the percussion- ists of the San Diego Symphony in Janu- scores. And in today’s political climate, ary when they played along an area of the older works are sometimes taking on Mexico-U.S. border known as “No Man’s Land” with no easy access. new resonance. The usual concert rules didn’t apply. With American musicians and spectators by David Patrick Stearns on one side of the border and a group of Mexican percussionists and spectators on the other, John Luther Adams’s 2009 In- uksuit, a piece intended to resonate with natural surroundings, had rather more significance. Nobody said it was any kind 50 symphony SUMMER 2018 The scene at the U.S.-Mexico border in with percussion on roads where there was rise all over the world, but I’m also talk- southern California on January 27, when no guard rail.” ing about the unprecedented threat to our San Diego Symphony musicians gave a Orchestras didn’t always get out so survival as a species. How could orchestras free, binational performance of John Luther much. They tended to stay in their acous- not engage in those big questions?” Adams’s Inuksuit, a percussion work intended to be played outdoors. Mexican musicians tically appropriate concert halls, speaking Martin Luther King Jr. memorial con- simultaneously performed the score—on the universal languages that originated in pre- certs, annual traditions at some orchestras, other side of the border wall. vious centuries. Now their evolving sense have long been a forum for celebrating the of social responsibility has them explor- wider humanitarian ideals that King stood ing terrains where their pop-music coun- for. Next spring, the New York Philhar- terparts might hesitate to tread. Between monic and incoming Music Director Jaap concerts in glittering new theaters while van Zweden will devote three weeks to touring China, Philadelphia Orchestra musicians play in Works that speak to current social schools for migrant workers. issues occupy a more central place Newly written works that at orchestras from New York to speak to current social issues are hardly unknown among Tallahassee and beyond. orchestras—think of John Adams’s 2000 oratorio El Nino, in which “Music of Conscience” concerts that in- a Latino incarnation of the Holy Fam- clude John Corigliano’s 1990 Symphony ily is contrasted with a glowering police No. 1 (“Of Rage and Remembrance”), presence; the work has been championed which was a musical flashpoint during the by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the early years of the AIDS epidemic. David San Francisco Symphony, among others. Now, such works occupy a more cen- Composer John Luther Adams, whose works often evoke the natural environment. tral place at orchestras from New York to Tallahassee and beyond. But in contrast to opera companies—which have navi- gated political issues at least as far back as the time of Verdi, when the Nabucco chorus “Va, pensiero” became an unof- ficial anthem for Italian nationalism— orchestral music doesn’t often have the benefit of words for statement-making. The lack of any clear route for symphonic social engagement, however, doesn’t seem to keep anybody away from these un- charted waters. “The art form is a potential avenue of connection. It can help bridge differences San Diego Symphony in some way. And it’s almost the respon- of a protest amid U.S. immigration poli- sibility of the pre-eminent artistic institu- cies that are an especially divisive issue in tions of whatever location to try to have southern California. On the surface, the people connect in those ways,” says San event was a free performance in the San Diego Symphony percussionist Cohen. Diego Symphony’s month-long festival It goes beyond overtly political matters, “It’s About Time: A Festival of Rhythm. says composer John Luther Adams, whose Sound. And Place,” curated by composer years living in Alaska prompted descrip- Steven Schick. But with all the work re- tive, perhaps neo-Impressionist works quired to create and hear the binational such as Become Ocean, Become River, and performance, significance was unavoidable. Become Desert that remind listeners on all Donald Lee “Just to get to the location, people had sides of environmental issues what un- to walk a mile or more,” says Greg Co- spoiled natural phenomena might sound Lang’s opera prisoner of the state will be hen, the San Diego Symphony’s 38-year- and feel like. “All thinking people are try- performed alongside Beethoven’s Fidelio: old principal percussionist. “It had rained ing to figure out how to move forward both pieces about political imprisonment, previously and some of the roads were in this mess we’ve created for ourselves,” one set in the future, the other in the past. washed out. We had two trucks loaded says Adams. “Certainly, Fascism is on the In addition to the “Music of Conscience” americanorchestras.org 51 Chris Lee Above: The New York Philharmonic presented composer Julia Wolfe’s Anthracite Fields at the NY Phil Biennial in 2014. Julian Wachner led musicians from the Bang on a Can All-Stars and the Choir of Trinity Wall Street in the work, which reflects on Pennsylvania’s coal-mining culture around the turn of the twentieth century. Anthracite Fields won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Music. concerts, the season’s new-music com- importance of having a great symphony for Puerto Rican victims of the natural missions include Julia Wolfe’s Fire in my orchestra in their lives.” disaster, raising $34,000. Yet the produc- mouth, about the 1911 Triangle Shirt- Yes, context: creating greater meaning waist Factory fire in New York that killed among already established works. New roughly 146 workers, the majority being Yorkers can hear the Corigliano sym- immigrant women. The tragic results of phony as a case history in the fatal con- sequences of government “We want to be in our city,” says Deborah discrimination and neglect. Borda, president and CEO of the New York On the West Coast last year, Oregon Symphony Philharmonic. “A sense of context that is patrons wouldn’t miss the larger than the music is a way of getting irony of Copland’s Lincoln people to think about the larger importance Portrait, which features Lincoln’s own words about of having a great symphony orchestra in freedom and equality, be- their lives.” ing narrated by Star Trek star George Takei, whose Japanese-American parents the fire led to reforms in workplace safe- were forced to live in a World War II-era ty regulations and influenced the rise of internment camp the same year—1942— workers’ unions. that the Copland piece was written. “We want to be in our city,” says Debo- In the wake of Hurricane Maria, which Peter Serling rah Borda, president and CEO of the New devastated Puerto Rico last fall, the Composer Julia Wolfe, whose recent works York Philharmonic. “A sense of context Philadelphia Orchestra’s long-scheduled have focused on the personal and social that is larger than the music is a way of concert performances of Bernstein’s West impact of twentieth-century American getting people to think about the larger Side Story were turned into fundraisers industrialization. 52 symphony SUMMER 2018 Brandon Patoc Above: Led by Music Director Ludovic Morlot, the Seattle Symphony performs the world premiere of John Luther Adams’s Become Desert in March 2018. The work is for an ensemble of five orchestral and choral groups, which are placed throughout the concert hall. The Seattle Symphony commissioned Become Desert as well as Adams’s Become Ocean, which won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Music. tion took on unintended larger meanings Philharmonic for performances in March as the federal government drew heat for 2017. In February 2018 at the Louisville its slow response to the island-wide trag- Orchestra, Music Director Teddy Abrams edy. At other times, repertoire can seem unveiled a collaboration between com- beside the point. It almost didn’t matter poser and poet Sebastian Chang and Iraqi what the members of the Philadelphia artist Vian Sora to create Between Heaven Orchestra played when they took a break and Earth, a multimedia work reflecting from previously arranged Far East tour life in war-torn Baghdad. concerts to visit schools for Chinese mi- Often, these are occasions for commu- grant workers. The point is that the musi- nity partnerships. The Michigan Philhar- cians showed up. monic partnered with the Dearborn-based Arab American National Museum for Contemporary Concerns Letters from Iraq. The coming New York New works are arriving with increasing Philharmonic season has the International visibility. Joel Thompson’s Seven Last Words Rescue Committee and the Lesbian, Gay, of the Unarmed, employing the dying ut- Bisexual and Transgender Community terances of unarmed African-American Center as significant partners. If there’s a Jürgen Frank men, premiered in 2015 as a choral work stealth element for developing commu- New York Philharmonic President and CEO with a small group of instruments. Newly nity involvement, it’s the mere presence of Deborah Borda scored for chorus and orchestra, the work choirs. In Tallahassee, it’s Morehouse Col- will rise again in March 2019 in perfor- lege Glee Club and Florida A&M Con- take the symphonic institutions out of mances by the Tallahassee Symphony cert Choir. Amateur singers tend to draw their comfort zone. One obvious example Orchestra. Rahim Alhaj’s Letters from friends and family that might not normal- is San Diego Symphony’s weather-im- Iraq—with texts describing the American ly attend such concerts.