Reclaiming MLK

If you've read this blog before, you know that I do some freelance writing for the Chicago Sinfonietta. Every year for at least the last decade and regularly before that, the orchestra has programmed their January concert as a celebration of the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It's not a random choice, nor is it merely a commercial calculation. Rather, the impetus for the concert springs from the organization's very DNA, as its founder, conductor Paul Freeman, was a black man and an acquaintance of Dr. King, in whose legacy lies the inspiration behind the orchestra's formation and its continuing advocacy of classical music opportunities for young musicians and composers who are not white.

I've attended a lot of these, and inspirational as they can be, they do tend to follow something of a blueprint. There were even a couple that had the whiff of complacency about them, self-congratulatory affairs that seemed to trot out Dr. King's memory as a plot device, awash in the glow of elevated humanity. Look how far we've come!

The Chicago Sinfonietta did something different last night, something that these grim times demanded, something that acknowledged that things are still pretty messed up in 21st Century America.

Classical music seasons are planned over a year in advance, and if you look at the current Sinfonietta season brochure, printed last spring, you will see Young Chicago Authors mentioned as narrators of Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait. You will see Sujari Britt, a remarkably poised and insanely talented cellist who happens to be a 13 year old black girl.  You will note the name of 15 year old Jherrard Hardeman, a composer whose Symphony No. 3 (!) was being presented for the first time by a professional orchestra. You'll read that an actor will recite some lines from Dr. King's I Have a Dream speech and that a high school choir would sing. Finally, you'll see the treacly copy, "This annual crowd-pleaser celebrates the future with the boundless optimism of today's youth."  Ouch.

Then 2014 happened, the deaths of two black men (one a boy, really) at the hands of the authorities and the further indignity of those same authorities getting off scott free, cleared of guilt without even the benefit of a trial. And then the protests and, yes, riots. And then the Fox News led backlash, the blaming of the victims.

Somewhere in the administrative offices of the Chicago Sinfonietta, it occurred to somebody that optimism was at a premium and that a "crowd-pleaser", blind to the turmoil, might not entirely be the right way to go. A celebratory MLK remembrance in times when there is very little to celebrate was not what was needed.

So, yes, all the feel good stuff was still there, but the context was changed dramatically by letting the Young Chicago Authors write and read their own stories reflecting on MLK and what it's like to be young and black in America.

"I had a nightmare that the past was present

Rope became gun

Whip became chokehold

Gasping for air in the bowels of European ships

Became completely breathless

Emmit Till became Michael, I mean Trayvon, I mean Jordan, I mean Eric

I mean more names that I can say

I mean more corpses than I can count"

Those are the words of Moriah Dowd, one of four young poets who contributed to I Have a Dream (Remix). It doesn't stop there. Poet after poet stepped to the mic, expressing anguish and frustration, but also anger and determination. And, in the midst of it all, some fleeting sense of hope, tempered by harsh reality. Another piece, What Would MLK Say?, lays bare the way the powerful absolve themselves of responsibility and deny their complicity; "They use his name as their saving grace, their golden umbrella, As if they are guilt free. They try to make me the guilty one... as if it's our fault we are dying."

The rest of the tribute concert was predictably inspiring, perhaps all the more so in the context of Young Chicago Authors' reality check. Sujari Britt was brilliant. Jherrard Hardeman, who guest conducted his own piece, was poised and confident, his composition marrying the elegiac quality of Barber's Adagio to the rhythmic minimalist pulse of John Adams. Actor Wayne K. Woods portrayal of Dr. King was note perfect, even as he highlighted the not-so-hidden militancy of parts of the speech we don't often hear. Lincoln Portrait was inspirational as the Young Chicago Authors read the 150 year old words of the 16th president. The Waubonsie Valley High School Mosaic Choir was a marvelous thing to behold, singing freedom songs of Nelson Mandela alongside contemporary gospel, the shining of their young faces matching the power of their voices.

The concert closed in its traditional fashion with everyone, audience included, joining hands to sing the Civil Rights era anthem We Shall Overcome. I'll admit right here that this has never been my favorite part of the concert. I viewed it as a nostalgic remnant of an earlier time, a play to older members of the audience who lived it. That all changed last night. The "Civil Rights Era" is hardly over. Hell, it's hardly begun, and if we don't overcome someday, well, we are all screwed for sure.

I wrote the program notes for this concert back in December, when the turmoil of Ferguson and Staten Island were still headline news, and I hoped at that time I would accurately predict the spirit of the concert. I've had a few people tell me the notes were spot on, so if you'd like to read them drop me a line and I'll send them to you. Young Chicago Authors also made the complete text of last night's poems available to the audience. Words on paper are different than voices crying out, but they are well worth reading on their own, so if you contact the Sinfonietta or YCA I'm reasonably sure they could send them to you.

www.chicagosinfonietta.org

www.youngchicagoauthors.org

Identities

Some of you may know that I do research and write program notes for the Chicago Sinfonietta. Their final concert of their 2013-14 season deals with how we maintain our cultural identity, even if we are, through choice or otherwise, many miles and generations removed from the places we call home. I thought I'd reproduce those notes here, as I found the research fascinating and rewarding. Always learning, always learning...

Read on.

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As both individuals and members of society, people are on a perpetual quest for identity. It brings order and perhaps even a sense of comfort to know who we are and what our place in the universe is. There are many ways to take measure of such things, among them what we do for a living and where we choose to live, what political or religious beliefs we adhere to, how we think about race, gender or sexual orientation. I would argue, though, that perhaps the strongest identifiers are those that have to do with culture and history.

For the final concert of their 2013-14 Season, the Chicago Sinfonietta looks at how traditions of art and culture define our sense of who we are as well as the way those traditions both connect us to our heritages and inform our present day lives. To do so, we look to two very different societies connected only by the Silk Road, China and Eastern Europe.  They’ll perform contemporary works that are deeply tied to their respective ethnic traditions that simultaneously say something new, and in the process perhaps share a bit of knowledge and cultural pride with those who are willing to listen.  

This journey of discovery starts in Eastern Europe, and more specifically, the small Jewish villages called shtetls that dotted Poland, Romania, the Ukraine and other countries for nearly 800 years, only to disappear almost overnight with the onset of World War II.  Our first two selections are both by the Russian-born composer Ilya Levinson, who is an Assistant Professor of Music at Columbia College Chicago. Levinson immigrated to the United States in 1998, and is a graduate of both the Moscow State Conservatory and the University of Chicago. His identity serves as rich material for his work.

Shtetl Scenes was written by Levinson in 2005 and it is, in his words, a “nostalgia cycle”. He wrote it “about a world that is lost [and] not coming back” and to “give a voice to those who cannot speak.” It was originally written for piano, but the version being performed by the Sinfonietta is a full orchestral arrangement. We will hear two of the cycle’s five movements. The first, Forgotten Dreams, imagines an idealized life in the shtetl, forever lost to the Holocaust, even as that dream slowly slips away with time. The second movement, Freylakh, is a lively dance of the type that was enjoyed in these long gone places, full of rhythm and exuberance. This piece starts slowly and suddenly its pace accelerates to a very fast tempo.

The stage now set, we come to the first of our two concert centerpieces.

Klezmer is a combination of the Hebrew words "kley" (vessel) and "zemer" (melody), describing musical instruments in ancient times. It came to be used to describe Jewish folk musicians sometime in the middle ages.  In the 1970s, “klezmer music” and “klezmer band” were terms coined to describe the revival of Eastern European dance music and Yiddish folk and theater songs. It’s a rollicking sound that shares much with jazz and Latin music.

Maxwell Street Klezmer Band

As a music professor and composer, Levinson’s research interests include klezmer music and the klezmer idiom in contemporary concert music. He was asked to compose a klezmer-based orchestral work in 1998 by Phil Simmons, the artistic director of the Linclonwood Chamber Orchestra. Because most klezmer tunes are a short 3 or 4 minutes in length, Levinson quickly settled on the genre of rhapsody. This allowed him to build a concert-length piece out of a series of exciting musical episodes, much like such works as Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue or Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsody.   Thus was born the Klezmer Rhapsody.

Once Levinson determined the form, he set about introducing the more dissonant harmonic and contrapuntal practices of the 20th century in the work, using these to break up the structure, rhythms and harmonies of the klezmer melodies. All the themes of the piece are original, but they were composed using certain rhythmic, melodic and harmonic idioms of klezmer music, and thus intended to bring to mind traditional melodies. He worked closely with the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band’s musical director Alex Koffman to insure the work’s authenticity, and it premiered in 1999 as an orchestral piece with Koffman as violin soloist. The story of Klezmer Rhapsody, however, doesn’t end there.

Levinson later arranged the work for violin and klezmer band sans orchestra and this version appears on the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band’s 2005 album Old Roots New World. Tonight, the Chicago Sinfonietta premieres a brand new version for klezmer band and orchestra. For this new arrangement, Levinson has thoroughly reworked and re-conceptualized the piece to take advantage of the dynamic interplay between the two ensembles. In this version, there is a bit of a musical joke going on, as the orchestra “learns” about klezmer and the band alternately supports or makes fun of their efforts. By the end of the piece, though, both ensembles speak in a unified voice.

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Maestro Mei-Ann Chen is, as you might guess, no stranger to Asian music, but she is also someone who has rigorously mastered Western classical music as well.  The very first time she ever led the Chicago Sinfonietta, in October of 2009, her program paired two works from contemporary Chinese composers with works from Ravel and Rachmaninoff.  She might very well be the perfect conductor to introduce the evening’s third featured work, Identity: Zhongshang Zhuang, to Chicago audiences.

                                      

Su Chang

Identity combines the musical traditions of Western and Chinese culture in a piece that is accessible to international audiences. A romantic orchestral concerto setting provides the backdrop for the guzheng, a Chinese stringed instrument that is plucked and strummed like a harp. The instrument, which is nearly 3800 years old, is an ancestor to the Japanese koto, Korean gayagaeum and Vietnamese đàn tranh.  Its mesmerizing timbre and lightning agility blend the familiar and the exotic, and Identity showcases its unique sound. Tonight’s soloist, Su Chang, traveled to Chicago from China for this performance.

The work is a collaboration between Chinese producer and composer Victor Cheng and American composer Michael Gordon Shapiro, and as such, Identity bears the musical signature of both Eastern and Western musical traditions. Cheng composed the core themes and established the direction of the piece. The Los Angeles-based Shapiro, a graduate of the film scoring program at the University of Southern California, also has a graduate degree in music composition from New York University and a background in writing music for video games. Both of these fields demand a high degree of story and character-related musical skill. He took Cheng’s themes (and detailed story line) and scored them for orchestra and, of course, the guzhang.

Identity tells a fictionalized story of a family ripped apart by conflicting loyalties during the time of the Chinese civil war, sending some members into exile.  As such, it is divided into three movements, each of which tells a different part of the story: Peaceful times, conflict, victory, exile, remembrance. The versatility of the guzheng comes into play, as it alternately represents the pastoral beauty of the Chinese landscape, the harsh realities of war and the loneliness and despair that come from separation. Nostalgia, longing and resolution are all conveyed by its tone and timbre. Ultimately, the piece seems to say, even though civil war divides a people along political and philosophical lines, at heart they retain a common identity that survives and perhaps points the way toward reconciliation.

As noted earlier, when Ilya Levinson first approached writing a klezmer piece for orchestra, he immediately thought of the form of a rhapsody, something like Rhapsody in Blue or the Romanian Rhapsody. Thus, it seems only fitting that we close the Identities concert with George Enescu’s most famous piece. Enescu himself was a concert violinist as well as a composer and conductor. He was a bit of a prodigy, graduating from the Vienna Conservatory at the age of 13, continuing on to study in Paris. His compositions were influenced by Romanian folk music, and he was a champion of other Romanian composers. Enescu’s musical curiosity went beyond mere provincialism, though, and included Balinese gamelan and Indian music.

The Romanian Rhapsody No. 1 is the better known of the two he wrote, and he is said to have remarked that it “was just a few tunes thrown together without thinking about it". Though this is an incredible understatement of modesty, that model helped Levinson write Klezmer Rhapsody, based as it is on several traditional klezmer song forms, all of which are short in length. At any rate, Enescu completed the first rhapsody in 1901 at the age of 19. It is ebullient and outgoing, as is fitting for a work that takes its starting point with a folk song whose English translation is "I have a coin, and I want a drink".

This lighthearted work is perhaps the best way to close an evening which, while providing superb and often exhilarating entertainment, also gives us much to ponder about the sometimes tragic vagaries of history and the universal imperative to remain true to both ourselves and our heritage. Through this, we can draw strength from our own identities.

A global dance party

I'll get the 'full disclosure' part out of the way first. I used to work for the Chicago Sinfonietta as their Communications Director, and I still do some research and writing for them for which I am compensated. I have a great deal of respect for what they do, both philosophically and creatively. But I should be clear: This respect flows from an alignment of my values with their activities. I don't say nice things about them because they pay me to do so.

I previewed their most recent concert for Arte y Vida Chicago, and you can read that here. I attended the concert a couple of nights ago and have had some time to think about what I heard and saw. That's what this blog post is about.

A few quick words about the Sinfonietta for those of you who didn't click the Arte y Vida link. They are led by a woman from Taiwan, who inherited that role from the African-American conductor who founded the orchestra 27 years ago. They play a mix of standard repertoire (that's what most people think of when they hear the words 'classical music', leaning heavily on music written by dead white guys) with newer works by living composers who are often the complete opposite of dead white guys. Somehow, they make this work, finding room for both in a single thematic concert. It probably helps that they shy away from dissonance and extremes. There's a populist aesthetic to be sure, but it doesn't cross the line into pandering.

photo by Chris Ocken

Their most recent offering was titled Global Dance Party. Given that the concert was presented at Chicago's Symphony Center, you can rest assured that dancing is generally not encouraged. The orchestra's marketing addressed this contradiction with some gibberish about 'dancing in your seats'. Nonetheless, there was a reason for the title: A focus of the programming was built around Indian-flavored hip-hop dance music of DJ Rekha, whose style makes liberal use of Bollywood and Bhangra sources from her cultural and ethnic background. Hip-hop being what it is, though, lots of other sounds make their way in: dub reggae and dancehall, Latin and Brazilian, and of course fat beats. It's music designed for sweaty dance clubs and street parties, not concert halls. Integrating a live orchestra into that was an audacious and unlikely experiment.

Did it work? For the most part, yes. The centerpiece was a tune called Pyar Baile, a song that was released a few years ago by Rekha and her writing and production partner (and Indian percussionist) Dave Sharma. It's a thick slice of carioca funk seasoned with Bollywood touches and features vocals in both Hindi and Brazilian Portuguese. Unfortunately, technical difficulties with Rekha's deck forced everyone to hit the reset button, and even after they did an uneven sound mix found the orchestral arrangements overpowering the electronics.  The arrangements weren't interesting enough by themselves to encourage any dancing, in the seats or otherwise.

I'll get back to Rekha later, but it's the rest of the evening that provided context for this 'DJ with an orchestra' thing, taking it beyond novelty. There were not one, but two guest conductors leading the orchestra (usually not at the same time). Both are rising young stars gaining a lot of notice, but on the surface have little in common. Alexandra Arrieche was born in Brazil and brought South American works with her from Astor Piazzolla and Hector Villa-Lobos. The 30-something African-American conductor Joseph Young selected works from the equally young African-American composer Jonathan Bailey Holland. The wild card was something from the Hungarian composer Erno Dohnányi.

All the selections shared upbeat tempos and sonic brightness. Piazzolla is the inventor of nuevo tango, of course, and his Fuga y Misterio is a whirlwind of rhythmic strings. Villa-Lobos is a Brazilian national treasure, and the orchestra sounded wonderful on his Bachianas Brasileira No. 2. Holland's work is harmonically and structurally complex, but it's inspiration here on The Party Starter and Motor City Dance Mix were the great disco and soul records of the 1970s, heavily flavored with hi-hat, suspended piano chords and glistening strings. Even the outlier, Dohnányi's Symphonic Minutes, proved a lively choice, based as it is on Hungarian folk dance.

What everything had in common was that all the composers took something popular (in the "of the people" sense) and interpreted it through another musical form. The conductors, clearly relishing the opportunity to lead music that was dear to them, coaxed sustained inspired playing from the orchestra.

photo by Chris Ocken

That brings us back to DJ Rekha. In sourcing her sounds from ethnic traditions, she translates them into dance floor fillers. The Sinfonietta experiment took this one step further, bringing Rehka's mixes into the realm of, quote-unquote, serious music. But it is a party, after all. Rekha returned for the finale, her deck fully functional and sound balance fixed, for a three movement suite comprised of material originally developed for a DJ set in a club. The orchestral arrangements were uncluttered, giving the beats and samples room to breathe and do their intended thing. A crucial extra element was inviting an orchestra violinist who is also a noted jazz musician to grab the spotlight and inject several energetic improvised passages in a sort of duet with Rekha. In a final touch, the Sinfonietta organization had cleverly invited a number of young Indian dance students to flood the aisles and edges of the stage. Turning up the house lights blurred the distinction between stage and audience. Now the party had, finally, started in earnest.

A total success? Um, maybe not quite. Worth doing? Depends on your perspective. Mine is that great things can happen when you mix cultures. I'm not only talking about ethnic culture, but also the increasingly meaningless distinction between high and pop culture. If the unfettered shared joy in the hall at this concert is any indication, this was certainly a welcome achievement.

photo by Chris Ocken

Chicago Sinfonietta honors Día de los Muertos

If you've ever glanced at the little bio sketch over there on the right, you noticed that I am both a marketing consultant to the performing arts community and a freelance writer. I recently had the opportunity to combine both skill sets for the Chicago Sinfonietta, which is one pretty cool orchestra. (Full disclosure: I toiled as the Sinfonietta's Marketing Director for several years.) On November 9 in Naperville and November 11 in Chicago, they will present their fourth annual concert honoring the Mexican holiday of Día de los Muertos.  

They asked me to research and write program notes for both their website and the book that they hand out at the concert. I initially found the project a bit challenging because, though honoring a Mexican holiday, there were no works by Mexican composers being performed. That forced me to look a little deeper into the commonalities between Dia and the Catholic All Souls' Day, which are both, not at all coincidentally, on November 2. As I (virtually) traveled back and forth between Argentina, Austria and Spain, the commonalities that bridge cultures became apparent, as well as the changes that occur when customs, rituals and practices migrate from one place to another.  As that sort of cultural exchange is the underlying theme of this blog, I thought I'd share the results of my work with you here.

First, there's the "Digital Guide" that appears on the Sinfonietta website. Besides brief essays on the composers, performers and works being performed, there are embedded videos that illustrate the selections and uniqueness of the artists. Because of the dictates of marketing, the essays are short and (hopefully) snappy, designed to intrigue you enough to watch a video and then (ca-ching!) buy a ticket.

The program notes were a chance to stretch out and explore the themes of the concert with a bit more depth and thoughtfulness. Please read on, and let me know if I succeeded.

Maybe I'll see you at the concert!
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The Mexican holiday of Día de los Muertos (or Day of the Dead) has origins in pre-Columbian Mexico. Rituals celebrating the deaths of ancestors have been observed there for as long as 2,500–3,000 years.  On the Aztec calendar, it was a month-long celebration occurring in August. The conquering of the “New World” by Spain changed all that. As a matter of cultural survival, indigenous customs and beliefs were often disguised by their practitioners as Catholic rituals to hide them in plain sight from their conquerors; the holiday now corresponds to the Catholic observance of All Souls’ Day. In this way, Aztec rituals were combined with those of Spanish Catholic origin to create the holiday as we know it. Further, because of this Spanish connection, some version of the holiday is also observed throughout much of the Americas. 

The holiday honors the remembrance of departed loved ones, mourning their absence while simultaneously celebrating their lives and the continuing spirit that they leave with us. Graves are cleaned and decorated. Shrines, or ofendras, are built in their honor. Favorite foods and beverages are brought and offered. The intent is to encourage visits by the souls, so the souls will hear the prayers and the comments directed to them. Here, death is not thought of as an ending, but rather a continuation of life in a different form. Celebrations often take a humorous tone, as celebrants remember funny events and anecdotes about the departed.

With our concert, the Sinfonietta captures both sorrow and joy with an aural and visual spectacle worthy of those who have passed before. We’ll travel from stark tragedy to celebratory revels, passing back and forth between the Americas and Europe, illustrating a universal yearning that all of humanity shares.

Our journey begins in early 20^th century Spain, by way of Argentina, but anchored in religious and cultural traditions that pre-date both. Composer Osvaldo Golijov was born to a Jewish family in La Plata, Argentina in 1960. His mother was a piano teacher, his father, a physician. He was raised surrounded by classical, Jewish liturgical and klezmer music, and the nuevo tango of Astor Piazzolla. He studied piano and composition at the local conservatory before moving first to Israel, and then the United States to continue his studies. His music is a reflection of these multiple influences, rendered as a cohesive whole. 

Ainadamer, his first opera, premiered in 2003. The title is Arabic for “Fountain of Tears”, and the story, by noted playwright David Henry Hwang, is based on Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca and his partner and muse, the Catalan actress Margarita Xirgu. The story is told in a series of flashbacks, as Xirgu remembers García Lorca’s life and the circumstances leading to his death. Ainadamar has features of both an opera and a passion play, as it examines the powerful symbolic role García Lorca has embodied, especially among other artists, following his murder during the Spanish civil war. In this symbolism, the poet becomes a martyr in the name of freedom of artistic expression, and his soul and spirit stay alive.  

Based as it is on events in Spain, Ainadamer is filled with Iberian musical influences, notably flamenco, but the score also illuminates the Arabic and Jewish predecessors of that familiar sound.  The short Preludio is filled with ominous percussive effects, some of which are the electronically generated sounds of gurgling water and galloping hoof beats, and it segues directly into the Balada. This introduction, for orchestra, chorus and soprano, will be performed at Día de los Muertos.

If Ainadamer has elements of a religious passion play woven into its structure, the evening’s second selection is an authentic liturgical ritual, albeit one written by a master of classical music that is augmented in this performance by elements of theatrical presentation.

As noted earlier, Día de los Muertos occupies the same spot on the calendar as the Catholic All Souls’ Day. One of the rituals of the Church is the requiem mass for the dead. As such, it is also meant to honor their life. Its history and practice date back to the early Roman church. Beginning in the late 15^th century, the requiem mass began to inspire a large number of composers who were drawn to the dramatic character of the ritual’s text. By the 18^th century, requiems became a genre of classical music unto itself as composers began to write them as concert works separate from liturgical use.

Classical music has its share of intrigue, betrayal and people behaving badly. In other words, it’s a lot like the rest of human existence. But even by these standards, the story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem stands apart. It was the composers’ final work. In fact, he died before its completion. The severely ailing Mozart was approached in 1791 by the emissary of an anonymous count who wanted a mass to commemorate the recent of the death of his wife. The composer was given half of a commission, with the balance to be paid on its completion.  The story, though, is that the count, who had artistic pretensions, planned to pass off the composition as his own. Mozart, feverish and near the end of his life, reportedly came to believe he was writing his own requiem. As it turns out, that is pretty much what happened.

After Mozart died, his widow Constanze, not wanting to lose the remaining commission, secretly had it completed by another composer, Franz Xaver Süssmayr. The finished manuscript was delivered bearing Mozart’s forged signature. However, the count’s alleged scheme to claim authorship was derailed when a public performance of the requiem, organized by Constanze, was given before the count presented his. If all of this sounds familiar, it is because a somewhat fictionalized account of the episode appeared in Peter Shaffer’s play (and later movie) Amadeus.

The Sinfonietta’s performance of selections from the Requiem will be dramatized by inventive costumes created by Redmoon Theater that will be worn by members of the choir. The skeleton designs that Redmoon created are strikingly reminiscent of images used in much Mexican folk art. These iconic figures appeared in the work of 19^th century artist and cartoonist José Guadalupe Posada. Considered the most renowned Mexican popular artist, it is Posada’s images that come to mind almost automatically when we think of Día de los Muertos.

The passing of the seasons have long been used as a metaphor for the cycle of life. Who hasn’t heard the phrase “autumn years” (or its gentler counterpart “golden years”) used to describe people deep into their lives? There’s no indication that the Argentine composer and originator of nuevo tango Astor Piazzolla had this in mind when writing Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires) but there is that passionate and edge-of-tragedy feel that permeates so much of tango, so who knows? Piazzolla has certainly written pieces that directly address death and remembrance; in fact, both Adios Nonino (commemorating his father) and Oblivion have been performed at previous Sinfonietta Día de los Muertos concerts.

Piazzolla was born in Mar del Plata, not far from where Osvaldo Golijov would be born 39 years later. For many years Piazzolla lived something of a double life, playing in tango bands by night, studying classical composition by day.  While studying in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, he was made aware that the ‘classical’ forms he was copying did not reflect his true soul. Returning to Buenos Aires, he began creating what would become nuevo tango. 

Estaciones Porteñas (a porteño is a person born in the Argentine capital) was originally four separate pieces written for his tango quintet. In 1998, Russian composer Leonid Desyatnikov wrote a new arrangement with a more obvious link to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons by converting each of the pieces into three-section movements and re-arranging them for solo violin and string orchestra. To strengthen the link he included several quotations from Vivaldi's original work. Of course, in the southern hemisphere, warm and cold months are reversed, so some quotations are not where you’d think they would be. 

El Sombrero de tres picos (The Three Cornered Hat), the final performance of the concert, has its beginnings in a modest two act ballet by Manuel de Falla. The libretto, derived from a novella by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, is the story of a magistrate infatuated with a miller's faithful wife and his attempts to seduce her. A 1916 performance in Madrid was witnessed by Russian ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who was so taken by the music that he commissioned Falla to score a full orchestral ballet from its themes. The resulting work had its premiere in London in 1919, with costumes and scenery by no less a figure than Pablo Picasso.

You may have noticed that Falla’s ballet was written during roughly the same time and setting portrayed in Osvaldo Golijov’s opera. There is, though, a further connection between the two works. García Lorca, the subject of Ainadamer, was an accomplished pianist, part-time composer and something of a musicologist, especially when it came to flamenco. He and Falla were friends, and together they staged a festival of the authentic form of cante jondo, or “deep song,” as the most substantial branch of flamenco is known. Some of the singing in the complete El sombrero de tres picos is modeled after cante jondo, and flamenco rhythms power the dances. The Suite No. 2, heard tonight, consists of three orchestral dances.

In keeping with the themes of his opera, Golijov brought out flamenco’s ominous, darker underpinnings in his score, as when the sharp percussion echoes the gunshots that killed García Lorca. Falla’s tale, however, is a gentler and often humorous one with an ultimately happy ending, and the music is brighter and more celebratory because of it.

Thus, with this lively conclusion to the concert, we celebrate. But we also remember.