the delights of ‘diversity’ - chicago sinfonietta ... · american port of call, ... traffic...
TRANSCRIPT
BY JOSEPH MCLELLAN | SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON POST |
THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2001
“We are in for a treat,” promised Virginia Williams, filling
in for her absent son, the mayor, Tuesday evening in the
Kennedy Center Concert Hall. ”This, she added, “is a
different kind of music.”
The program, performed by the Chicago Sinfonietta
with conductor Paul Freeman and a variety of guest
artists, was titled “Symphonic Diversity.” With one
spectacular exception, the Concerto for Steel Pan and
Orchestra of Jan Bach, the concert featured com-
posers of African-American or Hispanic ancestry. And,
true to Williams’s promise, it was one of the most
unusual programs in the Washington Performing Arts
Society’s season.
As exemplified in this program, symphonic diversity
usually involves a lot of percussion, muscular rhythms
and an array of sounds never imagined by Beethoven
or even Rimsky-Korsakov. In one piece, Encuentro:
Suite de Danzas Yucatecas by Victor Pichardo, the
orchestration included conch shell, wooden box, tor-
toise shells, donkey jawbone and other folk instru-
ments, played by
the five-member
Sones de Mexico
Ensemble.
The Bach concerto offered a technically brilliant and
sometimes witty solo by Liam Teague on the metallic
percussion instrument heard in Caribbean steel bands.
What it does best is shimmer,an effect that was sometimes
submerged in the orchestral sound. It had the audience
laughing loudly during a comic dialogue (or debate) with
a flexatone in the orchestra’s percussion section, and it
concluded with a dazzling display of speed.
In his note on his brassy, bluesy, energetic An
American Port of Call, Adolphus Hailstork ignores the
music’s descriptive qualities and says it is about “the
interval of a major seventh and the cascading, synco-
pated theme that grew out of it.” Perhaps, but in per-
formance it called to mind a bustling scene with motor
rhythms, traffic jams, horns blowing, trains roaring by
and other sounds of a busy city.
The program built to a climax with Alberto
Ginastera’s exotic, high-energy dances from the ballet
“Estancia,” music that rises to a concluding frenzy
comparable to Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.”
For contrast, the program included two of the less bois-
terous classics of African American symphonic music:
George Walker’s gently elegiac Lyric for Strings and William
Grant Still’s “Afro-American” Symphony. During the Still
work, narrator Danny Glover read three poems by Langston
Hughes. The result was emotionally powerful,but at a cost;
the spoken words overshadowed the music to the point of
serious imbalance, except for moments when the music
drowned out the speaker’s voice.
REPRINTED BY CHICAGO SINFONIETTA
©2001 THE WASHINGTON POST COMPANY
THE DELIGHTS OF ‘DIVERSITY’
“THIS,” SHE ADDED, “IS A DIFFERENT KIND OF MUSIC.”
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PAUL FREEMAN, MUSIC DIRECTOR THOMAS DE WALLE, GENERAL MANAGER
MUSIC EXCELLENCE DIVERSITY
BY CHESTER LANE | MAY · JUNE 1997
Presenting a rich variety of symphonic music to a
diverse community is increasingly the goal of American
symphony orchestras. Few of them, however, have put
that idea into practice as successfully as the Chicago
Sinfonietta, an ensemble of 40 to 50 musicians that
plays in Orchestra Hall and in the west suburb of River
Forest. Its board, its playing roster, and its audience
are all permeated with ethnic variety. And the story of
how the Sinfonietta’s Martin Luther King concerts took
on an extra dimension this year begins with the
ecumenical ideas of Paul Freeman and Weldon
Rougeau, the orchestra’s African-American music
director and president.
Long before he earned a Harvard law degree and
became an attorney, Rougeau was a dedicated civil
rights activist. His activism had gotten him expelled
from the public university he was attending in his
native Louisiana.
And through CORE, a
national civil rights
group, he had met
Michael Schwermer,
a young Jewish man
from New York whose idealism had brought him to the
Deep South to work on voter registration drives. In
1964, soon after Rougeau came to Chicago to resume
his schooling at Loyola University, he learned that
Schwermer, along with another Jewish worker named
Andrew Goodman and an African American, James
Chaney, had paid the ultimate price for their activism:
they had been murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
“The shock was a personal one for me,” says
Rougeau. “Being in the civil rights movement in those
days was almost like being at war. The relationships
you developed were very strong and long-lasting.
People felt a kinship to each other. And when some-
body died, especially in circumstances like those, it
was tough.”
Like Rougeau, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a
black man who appreciated the contributions that
Jewish Americans had made to the civil rights move-
ment. King had, in fact, paid tribute to his “Jewish
brethren” in a speech soon after three civil rights work-
ers were slain. So when the Chicago Sinfonietta was
looking for a way to bring the city’s black and Jewish
communities closer together – an idea proposed by one
of its board members, Seymour H. Persky – the orches-
tra’s Martin Luther King concerts in January seemed
like the “ideal slot,” according to Freeman. “We would
salute Dr. King and have as part of the program a
memorial to the three civil rights workers,” he says.
“At first I couldn’t find the catalyst, because I didn’t
know what music to perform. Fortunately, one of the
cantors in Chicago, Albert Mizrahi, sent me the Yizkor
Requiem by Thomas Beveridge. Tom is minister of
music at a church in northern Virginia, and his requiem
combines the Jewish and Christian liturgies.” Freeman
selected about half of the work, inviting Mizrahi and
the choir from Anshe Emet Synagogue to perform with
the Sinfonietta at Orchestra Hall on Martin Luther King
Day, January 20, 1997. On the second half of that
concert the orchestra combined with the 200-voice
Apostolic Church of God Sanctuary Choir, performing
gospel selections arranged by Alvin Parris. The previ-
ous day at Rosary College, the orchestra’s other venue
in River Forest, Morton Gould’s orchestral Revival:
LIVING THE DREAM: EXCELLENCE THROUGH
DIVERSITY AT THE CHICAGO SINFONIETTA
ITS BOARD, ITS PLAYING ROSTER, AND ITS AUDIENCE ARE ALL PERMEATED WITH ETHNIC VARIETY.
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PAUL FREEMAN, MUSIC DIRECTOR THOMAS DE WALLE, GENERAL MANAGER
MUSIC EXCELLENCE DIVERSITY
Fantasy on Six Spirituals and Aldolphus Hailstork’s
Epitaph (In Memoriam: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) were
performed in place of the rafter-raising gospel songs.
Both concerts filled out the “freedom” theme with
Copland’s Lincoln Portrait, narrated by actor Paul Winfield,
and Beethoven’s Leonora Overture No. 3 (composed for
the opera Fidelio, an impassioned statement about
political imprisonment and deliverance). And both con-
certs ended with an emotionally charged audience joining
the orchestra and chorus in “We Shall Overcome.”
Unlike many orchestras, the Sinfonietta performs a
Martin Luther King program only every two years, the
idea being to avoid any predictable routine. This year’s
far-from-routine MLK concerts exemplify an approach
to programming that has been the hallmark of
Freeman’s leadership. An African-American conductor
who put together a pioneering series on black com-
poser for Columbia Records in the 1970’s, he has
nonetheless brought to the orchestra’s programs
a highly eclectic mix of
home-grown artistry and
European classics from
several centuries.
The February con-
certs, for example, fea-
tured the world pre-
miere of Chicago composer Kimo Williams’ Two
Gether. Commissioned as a Sinfonietta auction “pre-
mium” in honor of a couple’s 38th wedding anniver-
sary, it shared the program with works by jazz great
Thelonius Monk, 17th-century Italian Girolamo
Frescobaldi, and two Europeans from our own century,
Maurice Ravel and Rodion Shchedrin. And Freeman
has espoused such under-performed American com-
posers as Leo Sowerby (1895-1968), whose Symphony
No. 2 appeared on the March concerts along with
Aldolphus Hailstork’s Celebration and Carl Orff’s
Carmina Burana.
Since last fall, Freeman also directed the Czech
National Symphony Orchestra, and he speaks with
pride about the “cross-pollination” of musical cultures
that this is helping to bring about. This season he
involved both of his orchestras in a two-CD recording
project devoted to works of Sowerby. Freeman brought
in two Czech soloists for the Sinfonietta’s Carmina
Burana performances in March, and the chorus used in
that concert, the Northern Illinois University Concert
Choir, will reprise its efforts with the Czech orchestra
in Prague next season.
African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians make up
43 percent of the Sinfonietta’s board of directors, 24
percent of its playing roster, 50 percent of its soloists,
and 35 to 40 percent of its audience. A commitment to
diversity has attracted the financial backing of the
Chicago Tribune and Marshall Field’s, a major depart-
ment store chain. And the Sinfonietta recently
received a two-year, $120,000 grant from the Joyce
Foundation for its audience-broadening efforts. This is
good news for an organization that has performed sig-
nal service to the City of Chicago but is only now, after
a decade of operation, seeing the end of the deficit
tunnel. “In the first three years,” says Freeman, “we
accumulated a deficit that we have paid down over the
past six and a half. Now that we’re in our tenth year,
we hope to burn the mortgage.”
“When I started the orchestra ten years ago,”
Freeman continues, “I didn’t know that it would blos-
som as well as it has. But I say now to our board that
we are living the dream. The dream was that one day
PAUL FREEMAN DIRECTING THE CHICAGO SINFONIETTA AT ORCHESTRA HALL
THE DREAM WAS TO FILL AN ARTISTIC NICHE IN THECOMMUNITY, WHICH WAS TO PERFORM REPERTOIRE FOR MID-SIZED ORCHESTRA.
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we’d have a big audience, and as we’ve gone along
audiences have increased both in Orchestra Hall and
in the suburbs. The dream was to fill an artistic niche
in the community, which was to perform repertoire for
mid-sized orchestra. We also wanted to tour. We’ve
now toured Europe four times and been invited back
for 1998-99. We wanted to record, and we’ve now
made seven recordings. But perhaps the most impor-
tant dream was our social mission: We coined the
expression ‘Excellence Through Diversity’ and we’re
fortunate in having African Americans, Hispanics, and
Asians of great stature on our board, with a similar mix
in the orchestra.”
For principle violist Renee Baker, an African
American who plays principal viola with several other
Chicago-area orchestras as well, the Sinfonietta is
“the best thing I could have ever come across short of
playing in a full-time symphony.” Baker heads up the
Sinfonietta’s Youth and the Professional Program,
through which orchestra musicians serve as mentors
for Chicago-area students, providing private instruction
and leading workshops for members of the All-City
Youth Orchestra, “There’s a very high percentage of
minority children in All-City,” she says. Many [profes-
sional] orchestras have so few minorities that these
kids don’t think that kind of thing is for them. But they
come to the Sinfonietta concerts and see [minority
musicians], and they’re not all in the back!
“Paul Freeman is world class. A lot of people talk
about encouraging minority talent, but that talent
could be staring them in the face and unless govern-
ment makes them do it they won’t make the move. He
did it without being told, and without the funds.
“I’ve always felt the Sinfonietta was like a milkshake.
Lots of things go into it, and you don’t want to drink it
and say ‘I can’t taste anything except milk, or vanilla, or
sugar.’ To get a homogenous product you have to shake it.
Everybody all together.”
REPRINTED BY CHICAGO SINFONIETTA
CHESTER LANE IS A SENIOR EDITOR OF SYMPHONY
©1997 SYMPHONY
THE SINFONIETTA ON MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY WITH NARRATOR PAUL WINFIELD,
CANTOR ALBERTO MIZRAHI, THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH OF GOD SANCTUARY CHOIR, AND
MUSIC DIRECTOR PAUL FREEMAN.
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PAUL FREEMAN, MUSIC DIRECTOR THOMAS DE WALLE, GENERAL MANAGER
MUSIC EXCELLENCE DIVERSITY
BY JOHN VON RHEIN | TRIBUNE MUSIC CRITIC |
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1996
ETHNIC DIVERSITY AND IMAGINATION EQUAL SUCCESS
FOR CHICAGO SINFONIETTA
The Chicago Sinfonietta clearly believes in backing up
its mission statement with good, honest community
outreach. And the results of those efforts speak for
themselves.
Having built a respectable reputation at home and
abroad, all the while keeping its fiscal house in order,
the mid-sized orchestra can afford to blow its own horn
a bit as it prepares for its 10th anniversary concert
series, beginning next month at Orchestra Hall and
[Dominican University] in River Forest.
“As an organization, we have determined that bigger
is not necessarily better,” says Paul Freeman, founder
and music director of the ensemble, which numbers as
many as 55 players and as few as 45, depending on
the music that’s being performed.
Being relatively compact makes the Sinfonietta
more portable than an orchestra like the mighty 105-
member Chicago Symphony, Freeman points out, and
allows him the flexibility to program an unusually varied
repertory, spanning the 17th to the 20th centuries, that
doesn’t fall within the purvue of a large symphony orchestra.
That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t explain how
Freeman’s group has managed to survive – and indeed,
prosper – for ten years in a tight, highly competitive
classical music market that has seen the demise of
several mid-sized groups, notably The City Musick and
Basically Bach.
“Maestro” Freeman (as he is known within the
organization) is as quick at rattling off rosy statistics
as he is with the baton. The group, he explains, has
operated in the black for the past six years, ending
last season with a $33,000 surplus. This has enabled
the Sinfonietta to reduce its accumulated deficit to
about $25,000, on a budget of $1.4 million.
Subscription ticket sales increased 40 percent over
the previous year. This year’s subscription sales, so
far, are running 15 to 20 percent higher than they were
last year at this time.
William Griffin, the Sinfonietta’s general manager
since 1994, attributes the orchestra’s success primarily
to two factors. “First of all, we would not be where we
are without Paul Freeman’s vision. The other reason we
have taken hold in Chicago is that we are such an eth-
nically diverse institution, at all levels.”
Indeed, from the very beginning Freeman saw the
Sinfonietta as a kind of Rainbow Coalition orchestra,
youthful in personnel as well as in outlook, and also a
place where talented black, Hispanic and Asian musi-
cians could gain valuable orchestral experience.
And he has made good on that vision.
No other small orchestra in the Chicago metropolitan
area can boast so ethnically diverse a roster. About 28
percent of the orchestra is made up of non-white players;
this translates into six to nine African Americans
(again depending on the specific repertory), three or
four Asians and three Hispanic musicians. It is also
significant that more than half the players are women.
YOUTHFUL OUTLOOK
PAUL FREEMAN, FOUNDER AND MUSIC DIRECTOR OF THE CHICAGO SINFONIETTA,
NOW ENTERING ITS 10TH SEASON
Similar percentages apply to the group’s racially
mixed board of directors as well as to the associate
board and its various support groups.
Freeman is always on the lookout for deserving
young soloists who would otherwise find it hard to
secure a professional orchestral booking in the area.
Among the soloists the Sinfonietta will present this
season are a 19-year-old African-American pianist, Carl
Gales, and violinist Livia Sohn, a Korean-American
teenager.
“From the feedback I get from black audience mem-
bers, I know their positive reaction to our concerts
relates directly to seeing their own on stage, hearing
black soloists perform and hearing music by black
composers, which we intersperse with more standard
fare,” the music director says.
Still, Freeman stresses that the Sinfonietta is not an
affirmative-action orches-
tra. Quality, not quotas,
is its operative credo:
Regardless of a player’s
ethnic background, he or
she must be able to
meet a certain level of
performance ability – and
many do not.
“Although we hold auditions for minority musicians
from time to time, we do not displace other players
just to give a position to a minority player. An orches-
tra could not thrive that way,” Freeman explains. “What
we do, rather, is keep a list of possible substitute play-
ers. When there’s an opening in the orchestra, if a
qualified minority musician is on the list, we try to give
that person preference.”
Unlike other professional mid-sized orchestras in
the area, the Sinfonietta has taken full advantage of the
exposure provided by touring and recording.
Last season the group made its fourth European
tour – nine concerts in Switzerland and three in
Germany – and undertook its first major U.S. tour, con-
sisting of eight concerts in California. This month will
bring the release of the Sinfonietta’s sixth recording,
the Rudolph Ganz Piano Concerto as performed by the
late Chicago pianist Ramon Salvatore, on the Cedille
label. Next spring Freeman and friends will be back in
the studio to tape another Chicago composer’s work,
Symphony No. 2 by Leo Sowerby; the Sinfonietta con-
cert March 31 will mark its first local performance in
nearly 70 years.
And the group’s go-getter spirit has not escaped the
attention of Chicago foundations, its largest support
source. Last year local foundations gave the Sinfonietta
$222,475 (including $25,000 from the Chicago Tribune
Foundation) – about $60,000 more than the Sinfonietta
had budgeted. By comparison, non-foundation corporate
support – around $73,000 last year – is lagging, but this
is a problem shared by many of the city’s smaller
groups.
Perhaps what is needed is for the Sinfonietta to
entice a few corporate honchos into one its concerts
downtown or at [Dominican University], where the group
continues as the resident professional orchestra. Maybe
then these captains of local industry would realize what sets
the group apart – the eagerness of the young musicians
and the frisky, diverse programming that puts symphon-
ic music within reach of a true community of listeners.
All it takes, Freeman says, is a bit of musical imag-
ination, talented young players and a willingness to
demolish the invisible barriers that separate performer
and listener, highbrow and lowbrow music. Last year
he put a 16-piece steel drum ensemble on stage for the
premiere of a new Concerto for Steel Pan by Chicago
composer Jan Bach. The result was one of the most
exhilarating evenings stuffy old Orchestra Hall has
heard in ages. Here was the Sinfonietta doing what it
does best.
NO OTHER SMALL ORCHESTRA IN
THE CHICAGO METROPOLITAN
AREA CAN BOAST SO ETHNICALLY
DIVERSE A ROSTER.
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Looking ahead, orchestra officials have put together
a five-year growth plan. Griffin says he hope to have an
endowment fund in place by the year 2000, by which
time the orchestra will have added a third subscription
series to its concert agenda at Orchestra Hall and
[Dominican University]. More domestic and foreign tours
are penciled in for 1998 and 1999, perhaps even several
joint appearances with Freeman’s “other” orchestra, the
Czech National Symphony Orchestra of Prague, of which
he was named music director earlier this year.
But the people in charge of the Sinfonietta are careful
not to put artistic ambition ahead of financial stability.
And careful, too, to keep the ensemble’s mission ever
in clear view – which means,among other things,building
classical music audiences for the future.
“One of my most gratifying experiences is talking
with young people when they come backstage after our
concerts,” Freeman says. “I asked one 8-year-old what
his favorite piece on the concert was. ‘Shostakovich,’ he
replied. Imagine your typical adult listener saying that!
“I asked another youngster whether she had fallen
asleep at any point during the concert. ‘Of course not,’
she replied, very huffily. She clearly felt I had insulted
her to the quick!”
REPRINTED BY CHICAGO SINFONIETTA
©1997 THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE
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PAUL FREEMAN, MUSIC DIRECTOR THOMAS DE WALLE, GENERAL MANAGER
MUSIC EXCELLENCE DIVERSITY
BY TED SHEN | SPECIAL TO THE TRIBUNE |
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2000
At first glance, Monday night’s program for the Chicago
Sinfonietta concert at Symphony Center looked as if
conductor Paul Freeman’s “something for everyone”
policy had gone amok. How else to explain the inclu-
sion of Mendelssohn’s Fourth Symphony alongside
works written by and associated with three prominent
African-American musicians from the 20th Century?
Yet, a close scrutiny reveals that it might not have
been far-fetched to lump together music of a lyrical
bent that didn’t break new ground but elaborated or
even improved on existing forms. Mendelssohn, in his
symphonies, paid heed to the classical style of Mozart
and Beethoven just as much as George Walker and
Hale Smith followed the examples of European-
influenced modernists and jazzman Charlie Parker
honored Tin Pan Alley tunesmiths by playing the alto
sax in arrangements of their popular hits.
Juxtaposing jazz and classical music has become a
trademark for the Sinfonietta, an organization that
insists on diversity in its roster and repertoire. Still, it
was unusual even for it to feature three black com-
posers in one program – albeit composers who, though
divergent in their career paths, are now regarded as
exemplars of the African diaspora.
Parker played in bars and clubs and died young,
while his near-contemporaries Walker and Smith went
the establishment route and ended up with long
tenures in academia. The irony, of course, is that Bird’s
legacy has had the more profound impact on American
music and culture.
Just how much could be sensed in the Sinfonietta’s
performances of five selections from the “Charlie
Parker With Strings” recordings made between 1947
and ‘52. Or, more accurately, in the buoyant playing of
veteran saxist Phil Woods that uncannily resembled
the original grace and feel of freedom.
The glossy pizzicato-laden orchestral backdrops –
some by Joe Lipman and others by Jimmy
Carroll – sounded awfully like Muzak, even though the
Sinfonietta painted them with gusto. When the quartet
led by Woods performed “Body and Soul” alone, they
managed to reclaim Parker’s bop essence.
Walker’s 1945 Lyric for Strings suffers from
a “by-the-numbers” simplicity; the strings enter stately,
section by section, then swell to euphony. Like its
model, Barber’s Adagio for Strings, it exudes a sweet-
ness tempered by regret and ends in calm acceptance.
Freeman guided his players through the various shadings
carefully and brought forth the poignancy.
SINFONIETTA CONCOCTS AN UNUSUAL MIX
CHICAGO SINFONIETTA CONDUCTOR PAUL FREEMAN
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Smith’s Ritual and Incantation, a 1974 work cham-
pioned by Freeman over the years, couldn’t have been
more different in mood. It’s raucous and ecstatic, moving
from primordial brass wails to string buzzes to percus-
sive whacks. Its percussion-heavy soundscape brings
to mind Stravinsky, Hindemith and Lukas Foss. But its
wild streak and raw power also hark to Smith’s experi-
ence as a jazz pianist collaborating with the likes of
Dizzy Gillespie.
Freeman worked up a sweat getting a rousing, skill-
ful performance out of the orchestra. The same zeal
could have enhanced their reading of Mendelssohn’s
symphony, which turned out to be tepid except for the
vibrant finale. It was back in full force for the encore,
Gliere’s Russian Sailor’s Dance. The band becomingly
whooped up the boozy delirium.
REPRINTED BY CHICAGO SINFONIETTA
©2000 THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE
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PAUL FREEMAN, MUSIC DIRECTOR THOMAS DE WALLE, GENERAL MANAGER
MUSIC EXCELLENCE DIVERSITY
SINFONIETTA TEAMS UP WITH APOSTOLIC CHURCH
OF GOD CHOIR TO RAISE THE RAFTERS IN ORCHESTRA
HALL IN A TRIBUTE TO MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
BY HOWARD REICH | TRIBUNE ARTS CRITIC |
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22, 1997
America celebrated the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. in
uncounted ways on Monday, but the musical tribute that
shook Orchestra Hall surely ranks among the most stirring.
With the Chicago Sinfonietta playing at the top of
its form, the Apostolic Church of God Sanctuary Choir
singing to the high heavens and a nearly sold-out
house roaring its approval, one might almost have
thought this was Sunday morning in a magnificent
South Side Church.
Certainly the mood of jubilation and sense of
redemption that defined the final minutes of the concert
transcended expectations, particularly for anyone
accustomed to the secular forms of musicmaking that
typically are heard in Orchestra Hall. Defying the musical
convention, however was precisely the idea.
For the past several years, the Chicago
Sinfonietta – under the direction of Paul Freeman – has
marked King’s holiday with a special tribute concert,
none more ambitious nor stylistically wide-ranging than
this. By featuring a gospel choir of more than 200 voices
and backing it with both an orchestral accompaniment
and a buoyant gospel rhythm section, Freeman was
tossing symphonic convention to the winds.
If the massive choir sounded a bit tentative in its first
two selections, “When All of God’s Children” and “Soon,
Very Soon,” the ensemble burst forth with remarkable
sonic power and rhythmic drive in its final offering, “I’m
So Glad I’m Free.” Here,at last,was an arrangement worthy
of this group, with call-and-response patterns making
one chorus sound like three.
But Freeman, a shrewd program builder, was not
content to win over his audience with heaven-storming
fare alone. Instead, he offered two major works that
honored King’s legacy in significantly different ways.
Much of the music that Aaron Copland wrote in his
populist manner would have fit neatly into this program,
yet A Lincoln Portrait was particularly appropriate.
Using excerpts from Lincoln’s speeches and letters,
Copland fashioned a piece addressing the nobility of
Lincoln’s ideas in both word and musical phrase.
To his credit, conductor Freeman chose actor Paul
Winfield to read the famous narration, and Winfield’s
decidedly idiosyncratic version – one of the most lyrical
this listener has heard – justly won him a standing ovation.
The poetry of Winfield’s reading, with its soft tones
and carefully nuanced phrasings, cast A Lincoln
Portrait in a relatively new light. For while many
narrators relish the drama and oratory of the piece,
Winfield gave the text a soft-spoken, human dimension
it rarely receives.
DEFYING CONVENTION
PAUL FREEMAN LEADS THE CHICAGO SINFONIETTA IN ITS ANNUAL TRIBUTE
TO REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING ON MONDAY NIGHT IN ORCHESTRA HALL.
The most challenging work of the evening was
Thomas Beveridge’s Yizkor Requiem, a piece for cantor,
small chorus, and orchestra that draws heavily on
Hebraic text and musical tradition. By including such a
work in an evening honoring King, Freeman and the
Sinfonietta clearly were saluting the Jewish contribu-
tion to the civil rights movement in America.
For anyone who didn’t pick up on this point, however,
the evening’s program booklet noted that the perform-
ance of the piece was “dedicated to James Chaney,
Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner,” the
“African-American Christian and two European-American
Jews” who died during the civil rights battles in
Mississippi in the early 1960’s.
Cantor Alberto Mizrahi, the Anshe Emet Synagogue
Choir and the Sinfonietta performed excerpts of the
piece with fervor and sensitivity.
Yet by including on this program such a broad range
of repertoire, Freeman was reaching out to all of his
listeners, surely King would have been pleased.
The program will be broadcast on WFMT-FM 98.7
February 2.
REPRINTED BY CHICAGO SINFONIETTA
©1997 THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE
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BY WYNN DELACOMA | SUN-TIMES MUSCIC CRITIC |
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1996
Ask any consultant what an arts organization needs
to survive in these difficult times, and the answer will
be simple: a clear mission.
Few Chicago music groups have as clear a sense of
its own mission as the Chicago Sinfonietta. Monday
night, at its second program of the season at
Orchestra Hall, the message of that vision was sent
loud and clear, as is typical of this ensemble founded
ten years ago by conductor Paul Freeman.
One reason Chicago Sinfonietta exists is to give
young soloists a chance to be heard. The evening’s
violin soloist was 19-year-old Livia Sohn, whose
resumé includes some impressive concert appear-
ances and a Yehudi Menuhin Competition prize.
Chicago Sinfonietta also aims to bring the best
possible performances to audiences at less-than-
stratospheric prices. The evening’s other soloist was
Alex Klein, who joined the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra as principal oboist last season. Ray Still, his
predecessor at the CSO, was among the world’s finest
oboists, and Klein is proving to be worthy replacement.
The Sinfonietta also exists to give its players, many
of them just starting orchestral careers, a chance to
explore the standard repertory and expose audiences
unfamiliar with classical music to the major com-
posers and works. The evening closed with a rousing
reading of Dvorak’s Seventh Symphony. This list may
impress funding organizations, but the true test of a
music group’s vision is how its performances sound.
Monday’s program, a repeat of one done Nov. 10 at
[Dominican University], was a reminder of the
Sinfonietta’s strengths.
Klein brought his trademark clear, powerful tone to
Mozart’s C Major Oboe Concerto. The orchestra sounded
heavy behind him, but his bright, agile playing was
seamless and smooth, whether in Mozart’s elegant
ornaments or longer, singing melody lines. A sense of
playfulness suffused the finale.
In Bruch’s G Minor Violin Concerto, Sohn played
with ardor and confidence, matched by the orchestra’s
crisp attacks and ability to create musical drama.
Freeman, who also is music director of the Czech
National Symphony Orchestra, excels in 19th century
Eastern European music, and the Dvorak Seventh
Symphony was exuberant, full of vivid color and
unforced excitement.
REPRINTED BY CHICAGO SINFONIETTA
©1996 CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
SINFONIETTA PLAYS ITS MISSION PROUD
FEW CHICAGO MUSIC GROUPS HAVE AS
CLEAR A SENSE OF THEIR OWN MISSION
AS THE CHICAGO SINFONIETTA.
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MUSIC EXCELLENCE DIVERSITY
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MUSIC EXCELLENCE DIVERSITY
BY ANDREW PATNER | CLASSICAL MUSIC REVIEW |
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1996
DIVERSE CROWD FINDS DELIGHT IN SINFONIETTA
Those who bemoan the future of audiences for classical
music should attend a concert by the Chicago
Sinfonietta. People of all ages and walks of life mingle
cheerily. African-Americans, Hispanics and Asian-
Americans are a strong presence. There is a spirit of
bon homme too often absent from the stuffy crowd at
Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts.
But a Sinfonietta evening is not merely an exercise
in feel-good psychology or sociology. Serious music is
made under the baton of music director Paul Freeman.
Monday night’s program at Orchestra Hall exhibited
another Freeman strength-program building.
The high point was a rarity: the 1941 Piano Concerto in
E-flat by legendary pianist and conductor Rudolph Ganz,
the longtime head of Chicago Musical College who lived
here until his death at 95 in 1972. The CSO commis-
sioned the concerto to mark its 50th anniversary, with
Ganz himself giving the premiere under Frederick Stock.
Ramon Salvatore was the revival’s more than able
soloist. He brought out the 25-minute work’s debts to
Ravel to Shostakovich, but did so with an ear that
found “Dr. Rudi’s” own voice. Like Ganz’s influences, it
was one inspired by the sounds and rhythms of
American jazz but with a decidedly European accent.
So what if passages in the outer movements sounded
as if they were written for Jose Iturbi to play at the
Hollywood Bowl? Salvatore tore into them with preci-
sion and gusto. One looks forward to the premiere
album of the work that he and Freeman will record this
week for Cedille Records.
These were the first performances by a local
orchestra of Hale Smith’s 1977 Innerflexions. Smith, 70,
a leading African-American composer, was present to
hear his nine-minute essay that echoed Stravinsky in
its bending of rhythms, harmonies and colors.
The high notes and pianissimos of Mahler’s early
Songs of a Wayfarer were beyond veteran Norwegian
soprano Kari Lovass, but Freeman gave Schoenberg’s
reduction of the score for midsize orchestra a con-
vincing reading. A spirited performance of Mozart’s
Symphony No. 35, “Haffner,” K. 385, opened the pro-
gram; joyful encores of a Dvorak Slavonic Dance and
Leroy Anderson’s delightful pizzicato Plink, Plank,
Plunk (offered twice!) closed it, sending the audience –
whether black or white, young or old, in wheelchairs or
running shoes – out smiling into the night.
REPRINTED BY CHICAGO SINFONIETTA
©1996 CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
MUSICAL MELTING POT
CHICAGO SINFONIETTA DIRECTOR PAUL
FREEMAN BRINGS SERIOUS MUSIC TO
A LIGHTER ATMOSPHERE.
SOLOIST RAMON SALVATORE PERFORMED
THE 1941 PIANO CONCERTO IN E-FLAT
WITH GUSTO
BY WYNN DELACOMA | SUN-TIMES MUSCIC CRITIC |
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1997
The advertised theme of Monday night’s Chicago
Sinfonietta concert at Symphony Center was “Music of
Our Homelands,” one of those vague, catch-all titles
often slapped on mundane programs to give them
some zip.
Had the evening conducted by Sinfonietta founder
Paul Freeman simply consisted of Dvorak’s well-worn
“New World” Symphony and the vapid Irelande-
Symphonic Poem by Irish composer Augusta Holmes,
the title would have been mere window dressing. But
the program also included August 12, 1952: The Night
of the Murdered Poets, a powerful work composed in
1978 by Morris Moshe Cotel.
The piece is a setting of seven texts masterfully
declaimed Monday night by Lyric Opera’s Danny
Newman, set against a spare accompaniment of
piano, double bass, French horn and percussion.
Inspired by the deaths of 24 Jewish poets in Moscow’s
infamous Lubyanka Prison during Stalin’s reign of
terror, the work raises profound
questions about the very defini-
tion of homeland. By scoring the
work for such a tiny band of
musicians, Cotel underlined the
horrifying loneliness that must
have haunted the doomed Jewish poets in their final
hours. Also implied, of course, is the loneliness of any
people, including Jews, who feel themselves in exile
and without a homeland.
Newman, a legendary public relations man who fre-
quently announces changes of cast in Lyric’s vast
Ardis Krainik Theatre without benefit of microphone,
has a clear dramatic voice suited to Cotel’s work. He
was amplified Monday night, but there was nothing
exaggerated in his delivery. Hurling forth the words,
“Earth, oh earth, do not cover my blood,” attributed to
slain poet David Bergelson, he spoke directly from the
heart, with the raw urgency of a tormented soul.
The orchestral accompaniment was a marvel of
understatement. Principal bassist Brenda [Farnsley],
pianist Patrick Sinozich and principal horn John
Fairfield, along with Sinfonietta percussionists, creat-
ed a landscape of winterly solitude. In comparison, the
late 19th century romanticism of Holmes’ “Irelande-
Symphonic Poem,” sounded trite. Her tone poem
portraying Irish life from pastoral gambols to political
turmoil sounded hackneyed despite the polished
performance.
The concert opened with a sprightly performance of
Carl Maria von Weber’s “Euryanthe” Overture. Early
deadlines prevented me from staying for Dvorak’s
“New World” Symphony.
REPRINTED BY CHICAGO SINFONIETTA
©1997 CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
CHICAGO SINFONIETTA AT SYMPHONY CENTER
THE ORCHESTRAL ACCOMPANIMENT WAS A MARVEL OF UNDERSTATEMENT.
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BY WYNN DELACOMA | SUN-TIMES MUSCIC CRITIC | TUSEDAY,
NOVEMBER 19, 1996
James “Kimo” Williams stood triumphantly onstage at
Orchestra Hall. The Chicago Sinfonietta had just given
the Chicago premiere of his classical music composi-
tion, Symphony for the Sons of Nam, and the audience
was on its feet.
Williams bowed to the main floor before raising his
arms in victory to the balcony. When the clapping subsided,
Williams, a 44-year-old black Vietnam veteran, turned
and bowed deeply to Paul Freeman, the Sinfonietta’s
conductor and the man who made William’s memorable
night possible.
“He’s been the greatest catalyst for getting the works
of African-American composers heard,” said Williams,
who is an artist-in-residence at Columbia College.
Getting the compositions of little-known ethnic com-
posers heard and recorded was one of the goals
Freeman set out to achieve when he founded the
Sinfonietta in 1987. Freeman also wanted to expose
the works of great composers to diverse audiences
and provide opportunities for ethnic musicians to play
classical music.
He seems to have reached all of those goals
despite busy travel schedule that takes him around
the world to conduct and record with other orchestras.
Last week, for example, Freeman was in England con-
ducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Sinfonietta is Italian for “little symphony.” Unlike
traditional symphonic orchestras that have about 100
members, the Sinfonietta has only about [55] members.
And in this instance, Sinfonietta also means “tiny
budget,” compared to
major orchestras.
The Sinfonietta’s
annual budget is about
$1.5 million. The Chicago
Symphony Orchestra, by
comparison, has a yearly
budget of $35 million.
Sinfonietta members
also get paid only when
they perform, unlike CSO
members, who receive a
regular paycheck.
Despite its shoestring budget, the Sinfonietta puts
on six concerts a year at Orchestra Hall. It also per-
forms at [Dominican University] in River Forest.
The Sinfonietta also has made major strides in pro-
viding career opportunities in classical music. Some
52 percent of the Sinfonietta’s musicians are women
and 25 percent are non-white, Freeman said during a
recent interview. The Sinfonietta’s motto is Excellence
Through Diversity.
“At CSO, women are a minority, and the orchestra
never has had a permanent black member in its history,”
Freeman said. The CSO isn’t the only major orchestra
that has a dearth of black musicians. A survey
released in April by Symphony magazine reported that
blacks held a mere 1.4 percent of the 8,700 positions
at 116 major orchestras – virtually unchanged from a
survey conducted five years earlier.
SINFONIETTA PROVIDES SOUNDINGBOARD
FOR BLACK COMPOSERS
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PAUL FREEMAN, MUSIC DIRECTOR THOMAS DE WALLE, GENERAL MANAGER
MUSIC EXCELLENCE DIVERSITY
PAUL FREEMAN IS OPENING THE DOOR FOR
BLACK CLASSICAL MUSICIANS AND COMPO-
SURES WITH THE CHICAGO SINFONIETTA,
WHICH HE FOUNDED IN 1987
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“Conductors such as Freeman help open the doors
for black classical musicians and knock down racial
stereotypes,” said Samuel A. Flood Jr., director of the
Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College.
“If Freeman didn’t offer young blacks a chance to
play classical music, they wouldn’t see it as a career
option,” Flood said.
“There’s also a strong belief that blacks can only
play jazz and blues. It is important to show another
side of our talents.”
That side not only includes playing classical music,
which evolved from Europe, but writing it as well.
Although Freeman has become a champion of black
composers, he only
discovered their exis-
tence in 1969 while
attending a musical
symposium in the
South. In its reper-
toire, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra included classical
compositions by black composers from the Southeast.
“It was a revelation…I had not been exposed to the
works of black composers in conservatory,” said
Freeman, who received his doctorate from Eastman
School of Music in Rochester, NY.
Five years later, Freeman gave African-American
composers a new performance in the world of classical
music when he recorded the now-famous “Black
Composers Series” for Columbia Records .
The first discs in the set were issued from 1974-77
and reissued in 1988. In that series, Freeman recorded
the music of William Grant Still, who wrote “Afro-American”
Symphony; Ulysses Kay, who composed Markings, and
Chevalier de Saint-Georges, who died in 1799.
“By recording the works of a composer, you expose
what you heard in a hall to many, many more people.
You have the potential of reaching 10,000 to 20,000
more people. Other conductors also hear the music
and possibly put it into their music programs,”
Freeman said.
Columbia’s Flood agrees, but says symphony
orchestras still largely ignore black composers.
“Despite the acclaim the ‘Black Composers Series’
received, the works of African-American composers are
seldom played by anybody,” he said.
Someone, however, is listening.
Recently the Sinfonietta received a $28,000 match-
ing grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to
record the works of three black composers on the Pro
Arte Fanfare Label.
They include Roque Cordero’s Eight Miniatures for
Orchestra, Adolphus Hailstork’s Epitaph for a Man who
Dreamed and Williams’ Fanfare for Life, which concerns
urban violence.
When Freeman isn’t traveling, he stays in Chicago
and Victoria, British Columbia, where he lives with
his son and wife, Cornelia, a French teacher.
REPRINTED BY CHICAGO SINFONIETTA
©1996 CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
HE’S BEEN THE GREATEST CATALYST FOR GETTING THE WORKS OF AFRICAN-AMERICANCOMPOSERS HEARD
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MUSIC EXCELLENCE DIVERSITY
BY ANDREW PATNER | SUN-TIMES MUSCIC SECTION |
SUNDAY OCTOBER 13, 1996
10-YEAR-OLD SINFONIETTA IS THRIVING
If the Chicago Sinfonietta could claim only to have
brought new audiences to the world of classical music,
you’d have to regard the group as a marvelous
success story.
The same is true if it were known only for offering
an outlet to minority musicians, soloists, composers
and conductors.
Or ditto if in 10 years the feisty ensemble had sim-
ply accomplished a high level of performance of a
wonderfully varied repertoire.
But as it marks its 10th anniversary, Chicago’s
alternative symphony orchestra and its founder and music
director, Paul Freeman, have done all of these things
and more.
“We’re living the dream,” says Freeman, the visionary
with orchestras in Prague, Czech Republic and
Victoria, British Columbia, as well as Chicago.
“Starting with virtually no capital at a time of sup-
posed decline in the orchestral music business, we
are alive and thriving. And we haven’t had to sacrifice
any of our mission or purpose.”
While given to positive thinking and big dreams,
Freeman is not boasting. The critics back him up, as
do audiences and the blue chip members of Chicago’s
philanthropic community.
Sun-Times classical music critic Wynne Delacoma
has saluted Freeman’s “flair for programming that
expertly blends the familiar and the new,” as in programs
that might combine Mozart and a Trinidadian-influenced
steel band. During the recent tour, the leading German
daily, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, noted that
the Sinfonietta’s “musicians not only respond exquisitely
and capture the spirit of the music, but also perform with
careful attention to the most minute detail.”
“In a short time they’ve created a pretty impressive
organization,” says Francine Carbonargi, program officer
with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation. “You go to their concerts and you just feel
an excitement in the crowd that is sometimes lacking
in some of the older and more established institu-
tions.” Other major Sinfonietta funders include the
Joyce Foundation, the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation and the
Chicago Community Trust.
Other groups might learn from the Sinfonietta’s
example. Dreams of artistic excellence have always
been partnered with the development of a strong board
and volunteer support. The Sinfonietta has a cadre of
supporters for audience and development that are as
diverse as the group itself and its ticket buyers.
Last year marked the Sinfonietta’s first million-
dollar budget year and the creation of an associates
board of younger supporters.
A POSIT IVE REFRAIN
“WE’RE LIVING THE DREAM... AND WE HAVEN’T HAD TO SACRIFICE ANY OF OUR MISSION
OR PURPOSE,” SAYS CHICAGO SINFONIETTA FOUNDER AND MUSIC DIRECTOR
PAUL FREEMAN.
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“I have always said that bigger is not necessarily
better,” Freeman says of his [55]-member orchestra.
“Over the next decade we are looking to grow, but in
depth, through outreach and in our partnerships with
education, not by increasing our schedule or reducing
our quality.”
At a time when the major classical music organiza-
tions have had to be dragged into an era of diversity and
educational programs, the Sinfonietta sees these func-
tions as central to its mission.
Stories are often told in the world of music out-
reach of the excitement inner-city youngsters feel
when they encounter classical music and instrumen-
talists. The Sinfonietta
can top those stories, as it
is one of the few organiza-
tions that provides profes-
sional musicians who are
themselves minorities to work with both inner-city and
affluent young people.
The Sinfonietta’s “Youth and the Professional”
program matches players with students in the
All-City Youth Orchestra of the Chicago Public Schools.
“The bonds that we see established between musi-
cians, black and white, Hispanic and Asian, just blow
your mind,” Freeman says.
None of these activities diminishes the
Sinfonietta’s more standard tasks of performing, tour-
ing and recording. Next winter will see a tour to
Southern California, and in 1999 the group has been
invited back to Switzerland and southern Germany for
its fifth European tour.
At its Orchestra Hall gala last Monday, the
Sinfonietta launched its seventh compact disc, “Chicago
Concertos”, on James Ginsburg’s Cedille Records. The
disc contains another Freeman dream, supporting the
music of Chicago composers, past and present.
The group’s spring concerts will see a long-overdue
return of the music of Leo Sowerby to Orchestra Hall
with performances – and a recording – of the late
Chicagoan’s Second Symphony.
“I have always been a dreamer,” Freeman says.
“But growing up in segregation in Richmond, VA, to
have fulfilled my personal dreams and to have helped
to found an entity that brings dreams to others, even I
sometimes can’t believe what we’ve done.”
REPRINTED BY CHICAGO SINFONIETTA
©1996 CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
OTHER GROUPS MIGHTLEARN FROM THESINFONIETTA’S EXAMPLE.