Passion Tragedy Love looks at how artists through the centuries have been inspired by l’amour in all its forms, from innocent and playful to tempestuous and heartbreaking. Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, inspired by Shakespeare, finds its counterpoint in Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, a 20th century update of Romeo and Juliet. Because love is most intensely experienced by the young, we have invited the Harlem Quartet to join us on this amorous journey.
THE ARTISTS
[one_half]Mei-Ann Chen, Music Director and conductor
Passion Tragedy Love marks the conclusion of Mei-Ann Chen’s first season as Chicago Sinfonietta Music Director. It is a year filled with firsts, including her stunning debut at Millennium Park’s Pritzker Pavilion and several performances of works not previously heard on Chicago stages. As the Sun-Times’ Andrew Patner has remarked, “Mei-Ann Chen has shown that she was born to lead this group. She plays and speaks from the heart, the body and the head, and the audience and players have embraced her.” The season finale continues this trend with yet another premiere and a collaboration with one of the most exciting young chamber ensembles on the world stage in a concert that is sure to stir your soul.
Mei-Ann Chen’s complete biography can be found here.
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She talks about the concert in this video clip, including our plans to record the first new Chicago Sinfonietta CD in a decade.
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Harlem Quartet – Ilmar Gavilan and Melissa White, violins; Juan-Miguel Hernandez, viola; Paul Wiancko, cello
The Chicago Sinfonietta has always sought to collaborate with young musicians of color for an infusion of energy and a perspective not witnessed enough on the classical stage. The Harlem Quartet is among the best of this new crop of talented artists, and it is little wonder that this is our second collaboration with this groundbreaking ensemble as well as the sixth time violinist Melissa White joins us.
The Quartet was founded in 2006 by the Sphinx Organization, dedicated, like the Sinfonietta, to building diversity in classical music. They made their Carnegie Hall debut that year and have since gone on to grace stages around the world, including a White House performance for President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. They have just returned from a trip to South Africa. In addition to classical music, they have performed with jazz pianist Chick Corea and were guests at the Panama Jazz Festival.
Their bio and lots of other cool stuff can be found at their website.
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They show off their exuberance and a bit of playfulness in this clip of the Duke Ellington classic Take the A Train.
A. George Pradel and Bill Kurtis, narrators
We have a special treat in store for both our Naperville and Chicago audiences, bringing Shakespeare’s words to life in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Naperville Mayor A. George Pradel, our Wentz Concert Hall guest, was first elected in 1995 and has been re-elected 4 more times, making him the longest-serving mayor of that city. He’s known for his many public appearances, friendly demeanor, and boundless enthusiasm for his home. The Mayor’s civic pride is on full display in this clip for a Naperville event.
Veteran broadcaster Bill Kurtis, our Symphony Center guest, began his Chicago television career back in 1966, and his distinctive voice is well known to generations of Chicagoans. He has won 20 Emmy® Awards and was elected to the Illinois Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame in 1998. He currently co-anchors the weekday 6PM newscast on CBS 2 Chicago. In this clip, Kurtis demonstrates his mad poetry skills, parodies a Christmas classic, and plugs his work on A&E.
THE COMPOSERS
[one_half]Michael Abels
Delights and Dances
Among Chicago Sinfonietta founder Paul Freeman’s many goals for the orchestra was to seek out the work of young composers of color deserving of a wider audience. Prominent among them is Michael Abels, whose Global Warming was featured on Sinfonietta’s African Heritage Symphonic Series Volume III CD. That piece was performed by the Sinfonietta in 2007, and in 2009 the orchestra commissioned and premiered a new work entitled Aquadia. Also in 2007, Abels was commissioned by the Sphinx Organization to write Delights and Dances specifically for the Harlem Quartet, and it received its Chicago debut in a May 2010 Sinfonietta performance.
The work is steeped in the rich American traditions of bluegrass, blues and jazz, featuring the Quartet trading riffs with each other and the orchestra. Love can sometimes feel delightful and inspire dance, and that playfulness is wonderfully conveyed in this piece.
Michael Abels’ bio can be found here. The video clip features the Harlem Quartet performing the final movement of Delights.
[/one_half] [one_half_last] [/one_half_last] [one_half]Felix Mendelssohn
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Felix Mendelssohn was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. The grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, he was recognized early as a musical prodigy, but his parents were cautious and did not seek to capitalize on his talent. It may very well be this philosophical family trait that led him to contemplate and musically express the manifold sides of youthful, tempestuous, and certainly never boring love. Appropriately enough, Mendelssohn first composed the overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the age of 17, and then returned to it with a reflective and more mature perspective at 33. With help from our guest narrators, we’ll feature three selections from this work tonight: the Overture, Scherzo, and Nocturne. Each has a distinct feel conveying different emotions.
More on the life of the composer can be found at the Felix Mendelssohn website.
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The clip is from the Scherzo, the liveliest of the three movements.
Benjamin Lees
Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra
As noted by Mei-Ann Chen above, the Sinfonietta along with the Harlem Quartet will be recording a new CD scheduled for release in 2013 and featuring music written for string quartet and orchestra. Among the pieces being performed and recorded is this rarely heard work. Benjamin Lees certainly lived a global life. The contemporary American composer was born in Harbin, China, raised in San Francisco and lived in Palm Springs, California. Lees was a prolific composer, writing chamber music, concertos, operas, symphonies and more that were initially overlooked because a modernist style was the fashion in contemporary composing and Lees method was more direct.
Lees once said “There are two kinds of composers. One is the intellectual and the other is visceral. I fall into the latter category. If my stomach doesn’t tighten at an idea, then it’s not the right idea.” Of course, there’s probably nothing more visceral, and less intellectual, than love.
The estate of Benjamin Lees maintains this website in his honor.
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The clip features the third movement of the concerto, Allegro energico.
Leonard Bernstein
Randall Craig Fleischer
West Side Story – World Premiere arrangement for String Quartet and Orchestra
Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story is a true classic of American musical theater from one of the country’s most beloved composers and conductors. When Randall Craig Fleischer, a young composer and conductor that studied with Bernstein at Tanglewood in 1989, first approached the task of arranging this work for String Quartet and Orchestra, he thought “The challenge for me in crafting this arrangement was to retain everything that is unique about the score, its sensual colors in the love duets and its edgy ‘bite’ in the gang scenes, the Latin jazz flavor – and transfer all of Bernstein’s unique genius from voices to string instruments. It was a challenge but I feel much closer to West Side Story.”
As noted earlier, Bernstein’s work is a 20th century New York City update on Shakespeare’s tragic love story Romeo and Juliet, with its star-crossed lovers destined for heartbreak. Nonetheless, West Side Story contains passages of humor and joy. Both of those qualities are on ample display in this clip of the Venezuelan Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestra’s encore performance in London. MAMBO!
More details on Randall Fleischer’s career are covered on his website.
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Research & content by Don Macica, Design by Ryan Smith