Poi Dog gives Dvorak a spin

Rockers join Sinfonietta in a tweaked ‘New World’

Chicago Tribune
By Michael Cameron
Special to the Tribune
Published March 23, 2005
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Last year, concert schedules were peppered with performances of Antonin Dvorak’s music to mark the 100th anniversary of the composer’s death. As one of the few 19th Century European composers with links across the Atlantic, his Symphony No. 9, “From the New World,” has long been his signature work in the U.S. In Chicago alone, there were at least a dozen performances by area orchestras last year.

So concertgoers may have been underwhelmed at the prospect of still another reading of this warhorse, this time by the Chicago Sinfonietta at Orchestra Hall. Conductor Paul Freeman sweetened the pot considerably Monday with the inclusion of another beloved Chicago institution, the rock group Poi Dog Pondering or PdP.

This was the latest attempt by a classical music institution to broaden its audience base through collaborations with representatives from other genres. In the best metaphor yet for the merging of opposing aesthetics, a WXRT spokesman told of his wonderment at a backstage floor that his shoes didn’t stick to.

Advanced publicity suggested audiences would hear two versions of the Dvorak symphony, in its original orchestral guise and in an arrangement by PdP. The actual concert was a bit more complicated than that, almost certainly for the better.

Fortunately PdP’s Frank Orrall and Susan Voelz chose not to construct a blow-by-blow transcription of the orchestral score..

Rather, PdP built a single movement, 12-minute montage with the orchestra, with special emphasis on motifs from the 2nd movement. Its opening brass chorus was quoted in the initial slow section, and at one point there was a brief Ivesian moment, as a wind flourish from the opening movement was superimposed. The mild conflict was the evening’s only hint at dissonance. Eventually an uptempo section emerged that didn’t seem obviously tethered to any of Dvorak’s tunes, but nevertheless featured some reasonably adept improvisation.

PdP seemed most comfortable with their own material–harmonically simple, mid-tempo folk-rock jams. The effect was like a warm, comforting bath, even if Orrall’s lyrics aimed for something more profound. The highlight was “Big Constellation,” its wash of acoustic guitar sound lifted by Freeman’s strings.

The opening half consisted of Dvorak’s symphony paired with a rarity, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s “Danse Negre” from his “African Suite.” It was fascinating to note the similarities of these two early attempts at fusing American folk idioms with Western classical traditions. Gentle syncopations and characteristic pitch patterns appear in both works, minus the special earthiness which inevitably evaporates in these contexts.