Ravinia 2021 - Issue 1

PAVILION 8:00 PM SATURDAY, JULY 10, 2021 CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA MARIN ALSOP, conductor JONATHAN RUSH, guest conductor † JAYE LADYMORE, narrator † Celebrating America LAURA KARPMAN All American ++ STACY GARROP The Battle for the Ballot ++ Jaye Ladymore, narrator CARLOS SIMON Fate Now Conquers ++ Jonathan Rush, conductor JAMES P. JOHNSON Harlem Symphony ** Introduction: Penn Station—Subway Journey Song of Harlem The Nightclub Baptist Mission JAMES P. JOHNSON Victory Stride ** There will be no intermission in this program. † Ravinia debut ++ Midwest premiere ** First performance by the CSO and at Ravinia Tonight’s program is performed in memory of Charles and Margery Barancik . LAURA KARPMAN (b. 1959) All American Scored for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, clarinet and bass clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, two horns, two trumpets, two trombones, tuba, timpani, a large percussion battery, piano, harp, and strings Awards alone reveal a great deal about the diverse musical talents of composer Laura Karpman. She has been nominated for more than 10 Emmy Awards and has won for her music on the Discovery Channel’s documen- tary series Why We Hate and multiple awards for the PBS series The Living Edens . Karpman has earned honors in another composition- al domain—video game music—receiving two Game Audio Network Guild Awards. The recording of her multimedia opera Ask Your Mama , commissioned by Carnegie Hall and based on a cycle of poems by Langston Hughes, won a Grammy Award. She also has received the Charles Ives Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Karpman possesses impeccable academic cre- dentials, having studied at the Tanglewood Music Center, Aspen Music School, and Les Écoles d’Art Américaines de Fontainebleau with famed pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. She received a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Michigan and master’s and doc- toral degrees from The Juilliard School. She currently serves as an advisor for the Sundance Film Institute and teaches on the faculty of the USC Thornton Screen Scoring Program and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Promoting equity within the music industry and amplifying the voices of women compos- ers have occupied Karpman increasingly in recent years. In 2014, she co-founded the Al- liance for Women Film Composers—an orga- nization providing visibility and advocacy for women composers—with Lolita Ritmanis and Miriam Cutler. Two years later, she became the first female film composer elected to the music branch of the Academy of Motion Pic- ture Arts and Sciences Board of Governors. This dedication to women composers also influenced a recent orchestral score commis- sioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel for a concert at the Holly- wood Bowl on August 22, 2019. After consid- ering various patriotic themes and marches by John Philip Sousa, “An idea jumped into my head,” recalledKarpman. “I have been thinking a lot about the pervasive invisibility of women composers inmusic history. We tend to believe that there were very few, if any, women com- posers in past centuries, and that we are now a product of the advancement of women in all professions. But I’ve begun to think that may- be there were women composers, lots of them, and that their works have been unrecognized, unamplified. I set out looking for patriotic songs by American women composers. Much to my own surprise, I found not one or two, but hundreds.” Karpman selected three rep- resentative women composers for this “very American anthem called All American—the italics being significant.” Mildred J. Hill (1859–1916) grew up in Louis- ville, KY, in a musical environment with two Laura Karpman sisters, becoming a composer, ethnographer (publishing under the male pseudonym Jo- hann Tonso), and progressive educator at the Louisville Experimental Kindergarten School, which earned her recognition at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. Hill was equally progressive in her ethnographic research. She proposed in the article “Negro Music” (1892) that Black music could form the basis of a dis- tinctive American musical style, an idea that influenced Antonín Dvořák. She composed the patriotic song “March on, Brave Lads, March on!” during the Spanish American War and dedicated it to “the Louisville Le- gion and All the Boys in Blue.” Hill is perhaps better known for a kindergarten song written with sister, Patty: “Happy Birthday to You.” Emily Wood Bower published her patriot- ic song “Your Country Needs You” (1917) during World War I. Bower served as organist at West Presbyterian Church of Binghamton, NY. Between 1924 and 1931, she directed the MacDowell Club Chorale in Mountain Lakes, NJ, preparing the ensemble for performanc- es at the New Jersey Federation of Women’s Clubs’ Choral Competition and other benefit concerts for the MacDowell Colony. Bower also composed the “MacDowell Club Bless- ing” (“Father we thank thee for gifts from above”), which was sung at the annual Feb- ruary luncheon. [Esther] Anita Owen (1874–1932) grew up in Brazil, IN, and attended Saint Mary-of-the- Woods College, a Catholic girls’ school in nearby Terre Haute, IN. A prolific compos- er of popular songs, lyricist, and successful publisher, Owen founded Wabash Music Co. in Chicago. She published her patriotic song “ ’Neath the Flag of the Red, White, and Blue” with Chicago’s National Music Company in 1893. Owen belonged to a handful of women composers cited in E.M. Wickes’s Writing for Popular Song (1916). In the chapter on “Col- laboration,” Wickes noted: “Irving Berlin writes both words and music for most of his songs, but many look up to him as a genius, and genius is expected to excel the ordinary mortal; but if he is a genius in this respect, what name or title would one confer upon Anita Owen, who writes her own lyrics, mel- odies, and piano scores? She does not com- pose ragtime, but hits nevertheless.” STACY GARROP (b. 1969) The Battle for the Ballot Scored for two flutes and piccolo, oboe and English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, tenor and bass trombones, timpani, triangle, tom-toms, crash cymbal, large tam-tam, marimba, egg shaker, suspended cymbal with bow, two bongos, tenor drum, bass drum, tubular bell, harp, piano, strings, and female narrator The text of the 19th Amendment to the Con- stitution of the United States of America is concise, just 39 words granting voting rights RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIA MAGAZINE 47