Ravinia 2021 - Issue 4

“We should let go of the perception that there is a canon ... go back to the Duke Ellington quote: There are only two kinds of music, good music and the other kind.” Chicagoans Pine (left) and Ifetayo Ali-Landing (right), as well as a string quartet comprising members of the diversity and inclusion–focused Chicago Sinfonietta, join Downes on the SeptePEerb RisinJ Sun concert at Ravinia featuring the music of several Black composers with deep ties to the city, including groundbreakers Bonds, Price, and Nora Holt plus jazz impresario Lil Hardin Armstrong and landmark singer- songwriter Sam Cooke. LISAɞMARIE MA==8CC2 (3INE) RA9INIA 3A7RIC. GI3S2N (ALIɞLANDING) she points out, “No Americans of any ethnicity were writing concertos in the 1700s.” Because she feels personal connec- tions to so many composers, and the stories behind them, Pine admits she can’t be objective in selecting which music to publish—she abides by the vote of her foundation’s com- mittee, composed of eminent Black musicians. While Downes and Pine have been doing their work for years, everyone was suddenly more willing to pay attention in 2020, following the vid- eotaped murder of George Floyd and the reckoning with racism in many institutions, including classical music. “I would get calls from people saying, ‘I have a recital in five days and I need to find a piece by an African Amer- ican composer,” Pine recalls. “And I would think, ‘You’ve been performing for 30 years and now it’s an emer- gency?’ On the other hand, better late than never. I felt there was an intransigence, a closed-mindedness, and then boom, everything changed.” The COVID-19 pandemic, the other horror of 2020, offered opportuni- ties for Downes to do multilayered storytelling in the virtual world. With live concert bookings picking up, “I’m really curious how it will feel to integrate both of these things,” she says. “We’re are accustomed in the concert hall to some kind of a wall. Are audiences now going into concert hall thinking about their living room where there’s no wall?” She has had good conversations with presenters, including Ravinia, about how formats might change. “Everyone really wants to hold onto the good stuff from this time,” she says. “We haven’t really figured out what to call these performances. It’s not a lecture or a recital. It’s a storytelling concert. I love sharing these stories.” Her Ravinia concert, with the theme of migration, “honors the music by putting it in context and not saying, Look, Black composers ,” she says. “I’m half Black and half Jewish, so migration and journey are at the heart of my existence.” And perform- ing in one of the main centers of the Great Migration is “really meaning- ful,” she says, “because Chicago means so much in this history. It just feels emotionally resonant.” David Lewellen is a Milwaukee-based journalist who writes regularly for the Chicago Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, and other classical websites. RAVINIA MAGAZINE • SEPTEMBER 7 – SEPTEMBER 24, 2021 10