Ravinia 2022, Issue 1

IRENE YOUNG (WATKINS) BENNETT GORDON HALL 1:00 PM SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 2022 CHICAGO SINFONIETTA JONATHAN RUSH, conductor Let Freedom Ring COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Danse nègre from African Suite WATKINS Soul of Remembrance from Five Movements in Color * PRICE Nimble Feet from Dances in the Canebrakes (arr. Still) DVOŘÁK Largo from “New World” Symphony ROUMAIN Klap Ur Handz from Rosa Parks Symphony * PRICE Juba Dance from Symphony No. 1 * HERSH, arr. “We Shall Overcome” / “Lift Ev’ry Voice” * There will be no intermission in this program. * First performance at Ravinia SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR (1875–1912) Danse nègre from African Suite , op. 35 Scored for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, four trombones, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, and strings Daniel Peter Hughes Taylor, the son of a wealthy merchant in Freetown, Sierra Leone, formed a relationship with Alice Holmans while pursuing medical studies at King’s College Hospital and the Royal College of Surgeons. Daniel and Alice may have secret- ly married, for she listed the surgeon as the father and her name as “Taylor” on the birth certificate of their son, who entered the world on August 15, 1875, in London. But Dr. Taylor returned to Freetown long before the boy’s birth, and he never played a role in his life. Alice named the child Samuel Coleridge-Tay- lor—an homage to the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)—and raised him in the household of her parents in Croy- don. His grandfather Benjamin Holmans, who possessed a love of music, became 5-year-old Samuel’s first violin teacher and later paid for his instrument and private les- sons with more qualified instructors. By the time Coleridge-Taylor finished at the Royal College of Music in London in the summer of 1897, he had emerged as a skilled violinist and pianist, a published composer, and an indi- vidual discovering himself as a Black man of African descent living in Victorian England. Written one year later, the African Suite for solo piano affirmed this identity while remaining within the conventions of late-19th-century in- strumental music. Its four movements— Intro- duction , A Negro Love-Song , Valse , and Danse nègre —follow the broad outlines of a sonata, though with rhythmic and melodic elements derived from African music. The publisher Augener Ltd. announced the release of the Af- rican Suite in the Musical News (December 31, 1898). As was its habit, Augener issuedmultiple instrumentations of Coleridge-Taylor’s music, including the composer’s version of Danse nègre for full orchestra. A reviewer for the Mu- sical News (February 4, 1899) commended the new suite: “Its natural coloring gives it a breezy freshness which is quite exhilarating.” MARY D. WATKINS (b. 1939) Soul of Remembrance from Five Movements in Color Born in Denver and adopted at 14 months by an African American couple from Pueblo, CO, Mary Maloney grew up in the thriving steel town nicknamed the “Melting Pot of the West” because of its rich ethnic diver- sity. Nonetheless, racial prejudice and seg- regation were pervasive but could not curb her involvement in church and private pia- no lessons from age 4. It wasn’t long before the improvised playing done by ear in wor- ship conflicted with her formal studies, so Mary learned at an early age how to resolve seemingly contradictory styles and perfor- mance traditions—a skill she would summon throughout her career. After high school, Mary took music theory and piano classes at a local community col- lege but delayed her entry into college for several years. In 1963, she married Edward Dawkins, moved to his hometown of Wash- ington, DC, and gave birth to a daughter. Sev- en years later, Mary began a bachelor’s degree in composition at Howard University, which she completed in 1972. The marriage did not last, and, after a short time in Colorado, Mary moved to California, where she changed her name to Mary D. Watkins. Watkins’s professional career has grown in several distinct phases. Jazz dominated her activities as a performing pianist, composer, and arranger well into the 1980s, including the widely acclaimed jazz fusion disc Winds of Change (1981). That same decade marked Watkins’s return to composition for orches- tra, chorus, and chamber ensembles, in which she freely mixed classical, jazz, gospel, and avant-garde styles. Notable compositions in- clude The Sword that Heals (1988) for orches- tra and jazz ensemble, One Episode in an In- ner Journey (1986) for orchestra and piano, and The Revolutionary Nutcracker Sweetie (1987), a contemporary interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Ballet for cham- ber orchestra. Watkins devoted herself to film and video scores across the late 1980s and 1990s, nearly two dozen projects that received two Emmy Awards, one Dupont Film Award, one Sundance Award, one Peabody Award, and three Academy Award nominations. In recent years, Watkins has produced several full-length operas, including Emmett Till, The Opera , which premiered on March 23, 2022. Five Movements in Color (1993) emerged from a commission by the Camellia Symphony Orchestra in Sacramento, CA, with funding from Meet the Composer and the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. Nan Washburn led the Camellia Symphony Orchestra in the world premiere in February 1994 as part of their Black History Month celebration. At an essential level, Five Movements in Color hearkens back to Watkins’s youthful explora- tions of “color, shades, and the effects of mel- ody and harmony on emotion.” Watkins de- scribes this suite as “an epic statement about the African American experience,” a five-stop voyage from the African continent through the Civil Rights Movement. Sorrowful mem- ories of their homeland torment the slaves in Soul of Remembrance . When asked in an interview for the National Endowment for the Arts about her proudest moment as a composer, Watkins singled out the New Black Music Repertory Ensemble’s recording sessions for Five Movements in Col- or , held August 11–12, 2009, in Pick-Staiger Concert Hall in Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music. “The music [ Soul of Remembrance ] wasn’t flashy, technically chal- lenging, or anything like that. It was serene, Mary D. Watkins Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1905) RAVINIA MAGAZINE • JUNE 15 – JULY 3, 2022 26 I I