Ravinia 2022, Issue 3

PAVILION 8:00 PM FRIDAY, JULY 29, 2022 CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA MARIN ALSOP, conductor ANNA DUCZMAL-MRÓZ, guest conductor † LAURA JACKSON, guest conductor † JERI LYNNE JOHNSON, guest conductor † MONTGOMERY Source Code ** Anna Duczmal-Mróz DAUGHERTY Time Machine for Three Conductors and Orchestra ** Past Future Marin Alsop; Laura Jackson; Jeri Lynne Johnson –Intermission– PROKOFIEV Romeo and Juliet Suite (assembled by Marin Alsop) The Montagues and the Capulets (from Suite No. 2) Scene (from Suite No. 1) Morning Dance (from Suite No. 3) The Young Juliet (from Suite No. 2) Masks (from Suite No. 1) Friar Laurence (from Suite No. 2) Dance (from Suite No. 2) The Death of Tybalt (from Suite No. 1) Dance of the Girls with Lilies (from Suite No. 2) Aubade (from Suite No. 3) Romeo at Juliet’s Grave (from Suite No. 2) The Death of Juliet (from Suite No. 3) Marin Alsop † Ravinia debut ** First performance by the CSO and at Ravinia Ravinia expresses its appreciation for the generous support of Program Sponsor Pamela J. Mayo . As part of the Breaking Barriers Festival , this performance honors the 20th anniversary of the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship . Ravinia expresses its appreciation to Dinah Jacobs Castle for her lead sponsorship of the 2022 Breaking Barriers Festival. JESSIE MONTGOMERY (b. 1981) Source Code Scored for string orchestra Growing up on the Lower East Side of Man- hattan—the child of a jazz musician/film- maker father and theater artist/storyteller mother—Jessie Montgomery absorbed the experimentation, community engagement, diversity, and activism of artists residing in the surrounding neighborhood. She began taking violin lessons at age 4 through the Third Street Music School Settlement, the longest continuously running community music school in the country, and now serves on its board of directors. Montgomery went on to study violin at The Juilliard School and composition at New York University and Princeton University. As a violinist, Montgomery has been a mem- ber of the Providence String Quartet, PUB- LIQuartet, and Catalyst Quartet, and has performed with the Silkroad Ensemble and Sphinx Virtuosi. She has sustained a rela- tionship with the Sphinx Organization, a nonprofit dedicated to “transforming lives through the power of diversity in the arts,” since 1999 as a two-time laureate of the an- nual Sphinx Competition, composer-in-res- idence with the Sphinx Virtuosi, and recipi- ent of the Sphinx Medal of Excellence and a $50,000 career grant. Her innovative work as a composer has gar- nered increasing attention in recent years. Montgomery has received the Leonard Ber- nstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation and grants from Chamber Music America, American Composers Orchestra, the Joyce Foundation, and the Sorel Organization. Montgomery has just completed her first year as Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as well as a res- idence at the Ravinia Steans Music Institute. Jessie Montgomery The Isaiah Fund for New Initiatives, in part- nership with Symphony Space, commissioned Source Code for string quartet in 2013. The version for string orchestra dates from 2015. Montgomery was originally requested to compose a piece about identity and what it means to be an American. Since both of her parents had been politically active during the Civil Rights Movement, she initially “experi- mented by reinterpreting gestures, sentences, and musical syntax (the bare bones of rhythm and inflection) by choreographer Alvin Ailey, poets Langston Hughes and Rita Dove, and the great jazz songstress Ella Fitzgerald into musical sentences and tone paintings.” Those experimentations ultimately returned her to the African American spiritual, which influenced so many forms of musical expres- sion and became the “source code” for her composition. Instead of using an existent spiritual, Montgomery composed her own melody based on the “inflection of an African American spiritual.”The upper strings sustain a single pitch (A) from which emerges a pen- tatonic melody, broken into short fragments. Alvin Ailey Rita Dove RAVINIA MAGAZINE • JULY 18 – JULY 31, 2022 42