Ravinia 2023 Issue 1

LEIGH WEBBER/SPOLETO USA ( UNHOLY WARS ) Sulayman in the premiere performance of Unholy Wars at Spoleto Festival USA in 2022 inaccuracies and romanticizing that are representative of the period. How shall we contextualize that? “We’re searching for different per- spectives written by Western compos- ers on the East, but also Eastern com- posers writing about the West, like the depictions of Cornelia Foss paintings by Takemitsu [ In the woods ], and ideally grappling with these ideas— having the opportunity to say, This is difficult and slightly awkward and improper, actually. Here’s another way that somebody else approached it. Maybe this is less improper. Or more improper, even.” “We start in the Baroque era with Purcell and Dowland,” says Sulayman. “We wanted to show a spotlight on how things are always borrowing from something else and getting informed by the thing that comes before it—and is obviously influencing the thing that comes after it. It’s really a cyclical way of looking at this music. And it also ties in with the guitar itself and the wood of the guitar and how the oud and the lute were forerunners of a Spanish version and how the Spanish guitar comes out of all of that. There’s a whole journey from Sephardic song into Arabic song into a contemporary Lebanese song by Fairuz that actu- ally took a melody from Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez . You look at how the things we took from the Arab world we give back, and the Arab world’s takes from that. It’s all a very interesting journey if you will.” SULAYMAN has also been perform- ing his own program, Unholy Wars , which reconsiders the Crusades. “It is not dissimilar to what this pro- gram is,” he explains. “It’s obviously different in that is all Italian Baroque music. It really is about the Crusades taking the centerpiece of [Montever- di’s] Tancredi and Clorinda and as a narrator, having to tell the story over and over again. The opera tells the story from this Western perspective of Catholic supremacy and how painful that is for somebody to have to go through that and sort of accept status quo. How often does an Arab get to stand onstage and maybe reframe and reclaim the narrative around the Crusades and help us move forward into a space of better understanding? What that show does—because I use a lot of dance—we physically move the space into a new space of dialogue and understanding. It’s a nice piece. I’m proud of it. “The Crusades were always on the tip of my parents’ tongues. You see Lebanese people and they run the gamut in terms of how they look. My Mom is olive-skinned but has light eyes and a reddish tint to her hair. I’m very dark-skinned, dark featured. My Dad is fair, and so is my brother. You look at this rainbow of people, how can they all be ethnically Lebanese? Why do I look so different than my brother? The answer was always, ‘That’s the Crusades,’ leaving out things like rape and pillage.” AS FOR BROKEN BRANCHES , Shi- be asks rhetorically: “Who else is cut out to do this program? This is a bi- ographical collection of pieces, right? It’s about my background as being a half-Japanese person in Scotland in the ’90s, which is an ethnically homo- geneous place. And it’s about Karim’s background as being a second-gener- ation Lebanese immigrant in North America, which is also a specific thing. We wanted to do this program because it’s really important to us. And it’s im- portant to us because it’s about us. “Karim and I are really close. We have a great deal of love and respect for each other and for one another’s work. I think that really comes across on stage. While there is this sort of cross-cultural slant to what we’re doing with this specific narrative that we’re weaving over the course of the recital, it is also a collection of really banging tunes.” “As artists,” says Karim, “we have the opportunity to raise our voices in a different way. With something like Unholy Wars or Broken Branches you never want to be too prescriptive. You never want to tell people what they need to be thinking or how they need to be listening. Sometimes people just want to come and hear really good music, and that’s enough. “But the people who are willing to go deeper and accept messaging or however you want to put it, there’s something for them there and hope- fully that’s how conversations can get started. And then you can help change people’s perspective and get them to hear your side of things.” Award-winning veteran journalist, critic, author, broadcaster and educator Dennis Polkow has been covering Chicago-based cultural institutions across various local, national, and international media for more than 35 years. RAVINIA MAGAZINE • JUNE 6 – JULY 2, 2023 14