Ravinia 2023 Issue 1

Broken Branches grew from a discom- fort at aspects of repertoire generally explored through art song with the gui- tar; or perhaps more accurately a desire to present certain repertoire in a way that makes uncomfortable aspects of it clearer. The Japanese composer Dai Fujikura recently tweeted that for many French composer friends, Jonathan Harvey was the “only British composer since 3XUceOO Ȉ 'efiQLWeO\ D +oW 7DNe EXW LWȅV LQ - teresting to me that Harvey is—by some markers—neglected in the UK, and I rel- ish that this piece pithily sums up a cen- tral plank of the program. Harvey wrote: “It is not really a folk song arrangement, PoUe D PePoU\ of D 6Xfi VoQJ KeDUG some time ago and probably incorrectly UeWDLQeG oU DW OeDVW fiOWeUeG WKUoXJK P\ own paths of thought.” This conceptual GLVWDQce LV QoW GLVVLPLODU Wo BULWWeQȅVȂQoW to appropriate a Chinese atmosphere, but instead respond to the philosophical underpinnings of the poetry—and (for- give a tangent) almost the same as Hen- ]eȅV LGeDV LQ .DPPeUPXVLN ȇ7Ke Tentos sound much as I imagine Greek music must have sounded”; a memory or a dream; something imagined. How to “remember” a new context which bridges the very different genres presented on this program? Settings of problematic poetry need to be ex- amined with good context (satisfying placement of the works), but ideally also a binding idiom with compelling al- ternative performance practice. I have deliberately muddied the waters of— among others—Monteverdi and Fairuz Wo cUeDWe D ficWLoQDO \eW DXWoELoJUDSK - ical origin point, a vaguely poppy folk mashup of a style which pleasingly bas- tardizes stylistic norms and infuriates my lute-playing friends. In combination with the pieces on the program that are nec- essarily classically performed, I hope that a better understanding of the histori- cal narratives around these pieces leads to an improved understanding of what PDNeV WKeP LQ VoPe cDVeV GLfficXOW Wo grapple with—but that puts forward the case that radical interventions can be a part of a potential solutions package. – Sean Shibe – I met and started working with Sean a decade ago at the Marlboro Music Fes- tival, the storied chamber music Mecca in southern Vermont. Ever since those GD\V LQ WKe coQfiQeV of D PoVW WUDGLWLoQ - al classical music space, Sean and I frequently discussed making an album together. I am so pleased the time has come to offer Broken Branches to our listeners, both on record and in concert. Over the years, I have often strayed from the well-worn footpaths of a ca- UeeU LQ cODVVLcDO PXVLc ,WȅV LQ WKeVe ZDQ - derings where so much can be learned DEoXW oQeȅV UooWV DQG WKe LGeD of D home base. For me, music (regardless of genre) will always be my home. I want my storytelling-through-song to reso- QDWe ZLWK WKe WLPeV ZeȅUe OLYLQJ LQ DQG how I experience them as an individual artist. As 2020 upended the classical music world in so many ways, an explosion in the port of Beirut occurred and shook every Lebanese household, both in Leb- anon and throughout the world. Four days later, my father died from cancer, and I was staring into a void. With my fDWKeUȅV GeDWK D EODQN cDOeQGDU DQG D world in total chaos, “home,” in all its meanings, was in shambles. In the weeks and months after this, I re- built my home by dreaming up and fol- lowing through with projects, including this program with my dear friend Sean (who reached out often to offer support in a bleak time—he was one of my many solid oaks, if you will). Broken Branches explores a wide range of repertoire of- fering its listeners the idea that home can WUDQVceQG oQe VSecLfic SODce oU WLPe 5efeUeQcLQJ WKe fiQDO OLQe of 6LQDQ $Q - WooQȅV SoeWU\ LQ WKe VoQJ /D\DOe &KDNeU ZUoWe foU XV WKe WLWOe UeɷecWV WKe PDQ\ themes of this album: the wood of the guitar and its relatives, our own family trees, and the splintering of that history as we examine the diaspora, and the at- tempt to build “home” separate of phys- ical borders. – Karim Sulayman – ROOT SYSTEMS Edward Said’s landmark book Orientalism outlines the false dichotomy between “West” and “East.” In a critique as relevant now as it was nearly half a century ago, Said argued that the West gained the upper narrative hand and styled itself as the dominant cul- ture, relegating the East to the category of “the Other.” In order to move beyond these attened stereotypes, he added that we must abandon othering in favor of understanding. is requires us in turn to abandon familiar territory: “ e more one is able to leave one’s cultural home, the more easily is one able to judge it, and the whole world as well, with the spiritual detachment and generosity neces- sary for true vision.” e idea of a cultural home becomes more complex when you have one foot in both worlds. (Said himself was Palestinian by birth but rst moved to the United States when he was .) On the one hand, being a so-called third culture kid can sharpen that sense of true vision Said extols. On the other hand, it also means that it’s hard to pinpoint what, ex- actly, home is—hard to untangle the roots of one’s family tree. It’s a juxtaposition familiar to Karim Sulayman, a rst-generation Leba- nese-American (born in Chicago to parents who ed Beirut during the Civil War): “You don’t have the experience of what it’s like to grow up there. And your parents are also try- ing to make sure that you’re having the most American experience imaginable—even if they don’t fully understand it.” is dynamic is central to Broken Branches, which takes its name from “A Butter y in New York” by Layale Chaker (b. ) —a work commissioned especially for this pro- gram. In verse that traces the splintering of family trees into the global diaspora, Iraqi poet Sinan Antoon concludes: “I live / like a broken branch.” How to leave home—and how to go home again—when home isn’t a xed concept? It’s easy to chart a Said-style history of Asian Layale Chaker in uences on “Western” classical music, and how those cross-cultural connections in- formed works composed in both bad and good faith. But shoehorning things into a forced binary of “East” and “West” eliminates a spectrum of identities more slippery than settled. “ is program examines our own identities, but our identities are complicated,” Sulayman adds. “We actually are Westerners. For better or worse, we are ‘other.’ Even with our own identities, we are ‘other.’ ” Guitar- ist Sean Shibe, who was born to an English father and Japanese mother and raised in Edinburgh—“at that point, the most ethni- cally homogenous—read: white—place in Europe”—echoes this sentiment. For both artists, their identities have shaped their approaches to a largely Eurocentric musi- cal genre in ways implicit and explicit. “Even though classical music is this sort of white Western European thing, we exist in it now,” says Sulayman. Shibe likewise acknowledges that he might have had a di erent experience as an Anglo-Asianmusician had he not chosen an instrument that was also an outlier. “I’ve found very artistically gratifying experiences through embracing that kind of ‘otherness’ that the guitar has on the concert platform.” Both musicians were interested in how West- ern composers handled Orientalism and East- ern identity. It’s a theme that has especially preoccupied Sulayman in recent years as he developed “Unholy Wars,” a multi-disci- plinary production that reframed Western de- pictions of the Crusades by the likes of Mon- teverdi, Rossi, and Handel through his own Arab heritage. Broken Branches was ignited by a similar spark, delivered from a di erent van- tage point. Early representations of the East were not necessarily polemical—the su ering of Monteverdi’s narrator in “La mia turca” reads more as sexy cynicism than exotic cau- tionary tale. Moreover, Claudio Monteverdi ( – ) and Giulio Caccini ( – ) form a link in opera’s Mesopotamian roots: e rst surviving notated music, unearthed in present-day Syria in the s, dispelled the Possible portrait of Claudio Monteverdi by Domenico Fetti RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIA MAGAZINE