Ravinia 2023 Issue 2

Top and middle: Folk singer/instrumentalist Fiona Gillespie and fiddlers Susanna Perry Gilmore and Caitlin Hedge help authentically share the “language” of early and traditional music using instruments from that time period. Bottom: Stories of The Road to Dublin are told with a few props as well as song. composers provided virtuoso varia- tions for voice and violin over ground bass patterns that were the go-to dance tunes that everybody knew, the chaconne, the passacaglia, the gigue. To me, it’s not a big leap. We wanted to explore where that folk music came from. We were playing summer con- certs in a rustic barn outside of Cleve- land, and I felt this rustic venue need- ed rustic repertoire. I worked with a wonderful Baroque violinist that I knew who also specialized in Scottish music from Cape Breton. Then we moved to Irish, then to Appalachian, and eventually into Sephardic, which was a bigger jump. It’s like learning a foreign lan- guage: once you’ve learned one or two it becomes very easy to learn the third and the fourth. After we had learned Scottish and Irish, it became easier to learn other styles, but always through working with folk musicians who are steeped in those traditions. That’s important, because it’s an oral tradition, it’s not written down. What Appalachian music really is, is British Isles music that came across with the immigrants, then got mixed up a little bit with influences of gospel and things and took on what we think of as an American accent. But it was rooted in Irish and Scottish music. Your programs have a distinct thread of storytelling. We tend to think of ‘program music’ as a Romantic invention; do you feel the Baroque has a closer connection to narrative music than is generally thought? I would have to say yes. We just played The Four Seasons in London [and that was our first program at Ravinia]. Vivaldi was a master of storytelling. We love playing it. But I also do a number of Baroque pro- grams that feature, let’s say, storm and tempest music, which is essentially program music. Or Baroque music that evokes colorful folk dances like you get in the French Baroque; often they’re imitating Arabic, or Egyptian, or Native American music, always with a high degree of naïveté. But I feel like there are quite a lot of ‘pro- grams’ that can brew in the Baroque repertoire. So, tell us about The Road to Dublin. I structured this program in a dif- ferent way than any other. There’s a famous ballad called ‘The Rocky Road to Dublin,’ which Irish fans will know. It has several verses, and the person who is telling the story goes through various misadventures on his way to Dublin along the rocky road. I thought it would be fun to take each stanza of that ballad and create a set out of it, using pieces by other composers from the time that reflect on the theme of that stanza. So, the various adventures of this unfortunate man on his way to Dublin are each amplified as a whole set. He encoun- ters fair lasses, a robber, loses his bun- dle, gets beaten up by some Liverpool boys because of his Irish accent. Each of those stanzas becomes a set, so we are following his story throughout the entire concert. Speaking of program music … Exactly. Then at the end, we hear the whole ballad. We premiered it in Cleveland last summer, and people seemed to really love it. It’s mostly lighthearted, but there is a section where we look at the Irish immigrants who left their homes for America due to starvation and poverty. That I think is very poignant. How do you feel about returning to Chicago and Ravinia? We have now finished two years of what we call our Windy City minise- ries. We are playing in Chicago about three times a year, so we will be back in the fall and the winter. But we are so excited to return to Ravinia! This will be our fourth visit, and we’ve just always had such a great time there. We’ve been twice in the Martin The- atre; last time we were in the Pavilion. Ravinia is such a beautiful park—and I think it’s amazing that so many peo- ple sit out there on the Lawn to listen. The audiences at Ravinia are really very special! Mark Thomas Ketterson is the Chicago correspondent for Opera News and program annotator for Atlanta Opera. He has also written for Playbill , the Chicago Tribune , Atlanta Journal Constitution , ArtsATL, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Washington National Opera, the Edinburgh Festival, and Wolf Trap. RAVINIA MAGAZINE • JULY 3 – JULY 16, 2023 78