Ravinia 2023 Issue 5

Among the Price piano pieces that Downes will be performing on her August 22 program are the Piano Sonata in E minor and Summer Moon : “I’ll play some of her bigger things and some of her smaller things. She wrote a lot of small pieces that are lovely and I think were intended for younger players or for just easy commercial viability, to try to publish stuff. So there’s a pretty wide range of piano music.” Bonds, like Price, has a deep Chicago connection. Though Price moved to Chicago in 1927 and re- mained for the rest of her life, Bonds was born here. “Margaret Bonds grew up in Chi- cago and went to Northwestern. Then she moved to Harlem mostly because of her association with Langston Hughes,” says Downes. “There’s a story where she’s at Northwestern in the late ’20s and early ’30s, and she’s miserable. She’s one of a handful of Black students and is not allowed to do this, that, or the other thing. She found Langston Hughes poetry in the library and she said it saved her life. And they eventually connected and he convinced her to move to Harlem; she became really central in what was happening in Harlem during the Renaissance. She eventually moved to Los Angeles. “While in Chicago, Margaret Bonds was very close to Florence Price and premiered a lot of Florence Price’s piano works. She was a really accomplished pianist. You can hear the progression. Margaret Bonds’s music is one step further along in terms of 20th-century sound. “ Her language has much more of an awareness not only of jazz, but of what was happening in concert music of the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s. She was writing well into the ’60s. There’s more risk-taking harmonically. And because she was such a fine pianist, there’s something so natural about her piano writing. And then, of course, her collaboration with Langston Hughes led to incredible songs. They were really close collaborators and a support system for each other. “ Florence Price was almost like a teacher of hers. Margaret Bonds’s father was a fascinating figure, and her mother was kind of like the den mother of the Chicago Black Re- naissance. She had this house where people would come and stay. Margaret Bonds really grew up in the bosom of this creative energy. After her divorce, Florence Price and her kids lived with Margaret Bonds and her mother for a little while.” Has the music of Bonds, like Price’s, been a more recent discovery? “Yes, but not because it was in dis- array—it was in various collections,” Downes says. “The reason is that it took a really long time to get the estate of Margaret Bonds sorted out, to track down some heirs. She only had one daughter, and her daughter had died, too, so a lot of this music just hasn’t been available. It’s now held by Hilde- gard Publishing and they are getting everything published. But some of these songs that Nicole and I are do- ing have not been performed before. “It’s so exciting that audiences are going to discover ‘new’ things, things they haven’t heard before. I’m really careful never to credit myself with ‘discovering’ anything—all we’re doing is uncovering things. I think it’s an incredibly exciting time, a really healthy thing. A lot of what we worry about when it comes to classical mu- sic is that the canon has been fixed. What does that mean in terms of new audiences? Now, this expansion is giving an invitation and reflection to a much broader listenership. That’s a really beautiful thing to witness. “I think we are [unlocking] history. I think we’re reconsidering what the canon means, because I always think it’s quite silly that until the 20th cen- tury, classical music was always what was new. There wasn’t this fetish-fix- ation on things from centuries ago. It was always growing, always evolving. I think that this particular body of work is really reclaiming an American identity and is immediately having an impact on a new generation of Ameri- can composers.” “We are also bringing diverse com- posers into the academic world, which has been in serious calcification,” observes Cabell. “We’re all moving in that direction. Underrepresented com- posers—we’re exposing our students to repertoire that is definitely different than I was exposed to a generation ago. “I’m very happy to be alive during this time when things are starting to happen. My fear is that academia, concert halls, opera houses, and recording companies will have had a moment during Black Lives Matter but they will just gradually atrophy back into Eurocentric music and artists and exclusivity. I hope that I’m wrong. But I’m so, so happy to see the progress that is happening. And they’re not just saying it, they’re actually doing it. Not just putting out statements of support but actually hiring Black singers, and not just in Black music. It was important that we were able to sing canon repertoire as well. Don’t just hire Black singers for Fire Shut Up in My Bones , Porgy and Bess , The Champion . Don’t just have a Black opera. It was a very clear talking point and topical subject whenever I would participate in a Porgy and Bess . ‘It’s wonderful to see you, but no, I’m not just singing Aida . Maybe I’m singing Le nozze di Figaro . Maybe I’m singing La bohème .’ This is great to have those opportunities. I’m very, very encouraged by what I’m seeing at major and [hyper-local] opera houses and in between. And in concert halls that are programming a piece like George Walker’s Lilacs , which I did four times and recorded last year. But again, that was all last year. We want concert halls to continue to present George Walker. “I had assumed that, with time, opera houses might consider hiring more artists from diverse communi- ties. I couldn’t have foreseen this move towards commissioning and mount- ing so many productions of music by Black composers or performing previous works by Black composers. I really couldn’t have expected it would happen so fast. So again, it’s really, re- ally interesting to be currently alive in this time of history. And all I can say is that I hope it will continue.” 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. Shortly after the premiere of Price’s Piano Concerto in 1934, Margaret Bonds reprised the work with the Woman’s Symphony Orchestra of Chicago and conductor Ebba Sundstrom on the recommendation of Frederick Stock, who was impressed by Bonds’s performance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on the 1933 World’s Fair concert that also featured Price’s award-winning First Symphony. RAVINIA MAGAZINE • AUGUST 15 – AUGUST 27, 2023 14