Ravinia 2023 Issue 5

JIYANG CHEN (DOWNES); ERIKA DUFOUR (CABELL) LARA DOWNES Named Performance Today ’s 2022 Classical Woman of the Year, pianist Lara Downes draws on legacies of history, family, and col- lective memory, as well as her peripatetic up- bringing, to forge performance and recording projects with an inclusive breadth of human experience. Her myriad artistic collabora- tors range from classical cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianist Simone Dinnerstein, and baritone Thomas Hampson to folk icon Judy Collins and multifaceted singer Rhiannon Giddens to writer Adam Gopnik and former US Poet Laureate Rita Dove. She has also worked with composers such as Clarice Assad, John Corigliano, Jennifer Higdon, Paola Prestini, and Stephen Schwartz on projects that span genres and generations to expand American repertoire. Downes is the creator and curator of Rising Sun Music recording series, which sheds light on the music and stories of Black composers over the past 200 years, and she is the inaugural Artist Citizen in Residence for the Manhattan School of Music as well as a fellow of the Loghaven Artist Residency. She also hosts Amplify for NPR Music, a video series that engages visionary Black musicians and artists, and is the evening host and resi- dent artist of KDFC radio in her native San Francisco. Her work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, National Endow- ment for the Arts, and Sphinx Organization, as well as many awards. Downes’s debut disc on Sony, For Lenny , won the 2017 Classical Recording Foundation Award, and she has since released For Love of You , a celebration of pianist and composer Clara Schumann; Holes in the Sky , highlighting several women’s con- tributions to American music; Florence Price: Piano Discoveries , world-premiere recordings of piano works by the groundbreaking Black composer; and Reflections: Scott Joplin Recon- sidered , showcasing the stylistic breadth from his iconic piano rags to his songs, dances, and opera. Earlier this year, she debuted on the Pentatone label with Love at Last , featuring 24 pieces by living composers around the globe. In addition to her recording and leadership work, Downes has performed widely on ma- jor stages such as Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, and Tanglewood, as well as in intimate venues such as National Sawdust, Le Poisson Rouge, and Yoshi’s SF. Lara Downes made her Ravinia debut in 2018 and was last heard at the festival in 2021. NICOLE CABELL Widely acclaimed for her velvety timbre and finely nuanced interpretations, American soprano Nicole Cabell continues to demon- strate versatility in repertoire ranging from Baroque to contemporary on opera and concert stages since winning the 2005 BBC Singer of the World Competition. Cabell’s ca- reer-highlight debuts include her first staged Bess in James Robinson’s acclaimed produc- tion of the Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess for En- glish National Opera, as well as portrayals of Handel’s titular Alcina at Grand Théâtre de Genève and Flavia in Cavalli’s Eliogabalo at Dutch National Opera, plus appearances in full lyric roles such as Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and for her debut at Paris National Opera. Recent appearances in the US have in- cluded Juliette in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette at Cincinnati Opera, Mimì in Puccini’s La bohème at Pittsburgh Opera, Donna Elvira in Mozart’s Don Giovanni at Detroit Opera, and returns to Minnesota Opera as Violetta and to San Francisco Opera in her role debut as Fiordiligi in Mozart’s Così fan tutte . Over the past year, Cabell sang the Countess in Mo- zart’s The Marriage of Figaro with Pittsburgh Opera and returned to the role of Bess with North Carolina Opera as well as in concert with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester in Hamburg. Elsewhere on the concert stage, she recently joined the London Symphony Orchestra for George Walker’s Lilacs and reprised the performance with the Chineke! Orchestra as part of the 2022 BBC Proms, also appearing as a soloist in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. In the US, Cabell gave a solo recital with Cincinnati’s Matinee Musicale and concerts of Barber’s Knoxville, Summer of 1915 with both the Boston and Tucson Sym- phonies; she was also a guest of the Seattle Symphony for Handel’s Messiah and the At- lanta Symphony for Vaughan Williams’s Sea Symphony . Nicole Cabell has been a regular guest at Ravinia since 2002, with highlights including a performance with composer-pi- anist Ricky Ian Gordon of her 2012 album Silver Rain —a collection of Gordon’s songs based on Langston Hughes poetry—and a concert of music from Porgy and Bess with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2015. This is her ninth season at the festival. composition influenced by the fourth move- ment of Schubert’s Moments musicaux . Oth- er creations include scores to the drama film A Woman, A Part , the documentaries Detro- pia and Book of Conrad , and the Amazon TV show Mozart in the Jungle . Mazzoli continues to perform as a pianist and keyboardist, most notably with the chamber-rock band Vic- toire, whose quirky yet delightful debut al- bum Cathedral City (2010), earned Album of the Year awards throughout New York City. “Is Victoire’s music post-rock, post-minimal- ist or pseudo-post-pre-modernist in- die-chamber-electronica?” pondered NPR’s First Listen . “It doesn’t particularly matter. It’s just good music.” Mazzoli received the 2012 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensem- ble Performance for eighth blackbird’s CD Meanwhile (featuring her composition Still Life with Avalanche as the opening track) and a 2019 Grammy nomination for Best Classical Composition for violinist Olivia De Prato’s recording of Vesper for Violin . Musical America named her its 2022 Com- poser of the Year, and Mazzoli most recently garnered the 2023 Marc Blitzstein Memorial Award for Musical Theater and Opera. In 2016, she co-founded the Luna Composi- tion Lab in New York City as a mentorship program for young women, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming composers. Missy Mazzoli served as Mead Compos- er-in-Residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 2018 through 2021. Recently, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra gave the world premiere (delayed two years by the pandemic) of Orpheus Undone , a work com- missioned for the CSO through the Helen Zell Commissioning Program, on March 31, 2022. Lyric Opera of Chicago co-commissioned her recent opera The Listeners with Opera Philadelphia and Norwegian National Opera, which staged the premiere on September 24, 2022. Among numerous projects, Mazzoli is composing a new work based on George Saunders’s award-winning novel Lincoln in Missy Mazzoli the Bardo for the Metropolitan Opera, with production scheduled for 2025. She has held faculty positions at the Bard College Conservatory of Music (2022 to present), Mannes College of Music at the New School (2013–23), and New York Uni- versity (visiting professor, 2013). In addition, she was in residence with Opera Philadel- phia (2012–15), Gotham Chamber Opera and Music Theatre-Group (2012–15), and Albany Symphony (2011–12). FLORENCE B. PRICE Piano Sonata in E minor [ See background information on the composer at the beginning of this program’s notes. ] Price found numerous opportunities to per- form the Piano Sonata in E minor (1932) following its prize-winning showing in the Fifth Annual Rodman Wanamaker Contest in Musical Composition for Composers of the Negro Race. Sixteen days after Frederick Stock led the Chicago Symphony Orches- tra in the world premiere of her Symphony No. 1 at the Chicago World’s Fair on June 15, 1933, Price performed two original piano compositions on a recital presented by the American Conservatory of Music at Kimball Hall, where she had once been a student. Her selections were the Piano Sonata in E minor and “Little Cabin Lullaby” from Dances in the Canebrakes . Classical structures are traceable throughout the piano sonata score—sona- ta-allegro, lyrical slow rondo, and a rapid scherzo finale—combined with melodies in- fluenced by African American spirituals and dances and late-Romantic harmonies and keyboard textures. –Program notes © 2023 Todd E. Sullivan Florence Price (ca.1933) RAVINIA MAGAZINE • AUGUST 15 – AUGUST 27, 2023 36