Ravinia 2023 Issue 5

Active COLLABORATION THE RENAISSANCE WILL BE PUBLISHED, RECORDED, STREAMED, AND PLAYED LIVE WITH LARA DOWNES AND NICOLE CABELL BY DENNIS POLKOW PIANIST, CULTURAL ACTIVIST , and radio show host Lara Downes has devot- ed much of her career to the music of underrepresented composers, especially women and Black composers like Florence Price (1887–1953) and Margaret Bonds (1913–1972). Returning to Ravinia Festival August 22 with a program titled and focused on themes of Love, Life & Laughter , Downes will spotlight both of those longtime Chicagoans alongside music of Clarice Assad, Amy Beach, Billie Hol- iday, Debbie Friedman, and former Chicago Symphony Orchestra Mead Com- poser-in-Residence Missy Mazzoli. Another favorite artist of the festival, soprano Nicole Cabell, will make a guest appearance. “We’ve been working together now, on and off, for about three years,” says Downes of collaborating with Cabell. “We connected during the pandemic around the music of Margaret Bonds. I started a recording label to specifically focus on music by Black composers that had not previously been recorded. That was one of my big projects since we all had some time on our hands. Nicole and I had wanted to work together for quite a while, so we were able to do a few remote recordings of some of these Margaret Bonds songs and we would send things back and forth. Nicole and I had immediate musical chemistry and understanding; it was real easy and quick. That was a lovely thing. Nicole is such an intelligent artist, and I love her choices. We moved in the same circles. We also got to perform together at the Gilmore Festival last spring.” “It’s primarily Lara’s concert,” explains Cabell. “[Adding to her piano pieces,] we’re doing four songs of Margaret Bonds, all unpublished and unperformed. Our relationship has gone back a few years now and with this repertoire—I said, ‘You know my voice at this point and I’m open to what music you think is beau- tiful and interesting and needs to be heard.’ I’m pretty open-minded on music I haven’t heard. What I tend to look for first is the poetry, which was intriguing. It touches on really universal themes; all the songs have this kind of thread going through them: the natural world, the natural sleep and dream cycle. I thought that was really interesting. RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIA MAGAZINE 7