Ravinia 2024 Issue 4

ANTHONY PARNTHER American conductor Anthony Parnther is the Music Director of the San Bernardino Symphony Orchestra, the Southeast Symphony and Chorus, and the newly formed Civic Orchestra of Los Angeles, as well as the Principal Conductor of the Gateways Music Festival Orchestra, which he led in its Carnegie Hall debut premiering I Can for narrator and orchestra by Jon Batiste. Parnther’s recent guest conducting engagements have included the premieres of Kris Bowers’s Horn Concerto with the Los Angeles Philhar- monic and Tamar-kali Brown’s oratorio We Hold These Truths with Los Angeles Opera, as well as Long Beach Opera’s revival of Anthony Davis’s Pulitzer Prize–winning opera Central Park Five . He has also been featured with the New York, Buffalo, Calgary, and Rochester Philharmonics; Philadelphia Orchestra; Atlanta, Baltimore, Cin- cinnati, Detroit, San Francisco, Sydney (Austra- lia), and National Symphonies; Royal Scottish National Orchestra; and the Chineke! Orches- tra, with whom he debuted at the BBC Proms. Dedicated to amplifying traditionally under- represented voices, Parnther has reconstructed and performed orchestral works by Margaret Bonds, Duke Ellington, Zenobia Powell Perry, Florence Price, William Grant Still, and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, as well as premiered and re- corded works by Chanda Dancy, Adolphus Hail- stork, Marian Harrison, Philip Herbert, Daniel Kidane, Gary Powell Nash, James Newton, George Walker, Errollyn Wallen, James Wilson, and John Wineglass. As one of today’s foremost film conductors, Parnther helms recording ses- sions for many major feature films and televi- sion series. He has led such projects as Avatar: The Way of Water , Oppenheimer , Black Panther: Wakanda Forever , Encanto , Star Wars: The Man- dalorian , Transformers: Rise of the Beasts , Nope , Creed III , Ghostbusters: Afterlife , Ice Age: Adven- tures of Buck Wild , Tenet , American Dad , Turning Red , PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie , and League of Legends . Parnther studied music performance at Northwestern University, and at Yale Univer- sity he focused on orchestral conducting with Lawrence Leighton Smith and Otto Werner Mueller. Anthony Parnther is making his Ravin- ia and Chicago Symphony Orchestra debuts. PAVILION 5:00 PM SUNDAY, AUGUST 18, 2024 CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA JONATHAN RUSH, conductor RACHEL BARTON PINE, violin WHITE Violin Concerto in F-sharp minor * Allegro— Adagio ma non troppo— Allegro moderato Rachel Barton Pine PAGANINI “La campanella” from Violin Concerto No. 2 in B minor, op. 7 Rachel Barton Pine –Intermission– BERLIOZ Symphonie fantastique , op. 14 Reveries—Passions A Ball Scene in the Country March to the Scaffold Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath * First performance by the CSO and at Ravinia Tonight’s concert is performed in memory of Nancy Zadek . JOSÉ WHITE LAFITTE (1835–1918) Violin Concerto in F-sharp minor Scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, strings, and solo violin The violinist-composer celebrated today as José White Lafitte was born on December 31, 1835, in Matanzas, Cuba, and baptized José Silves- tre de los Dolores on January 17, 1836. In the baptismal record, his mother was identified as María Escolástica, a morena libre (freed Black woman) and the father was listed as “unknown.” The baby boy was described as a párbulo pardo (brown infant). Almost 20 years later, on Octo- ber 16, 1855, an addendum in the margin of his baptismal record clarified his parentage: a fa- ther, Don Carlos White, was named alongside his mother, María Escolástica Lafitta, presum- ably adding the Hispanized surname of a former French slave owner named Lafitte. Thus, their son was officially recognized as José Silvestre de los Dolores White Lafitta. María and Carlos, who was 35 years older, nev- er married—colonial law generally prohibited interracial marriages, with some exceptions— though they raised a son and three younger daughters and lived together until Carlos’s RAVINIAMAGAZINE • AUGUST 5 – AUGUST 18, 2024 88 DARIOACOSTA