Program Book - CSO MusicNOW: Perspectives

TWENTY-FIFTH SEASON

CSO MUSIC NOW

Jessie Montgomery Mead Composer-in-Residence

Monday, October 24, 2022, at 7:00

Perspectives

Musicians from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Lidiya Yankovskaya Conductor

singleton

Jasper Drag

Yuan-Qing Yu, violin

John Bruce Yeh, clarinet

Patrick Godon, piano

simon

Lickety Split

Juan Horie, cello

Patrick Godon, piano

singleton Be Natural

Jessie Montgomery, violin

Danny Lai, viola

Juan Horie, cello simon loop

Baird Dodge, violin

Danny Lai, viola

Juan Horie, cello

simon Warmth from Other Suns

Yuan-Qing Yu, violin

Baird Dodge, violin Danny Lai, viola Juan Horie, cello

montgomery Sergeant McCauley

Just Now

Makina

Just Now (reprise)

My Father, How Long?

Lay Dis Body Down

Tim Munro, flute

Anne Bach, oboe John Bruce Yeh, clarinet

Abby Black, horn

Liam Jackson, bassoon

Jessie Montgomery, violin Susan Synnestvedt, violin Danny Lai, viola Juan Horie, cello

There will be no intermission.

Major support for CSO MusicNOW is generously provided by the Zell Family Foundation, Cindy Sargent †, the Sally Mead Hands Foundation, and the Julian Family Foundation. This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.

† Deceased

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alvin singleton

Born December 28, 1940; Brooklyn, New York

Jasper Drag (1999–2000)

Alvin Singleton on Jasper Drag

Jasper Drag was commissioned by the Verdehr Trio and Michigan State University. The creation of this work began in early 1999 in Atlanta, Georgia, and with long interruptions during the process, was not completed until September 4, 2000, at the Civitella Ranieri in Umbertide, Italy. The title refers to the June 7, 1998, Jasper, Texas,

incident of three white men dragging a Black to his death after chaining him to the back of a pickup truck. This composition is not intended to tell the story nor to evoke images. Jasper Drag is a marker on the collective memory of a nation still growing. This score is inscribed to the mem ory of James Byrd, Jr., the victim of this racially motivated act.

carlos simon

Born 1986; Atlanta, Georgia

Lickety Split (2015)

Carlos Simon on Lickety Split

As a young boy, I worked with my grandfather during the summers paving driveways in Rocky Mount, Virginia. He was a taskmaster. Things had to be done the right way and with haste when he asked for it in his own playful way. He would say, “Pull those weeds up lickety split!” or “Shovel that dirt lickety split!” It was tortuous work during the hot summer days but ultimately proved quite lucrative at the end of the day when my grandfather paid me for the day’s work.

This piece, in its whimsical character, draws on inspiration from that colloquial phrase,

lickety-split, coined in the 1860s. It meant to do something quickly or in a hurry. I used the rhythmic syllabic stresses of the phrase as a main motif for the piece (li-cke-ty-split). To create a playful mood, I used bouncing pizzicato lines in the cello part over wildly syncopated rhythms played by the piano. Harmonically, the central idea moves in parallel motion in thirds between the voices. As the piece develops to an agitated state, both instruments relentlessly rhythmically drive to a climactic ending—done so in a lickety split fashion.

alvin singleton

Be Natural (1974)

Be Natural is a work for any three bowed string instruments. It adds to Singleton’s list of works featuring improvisation by the players. The score in essence calls for a game involving musical

elements, none of which are in traditional nota tion. None, that is, except for the pitch B-natural, a half step below middle C, which must be sounded and held by at least one musician

throughout the piece. Additionally, the rules of this game call for each player to perform the pic togrammed notational requirements indicated in nine different “boxes,” calling for loud or soft, long or short notes and passages to be impro vised against the constantly sounded B-natural. Of course, all three musicians sounding the B simultaneously for a long time, which happens at

both beginning and ending of the piece, can also have a surprisingly psycho-musical effect on the listener. An early work by Singleton, it reflects an experimental trust in the musicality of the per forming artists. . . . Needless to say, no two per formances of Be Natural will ever be the same.

Carman Moore

carlos simon loop (2020)

Warmth from Other Sons (2020)

Carlos Simon on loop

The pandemic of COVID-19 has continued to influence my social, professional, and per sonal life in ways that I never imagined. Day to day life has been like a continuous “loop”—a never-ending quarantine loop. This piece reflects my feelings about the mandated stay-at-home order during this crisis.

Carlos Simon on Warmth from Other Sons

Between 1916 and 1970, the mass exodus of African Americans leaving the rural South, seeking homes in the urban West, Midwest, and Northeast became known as the Great Migration. Inspired by Isabel Wilkerson’s book

The Warmth of Other Suns, I chose to bring these stories to life through the voice of a string quartet.

jessie montgomery

Born December 8, 1981; New York, New York

Sergeant McCauley (2019)

Sergeant McCauley draws from Jessie Montgomery’s personal history. Scored for wind quintet and string quartet, the work is inspired by the Great Migration, the movement of more than six million African Americans over the early and mid-twentieth century from the rural South to urban centers across the United States. The work specifically tracks the journey of Montgomery’s great-grandfather, the Sergeant McCauley after whom the work is titled: a buffalo soldier who migrated northward before ultimately returning south to Mississippi.

Montgomery’s reconstruction of his journey is based as much on research (e.g., military records documenting his travels) as on family lore, nur tured in conversation with her mother and aunt.

Like a sound map of Sergeant McCauley’s travels, Montgomery’s score makes use of African American spirituals and work songs that would have been heard in the locales he likely passed. Sergeant McCauley’s five movements allude to these songs, each representing a stop along the way. The first movement is based on “Just Now,” a Methodist hymn thought to have

originated in the northern seaboard slave states (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina), which McCauley, a Virginia Methodist, may have known from his youth. The flute dreamily issues the tune over a quiet, whispered texture in the strings, before the full ensemble gradually joins in.

The second movement, “Makina,” depicts McCauley’s time in the military, working on the construction of the country’s young railroad system and the building of the Panama Canal. Unpitched air noises and key clicks in the wind instruments and percussive effects on the strings conjure a bustling construction scene.

Following a reprise of the opening hymn tune, the fourth movement features “My Father, How Long?,” a slave song whose words—“My

father, how long, poor sinner suffer here? And it won’t be long, poor sinner suffer here”—at once express a yearning for spiritual salvation and for freedom from the oppression of slavery.

The work’s final movement, “Lay Dis Body Down,” cites a funeral song said to originate from the region surrounding South Carolina, and represents Sergeant McCauley’s final rest ing place. Montgomery sets the song as a slow, meditative procession.

Patrick Castillo

Carman Moore is a composer, conductor, author, and music critic.

Patrick Castillo is a composer and writer living in New York City.

Major support for CSO MusicNOW is generously provided by the Zell Family Foundation, Cindy Sargent

Hands Foundation, and the Julian Family Foundation.

A statement from the artist Donovan Foote

For me, the music of Alvin Singleton and Carlos Simon has moments of disjointedness—at times haunting and then beautiful—and offers a feeling of the ethereal. It’s something like the sound of a memory existing somewhere between historical fact and a feeling. This first piece was important in developing the elements of language that would carry through on all four posters. Ink splatters, brushstrokes, coin rubbings, and instrument shapes began with this image, along with the motif of each program’s focal instrument. Here, the violin illustration exists more like the memory of a violin.

Artwork available at symphonystore.com/musicnow

profiles

Alvin Singleton Composer

Alvin Singleton was born in Brooklyn, New York, and attended New York University and Yale. As a Fulbright Scholar, he studied with Goffredo Petrassi at Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, Italy. After living and working in Europe for fourteen years, Singleton returned to the United States to become composer-inresidence with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (1985–88). He subsequently served as resident composer at Spelman College in Atlanta (1988–91), as UNISYS composer-in-residence with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (1996–97), and was the 2002–03 composer-in-residence with the Ritz Chamber Players of Jacksonville, Florida. In addition, he has served as visiting professor of composition at the Yale University School of Music.

Singleton has received numerous awards throughout his career. He is the recipient of a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship and was com missioned by the Serge Koussevitsky Music Foundation and American Composers Orchestra for the orchestral work When Given a Choice, which premiered at Carnegie Hall in April 2004. His other awards include the Kranichsteiner Music Prize by the City of Darmstadt, Germany, twice the Musikprotokoll Composition Prize by the Austrian Radio, the Mayor’s Fellowship in the Arts Award by the City of Atlanta, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Also in spring 2004, Singleton joined the American Composers Orchestra as Music Alive composer-in-residence and artistic advisor for the IMPROVISE! Festival. His music has been published exclusively worldwide by Schott Music since 1977, and is recorded on the Albany Records, Elektra/Nonesuch, First Edition, Tzadik, and Innova labels.

Carlos Simon Composer

Carlos Simon is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. His music ranges from concert music for large and small ensembles to film scores, with influences of jazz, gospel, and neoromanticism. Simon is composer-inresidence for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and frequently writes for the National Symphony Orchestra and Washington National Opera. This season, he has premieres scheduled with Brooklyn Art Song Society and the Boston and Detroit symphony orchestras in addition to a premiere with the Minnesota Orchestra of a large-scale tribute to George Floyd and the ongoing movement for racial justice. These follow other commissions from the New York and Los Angeles philharmonics and perfor mances by American Ballet Theatre and the Baltimore and London symphony orchestras.

Simon’s debut album for Decca, Requiem for the Enslaved, features a new work for spoken word, ensemble, and piano that honors the pass ing of the people bought and sold by university founders during the slave trade years. In 2018, the Navona Records label released Simon’s My Ancestor’s Gift, featuring music that incorporates spoken word and historic recordings to craft a multifaceted program of works inspired as much by the past as they are the present.

Simon earned his doctorate degree at the University of Michigan, where he studied with Michael Daugherty and Evan Chambers. He has also received degrees from Georgia State University and Morehouse College. Additionally, he studied in Baden, Austria; at the Hollywood Music Workshop with Conrad Pope; and at New York University’s Film Scoring Summer Workshop.

PHOTOS BY JO ELDREDGE MORRISSEY, TERRANCE RAGLAND

Jessie Montgomery Composer, Violin

Jessie Montgomery is an acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator. Recently named the 2023 Composer of the Year by Musical America, she is also the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation and the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, and her works are performed frequently around the world by leading musicians and ensembles. Her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of twenty-first century American sound and experience. Her growing body of work includes solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral works.

Montgomery enters her second season as the CSO’s Mead Composer-in-Residence. She serves as curator of the CSO MusicNOW series, for which she has also received commissions. In May 2022, Riccardo Muti led the world pre miere of her CSO-commissioned work Hymn for Everyone, the first of three works she will write for the Orchestra during her appointment.

Since 1999, Montgomery has been affiliated with the Sphinx Organization, which supports young African American and Latinx string play ers and she has served as composer-in-residence for the Sphinx Virtuosi, the organization’s flag ship professional touring ensemble.

Jessie began her violin studies at the Third Street Music School Settlement, one of the old est community organizations in the country. A founding member of PUBLIQuartet and former member of the Catalyst Quartet, she continues to maintain an active performance career as a violinist.

Montgomery holds degrees from the Juilliard School and New York University and is currently a doctoral candidate in music composition at Princeton University. She is professor of violin and composition at the New School.

Lidiya Yankovskaya Conductor

Conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya is a fiercely committed advocate for Slavic masterpieces, operatic rarities, and contemporary works on the leading edge of classical music. Since her appoint ment as Elizabeth Morse and Genius Music Director of Chicago Opera Theater in 2017, Yankovskaya has led the Chicago premieres of Jake Heggie’s Moby-Dick, Rachmaninov’s Aleko, Joby Talbot’s Everest, Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta, and Mark Adamo’s Becoming Santa Claus, as well as the world premiere of Dan Shore’s Freedom Ride. Her daring performances before and amid the pandemic earned recognition from the Chicago Tribune, which named her 2020 Chicagoan of the Year.

In the 2022–23 season, Yankovskaya makes a series of major orchestral debuts, including per formances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Sacramento Philharmonic, Knoxville Symphony, and Richmond Symphony. She also debuts at Santa Fe Opera in a new production of Dvořák’s Rusalka, at Staatsoper Hamburg with Eugene Onegin, and at English National Opera con ducting a newly staged production of Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. She leads the long-awaited world premieres of Edward Tulane at Minnesota Opera and The Life and Death(s) of Alan Turing at Chicago Opera Theater, where she also conducts the Chicago premiere of Szymanowski’s King Roger.

Yankovskaya is an alumna of the Dallas Opera’s Hart Institute for Women Conductors and the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship, and a proud two-time recipient of Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Awards. Yankovskaya is also the founder and artistic director of the Refugee Orchestra Project.

PHOTOS BY TODD ROSENBERG