First Person: Seeing America Program Notes

PROGRAM

FIRST PERSON: SEEING AMERICA Photographs from the Metropolitan Museum of Art THU / OCT 11 7:30 PM MULTIMEDIA Lily Knight, narrator Bill Pullman, narrator James Hanrahan, director

Brian Doser, technical director

15

VISIT THE BROADSTAGE.COM

Music by Ensemble Galilei Isaac Alderson, flute and pipes Hanneke Cassel, fiddle Ryan McKasson, fiddle Kathryn Montoya, oboes, whistle, recorder Jackie Moran, percussion Sue Richards, harp Carolyn Anderson Surrick, viola da gamba

OCT 2012

PROGRAM

Part One Run Time: 45 minutes

Part Two Run Time: 45 minutes

The West Reading: Navajo Prayer No Longer Mourn for Me............... Sue Richards Klövsjö Brudmarsch ........ Swedish Bridal March Full Rigged Ship .......................Traditional Irish Cluck Old Hen .....Traditional Appalachian Tune What Wondrous Love Is This? ....................From Southern Harmony (1835) Reading: 10 (from Geo-Bestiary) .................................. Jim Harrison (b. 1937) Reading: always your mother, jane hickok ................ Calamity Jane Hickok (1852-1903) Highlander’s Farewell ........ Traditional Scottish 1921 ...................Jackie Moran/Traditional Irish Exile of Erin ....................Tony Sullivan (b. 1950) Fiddle Duet Reading: A Change of Worlds ............................. Chief Seattle (1780-1866)

What They Saw Te Mane Laudum Carmine (from O Lux Beate Trinitas) .......... Micheal Praetorius (1571-1621) Button to Secret Passage Klövsjö Brudmarsch ........ Swedish Bridal March Polska av Jakob Aslund ..... arr. Karl Erik Nygard Slangpolska ...............Traditional from Smaland, Sweden Freedom Reading: So This Is Nebraska ......................................... Ted Kooser (b. 1939) Salmon Fishing ........................Traditional Irish Reading: Atlas ..........Claudia Emerson (b. 1957) Pretty Girl Milking the Cow .......Traditional Irish Dream of the Wanderer ....... Carolyn A. Surrick Reading: The Forever War ................................. Dexter Filkins (b. 1961) Cluck Old Hen .............Traditional Appalachian Reading: Knoxville: Summer 1915 ............................... James Agee(1909-1955) Hector the Hero .................. James Scott Skinner (1843-1927) Reading: I Started from Baltimore .................... Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) Polonaise .......................... Traditional Swedish Squire Wood’s Lament .................... Turlough O’Carolan (1670-1738) Reading: at the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, 1989 ... Lucille Clifton (1936-2010) O’Neill’s March ........................Traditional Irish Reading: Gettysburg Address ....................... Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) Monday Morning Reel ............................Phil Cunningham (b. 1960)

The Great Depression The Dust Bowl...................... Carolyn A. Surrick An American Odyssey ............................ Jane Addams (1860-1935) Reading: Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? .............................. Studs Terkel (1912-2008) Ground upon a Scotch Humour ........................... Nicola Matteis (1650-1709) Reading: The Layers .......................... Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006) Culloden ................................. Ryan McKasson There will be one 15 minute intermission.

16

ABOUT

17

VISIT THE BROADSTAGE.COM

Transcendent and soulful music winds around ian, ER, The Practice, NYPD Blue, Law & Order, the text as high-resolution images are pro- Chicago Hope, Family Law, and Ally McBeal, jected on a large screen in the center of the to name a few), in feature films (Changeling, stage. Actor Bill Pullman and actress Lily Knight Around the Bend, The Assassination of Richard brilliantly bring people, events, and places to Nixon, The Singing Detective, The Secretary, life. Begin with the strength, diversity, and Dahmer, AI). Her theatrical experience includes depth of the photography collection of The on Broadway (Agnes of God, As Is, The Musical Metropolitan Museum of Art: photographs Comedy Murders of 1940), Off-Broadway (Holy

by Walker Evans, Edward Curtis, Alfred Stieg- Terror, The Early Girl, The Fiery Furnace, to litz, Paul Strand, Weegee, and Thomas Eakins. name a few), and plays at many regional theThose images are accompanied by the words atres across the country. She is currently comof Langston Hughes, Carson McCullers, Damon pleting her first novel.

Runyan, John Muir, Frederick Douglass, Studs Terkel, and others. The soundtrack is the evoc- Bill Pullman, narrator, started acting profesative music of Ensemble Galilei – traditional sionally in New York theatre in 1983, and shortly music from Scotland and Ireland, some Bach, thereafter began his film career which curand new compositions featuring fiddles, harp, rently spans nearly 50 features. His movie work viola da gamba, percussion, banjo, whistles, includes blockbuster comedies (Ruthless Peoand oboe. What people! The haunted faces of ple, Spaceballs, Casper), dramas (The Serpent rural Americans as they struggle to survive the and the Rainbow, The Accidental Tourist, Igby Dust Bowl, indelible portraits of Native Ameri- Goes Down), romantic comedies (Sleepless in cans. The events that shaped a nation - the Seattle, While You Were Sleeping), action (IndeCivil War, the Great Depression, the immigrant pendence Day), thrillers (Malice), Westerns (The experience. And what places – from Virginian, Wyatt Earp), film noir (The “Transcendent the sidewalks of New York to the Last Seduction, Lost Highway, The and soulful music” majesty of Yosemite. Great phoZero Effect), and horror (The Grudge). tographers captured it all – hardship, war and Recent films he has completed: Killer Inside despair, and the gritty determination of ex- Me (with Casey Affleck), Rio Sex Comedy (with traordinary people in a magnificent land. This Irene Jacob and Charlotte Rampling), Bottle is what these extraordinary photographers saw Shock (with Alan Rickman), Phoebe in Wonder– First Person: Seeing America. land (with Elle Fanning and Felicity Huffman), Surveillance (with Julia Ormond), and Your Lily Knight, narrator, as a company member Name Here (a fantasy on the last days of author of Circle Rep in New York (and Circle West in Philip K. Dick). His theater work includes acting Los Angeles), has collaborated in the develop- in the Broadway revival of David Mamet’s Olement of many new plays, several of which she anna opposite Julia Stiles, the Broadway world helped develop from workshop to Off-Broad- premiere of Edward Albee’s The Goat (Drama way to Broadway production. She is an acting Desk nomination), and in Albee’s most recent teacher and coach in Los Angeles and a mem- production Peter and Jerry (Drama Desk nomiber of the classical acting company, Antaeus. nation), as well as productions of new plays by She’s played roles on over 50 television shows Beth Henley (with Holly Hunter) and Thomas (Big Love, The Mentalist, Boston Legal, Weeds, Babe (with Tom Waits). Mr. Pullman directed The Shield, Without a Trace, Buffy, The Guard- for the anthology TV series Night Visions, and

OCT 2012

ABOUT

directed and produced the TNT movie The Virginian (Wrangler Award/Best Picture, 2000).

He also starred in a television mini-series for NBC entitled Revelations, and starred in the HBO film Too Big To Fail for director Curtis Hanson. In 2011 he was seen portraying convicted killer Oswald Danes in the Starz Original series Torchwood: Miracle Day. Mr. Pullman has been an Ambassador for the MS (Multiple Sclerosis) Society since 1998; he serves on the board of Cornerstone Theater Company (using theater collaborations to engage the issues of underserved communities), and has helped facilitate health programs in his hometown of Hornell, New York, where his father practiced medicine. Mr. Pullman received a BA from the State University College at Oneonta, and an MFA in Theater Directing from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He taught in the Theater Department at Montana State University in Bozeman for two years before heading to New York.

explores the history of America through the eyes of its soldiers. His work on Spirit as a writer, sound and visual designer, and researcher launched a new career. In 2006 he joined with Ensemble Galilei to create First Person: Stories from the Edge of the World.

Isaac Alderson, flute and pipes, was born in Chicago and lived there until the age of 18. His earliest memories of music involve his father, who sings and plays blues and jazz on the harmonica, guitar, keyboard, and saxophone. He introduced Isaac at an early age to records from his favorite artists, and encouraged young Isaac to experiment with various instruments and to learn to play by ear and from memory.

When Isaac was about 12 years old, he discovered Irish traditional music, and says “there was no turning back. In particular, the sound of the uilleann pipes had me completely enthralled. My mother had a friend who played this crazy instrument, and he kindly gave me James Hanrahan, director, grew up in mid- a practice set of pipes and some records on century South Florida as the son of a newspa- loan. I soon became completely obsessed, and per photographer, in a house filled with pho- during my teenage years spent countless hours tographs, photographers, and practicing, listening, and learn“The events that photographic moments. He has ing about traditional music.” At shaped a nation…” worked in professional theater 14, Mr. Anderson met Laurence since the early 1970s as a technician and de- Nugent, the great flute and whistle player from signer in Washington, D.C. With his brothers, County Fermanagh. Mr. Anderson studied prihe founded one of the East Coast’s first video marily with Nugent for the next four years, as companies, Future View, Inc. The brothers pio- well as with pipers Al Purcell, Patrick Cannady, neered video projection and computer display Kieran O’Hare, and many others, whenever he technologies, starting with one very big TV and could pin them down for a lesson. Many trips a VW bug, and growing to hundreds of screens, to Ireland over subsequent years helped to projectors, monitors, links, and system de- fan the flames of his enthusiasm for the musigns. Since 1987, he has been an independent sic, and gave him the opportunity to study and producer working with a wide variety of cor- play with outstanding musicians. At 18, Mr. Anporate clients nationally and internationally. derson moved to New York in order to attend In 2001-06, he brought his theatre and video college and throw himself into the city’s pheskills together on the US Army’s annual Spirit of nomenal Irish music scene. He began playing America celebration. Performed before arena gigs there soon afterwards, and met “more audiences of 8,000 to 10,000 people, the show wonderful characters and players than I can 18

AB0UT

19

VISIT THE BROADSTAGE.COM

possibly list.” In 2002, Mr. Anderson became and Alasdair Fraser’s Valley of the Moon Fiddle the first non-Irish person to win three All-Ire- School in California. She continues to be an acland Senior Championships titles on the same tive member of the Boston music scene, and is day, which helped him gain recognition and featured on Darol Anger’s CD Diary of a Fiddler the confidence to pursue music as a full-time on the Compass Records label. career. After finishing college, he did a twoyear stint touring with Eileen Ivers and Immi- Ryan McKasson, fiddle, claimed the National grant Soul, and he thanks Eileen and “the boys” Scottish Junior Fiddle Championship in 1995 for teaching him about what it is to be a stage and went on to become the youngest National performer. Since leaving them, Mr. Scottish Fiddle Open Champion “In short, Anderson has played with groups in 1996. He has shared the stage magic was created.” and individual musicians across with Elvis Costello, Beck, Bjork, —Gazettes.com the United States, Canada, and Gavin Friday, and composer PhilIreland, most extensively with Comas, the show lip Glass, among others. His Seattle-based band, Celtic Crossroads, Jameson’s Revenge, and the McKassons, plays to packed houses, bringing an Bronx Boys.

American sensibility to traditional Scottish folksongs that have the feel of Celtic music blended Hanneke Cassel, fiddle, is the 1997 U.S. Nation- with the spirit of folk rock and bluegrass. al Scottish Fiddle Champion. She holds a Bachelor of Music in Violin Performance from Berk- Kathryn Montoya, oboes, whistle & recorder, lee College of Music, and she has performed is completing a doctorate at Indiana Univerand taught across the globe. Her fiddling has sity, where she studied historical oboes with graced the stages of Boston’s Symphony Hall Washington McClain and recorder with Eva (opening for Judy Collins), Mountain Stage, The Legêne. She holds degrees from Oberlin ConPlaza Hotel, Lincoln Center, the Boston Hatch servatory and Indiana University. Ms. Montoya Shell, and the Kennedy Center Millennium has performed with many ensembles, including Stage. A native of Port Orford, Oregon, Ms. Cas- Apollo’s Fire, The Newberry Consort, Ensemble sel started playing classical violin when she was Arion, the Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Opera 8 years old. She met fiddler Carol Ann Wheeler Theatre, Aradia Ensemble, and the Washington when she was 10 at a Texas-style fiddle con- Bach Consort. She is a recipient of the prestitest, started taking fiddle lessons with her, and gious Performers Certificate at Indiana Univerbegan competing in contests throughout the sity and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to Northwest. In 1991, Ms. Cassel captured the U.S. study in Germany. Kathryn was a finalist in the National Scottish Jr. Championship. With this American Bach Soloist Competition and has aphonor came a scholarship to study on the Isle peared as a soloist with the Bloomington Early of Skye, Scotland with the renowned Scottish Music Festival Orchestra and the Indianapolis fiddler Alasdair Fraser and Cape Breton master Baroque Orchestra. In the summer of 2005 she Buddy MacMaster. These two quickly became performed with the Boston Early Music Festival her fiddle heroes and continue to inspire her Orchestra in the world premiere of Johann Matmusic to this day. Ms. Cassel’s exuberance for theson’s Boris Goudenow and was on faculty at fiddling is also a product of the summers of her Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute. Ms. teen years, spent in fiddle camps in Scotland, Montoya has recorded for the Naxos label.

Mark O’Connor’s Fiddle Camp in Nashville,

OCT 2012

ABOUT

Jackie Moran, percussion, was born in Tipper- and toured Norway and Sweden with the Harpa ary, the son of an accordion player. Ten-year- ensemble. She has played for Presidents Clinton old Jackie and his family immigrated to Chicago and Bush, Queen Elizabeth of England, and sat where he quickly began drumming with the best in with the Chieftains Irish band. She has served players in the Irish music scene. The young boy as president of SHSA and the Washington, D.C., became the man who is preeminent in Chicago Folk Harp Society. She currently teaches and diIrish music. Famed fiddler Liz Carroll says that’s rects the harp program at the Ohio Scottish Arts true. “I just think he’s the best of the best in our School (OSAS), has taught at the Fairbanks Sumarea of the country - and all over. I don’t want mer Arts Festival in Alaska, Summerkeys Music to give him a swelled head but he’s a really ter- School in Maine, and most of the major harp rific drummer.” A founding and driving force of festivals in the US. She has written many origisuch influential bands as The Drovers, Wilding, nal tunes and several books of arrangements, Comas, Bua, and The Otters, Mr. Moran is a fix- and has a long list of recordings to her credit. ture in the studio and in concert settings, sym- www.suerichards.net pathetically accompanying such great artists as Daire Bracken, Kevin Burke, Dennis Cahill, Liz Carolyn Anderson Surrick, viola da gamba, reCarroll, John Doyle, Alain Genty, Martin Hayes, ceived a BA in music from UCSC and an MA in Paddy Keenan, Philip Masure, David Munnelly, musicology from George Washington University.

Aidan Burke, Daithi Rua, and Jimmy Keane. Mr. She founded Ensemble Galilei in 1990 and in this Moran’s talents have also led him to appear extraordinarily democratic organization her ofon stage with Riverdance, and to help form ficial title has always been “Navigatrix” – which and perform with the Trinity Irish Dance Com- refers to her uncanny ability to keep the group pany. And when Hollywood needs a musician on the road and bring new projects to fruition. to play the part, and look it as well, you’ll see She has worked with The Hubble Space TeleMr. Moran. Backdraft (1991), Blink (1993), Trav- scope Institute to create A Universe of Dreams, eler (1997), and The Road to Perdition (2002) all partnered with The National Geographic Socisaw fit to feature Mr. Moran and ety on First Person: Stories from “Great photographers his Bodhrán. Living just outside of the Edge of the World, and now captured it all-hardship, Chicago with his wife, Amy, and oversees Ensemble Galilei’s colwar, and despair, and the their daughters, Caroline and Solaboration with the Metropolitan gritty determination of phie, Mr. Moran also teaches the Museum of Art, First Person: Seeextraordinary people.”

Bodhrán – and makes them, too! ing America. She was in the film The Pelican Brief; she has recorded for Dorian, Richards, harp, is a traditional musician and Maggie’s Music, Telarc, NPR Classics, and Sono Sue Richards collector of tunes. As a child she studied classi- Luminus; and she teaches workshops and semical harp in Ohio with Lucy Lewis and Jean Har- nars on the business of music. Most recently, riman, and then turned to the Irish and Scottish her playing has taken her, with Sue Richards and music of her heritage. She won the American Ginger Hildebrand, to The Walter Reed Army National Scottish Harp Championship four Medical Center to play for wounded warriors. times and is a Scottish Harp Society of America The warriors and their families are the inspira(SHSA) Distinguished Judge. Ms. Richards has tion for her book of poetry, Between War and performed at Celtic Connections and the Ed- Here which can be found at www.uppergreeninburgh International Harp Festival in Scotland, books.com.

20

ABOUT

Photo Credits

[Migrant Pea Picker’s Makeshift Home, Nipomo, California] February, 1936 Courtesy, The Dorthea Lange Collection Oakland Museum of California

All the photographs shown in First Person: Seeing America are in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. To view the photographs again and to learn more about them, visit www.metmuseum.org/seeing_america

Helen Levitt Ansel Adams

[Two Masked Boys Playing, One Climbing a Tree, New York City] 1938 [Children Playing Around and on Top of a Door Frame, New York City] 1939 [Four Boys in “Beau Geste” Headgear, New York City] ca. 1940 [Three Kids on a Stoop, New York City] 1939 [Button to a Secret Passage, New York City] 1938 Copyright, The Estate of Helen Levitt Courtesy of The Estate of Helen Levitt

Rocks, Alabama Hills, Owens Valley, California, ca. 1950 Barn, Bamboo, Laguna Niguel, California, 1962 Road after Rain, Northern California, 1960 Copyright 2011, The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust Courtesy, The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Bill Arnold Heart’s Brook Farm, Hadley, Massachusetts, 1972 Copyright Bill Arnold Courtesy of the Photographer

Nicholas Nixon Lucy Ashjian

Covington, Kentucky [Boys with Shirts Off Against House, in Sun] 1982 Copyright, Nicholas Nixon Courtesy of The Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, CA

Arthur Rothstein Harry Callahan

Son of Sharecropper Mississippi Country, Arkansas [Boy, Barefoot and Bare-chested Sitting on Wooden Porch] 1935 [African-American Family at Gee’s Bend, Alabama] 1937 Father and Son in a Dust Storm, Cimarron County, Oklahoma 1936 Copyright, The Estate of Arthur Rothstein Courtesy of Grace Rothstein

Eleanor, 1947 Copyright, The Estate of Harry Callahan Courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Bruce Davidson Brooklyn Gang [Group of Teenagers in Restaurant] 1959 Copyright, Bruce Davidson Courtesy of Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos

Andreas Feininger

Stephen Shore

Midtown Manhattan Seen from Weehawken, New Jersey, ca. 1945 Copyright, The Estate of Andreas Feininger Courtesy of Bonnie Benrubi Gallery, New York

[Wrecked Truck in Woods] ca. 1970 Copyright, Stephen Shore Courtesy of Stephen Shore

Robert Gober

Aaron Siskind

Untitled (Detail from 1978-2000) [American Flag on Beach] 2000 Copyright, Robert Gober Courtesy of Robert Gober

Gloucester [Boys Playing on Dock] 1944 Copyright, Aaron Siskind Foundation Courtesy of the Aaron Siskind Foundation

John Goodman

Edward Steichen

The Schlitz Boys/Boston July 26, 1975 Copyright, John Goodman Courtesy of John Goodman

Agnes Ernst 1908 Copyright, The Estate of Edward Steichen Courtesy of The Estate of Edward Steichen

Dorthea Lange Abandoned Farm in the Dustbowl, Coldwater District, near Dalhart, Texas, June 1938 Migrant Mother of Seven, Age Thirty-two, Pea Pickers in California, 1936 The Road West [U.S. 54 in Southern New Mexico] 1938

21

VISIT THE BROADSTAGE.COM

[Street Scene with Large Group of Men] 1935-43 Bowery Triplets [Three Men in Hats on Street] 1935-43 Courtesy of the Estate of Lucy Ashjian