Dialogo: Debut by cellist John-Henry Crawford

Born in Shreveport, Louisiana, cellist John-Henry Crawford has already made strides in the field of classical music, in one case as First Prize winner of the 2019 International Carlos Prieto Competition; and more recently with this debut release, Dialogo. Crawford chose the title after the unaccompanied cello work by Hungarian composer, György Ligeti. In it, the cello portrays both voices, of the composer and the woman he’d fallen for, hence the “dialogue” depicted in the music.

Mr. Crawford also shares the fascinating history of the cello he plays, which has been in his family for over a century. His grandfather, Dr. Robert Popper, saw “the writing on the wall” as Nazism was on the rise in Austria, made a decision that saved both his life and kept the instrument safe. Crawford shares the full story, as well as insight into the cello sonatas of Brahms and Shostakovich, in his conversation with John Pitman. Love seems to flow through each of the pieces that this American cellist plays and makes the voice of the cello a true treasure, rescued from almost certain destruction.

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Juneteenth

Juneteenth at All Classical Portand

Saturday, June 19th was the 156th anniversary of the day news of emancipation finally reached the westernmost area of the former Confederate states in Galveston Bay, Texas. On All Classical Portland, we’re honoring this Juneteenth with music by African-American composers, and other composers of African heritage. Here are a few of the works you can look forward to hearing this Juneteenth. 

Margaret Bonds

Dream Variation

By Margaret Bonds

American composer Margaret Bonds (1913-1972), a student of Florence Price and William Levi Dawson, was particularly prolific as a composer of vocal music. “Dream Variation,” from her cycle Three Dream Portraits, is a setting of the poem “Dream Variations” from The Dream Keeper, a 1932 collection by her friend and frequent collaborator Langston Hughes. Hughes and Bonds also collaborated on a musical, a cantata, and many more art songs. 

Valerie Coleman
Image courtesy of the composer’s website

Umoja: Anthem of Unity

By Valerie Coleman

The orchestral version of Umoja, by contemporary composer Valerie Coleman, was commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra and premiered in 2019. In her program note, Coleman explains that “Umoja” is “the Swahili word for Unity and the first principle of the African Diaspora holiday Kwanzaa.” Of the orchestral version, she adds, “This version honors the simple melody that ever was, but is now a full exploration into the meaning of freedom and unity. Now more than ever, Umoja has to ring as a strong and beautiful anthem for the world we live in today.”

Edmond Dédé

Mephisto Masque

By Edmond Dédé

Edmond Dédé (c.1827/9-1901) was born in New Orleans but emigrated to France to attend the Paris Conservatory and build a career as a composer and conductor. He composed Mephisto Masque in 1899, shortly after a concert tour in America, during which he’d faced much greater racial prejudice than he was used to in France. Mephisto Masque is a satirical piece with a prominent part for mirlitons, or kazoos – Dédé dedicated this snarky piece “aux Bigotopgonistes,” a pun which can mean either “to kazooists” or “to bigots.”  

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Violin Concerto in G minor, Op. 80

By Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) was one of the first composers of color to achieve international fame in classical music. He composed his Violin Concerto, Op. 80, for one of several visits to the United States. American violinist Maud Powell played the work’s premiere in Norfolk, Connecticut in July of 1912, less than three months before the composer’s untimely death in September of that year.  

William Levi Dawson

Negro Folk Symphony

By William Levi Dawson

William Levi Dawson (1899-1990) was an American composer and teacher. During his long tenure at Tuskegee University, he transformed the Tuskegee Choir into an ensemble of international acclaim. Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony premiered in 1934 in a performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski. Dawson’s program note from the premiere explains, “The themes are taken from what are popularly known as Negro Spirituals. In this composition, the composer has employed three themes taken from typical melodies over which he has brooded since childhood, having learned them at his mother’s knee.” 

Scott Joplin

Treemonisha: Act 3 Finale: “A Real Slow Drag”

By Scott Joplin

Scott Joplin (1867/1868-1917) is well-known as the King of Ragtime; he was also one of the first African-American composers to write operas. His second opera, Treemonisha (1910) is a magical tale celebrating the power of education for African-American women and men. The opera remained unperformed during Joplin’s lifetime. In 1976, a year after the belated professional premiere of Treemonisha, Joplin was a awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize. 

Dumisani Maraire
Photograph courtesy of Discogs.com

Mother Nozipo

By Dumisani Maraire

Zimbabwean composer and mbira virtuoso Dumisani Maraire (1944-1999) spent much of his career teaching ethnomusicology at universities in Washington State, and introducing the Pacific Northwest to African musics. He composed Mother Nozipo, a musical tribute to his mother, in 1990 for the Kronos Quartet. The work is scored for string quartet and percussion, and Maraire appears as the percussionist in the work’s recording, from the Kronos Quartet’s 1992 album Pieces of Africa

Nkeiru Okoye
Photograph courtesy of the composer’s website

Dancing Barefoot in the Rain

By Nkeiru Okoye

Nkeiru Okoye is a contemporary American composer who grew up in New York and Nigeria. In 2020, she became the inaugural recipient of the Florence Price Award for Composition. “Dancing Barefoot in the Rain” comes from Okoye’s African Sketches, a four-movement piano suite completed in 2008. The suite has found a place in the international repertoire of contemporary concert pianists. 

Florence Price

Symphony no. 3 in c minor

By Florence Price

American composer Florence Price (1887-1953) is perhaps best known as the first African-American woman to have a symphony performed by a major orchestra: her Symphony No. 1 in E minor, which the Chicago Symphony premiered in 1933. She composed her Third Symphony in 1940, for the Detroit Civic Orchestra, a branch of the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Music Project. Eleanor Roosevelt visited Chicago in 1940 and heard a rehearsal of Price’s symphony. In an article recounting her visit, she praised both the WPA orchestra and the composer, saying, “They played two movements in a new symphony by Florence Price, one of the few women to write symphonic music.”

William Grant Still

Afro-American Symphony

By William Grant Still

William Grant Still (1895-1978) is often called the “Dean of African American Composers,” and with good reason: he was the first African-American to have an opera premiered by a major opera company; he was the first African-American to conduct a major American orchestra; and in 1931, his Symphony No. 1 in A-flat Major, “Afro-American,” became the first symphony by an African-American composer premiered by a major orchestra. Built on a single blues-inflected motif that appears in the first movement, Still’s symphony explores African-American history in four movements, which he entitled “Longing,” “Sorrow,” “Humor,” and “Aspiration.”  

woman playing cello inside a large sculpture

Nancy Ives x AUXART

In a continued effort to support collaborative relationships between artists in the local community, on Saturday, June 12th, All Classical Portland facilitated an artistic collaboration between visual artist Philip Krohn and cellist Nancy Ives.

The AUXART sculpture and sound work grew from Philip Krohn’s 9 week residency in Portland’s new creative space Building 5. AUXART is a play on the idea of using an installation space and large scale structural sculpture to amplify various creative inputs across artistic disciplines. As an exclamation point and project finale Nancy Ives played her cello from the heart of the sculpture. Nancy’s performance combined the work of Bach and works of her own composition she felt were harmonically tuned to the spirit and feeling of the sculptural environment.

Nancy Ives’ program included —

Prelude from Suite for cello and Vocal Obligato
J.S. Bach: Prelude from Suite in G Major for Violoncello Solo
Nancy Ives: Allemande from Suite for cello and Vocal Obligato
J.S. Bach: Allemande from Suite in G Major for Voloncello Solo
Nancy Ives: Sarabande! from Suite for Cello and Vocal Obligato
J.S. Bach: Sarabande! from Suite in G Major for Voloncello Solo
Celilo Fisherman by Nancy Ives, poem by Ed Edmo (used with permission)
On the Root Glacier by Nancy Ives

man playing the guitar with a forest in the background

Balkan Guitarist Miloš Debuts New Guitar Concertos

Montenegro-born, and London-based classical guitarist Miloš, celebrates his 10th anniversary with the recording label Decca by releasing The Moon and the Forest, which includes two concertos written for him.

Miloš (whose full name is Miloš Karadaglić), asked two composers as famous for their film music as for their concert works: Joby Talbot (who has residences in both Oregon and Great Britain), and Howard Shore. Both created concertos that the guitarist considers a dream come true: works that truly integrate the guitar and the orchestra, rather than works that pit the soloist against the orchestra. They are very original, distinctive works; atmospheric, rhythmic, melodic, exciting and meditative. These concertos both, as Miloš says in his conversation with John Pitman, “allow the guitar to sing.”

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Lili'uokalani

The Songs of Lili‘uokalani, Queen of Hawai‘i

Lili‘uokalani (1838-1917) was the Queen Regnant of Hawai‘i from 1891-1893, and was the nation’s last monarch. During her reign, she resisted the annexation of Hawai‘i by the United States, and after the coup that deposed her, she remained dedicated to the interests of the Hawaiian people.  

A trained singer, choir director and organist, Lili‘uokalani composed more than 150 mele, Hawaiian songs and chants. Her legacy of music remains greatly loved: she is one of the most-performed composers among Hawaiian musicians. The Queen’s songs transcend genre and are constantly reinterpreted, whether it be in popular or folk styles, as accompaniment to Hawaiian dance, in hymnlike choral arrangements, or as songs with piano. 

adults and children sitting at a table coloring

Oregon ArtsWatch Highlights ICAN & RII

We are delighted to share that All Classical Portland’s International Children’s Arts Network (ICAN) and the Recording Inclusivity Initiative (RII) have been featured in an article by Oregon ArtsWatch.

In the article “Radio Rejuvenation,” Brett Campbell highlights All Classical Portland’s programs and initiatives that strive to bring classical music to a wider, more diverse audience.


 

ICAN
“I think All Classical Portland has seized the opportunity to influence the future,” shared All Classical Portland’s President & CEO Suzanne Nance. “We want to make sure children feel like they have a home in classical music, a place in the concert hall. All our initiatives are aimed at amplifying young voices and encouraging them to tell stories of their communities.”

RII
All Classical Portland’s newest initiative seeks to address the gap of classical music composers and musicians from underrepresented communities that make it into the concert hall and onto the airwaves: “The Recording Inclusivity Initiative will elevate and amplify underrepresented composers and their music through the new recordings we produce and distribute together. We hope that the work we do through RII has a ripple effect that inspires others to act,” states Suzanne Nance.

RII recordings begin this week at NM Bodecker Foundation’s Halfling Studio. Flutist, and All Classical Portland’s 2020 – 2021 Artist In Residence, Adam Eccleston and pianist Monica Ohuchi will launch the initiative’s next phase by recording RII’s posthumous awardee Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s Sonata for Flute and Piano.

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You can read the article at Oregon ArtsWatch to learn more how ICAN and RII are working to ensure a diverse playlist, and broad and inclusive access to classical music.

painting of people on the subway

Simone Dinnerstein’s “An American Mosaic”

John’s latest conversation with American pianist Simone Dinnerstein on her second recording made at home during the pandemic: An American Mosaic. The title is for the multi-movement piece written for her by Richard Danielpour who, finding himself isolated during lockdown, found solace in Ms. Dinnerstein’s recordings. Each movement is a portrait of groups of people who responded to the pandemic, both in helpful and obstructive ways.

An American Mosaic was commissioned by the Oregon Bach Festival and debuted (online, understandably), by Dinnerstein, and is now available on disc. John’s recorded chat with Simone sheds more light on this timely, moving and very personal work.

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JAHM Image

A Playlist of Music by Jewish-American Women

Composers, teachers, performers, conductors, singersand cantors: the outstanding contributions of Jewish women to American music are ubiquitous. May is Jewish-American Heritage Month, and as part of our celebration at All Classical Portland, we hope you enjoy this playlist of music by remarkable Jewish-American women. 

Check out our Spotify Playlist, which features these composers in a slightly different lineup of compositions.

person holding a video camera

Where We Live: Outside The Frame

Tune in this Saturday at 5:15pm as we explore Outside the Frame, a program that teaches filmmaking to youth experiencing houselessness, through the Where We Live series.

Outside the Frame is an independent nonprofit that offers a model educational and vocational program, where young people create films about issues that matter to them and share them with the public. Nili Yosha, Founder, Artistic and Executive Director, shares how homeless & marginalized youth become the directors of their own films and lives.

Where We Live is a radio program that shines a spotlight on a variety of organizations in our community that are providing programs in art, theater or music that explore the intersection of art and social issues. Through this newly branded series of on-air spotlights, we seek to promote equity, foster inclusion and encourage emotional literacy.

Where We Live is part of All Classical Portland’s JOY (Joyous Outreach to You/th) program dedicated to equity and inclusivity.

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