11/9/24 Concert Program Notes, by Susan Swinburne
Jessie Montgomery – Coincident Dances
American composer Jessie Montgomery’s rising star is really more like a comet. Born (1981) and raised in the diverse and lively lower east side of Manhattan, she is a graduate of Juilliard (BA, violin performance) and New York University (MA, Composition for Film and Multimedia) and is currently a doctoral candidate in musical composition at Princeton. Meanwhile, the list of her awards and her past and present professional affiliations and projects is akin to Wonder Woman’s resumé. Highlights include: 2024 Grammy winner; Musical America’s 2023 Composer of the Year; ASCAP’s Leonard Bernstein award; Composer-in-Residence with Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Bard College, and the Sphinx Virtuosi; commissions for the National Symphony, Music Academy of the West, and the New York Philharmonic, among others; and new works for soprano Julia Bullock and violinist Joshua Bell. She continues to perform as a founding member of PUBLIQuartet, with Yo-Yo Ma’s Silkroad Ensemble and others, and she teaches violin and composition at The New School.
About the work on tonight’s program, Montgomery says, “Coincident Dances is inspired by the sounds found in New York’s various cultures, capturing the frenetic energy and multicultural aural palette one hears even in a short walk through a New York City neighborhood. The work is a fusion of several different sound-worlds: English consort, samba, mbira dance music from Ghana, swing, and techno.”
“My reason for choosing these styles sometimes stemmed from an actual experience of accidentally hearing a pair simultaneously, which happens most days of the week walking down the streets of New York, or one time when I heard a parked car playing Latin jazz while I had rhythm and blues in my headphones. Some of the pairings are merely experiments. Working in this mode, the orchestra takes on the role of a DJ of a multicultural dance track.”
William Grant Still – Symphony No. 5 “Western Hemisphere”
William Grant Still, born in 1895 just 30 years after the Civil War and emancipation, has been called the first composer to write truly “American” music. Often referred to as the dean of black classical composers, his prolific career spanned six decades and was peppered with major benchmark accomplishments. He won a Rosenwald and two Guggenheim fellowships. He was invited to compose the theme song for the 1938 New York World’s Fair, which played continuously throughout the 6 months of the exposition (but, due to separatist racial laws in New York, he had to wait for “Negroes Day” to attend). He was the first black musician to conduct his own work with a major American orchestra, in 1936 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Hollywood Bowl. He was also the first black composer to have an opera produced by a major American opera company, and the first to have an opera televised. And, his 1st symphony, entitled the “Afro-American Symphony,” is credited as one of the very first instances to use that hyphenate description.
Still was also a member of an influential and progressive group of black thought leaders called “The Talented Tenth.” In addition to William Grant Still the members of this group, all college-educated successful men deeply involved in the struggle for civil rights, included sociologist and NAACP co-founder W.E.B. DuBois, educator Booker T. Washington, and author Langston Hughes.
Symphony No. 5 “Western Hemisphere” received its premiere in 1970, performed by Oberlin College Orchestra during Still’s 75th birthday celebration at his alma mater. However, he first composed and completed the work in 1945, when it would have been his 3rd symphony; the composer, however, withdrew it without a premiere, put it aside, and went on to compose many other works including the 4th symphony. After making updates and revisions, he finally revealed the “Western Hemisphere” work 25 years later.
Breaking with classical tradition, Still asked his wife to give evocative, descriptive titles to the symphony’s four movements, which celebrate the diverse and vibrant cultures of the Americas. Herself a highly respected musician, poet, and journalist who also wrote most of the libretti to Still’s nine operas, masterfully did so.
George Gershwin – Piano Concerto in F Major
In 1925, hot on the heels of the wildly successful Rhapsody in Blue, George Gershwin was commissioned to write his first piano concerto by conductor Walter Damrosch for his Symphony Society of New York. “This showed great confidence on their part,” marveled the composer, “as I had never written anything for symphony before… I started to write the concerto in London, after buying four or five books on musical structure to find out what the concerto form actually was!”
Gershwin, then aged 27, had risen from very unlikely beginnings and acquired his musical reputation through a series of totally unconventional stops. Raised along with his older brother Ira in a non-musical family, his natural ability came to light at age 11 when his family bought a 2nd-hand piano. With no formal training, he sat down and played a popular song he had taught himself by following the keys on a neighbor’s player piano. At 15, he dropped out of school to work as a song plugger on Tin Pan Alley, demonstrating sheet music, and playing in night clubs. In 1916, his first song was performed and published, as well as his first solo piano work. From that point on, he was a working composer on Broadway. Dozens of his songs had been performed in stage shows by 1919, when Al Jolson performed his song, Swanee. Its sudden, meteoric popularity made George Gershwin a household name.
Given that his widely-known reputation and popularity as a songwriter for Broadway was his main calling card, there was some question in high-brow drawing rooms whether Gershwin would be able to repeat the musical magic he achieved with Rhapsody in Blue. “Many persons had thought that the Rhapsody was only a happy accident. “Well, I went out, for one thing, to show them that there was plenty more where that had come from,” he stated. He was also determined to score the entire concerto himself, after Rhapsody had been orchestrated by composer Ferde Grofé. The Concerto in F Major premiered on December 3, 1925, with Gershwin himself at the piano, and went immediately on to be performed in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. According to the composer, the work represents, “the young, enthusiastic spirit of American life.”
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Susan Swinburne has been a lover and student of music since demanding piano lessons at age six. Her work in orchestra managment has enriched her life personally and professionally for the past three decades. A frequent patron of concert halls throughout Southern California, she lives, listens, writes, and researches in the South Bay.