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Inside
This Issue: Inside This Issue Irving Berlin’s Musical Theater
of War Performing Hawaiian by Kevin Fellezs |
Connections and
Celebrations in African American Music by André and Ann Sears
On 9-12 February 2007 the African American Art Song Alliance held a groundbreaking conference, “African American Art Song Alliance: A Time for Reflection,” at the University of California, Irvine. Celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Alliance, this conference featured lectures, panel discussions, paper presentations and performances from leading interpreters of African American art music. The conference achieved a rare gathering of performers, scholars, teachers, and music lovers from across the United States, and gave them an opportunity to immerse themselves in music with a rich history and vibrant current life in performance. Having leading performers and composers of this music there in person provided attendees first-hand experience with compositional history and performance techniques. Organized by Dr. Darryl Taylor, Associate Professor of Music at UC Irvine, the conference brought together performance and education. With an opening reception and concert by the UC Irvine Students and faculty on Friday night (9 February), each of the following three days wove a general theme throughout the panels and performances. On Saturday, “Celebrating 30 Years: The Anthology of Art Songs by Black American Composers Revisited” highlighted anthologies of black art songs with a special focus on the 30th anniversary of Dr. Willis Patterson’s seminal Art Songs by Black American Composers, a collection first published by E. B. Marks Music Publishers in 1977. The collection was revised into a second edition of two volumes: Second Anthology of Art Songs by Black American Composers and The New Negro Spiritual (Willis Patterson Publishing, 2002). These recent publications are accompanied by CDs that have all of the songs in the two collections performed by leading interpreters, under Dr. Patterson’s direction. Saturday concerts included works performed from Patterson’s collections as well as the anthology compiled by Edgar Rogie Clark, Negro Art Songs (Marks, 1946), and A New Anthology of Art Songs by African American Composers edited by Jeanine Wagner and Margaret Simmons (Southern Illinois Press, 2004). On Sunday, “Contemporary Music—Contemporary Issues” included a lush array of panels, with presentations highlighted by several performances, and several of the featured composers in the audience. It was an exceptionally rich experience to hear H. Leslie Adams, Adolphus Hailstork, Jacqueline Hairston, and Olly Wilson speak on panel discussions about their compositional process, relate anecdotes about commissions and performances, and then hear their music performed throughout the day. Given their wide range of works for the voice, the topic of the conference this day was opened up, just a little, from art song to include opera. The panel “African Americans in the Operatic World” included Adolphus Hailstork (whose 1999 opera Joshua’s Boots was commissioned by the Opera Theatre of St. Louis and the Kansas City Lyric Opera) and former Metropolitan Opera singers Hilda Harris and George Shirley. Rounding out the day’s theme of contemporary music, Sunday evening’s concert featured Louise Toppin, a central presence today in the recording and performance of African American art song and opera, singing a “Recital of Art Songs of the 21st century” which contained several world premieres. On Monday, “African American Art Song as a Pedagogical Tool” brought together themes related to the recent availability of compiled anthologies with the training needed to perform this repertoire in the concert hall. Two panels, “Out of the Margins: Moving African American Art Song into Mainstream Repertoire” and “On Correcting Societal Misconceptions based on Racial Stereotypes,” discussed the challenges surrounding promoting this repertoire to the general public, as well as the need to teach the style and history of the music to produce compelling performances. The afternoon put the morning sessions into practice with a master class by George Shirley (Joseph Edgar Maddy Distinguished Professor of Music, University of Michigan). Though it was thrilling to have so many people who compose, write, teach, and love this music in the same place for four days, the conference was much more than a gathering that preached to the proverbial “choir.” The conference also brought into focus several themes about the current state of African American art song. First of all, it made clear that, with the current availability in anthologies and collections, ignorance of this repertory is no excuse for its neglect. In addition to scores, there are many excellent recordings that help those who did not grow up with this music hear performances that are steeped in the stylistic and idiomatic genres of the spiritual and gospel music—two strong influences on black art song that help translate the written notation from the page to a living musical tradition. Hence, there is ample opportunity to learn and luxuriate in this rich repertory and fewer reasons to push it to the sidelines of what is considered the American musical canon. Another energizing theme of the conference was the extent of the interracial collaboration and participation in this musical tradition. In candid discussions about helping this repertory become better known, the question of whether or not non-black performers should be encouraged to sing these works became almost superfluous. It was not as though the conference stated an “official” position, but the evidence of so many different ethnicities and skin tones at the event made a strong statement that this is music that everyone can share. African, Caribbean, European, Latino/a, and people from the United States performed together and sat side by side on panels and in the audience. The result was a general consensus of the need for more musicians and music lovers to learn the history of this music and for singers and pianists to perform it with a strong feel for appropriate performance practice. The conference also highlighted the number of educational materials available to the general public. The African American Art Song Alliance website (www.darryltaylor.com/alliance/), for example, is a valuable resource for studying the repertory. After arriving at the home page, you immediately hear music (recordings of black art song that are identified by title and name of the composer) as you navigate your way through the site. Once you have the information from the recording, you can look it up in the several databases on the site (Composers, Performers/Scholars, Discography, as well as a Gallery with nearly 70 photos). Additional information includes “African American Performers and Composers—A Chronology,” prepared by Dr. Hansonia L. Caldwell, culled from her African American Music - A Chronology, 1619-1995 (Ikoro Communications, 1996). Luckily, for those who missed the conference, it is possible to view a few special moments at YouTube (www.youtube.com/user/ArtSongAlliance), which includes clips from two performances: Ann Sears accompanying Monique Holms in Florence Price’s “Night” and Anthony McGlaun singing John Work Jr.’s “Dusk at Sea.” Also on the YouTube site is a clip of African American composer Robert Owens as he coaches a German student at the Hochschüle für Musik in Munich in January 2007. In another extraordinary celebration of African American Music, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania held its fifth Harry T. Burleigh Legacy Weekend during 22-24 February 2007. Edinboro is only a few miles from Erie, Pennsylvania, where Harry T. Burleigh was born and recently re-interred, so it is the ideal institutional host for a Burleigh conference. Over several years, five Burleigh festivals have explored several formats, including the usual scholarly conference model. However, conference director and faculty member Dr. Jean Snyder and the Music Department of Edinboro have mostly chosen to encourage interchange among the university, the Edinboro and nearby Erie communities, and visiting scholars. The result is a remarkable array of activities and an atmosphere of genuine excitement. American music scholars may be familiar with the earlier Harry T. Burleigh Legacy Weekend at Edinboro University that resulted in a special Harry T. Burleigh issue of Black Music Research Journal (24/2 [Fall 2004]), guest edited by Dr. Snyder. This year’s event began with an appearance by African American composer Dr. Nkeiru Okoye in theory classes and her meeting with individual composition students. Edinboro’s budding scholars were very appreciative of the special opportunity to work one-on-one with a contemporary composer, and they were thrilled with the Composer’s Forum in which Nkeiru shared her current work in progress, an opera based on the writings of Harriet Tubman. Dr. Ann Sears lectured on Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha and Kern and Hammerstein’s Show Boat in several classes, addressing musical, historical, and political aspects of both works. Representing the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and the Pennsylvania Underground Railroad History Project, Karen James delivered the keynote address, “Promises of Freedom: Hamilton Waters and Abolition,” relating new information she has uncovered about the activist black abolitionist community in Erie, Pennsylvania, and Northwest Pennsylvania, including Harry T. Burleigh’s grandfather Hamilton Waters and his father, Henry Thacker Burley. The Friday evening event moved the conference into the community, with a Community Choral Festival at Shiloh Baptist Church in Erie, featuring the Shiloh Baptist Church Choirs, Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday choir, and the Rev. Charles Kennedy, Jr., current president of the Harry T. Burleigh Society. Many conference attendees remembered a previous Burleigh conference presentation of Rev. Kennedy’s extraordinary one-man play about Harry T. Burleigh’s life, based on his imaginative research into Burleigh and Pennsylvania history. The 2007 Harry T. Burleigh Legacy Weekend concluded with a recital by soprano Dr. Louis Toppin, accompanied by Joseph Joubert, current music director for the Broadway musical The Color Purple. A significant part of the program included premieres of new music by Julius Williams, Dwight Andrews, Roland Carter, Janice Mitchell Misurell, and Nkeiru Okoye. The recital ended with a deeply moving song cycle, Aspects of Bill, commemorating the life and work of the late tenor William A. Brown. Brown was a remarkable singer who promoted American and African American music during his career, along with the traditional European and American art song, oratorio, and operatic canon. Nearly every important African American composer of the later twentieth century considered him a colleague, an ally, and an ideal interpreter of African American music and culture, and many wrote works specifically for him. Having grown up in a time and place when he could absorb many strands of African American music, Brown brought the inflections of jazz and the black church into his interpretation of texts and music, thereby dissolving the lines of demarcation between vernacular and cultivated traditions of singing. Brown, Toppin, and Joubert had often performed together over the years, and after Brown’s untimely death, Toppin commissioned many African American composers to write movements of a song cycle that would capture Brown’s unusual personality, philosophy of life, and life-long commitment to music. To date, the cycle includes songs by T. J. Anderson, Leroy Jenkins, Donal Fox, Alvin Singleton, Olly Wilson, William Banfield, and songs by other composers are in progress. Brown had appeared at the Harry T. Burleigh Legacy events in 2003 and 2004, so this recital and the performance of Aspects of Bill was an appropriate memorial to his career. A profoundingly touching aspect of the Burleigh events at Edinboro University has been the presence of the surviving members of the Burleigh family, including Mrs. Harry T. Burleigh II, widow of Burleigh’s grandson, and her children Marie, Anne, Harry T. Burleigh III, and his wife Nina. For scholars and music lovers, the opportunity to hear Burleigh lore from such special informants is, of course, priceless. This conference connected musicians and music lovers across distance, generations, genres of music and performance venues, scholarly disciplines, and ethnicity, gender, and class. Doubtless, like the first four Harry T. Burleigh Legacy events, the ripples of this gathering will be far-reaching, and African American music scholars and the Edinboro University/Erie communities look forward to the next one. For further information, log on to the website: www.edinboro.edu/cwis/music/Burleigh —Naomi
André, University of Michigan, and Ann Sears, Wheaton
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