Publications: re/sound

Published biannually 2002-2003 by the Philadelphia Music Project
Feature article from October 2003
Download the whole issue of re/sound here

PMP Grantees Raise Voices in Philadelphia
by David Shengold

Voices are being raised in song throughout the city, and the Philadelphia Music Project’s 2002 and 2003 awards have been giving them strength and resonance. Local choral, theatrical, and operatic institutions have utilized funds to power a stirring multiplicity of vocal styles and worlds, from gospel and cabaret to medieval holiday carols, opera, and commissioned contemporary music.

Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, an undoubted twentieth century masterwork but never a popular favorite, received its American premiere at the Academy of Music in 1928 under Leopold Stokowski. PMP’s 2002 grant to the Opera Company of Philadelphia allowed Ariadne to return to the Academy in March 2003 in a widely hailed new production and financed the "role debut" of Romanian mezzo Ruxandra Donose as Der Komponist. When a singer assumes a new role, coaching and rehearsal costs escalate; Donose, also a Met and Vienna star, enjoyed a huge success adding this key part to her repertoire for the benefit of Philadelphia audiences.

The effort to present works outside the mainstream has long engaged OCP. Jack Mulroney, the company’s Executive Director, explains, "The Philadelphia Music Project’s support in recent years has been crucial in enabling us to present important works that are outside the standard repertoire. These operas, such as last season’s Ariadne, offer no guarantees at the box office. However, it is only through their introduction that we can expand the horizons of Philadelphia’s opera audience, some still relatively new to the art form."

The venerable Mendelssohn Club, founded in 1874, is the city’s oldest continuously performing mixed community chorus, with accomplishments encompassing the U.S. premiere of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony and the Philadelphia premiere of Britten’s War Requiem. Today, its innovative programs serve both audiences and participants in exploring vocal music; new choral music is frequently commissioned. Mendelssohn Club has programmed two works by distinguished composer Charles Fussell at the Philadelphia Cathedral. Specimen Days, inspired by the writings of Camden’s Walt Whitman, was performed on May 3rd. On October 25th, the second grant-funded Mendelssohn Club concert presents the world premiere of Fussell’s Hart Crane–based work, High Bridge. Board member Lynn Faust notes, "The grant has given Mendelssohn Club the opportunity to bring back to Philadelphia our 1992 commission, Specimen Days, with baritone Sanford Sylvan in the role written for him. We were not able to engage Mr. Sylvan for our premiere of the work, so this opportunity has been especially important. Specimen Days has actually received many performances around the country since [then]." Fussell also penned High Bridge for Sylvan, recognized internationally for his services to new and baroque music: "I’ve written a number of works for Sandy... I have his voice in mind. If you keep him in mind, you know exactly what baritones do and what they don’t do in terms of range and color."

Philadelphia’s renowned Curtis Institute uses its grant towards its November two-week festival "Roremania," celebrating the legacy and enduring contribution (and eightieth birthday) of alumnus (Composition ’44) and faculty member Ned Rorem, known for his elegantly spare prosody. "Roremania" encompasses the acclaimed 1998 cycle Evidence of Things Not Seen, a retrospective of his songs by vocal students, and a faculty concert of chamber music. It culminates on November 7th with two performances of Miss Julie, performed by the Institute’s Opera Theatre and Symphony Orchestra at the Kimmel Center’s Perelman Theater. ‘I think that it is an honor for our students to be in the presence of, and working with, such an eminent composer. The opportunity to help celebrate his 80th birthday is something they will never forget," says Mikael Eliasen, head of the Curtis Vocal Studies department. With libretto by Kenward Elmslie based on Strindberg’s1888 tragedy, Miss Julie, Rorem’s only full-length opera, premiered at New York City Opera in 1965 and was revised in 1979.

The Academy of Vocal Arts, concentrating exclusively on training vocalists, also utilizes the Perelman. AVA unveils a concert version of Giacomo Puccini’s second opera Edgar (1889) there January 21st and 23rd, and January 24th at Centennial Hall in Haverford. Christofer Macatsoris will conduct AVA resident artists and more than 70 members of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. "Our resident artists have the opportunity to learn and perform a work by Puccini that is highly appropriate for their vocal and artistic development, but rarely presented. In fact, our production will be the Philadelphia premiere of Edgar," said AVA Executive Director K. James McDowell. "No reduction of the score exists for this opera, so without PMP funding, and a larger venue like the Perelman Theater, a production with full orchestra would be out of reach for AVA." This double-cast production engages a musically substantial but seldom-performed work, resident artists well suited to the leading roles, and a venue that will allow AVA to transition into serving an expanded Center City audience.

The University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Center of the Performing Arts presents a broadly multicultural array of music, dance, theatre and children’s programming. The Annenberg’s wide-ranging "Beyond Belief: A Celebration of Gospel Music" centers on a yearlong series of three Saturday night gospel performances featuring both nationally known exponents and local gospel groups, offering audiences faith-affirming music in a variety of styles. On October 11th, the Grammy-winning Reverend Hezekiah Walker and his Love Fellowship Choir, widely noted for their hip-hop inflected urban gospel, join Philadelphia’s historic Brockington Ensemble (in its fortieth year) and the youthful Blair Brothers. February 14th showcases dynamic Dottie Peoples, known since her 1995 award-winning classic "On Time God" as a leader in the new gospel generation, plus the David Winslow Singers and the Gospel Music Preservation Alliance. On June 12th, Zellerbach Auditorium will resonate with two well-established area choral groups, Carolyn Sims-Nesmith’s Freedom Choir of Philadelphia (celebrating its 35th anniversary) and the 25-year-old Wilmington Chester Mass Choir. Joining them will be Philadelphia native Tamika Patton, a recording artist whose musical ministry blends jazz and spoken word styles.

Annenberg Director Michael Rose observes: "As a genre, gospel is a form of musical expression that both builds upon and undergirds the rich heritage of American music while connecting to multiple audiences and communities with an immediacy and currency unlike most other performing arts forms. While gospel has not traditionally been presented as a musical series, it should be—in particular for one of the nation’s major urban, university-based performing arts centers—in that it embraces such traditional artistic values as diversity, structure, depth, tradition, and expanding self-definition. We fervently believe that this new series will bring us important new and crossover audiences, while strengthening Annenberg and Penn’s ties to music audiences and communities of faith in West Philadelphia and the broader region."

To that end, gospel artists will appear in residencies in nearby public schools and workshops with local gospel and church choirs. Penn Ethnomusicologist Dr. Carol Muller has developed public programs to further audience insight into the concerts; working with the festival’s participants, her students will create oral histories as an enduring testimony of "Beyond Belief."

Since its 1980 founding, Piffaro, a vital, entertaining seven-person Philadelphia-based Renaissance ensemble, has toured extensively on several continents. Many recordings document Piffaro’s aural world, encompassing shawms, sackbuts, dulcians, krumhorns, bagpipes, and lutes. PMP’s 2003 grant will allow Piffaro to mount three performances of "The Holly & The Ivy: A Midwinter Feast of Fools" at the Trinity Center for Urban Life (December 18-19) and Villanova’s St. Mary’s Chapel (December 20). A fully staged and costumed performance, this tale of the rivalry between Sir Holly and Lady Ivy for mastery of winter draws upon fifteenth century English carol texts and music from Henry VIII’s songbook. Soprano Laura Heimes, lutenist/singer Paul Shipper, and actor Mark Jaster are guest artists.

Since 1999, the innovative, nationally influential Prince Music Theater, founded in 1984 as the American Music Theater Festival, has operated out of its own state-of-the-art Center City facility. Besides developing new work, part of its mission involves celebrating the legacy of the creative mavericks and pioneers who have forged the American musical theater. Aided by funds from PMP, the Prince mounts a retrospective tribute to composer William Bolcom and lyricist Arnold Weinstein in spring 2004. The festival includes a revival of their Casino Paradise with Bolcom’s wife and frequent collaborator, mezzo-soprano Joan Morris; a concert of music from the operas McTeague, A View from the Bridge, and previews from the forthcoming Idiot's Delight; and a cabaret plus master classes.

"After over 40 years of writing musical theater and opera with Arnold Weinstein, it is thrilling to find the Prince Theater thinks well enough of us to do an overview of our long career," muses Bolcom. "I guess it proves the worth of sticking around long enough in life. We mounted Casino Paradise 13 years ago at the AMTF, and now patrons will have the chance to see and hear it after we’ve revised it to its great advantage; second chances are rare in this business."

The Philadelphia Music Project funds all manner of local musical groups in an impressive variety of endeavors. Voices lifted in song—for affirmation, in protest, as satire, or merely (!) in sorrow or joy—are the pulse of communities. Philadelphia, with a uniquely rich mix of talent, civic, religious, and ethnic traditions, and established yet vital musical and theatrical institutions, constitutes one of the nation’s most lively and fertile sources of and proving grounds for vocal art and expression. PMP’s crucial assistance helps the city prepare its singers, fuel its songs, and gather its listeners.