Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Ben Holt Memorial Concerts Revived with Audra McDonald

Ben Holt in Die Fledermaus

Dominique-René de Lerma:

Dean Brian Pertl of Lawrence University's Conservatory of Music, brought many aggiornamenti to the school's curricula, including ethnic considerations (he had previously been Microsoft's in-house ethnomusicologist). He has now announced the revival of the Ben Holt Memorial Concert Series, which had been dormant during a seven-year interregnum.

            Igniting this will be Audra McDonald, on 10 March.  A Juilliard student of Eileen Faull, she has won five Tony awards (the last for her Porgy and Bess) and appeared in Poulenc's La voix humaine with the Houston Grand Opera.  In addition to other opera repertoire, she was an Emmy nominee for her work as an actress on television and has appeared in major films. She has also been a guest on the television program of former presidential candidate, Stephen Colbert.

            The series is a tribute to Ben Holt, African and Native American of the Metropolitan Opera, whose super-star incipit was cut short by cancer, when he had just begun his ascent at age 34, the time a male voice reaches its maturity.  It had been known ten years earlier that his cancer could have been cured by chemotherapy, but that this would have an effect on his voice (witness the case of José Carreras).  He opted to live with it, sharing his love of the art, not only with concert goers, but children, the infirm, and incarcerated as well.  His credo: God gave me the gift of life.  What I do with that life is a gift back to God.

            The series was initiated in 1992 when I was director of Chicago's Center for Black Music Research, with a recital by mezzo-soprano Bonita Hyman (later principal with the Hamburg Opera).   Bass-baritone Kevin Short followed, not only in Chicago in 1993, but at Lawrence University when I joined the Conservatory faculty in 1994.  Subsequent artists included the late William Warfield, who grandfatherly narrated Peter and the wolf with the Conservatory's orchestra in a benefit for the Music Academy, to an overflowing hall.  In 1995, the Met's first tenor, George Shirley was heard in recital. Then was soprano Elizabeth Norman, who had just won the Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air, and now is on the faculty of Roosevelt University.  Kishna Davis, a private student of Leontyne Price (!), was the soprano in the orchestra's 1997 performance of the Beethoven ninth (available on CD).  Melissa White, 13-year-old violinist who had not yet won first place in the Sphinx Competition nor been accepted at the Curtis Institute of Music, was the 1997 guest artist.  In 1998, the prolific music journalist and author, Gene Lees,  spoke on literary style in popular music texts.  In 1999 we brought cellist Jared Snyder, who had just won first place in the Sphinx Competition for his cello recital debut (his mom, bassist with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, had worked for me during her students days at Indiana University and had studied voice with Mari Tanaguchi at Lawrence; as for his father, he was immediately engaged as director of the Conservatory's prep school).  The tenth season brought us Dr. Daniel Bernard Roumain, composer-violinist, whose reputation as a hip-hop idealized innovator and minimalist had him well on his way to international fame.  In 2002 another Sphinx winner came for a recital: violinist Gareth Johnson.  In 2003, a magnificent lecture-recital by tenor Dr. Darryl Taylor gave note to the centennial of the birth of Langston Hughes (this recording artist, a principal figure in vocal music repertoire and research, is now on the faculty of the University of California-Irvine). His program brought out a large population as well from the students and faculty of the English department. The last event before the hiatus was in 2004, when choral conductor for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra the late Brazeal W. Dennard, conducted the campus chorus.
            It was after this concert, health imposed itself on my activities.  Now, in this resurrection, Dean Pertl has at least two faculty members on his team for Holt concepts: George and Marjorie Olsen Chandler Professor of Music Janet Anthony (head of the string department) and Kenneth Bozeman (head of the vocal department, and the Frank C. Shattuck Professor of Music).
Antonio Green's web site on Ben Holt, including an album of historic photos, may be found at http://www.benholtarchive.com/bio/

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Dominique-René de Lerma

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