Lara Downes: Adventures with Scott Joplin!

Friends!

I'm writing from a beautiful hilltop house in Hawaii, looking out over the Kona coast and reflecting on life and work over the last month.

My new album REFLECTIONS: Scott Joplin Reconsidered came out on February 4, at the top of the Billboard and iTunes charts! Right away, I started hearing from listeners far and wide  - incredibly warm and personal responses. And when this NPR Morning Edition feature aired, there was even more of an outpouring. This music, and Joplin's story, is resonating in some very deep ways.

A few weeks ago, I spent a beautiful (if absolutely frigid) day in New York with Seth Colter Walls, walking through Joplin's Harlem to tell his story, and my own, for this wonderfully insightful deep-dive cover story for the New York Times.

I'm beyond grateful to share this work. This week, in an interview with "City Lights" on WABE Atlanta, I offered this perspective about Joplin and so many other composers of the past: "We keep playing their notes over and over again. Don't we also have to dig under that surface and honor who they were -  and who they weren't able to be , because of their time and their circumstances? And to put that possibility back into the notes. That's what I'm trying to do."

NEXT UP! An evening of music and conversation with the brilliant author and cultural commentator John McWhorter (who's a Joplin fanatic!) at WNYC's The Greene Space on March 30. More stories, secrets and scandals from Joplin's final years in New York, at a time of intense and rapid change in American life. Please join us if you can! Limited tickets are available HERE.

Thank you so much for your ongoing support and friendship - I'm sending you love and sunshine from this spectacular place!

Lara 

MetOpera.org: "A Concert for Ukraine"— 6 PM ET Monday, March 14; Soloists include Bass-Baritone Ryan Speedo Green; Streamed via metopera.org

Ryan Speedo Green

The Metropolitan Opera

On Monday, March 14, at 6PM ET, the Metropolitan Opera will present a benefit performance to support Ukrainian citizens under attack, with all ticket sales and other proceeds going to support relief efforts in Ukraine. Tickets are $50 and go on sale to the general public Wednesday, March 9, at 12PM ET.

Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin will lead the Met Orchestra and Chorus and star soloists in a 70-minute program, featuring music by Valentin Silvestrov, Barber, Verdi, Strauss, and Beethoven. The soloists will be Lise Davidsen and Elza van den Heever, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, tenor Piotr Beczała, bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green, and Ukrainian bass-baritone Vladyslav Buialskyi, who will lead the Met Chorus in a performance of the Ukrainian national anthem.

The concert will be broadcast in the U.S. via many of the radio stations that regularly carry the Met’s Saturday matinee radio series as well as member stations of National Public Radio. 

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The concert will also be carried live on Met Opera Radio on Sirius XM (channel 355) and streamed live via metopera.org.

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A Concert for Ukraine is made possible by a generous gift from C. Graham Berwind, III.

WNET.org: "Great Performances at the Met: Fire Shut Up in My Bones" premiering Friday, April 1 at 9 p.m. ET on PBS

Angel Blue, Walter Russell III, Latonia Moore and Will Liverman in "Great Performances at the Met: Fire Shut Up in My Bones."  Photo by Ken Howard. We're getting excited for Great Performances at the Met: Fire Shut Up in My Bones premiering Friday, April 1 at 9 p.m. ET on PBS (check local listings) as part of #PBSForTheArts. This special opera by Grammy-winning jazz musician and composer Terence Blanchard is an adaptation of Charles M. Blow’s memoir and marked the Met’s first performance of an opera by a Black composer and its first production back in its theater following the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown. Featuring a libretto by filmmaker Kasi Lemmons, the opera tells the story of a young man’s journey to overcome a life of trauma and hardship.

BroadwayWorld.com: New York Festival of Song Finishes Series with THE WIDER VIEW: SONGS BY BLACK COMPOSERS 8 PM April 13 at Merkin Hall

The final concert of the 2021-2022 series is set for Wednesday, April 13th.

by Marissa Tomeo 

Mar. 6, 2022

New York Festival of Song (NYFOS), led by Artistic Director Steven Blier, concludes its 2021-22 Mainstage Series with The Wider View: Songs by Black Composers on Wednesday, April 13, 2022 at 8:00pm at Merkin Hall, co-presented by Kaufman Music Center. The concert features mezzo-soprano Lucia Bradford, soprano Kearstin Piper Brown, and baritone Jorell Williams, together with pianists Nathaniel LaNasa and Steven Blier, in works by Black composers that include H. Leslie Adams, Margaret Bonds, Harry Burleigh, Adolphus C. Hailstork, Robert Owens, Hale Smith, and William Grant Still.

The Wider View: Songs by Black Composers is set to take place on April 13, 2022 at 8:00pm at the Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center, 129 West 67th Street, New York, NY 10023.

Tickets can be purchased at https://www.kaufmanmusiccenter.org/mch/event/new-york-festival-of-song-the-wider-view-songs-by-black-composers/.

The concert will feature works by by H. Leslie Adams, Margaret Bonds, Harry Burleigh, Adolphus C. Hailstork, Robert Owens, Hale Smith, and William Grant Still. 

OperaWire.com: "[W]orld premiere of Adolphus Hailstork and Herbert Martin’s 'A Knee on The Neck' at The Music Center at Strathmore on Mar. 26, 2022"

OperaWire

Mar 4, 2022

By Chris Ruel

An all-star cast will join the National Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorale, The Washington Chorus, and The Howard University Chorale to present the world premiere of Adolphus Hailstork and Herbert Martin’s “A Knee on The Neck” at The Music Center at Strathmore on Mar. 26, 2022, and at Capital One Hall on Mar. 28.

Headlining the premiere are A-list soloists J’Nai Bridges, Norman Shankle, and Kenneth Overton. Maestro Piotr Gajewski will conduct.

Written and composed as a tribute to George Floyd, a Black man whose murder in May 2020 by a Minneapolis police officer sparked nationwide protests, “A Knee on The Neck” is a colossal requiem cantata commemorating Floyd’s life and legacy. 

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Hailstork said, “What can an artist do? I can speak on the issues and put them in my work. These are the tragedies and triumphs of a people who have been beaten up for 400 years. Does anyone speak for them? Who writes pieces that speak for the existence of African Americans in the United States? I’ll take on that job.”

AJC.com: "Pianist Michelle Cann and conductor Donald Runnicles" presented "Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement from 1934" Thursday

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

 Michelle Cann
(Credit: Jeff Roffman)

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

By Pierre Ruhe, ArtsATL

March 4, 2022

Thursday felt like a special night in Symphony Hall. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra has programmed the music of Florence Price before, as recently as last year, but for the first time the orchestra was celebrating the arrival of an important new voice.

Born in Arkansas, Price escaped the Jim Crow South as part of the Great Migration in the early 20th century, and launched what might have been — should have been — an important career as a composer. Her Symphony No. 1 won a prize and was performed by the Chicago Symphony in 1932 — the first time a major American orchestra performed music by a Black woman composer. Chicago asked Price for more. Marian Anderson sang one of Price’s Negro Spiritual arrangements at her historic 1939 concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

But for obvious reasons that track with much of U.S. history — “I have two handicaps, those of sex and race,” she wrote — her music did not gain wide acceptance. Several key works were published and remained in print after her death in 1953, allowing her to hover at the outer edge of the repertoire. She wasn’t so much forgotten as ignored. Over the past decade, she’s had several vociferous champions, including a former ASO assistant conductor, Mei-Ann Chen, who programs Price wherever an orchestra will accept it, from Chicago to San Diego to even the Alabama Symphony.

Thursday, to introduce Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement from 1934, pianist Michelle Cann and conductor Donald Runnicles carried microphones to center stage. Cann, who teaches at Philadelphia’s prestigious Curtis Institute of Music and was here making her ASO debut, spoke excitedly of how this Concerto was known only through rehearsal parts, not a full score.

Miraculously, about a decade ago, the new owners of Price’s dilapidated old house in Illinois discovered boxes of her music in the attic. The full score to the Concerto and other major works — some “lost,” some unknown — were among them, and in 2018 most of this discovered music became public. (Hearing this sensational story, Runnicles put his foot in his mouth and acted all gobsmacked. “No one in classical music had ever heard of Florence Price!” he clucked. Coming from a conductor with an international career, it’s this willful ignorance — we might call it smugness — that led to Price’s forced obscurity.)

That’s a lot of heavy baggage for so charming and enjoyable a piece. Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement opens with a brief, showy orchestral opening, and the piano soon takes over with power chords announcing a commanding solo part. Despite its rather short length, just under 20 minutes, it has the style and substance of the great piano concertos. It unfolds with familiar gestures and a late 19th-century soundworld, notably with a folksy vibe and African American idioms. For a composer, this blending of classical structure with vernacular language was a framework that Dvorak had made popular a generation earlier.

Although it’s titled “in one movement,” the piece is laid out clearly in three sections. The second, leisurely and agreeable, features a long, soulful oboe solo. It is backed by what sounded like expressive commentary from the piano, as call-and-response, with just a hint of melodious, blue-note Gershwin. Gorgeous.

The music then slides easily into the energetic final section, based on the Juba dance rhythm, aka the Hambone, joyous and free. Cann and Runnicles made a tight partnership throughout. The audience ate it up. Obviously, belatedly, this satisfying concerto is ripe to enter the symphonic repertoire.

John Malveaux: Women's History Month

John Malveaux of MusicUNTOLD.com writes:

Wednesday March 2, 2022 while listening to KUSC classical radio station 91.5 FM, temporary host Lara Downes (weeknights 8:00 PM to midnight) programmed "Three Spirituals" by Adolphus Hailstork (Naxos Records). I am a friend of both composer Adolphus Hailstork and pianist/radio host Lara Downes. Lara's many and assorted projects to perform, record, and heighten awareness of neglected composers of African descent in classical music has been monumental over the past couple of years. However, Lara's interest and efforts are not limited by genre. I personally met Lara when I produced "But Beautiful" March 7, 2015 at Long Beach Public Library Main Auditorium. HAPPY WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH Lara Downes. 

Newberry.edu: Dr. Sarah Masterson to Release Philippa Schuyler Album of "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" on Centaur Records April 1

Dr. Sarah Masterson

 

Philippa Schuyler (1931-1967)

NEWBERRY, S.C. (March 2, 2022) — On April 1, Dr. Sarah Masterson, associate professor of music at Newberry College, will release her much-anticipated album — a first-ever recording of Philippa Schuyler’s “Seven Pillars of Wisdom.” The album will be published by Centaur Records and will be available through all major sellers and streaming services.

The album gives new life to one of the last works of Philippa Schuyler, concert pianist, composer and journalist whose music has been largely unheard since her untimely death 55 years ago.

 

Schuyler was born in 1931 in Harlem to George Schuyler, an African American journalist, and Josephine Cogdell, a white artist and writer from Texas. Philippa was performing Mozart at age five, and by 10 she had earned national fame as a young composer. As she entered young adulthood, her appeal among white Americans had declined, and she noted racial prejudice for the first time. After that, she left the U.S. and toured more than 80 countries, performing for numerous world leaders. In the 1960s, Schuyler became a published writer, and later a Vietnam correspondent for the Manchester Union Leader. She died in 1967, at age 35, while on a helicopter rescue mission in war-torn Vietnam.

 

Masterson discovered Schuyler nearly four years ago, and she soon found herself piecing together one of the late composer’s last pieces, the pages scattered throughout New York archives.

 

“I reassembled and transcribed the full work, using Schuyler’s combination of handwritten musical notation and performance instructions,” said Masterson. “In some of it, the music just stops, and she would say, ‘and now play these measures from this other movement, but with this in the left hand.’ So, I had to turn all that into musical notation,” she said.

 

Written in 1964-65, the technically complex, hour-long “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” was inspired by the book of the same title by T.E. Lawrence – more famously known as Lawrence of Arabia – about the British army officer’s participation in the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

 

“Perhaps also influenced by [her] experiences reporting on war crimes in the Congo, the piece explores challenging ideas about conflict, violence and faith through interwoven themes spelled with her own musical alphabet.”

 

Masterson’s pioneering recording has earned her the attention of Schuyler’s biographer, Kathryn Talalay. “[Masterson’s] performance is eloquent and nuanced, and the lucid liner notes enhance our understanding of this complex, mosaic-like piece. It is a tour de force,” she wrote in her review.

 

Masterson joined the Newberry College faculty in 2014. She holds a doctorate and a master’s degree from the University of Connecticut, and a bachelor’s from DePauw University. For more information, visit SarahMastersonPianist.com.

The Harlem Chamber Players: "Emmett Till," A New Opera, March 23 & 24, Gerald W. Lynch Theater At John Jay College

Tickets are now on sale for two concert performances of Emmett Till, 

a new opera by composer Mary Watkins and librettist Clare Coss!

Left to right top to bottom are Robert A Mack, Lucia Bradford, Nicholas Davis, Abigail Wright, Karmesha Peake, Merkel Reed, Amanda Rose Austin, and Justin Ryan.

Please note that you must show proof of vaccination in order to attend any indoor concerts. Masks and social distancing are also required. Temperatures will be taken at the door.

EMMETT TILL, A NEW OPERA

WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY, MARCH 23 & 24, 2022 AT 7 PM

GERALD W LYNCH THEATER

JOHN JAY COLLEGE

524 West 59th Street

New York, NY 10019

PRESENTED BY

Clare Coss and Mary D. Watkins

in association with

John Jay College, CUNY

The Harlem Chamber Players

Opera Noire International

FEATURING

Tania León, Conductor

Terrance McKnight, Host

Lucia Bradford, Mezzo-Soprano (Mamie Till)

Robert Mack, Tenor (Emmett Till)

Abigail Wright, Mezzo-Soprano (Roanne Taylor)

Amanda Rose Austin, Soprano (Carolyn Bryant)

Justin Ryan, Baritone (Roy Bryant)

Nicholas Davis, Baritone (Uncle Mose Wright)

Karmesha Peake, Contralto (Aunt Lizzy)

Markell Reed, Baritone (Maurice Wright)

Mary Watkins, Composer

Clare Coss, Librettist

Malcolm Merriweather, Chorus Master

Kyle Walker, Rehearsal Pianist

TICKETS

Orchestra Seat - $30

Student/Senior Discount - $20

For those who can and wish to support this world premiere production:

Angel - $1,000

Champion - $150

Click here to purchase your ticket(s).

OperaWire.com: Renée Fleming, Julia Bullock & Nadine Sierra Lead LA Philharmonic’s 2022-23 Season

OperaWire

March 2, 2022

By Francisco Salazar

The Los Angeles Philharmonic has announced its 2022-23 season.

For the purposes of this article, we will only focus on operatic and choral performances.

Gustavo Dudamel Leads “Songs of the Americas” in a program that will include music by Abreu, Bor, Esteve, Ortiz, and Villa-Lobos with the Tambuco Percussion Ensemble and the Los Angeles Master Chorale.

Performance Dates: Sept. 30- Oct. 2, 2022

Renée Fleming and Jean-Yves Thibaudet perform a recital.

Performance Dates: Oct. 16, 2022

Julia Bullock headlines “A Musical Portrait: Price and Bonds” and explores the musical voices of and relationship between Florence Price and Margaret Bonds. Lidiya Yankovskaya conducts with Michelle Cann at piano. 

Performance Dates: Nov. 5 & 6, 2022

Green Umbrella will be performed by the LA Phil New Music Group, conductor Simone Menezes, and Julia Bullock who curates.

Performance Date: Nov. 8, 2022

Christian Reif conducts Julia Bullock in a program entitled “History’s Persistent Voice.”

Performance Date: Nov. 11, 2022

Barbara Hannigan and Katia and Marielle Labèque perform “Electric Fields.”

Performance Dates: Nov. 15, 2022

The orchestra will perform “Tristan und Isolde” with each act performed in a separate performance. Gustavo Dudamel conducts a cast that includes Michael Weinius, Miina-Liisa Värelä, Eric Owens, Okka von der Damerau, Ryan Speedo Green, and Robert Stahley.