On The Fringe
November 2, 2024 | Carl Perkins Civic Center
Meet the Guest Artist
Artina McCain
Hailed by the New York Times as a "virtuoso pianist" Artina McCain, has built a formidable career as a performer, educator and speaker. As a recitalist, her credits include performances at Wigmore Hall and Barbican Centre in London, Weill Hall at Carnegie and Merkin Hall in New York City and more. Other highlights include guest appearances with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Memphis Symphony Orchestra and Fox Valley Symphony Orchestra. In 2022, she was the mistress of ceremony for the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.
Dedicated to promoting the works of Black and other underrepresented composers, McCain curates Underrepresented Composers Concerts for multiple arts organizations. She is an American Prize winner for her solo piano recordings of these works and won a Gold Global Music Award for her recent album project Heritage. In 2021, Hal Leonard published her transcriptions of Twenty-Four Traditional African American Folk Songs.
McCain was a featured inspirational leader in the award-winning PBS documentary series Roadtrip Nation: Degree of Impact in an episode exploring the real-world impact of professionals with doctoral degrees in and outside of academia.
McCain's performances have been heard on the Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK), Germany’s WDR and television appearances including features on CSPAN for the MLK 50 Commemoration. McCain is a three-time Global Music Awards winner including collaborative projects I, Too (Naxos), with soprano Icy Monroe, focused on African American Spirituals and Art Songs and Shades, a collaboration with her husband and duo partner Martin McCain.
After not performing for six years while battling a performance injury, she now enjoys a prolific concert career with more than 10 years of full injury recovery. She uses her recovery to serve as an advocate of musicians’ wellness–curating articles, lectures, and forums to educate teachers and students. Most recently the BBC featured her on the podcast Sideways telling her miraculous story of injury to recovery
Currently, McCain is Associate Professor of Piano and Coordinator of the Keyboard Area at the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music at the University of Memphis and Co-Founder/Director of the Memphis International Piano Festival and Competition.
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Dance Tribute for Orchestra and Piano Obligato
Fred Onovwerosuoke (b. 1960)
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Fred Onovwerosuoke, or “FredO” to his friends, has spent a lifetime spreading awareness and teaching audiences about the sheer magnitude of African music. There’s so much material on the continent that it’s impossible to mine it all, but FredO has spent the bulk of his career sharing it. Born in Ghana and raised in Nigeria, he was immersed in the musical experience of African musical traditions from the earliest of ages. As an adult, he as traveled to over 30 countries across the continent to research and explore as much of its aural traditional as he can. It’s this immersive understanding of the genre that Onovwerosuoke brings to his orchestral writing, and it’s what makes his performances so unique.
In 1990, FredO came to the United States to attend college. While an engineering student at Principia College in Illinois, he explored studies in music and found a home studying music theory and composition there. As he explains it, it produced a determined sense of individualistic composing that sought to bridge the divide between Western European and African music. As he further developed his research, FredO branched out to study music of the Caribbean and the Deep South of the US, all of which finds its way intermingled within his compositions.
FredO has found success throughout this life sharing his unique style, even drawing the attention of Hollywood. When Robert DeNiro needed a fresh score for his film The Good Sheperd, he reached out to Onovwerosuoke who was happy to provide vocal support from his newly formed St. Louis African Chorus. This attention attracted offers from music publishers, and FredO then produced the publication of Songs of Africa: 22 songs for mixed voices on Oxford University Press.
Ultimately, the music of Onovwerosuoke has reached countless audiences through his deep and reverent commitment to producing compositions that work to blend disparate music from multiple indigenous traditions. Hearing it is an experience that is genuinely unlike any other, and it brings people back for more again and again.
Pacific 231
Arthur Honegger (1892-1955)
The industrial revolution changed everything within western civilization, and its artists were swept up in the action just like everyone else. Musicians grappled with various ways to interconnect the very real “music” of machinery with that of traditional musical instruments. They often did this lovingly and with a genuine fondness for the almost inhumane churning of pistons, steam, and grinding gears – it isn’t until later that society and its artists start to question the wisdom of the dawn of the industrial era.
Arthur Honegger, a Swiss composer living mostly in Paris, spent years travelling France on trains and loved the experience to the extent that he described it as: “…they are living creatures and I love them as others love women or horses.” With this kind of devotion, it should surprise no one that Honegger sought a way to bring the locomotive somehow into his musical world and give it the homage it was due. Pacific 231 is that work.
Audiences often – logically – think of the title of this piece as the name of a train route, like the “Coast Starlight” or “Rocky Mountaineer”. But the title is more technical than that, a little more “in the weeds”, if you will, and that provides insight into how detailed Honegger’s intent for this work truly was. The title refers to an American model locomotive that has 2 sets of running wheels in the front, 3 sets of driving wheels in the middle, and 1 set of balance wheels in the back of the engine (hence, 2-3-1). This is a work, in Honegger’s mind, about precision. It’s about the totality of the machine’s existence – the source of the train’s power and the expression of its purpose.
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From the audience standpoint, some of that minutia might get lost in the sheer momentum of what they are hearing. When this work was premiered in 1924, all audiences could (and still do) hear is the hurtling of a locomotive moving inexorably forward, charging toward its final stop. The piece is so incredibly powerful that one would be forgiven for holding onto one’s seat during the performance.
Honegger expressed frustration during his life that the listening public didn’t fully grasp the largeness of his artistic intent, the complexity of his powerful statement. But in our defense, the music tells a pretty powerful story all its own – a musical expression of sheer industrial vigor that the orchestra brings to life. The clarity of that experience is memorable long after the performance and triggers a quiet desire to take a train ride.
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An American in Paris
George Gershwin (1898-1937)
The 1924 success of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue catapulted an already well-respected songwriter into the stratosphere of international composition. Everyone knew him and he was suddenly spending time with the greatest living composers on Earth. During a brief visit to Paris in 1926, the trip that would inspire An American in Paris, Gershwin spent time with Maurice Ravel, enjoying being viewed as shoulder to shoulder with the titan. Two years later, Gershwin would host Ravel in New York City and ask for lessons with the Frenchman; Ravel famously turned Gershwin down, encouraging him to simply focus on being the greatest version of himself.
Later that year, in December 1928, An American in Paris was premiered by the New York Philharmonic, marking a huge milestone for the composer. While Gershwin composed all the music of his famed Rhapsody in Blue, he felt at the time out of his depth to notate the piano score for orchestra, and therefore leaned on friends to accomplish that task. By Paris’ premiere, that confidence deficit was behind him. Gershwin produced the entirety of the orchestral score on his own – an accomplishment he was quick to share with his musical peers.
The work itself is considered a “Tone Poem”, meaning that it is a single-movement work that seeks to tell a story through music. The success of An American in Paris can be found in the ease with which audiences understand the story being told. An American is meandering the streets of Paris, taking in the sights and sounds of a fast-moving metropolitan city. One can hear the obvious presence of traffic, as well as the bustling movement of people on the sidewalks hurrying along. It’s lush, engaging, and replete with sweeping Gershwin melodies that are the cornerstone of the songwriter’s background.
Gershwin stood as an example to his European counterparts of how jazz could seamlessly make its way into classical music. With the wild success of both of his tone poems, he seemingly carved out a new genre of concert music that would deeply influence the music produced for decades to come.
Boléro
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Maurice Ravel is known in the musical community as one of the greatest orchestrators in history. What’s meant by this is that he had an uncanny knack for knowing precisely which instruments within an orchestra should play which notes at which time. Deciding that a flute should play a given passage rather than a cello, for instance, can have a remarkable influence over how an orchestral work might sound. Ravel was a genius at making the right decisions.
Boléro is probably the greatest example of this concept, mainly because it utilizes the same repetitive melody and rhythmic pulse over the course of 15 minutes, but the listener never tires of the repetition. Why? Because the orchestration makes the work feel utterly new and refreshing all along the journey. It’s quite a feat to pull off, and no one in history has ever succeeded like Ravel.
The work might never have come into being if Ida Rubenstein had gotten her way. Rubenstein, a famous ballerina who worked extensively with the Russian master Diaghilev, asked Ravel for some orchestral arrangements of Spanish music that she could choreograph. The specific music she wanted was under strict copyright, however, so Ravel convinced her that he could simply write his own music with a Spanish “feel” to get the job done.
What developed in Ravel’s mind was a musical experiment that he frankly had little confidence would work. His plan was to employ as limited a melodic palette as possible, draw it out as far as he could, essentially making one long crescendo that would last a quarter of an hour. In the hands of literally any other composer of the time, this outrageous idea would have bellyflopped from the start. But with Ravel’s orchestration prowess, he was able to tinker, develop, and layer the work in such a way as to make the building pressure of the piece turn into a powder keg of musical satisfaction.
The premiere of the ballet in 1928 was a profound success, both for Rubenstein and Ravel. But truth be told, it was the music that audiences were coming for. When the score was published the following year, every orchestra in Europe wanted to play it, much to Ravel’s surprise. In fact, the work was so successful as a concert piece that Ravel was almost annoyed by its success. What was for him an academic exercise in compositional discipline and orchestration had become a prairie fire of audience approval and love. A century later, we’re still caught up in the fire.
Appalachian Spring
September 7, 2024 | The Ned
Meet the Composer
Dawson Hull
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Dawson Hull is a pianist, composer, and conductor in the Memphis, Tennessee area. As the Pastor of Instrumental Worship Arts at Germantown Baptist Church, he leads the Conservatory of Music, orchestra, jazz band, and student choir, and is the founder of the Masterpiece Concert Series in Germantown, TN, which provides free classical concerts to the community.
Dawson frequently performs solo and chamber recitals in Memphis, and he and his wife (Taneea Hull, clarinet) enjoy performing together as a duo for churches, recitals, events, and masterclasses throughout the country. In 2022, Dawson and Taneea released their first album together entitled “REFLECTIONS”. The album features Dawson’s original arrangements of hymns for clarinet and piano, written in a classical style. Dawson was also recently invited to premiere some of his compositions at the International Clarinet Association 2019 ClarinetFest, and as part of the Jackson Symphony Orchestra’s 2020 Chamber series.
As a pianist, Dawson has appeared as soloist with the Paducah Symphony Orchestra, Delta Symphony Orchestra, Jackson Symphony Orchestra, Samford University Orchestra, Southeastern Chamber Orchestra, the Omulgee Symphony Orchestra, the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra, and the University of Memphis Symphony Orchestra.
Dawson holds a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in Piano from the University of Memphis, a Master’s Degree in Piano from Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Piano and Theory/Composition from Samford University in Birmingham, AL. His piano teachers include Alice Adams Jackson, Betty Sue Shepherd, Thomas Hecht, Marian Hahn, Eric Zuber, and Cathal Breslin. He studied composition under Ronald Boud, James Jensen, and Bob Burroughs.
Dawson and Taneea have three children, and they love to make music together as a family.
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Northern Lights
Dawson Hull (b. 1984)
A severe solar storm in May 2024 caused a unique phenomenon that allowed the aurora borealis to be wondrously visible in the southern part of the United States. Though this has happened before, what surprised curious stargazers was the magnitude of clarity that the pulsation of light provided. What is usually the sole purview of Alaskans and Northern Canadians was suddenly available to Tennesseans, and people laid out blankets, turned off as many lights as they could, and snuggled up for the show.
So, too, did composer Dawson Hull. The Memphis resident looked up at the night sky and what he saw not only filled his vision, but also his hearing. To hear him tell it, the sky lit up the sounds in his head and he put pen to paper to try to capture it. Though not possessing synesthesia (the ability to see literal color in sound), Hull does see general color associations with various sounds, and Northern Lights is the sonorous outcome of his borealis experience.
The work seeks to explore the fluctuations and gyrations of the dancing light that is the primary expression of the aurora borealis. As the lights morph from one shape to another, so does the music, as it ebbs and flows through an untethered harmonic palette. By its conclusion, there is a full measure of silence for the orchestra, a final breath of acceptance that the galaxy needs a little quiet to allow the speres an opportunity to say their peace. In this way, Hull has provided a tangible soundscape, reflecting back to the universe our best guess as to what it’s saying.
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Knoxville: Summer of 1915, op 24
Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
Samual Barber was the only composer on Eleanor Steber’s mind when looking for a new work to premiere with the Boston Symphony. A soprano with a powerhouse career in the middle of the 20th century, Steber sought out Barber in 1947 to provide a new work – something lyrical, lilting, and even a little nostalgic. Barber immediately turned to a small, loosely poetic and quasi-autobiographical piece by James Agee to set, and thus Knoxville: Summer of 1915 came into being.
What makes this work so memorable and popular involves the deep intermingling of the music and the text. It’s almost as if one cannot exist without the other. Barber was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, some 600 miles from Knoxville, but he understood exactly what the prose was describing. He, too, sat on his lawn in the twilight with his family, lazily whiling the summer days away. He, too, knew the sounds of streetcars, and he knew the tension as well as ease of family grownup conversations overheard by a young boy. Born the same year as Agee, it was as if the poet was describing Barber’s own life, and he wasn’t alone. Once Steber, herself born and raised in West Virginia, knew what text the composer intended to set, she proclaimed “That was exactly my childhood!”
To a certain extent, everyone can probably imagine the scene set by Agee. In 1915 even radios were relatively rare, so we’re left with the notion that folks truly did sit and talk with one another as a pastime. The idea of blankets on the lawn, a gentle warm humidity in the air, and neighbors walking by in the early evening is easily conjured in the mind, even if modern life often looks very different. Agee’s poem, and by brilliant extension, Barber’s setting of it, reinforces that heartfelt yearning for life stripped of distraction and focused on our loved ones. The music transports us to that moment and allows a brief stay – a suspended moment in time filled with longing, love, and the simple pleasure of being with one another. The premiere of the work in 1948 was such a success that Knoxville: Summer of 1915 was considered a standard overnight. And so it has been ever since.
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Le Boeuf sur le Toit, op. 58
Darius Milhaud (1892-1974)
Milhaud had an early start as a musician. To begin with, he was born into an incredibly musical family in Aix-en-Provance, not far from the coastal city of Marseille. From the age of 3 he was already playing duets on violin with his pianist father as well as showing signs of experiments with his own compositions. As a teen he entered the Paris Conservatory to study with titans such as Charles Widor and work alongside classmates like Arthur Honegger. Though possessing great talent for the violin, Milhaud gravitated toward composition at the Conservatory and made that the focus of his education.
While the outbreak of the First World War saw many of Milhaud’s friends heading off to the frontlines, rheumatoid arthritis disqualified him from service. In its place, Milhaud volunteered for the Civil Service office and was assigned as secretary to the French Ambassador to Brazil. In 1916, Milhaud moved for a 3-year stint to Rio de Janeiro, a move that would deeply impact his compositional output for the rest of his life.
Le Boeuf sur le Toit (“The Ox on the Roof”) is the outcome of Milhaud’s profound love of Brazilian street and folk music. When he returned to France in 1919, he couldn’t get the melodies he had encountered there out of his head. As a result, Le Boeuf is a grab bag of Brazilian melodic quotes, tunefully spun together in a Rondo form that has delighted audiences since its premiere. At least 20 different tunes are buried within the score, representing 14 Brazilian composers. Each of the tunes is carefully curated to make them explicit to the listener, partly by giving them each their own key.
The jocularity of the music conjures all sorts of festive images, and one of Milhaud’s friends in Paris, Jean Cocteau, encouraged him to allow a ballet company to choreograph the work with circus characters to enhance the impression on the audience. As it turns out, Cocteau had a point, and the premiere in 1920 in a club on the Champs-Élysées had people standing shoulder to shoulder to get a glimpse of the glorious spectacle before them. A series of performances in London were so successful that the work became a touring piece for ballet companies around the world. Even a bar in New York City was named after it. Ultimately, the sheer lifeforce of the music has made Le Boeuf sur le Toit Milhaud’s most performed work and a joy to experience live.
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Appalachian Spring (1945 Orchestral Suite)
Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
It’s often said it takes a village to raise a child, and the same is frequently true for bringing a piece of music to life. For dancer Martha Graham and composer Aaron Copland, a passing conversation in the early 1940s eventually resulted in a union of artistic geniuses premiering Appalachian Spring on October 30th, 1944, at the Library of Congress. Graham both choreographed and danced the lead in the ballet set to Copland’s score that night, but in truth, dozens of artisans – from set designers to costumers to lighting designers – merged to produce one of the most profound premieres in American musical and theatrical history. The premiere made such an impression that it bonded the two artists together in the minds of the public for the rest of their lives. That the work would receive the Pulitzer Prize the following year was almost a foregone conclusion.
Copland was already deeply respected in the ballet community, having produced the scores for Billy the Kid in 1938 and Rodeo in 1942. These scores defined his “Americana” compositional period that found its roots in US folk and hymn songs, exploring the mythology of pastoral American life in the 19th century. His music was sincere and earnest, much like the spirited stories that these two ballets told, and Martha Graham (herself a country girl from Allegheny, PA) was intent on telling this type of story, too. Graham solicited philanthropist Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge to commission the new work from Copland. Coolidge, with deep pockets and a desire to support new music, was only tangentially interested in ballet. What concerned her more was the creation of new chamber music. Therefore, the ballet from Copland would need to conform to the size and structure of a chamber music ensemble.
The ensemble size suited Copland just fine. In 1943, with only a loose storyline plotted, he began writing the score for a small band of 13 instruments. For the next year he continued to compose, using only a “placeholder” title for the work, Ballet for Martha. By the middle of October 1944 – only two weeks before the premiere – there still was no proper title. Graham happened upon a poem by Hart Crane that utilized the phrase “Appalachian Spring”, and the dancer knew she’d found it. Years later, Copland would openly talk about how the “spring” in the poem refers to a body of water, where most audiences think of the piece referencing the season of “spring”. But that detail notwithstanding, the title does serve to put one’s mind in the right setting for this rural and placid work. It should be noted that the subtitle for this work, at Copland’s direction, remained Ballet for Martha.
The ballet essentially follows four characters – a newlywed couple, a country minister, and a pioneer woman. They weave through an introduction, a revivalist gathering with square dancing, exploration of daily farm life of the young couple, and a gently optimistic conclusion looking heroically to the future. The revival scene includes the famous Shaker melody, “Simple Gifts” that is so cherished. Though not an Appalachian folk melody, it is arguably among the most sublime inclusions of a folk tune in modern music. Once the ballet was premiered, conductors clamored to include the work on the concert stage. The following year, Copland arranged the 13-instrument original score for full orchestra and the New York Philharmonic premiered it in 1945. The ballet lives and breathes, literally pulsing with humanity and restrained pride. Copland knew his country, and his love for its people is obvious in his soaring and optimistic score.
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Appalachian Spring Ballet
Choreography and Story by
Caroline Meinert
Artistic Director of Ballet Arts, Inc. of Jackson, TN ​
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The setting is 1890 in a small village nestled in rural Tennessee. At the break of dawn, a charming house stands on the hillside. Agatha, a mother and widow, steps out of the house carrying a basket. Engaging in her daily routine, she leisurely hangs her laundry on a clothesline while contemplating her life and the surrounding land.
Suddenly, a whirlwind of energy rushes out of the door – her daughter Sybil. Sybil, a young and lively maiden, embraces the morning eagerly. Agatha gazes at Sybil with a warm smile, recognizing Sybil as the cornerstone of her life. Despite enduring significant losses, Sybil has consistently provided Agatha with stability and support.
Sybil makes her descent to the local village. She warmly greets her companions along the way. The girls dance and play in the warm afternoon sunlight, their joyful time abruptly interrupted by the arrival of a charming young man named Walter. Walter, a spirited farmhand, captures the attention of all the young girls in the town, yet his gaze is fixed only on Sybil. Their first encounter leaves Sybil unsure about Walter, while he remains resolute in his desire to get to know her.
Sybil and Walter engage in conversation, getting to know each other and developing a mutual fondness. Agatha observes the interaction between her daughter and Walter, feeling concerned for Sybil's well-being and not wanting to see her daughter get hurt. Agatha desires her daughter's happiness but also grieves the changes as Sybil transitions into adulthood. Agatha fears she will lose her daughter forever.
Walter asks Agatha for permission to marry Sybil, but Agatha initially refuses. With support from his sisters, Walter demonstrates his suitability to marry Sybil. Eventually, Agatha changes her mind and gives her approval to Walter.
The wedding day is filled with joy and excitement for everyone. Walter and Sybil dance and rejoice with their dear ones, marking a momentous occasion as they embrace the promise of a new journey on the horizon.
Five years later, Agatha leaves the house and starts her usual daily routine. Sybil and Walter approach the house, their love deepened over the years. A joyful child runs out to greet her parents. Reflecting on the positive changes in her life, Agatha embraces her grandchild, feeling grateful for this life.