ABOUT
Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago’s 11th annual Collaborative Works Festival explores Chicago’s rich musical history through song.
PROGRAM I
CHICAGO’S OWN
The Festival’s opening program, Chicago's Own, features songs of composers who were born in Chicago as well as those who studied and taught at many of Chicago's universities and institutions. Among those born in Chicago are composers Ernst Bacon and Reena Esmail. Composers who taught and trained at the American Conservatory of Music and Chicago Musical College (now Roosevelt University Chicago College for the Performing Arts), include Ned Rorem, Joseph Schwantner, and Ruth Crawford Seeger. Their songs are featured alongside some of those teaching and residing in Chicago today, including Clarice Assad, Stacy Garrop, Lita Grier and Eric Malmquist.
ARTISTS
Kathryn Henry, soprano | Zoie Reams, mezzo-soprano | Nicholas Phan, tenor | Kuang-Hao Huang, piano
PROGRAM
NED ROREM: selected songs
CECIL COHEN: Epitaph for a Poet
ERNST BACON: selected songs
LITA GRIER: Two Songs from Emily Dickinson
ERIC MALMQUIST: Anna Imroth from Chicago Songs
STACY GARROP: We Real Cool
REENA ESMAIL: Rosa de Sal
RUTH CRAWFORD SEEGER: White Moon from Five Songs
DOLORES WHITE: That Black Reef
JOSEPH SCHWANTNER: Black Anemones from Two Poems of Agueda Pizarro
CLARICE ASSAD: Confessions
JULE STYNE: Time After Time
PROGRAM II
MUSIC & POETRY
The second program, Music and Poetry features the music of some of Chicago’s Black American composers who blazed new trails for Black American composers and musicians both in Chicago and nationwide. This history spans Nora Holt becoming the first African American in the US to receive a Master of Music degree in 1918, the founding of the National Association of Negro Musicians (NANM) in 1919, the premiere of Florence Price’s 1st Symphony with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Margaret Bonds becoming the first African American musician bow as soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. This history is highlighted with songs by Bonds and Price, in addition to songs by former NANM presidents Betty Jackson King and Nathaniel Dett, and former director of the Center for BlackMusic Research, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson. Alongside these are songs by Black American composers currently living in Chicago.
The concert takes its name from Nora Holt's musical journal of the same title, which she published in Chicago with the mission of promoting the work of African American musicians.
ARTISTS
Whitney Morrison, soprano | Zoie Reams, mezzo-soprano | Nicholas Phan, tenor | Lunga Eric Hallam, tenor | Robert Sims, baritone | Shannon McGinnis, piano
PROGRAM
NORA HOLT: The Sandman
arr. R. NATHANIEL DETT: selected spirituals
CECIL COHEN: Death of an Old Seaman
FLORENCE PRICE: selected songs
MARGARET BONDS: Songs of the Seasons
BETTY JACKSON KING: Theology
IRENE BRITTON SMITH: Why Fades a Dream from A Dream Cycle
WILL LIVERMAN: A Golden Day
COLERIDGE-TAYLOR PERKINSON: selected songs
SHAWN OKPEBHOLO: Two Black Churches
arr. SHAWN OKPEBHOLO: selected spirituals
PROGRAM III
THE AMERICAN SONGBAG
The closing program examines Chicago poet, journalist, and urban folk singer Carl Sandburg’s seminal anthology of American Folk songs, The American Songbag. Published in 1927, while Sandburg was living in Chicago, the anthology was an instantly popular collection of folk songs that proved to be foundational for the American folk resurgence, inspiring singers like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. A powerful statement of a diverse vision of American identity, Sandburg described the collection as a "ragbag of stripes and streaks of color from nearly all ends of the earth ... rich with the diversity of the United States."
The concert features arrangements of many of the songs contained in Sandburg's collection alongside various art song settings of his poetry.
ARTISTS
Pauline Tan, mezzo-soprano | Nicholas Phan, tenor | Lunga Eric Hallam, tenor | Anthony Reed, bass | Yasuko, Oura, piano
PROGRAM
ERIC MALMQUIST: Masses from On the Way
ERNST BACON: Omaha
arr. ERNST BACON: selected folk songs
arr. STEVEN MARK KOHN: selected folk songs
HOWARD SWANSON: Cahoots
arr. GEORGE WALKER: selected spirituals
arr. MARGARET BONDS: Ezekiel Saw The Wheel
ERIC MALMQUIST: Fellow Citizens from Chicago Songs
arr. RUTH CRAWFORD SEEGER: selected folk songs