NICK CURATES AND PERFORMS IN CAIC'S 2020 COLLABORATIVE WORKS FESTIVAL
NICK CURATES AND PERFORMS IN CAIC’S 2020 COLLABORATIVE WORKS FESTIVAL
CAIC’s 2020 Collaborative Works Festival: The Women, commemorated the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, which granted women the right to vote. Featuring exclusively the works of women composers, the festival was held over four consecutive weekends in October. The festival spotlighted music spanning over four and a half centuries, shedding light on the long history of musical pioneers who have been overlooked due to centuries of sexism.
WOMEN OF THE BAROQUE
“COLLABORATIVE ARTS INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO commemorated the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution with The Women, a series of streamed concerts dedicated to the music of female composers. Women of the Baroque initiated matters on October 9, with a tantalizing selection of works by Barbara Strozzi, Maddalena Casulana, Francesca Caccini, Antonia Bembo, Julie Pinel and Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre. Who remembers today that Strozzi was the most published composer of her lifetime? Or that Casulana, as noted in the excellent program notes by CAIC co-founder and artistic director Nicholas Phan, prefaced her First Book of Madrigals with her hope to “…show the world the futile error of men who believe themselves patrons of the high gifts of intellect, which according to them cannot also be held in the same way by women.”
Chicago audiences first encountered Phan in 2007, with his performances in Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria at Chicago Opera Theater. The tenor’s voice has beefed up since then and has served him well in Romantic song literature, but there was something ineffably satisfying in hearing Phan return to an earlier repertory. Phan’s intrinsically plangent timbre was beautifully showcased in this music, as was his singular gift in straightforward expressivity. Casulana’s “Vagh’amorosi augelli,”which opened the program,was given a heartrending reading tinged by gentle melancholy, as was Strozzi’s “Che si può fare?”—a ravishing piece that should be more widely known—at the concert’s conclusion…
…Those who doubt the power of music as a panacea in challenging times would have been convinced here; Women of the Baroque easily demonstrated why CAIC has emerged as one of the classiest vocal performance options in the city.”
– Opera News
LES PARISIENNES
“COLLABORATIVE ARTS INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO continued their 2020 Festival of Song, ‘The Women,’ on October 16 with ‘Les Parisiennes,’ an exploration of the groundbreaking female composers of the Parisian Belle Époque, including Lili and Nadia Boulanger, Cécile Chaminade, Germaine Tailleferre, and Pauline Viardot. Filmed at Chicago’s acoustically pristine Guarneri Hall, this delectable event arrested the listener anew with the translucent sensuality in this music as well as the often superb quality of its texts, including poetry by Pushkin, Maeterlinck, Paul Verlaine, Francis Jammes and Gabriel-Charles de Lattaignant…
…A rare complete performance of Lili Boulanger’s epic thirteen-song cycle Clairières dans le ciel was the centerpiece of the evening. Tenor Nicholas Phan brought an exquisitely floated upper register and plenty of ringing, muscular sound to this music. ‘Les Lilas qui avaient fleuri’ was tinged with pleading eroticism, while the final ‘Demain fera un an’ was capitally done and graced with an interminable final tone delivered on a rock-solid stream of breath. For all the beauty of his vocalism however, something one always treasures with this singer is his marked ability to instinctively sustain emotional continuity throughout instrumental passages and between individual pieces in sets. This was art song interpretation of a high order, indeed.”