Susan Graham & Music from Copland House

Terrace Theater

View Details

Patrons are requested to silence cell phones and other electronic devices during performances.

The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not allowed in this venue.

Susan Graham, mezzo-soprano
Music from Copland House
- Carol Wincenc, flute
- Benjamin Fingland, clarinet
- Suliman Tekalli, violin
- Melissa Reardon, viola
- Alexis Pia Gerlach, cello
- Michael Boriskin, piano

Program

Pierre Jalbert
(b. 1967): Crossings (2011)
[Commissioned by Copland House]

John Harbison
(b. 1938)

Selections from Songs America Loves to Sing (2004)

Solo: Amazing Grace
Canon: Aura Lee
Solo: What a Friend We Have in Jesus
Canon: We Shall Overcome
Solo: Ain’t Goin’ to Study War No More
Canon: Anniversary Song

Intermission

Richard Danielpour
(b. 1956)

A Standing Witness (2020)

Prologue

First Testimony
(Two assassinations. The Democratic national convention. Social crisis that was 1968.)

Second Testimony
(Moonlanding. Woodstock. Jimi Hendrix playing the Star Spangled Banner at the end of the Festival.)

Third Testimony
(Vietnam/bombing of Cambodia. Muhammad Ali refuses to be enlisted.)

Fourth Testimony
(Richard Nixon, Watergate, the heroes and the goats. The end of the war in Vietnam.)

Fifth Testimony
(Roe v. Wade. A woman’s right to choose.)

Sixth Testimony
(Vigil, the hostage crisis in Iran.)

Seventh Testimony
(The AIDS epidemic, and America’s reaction to it …)

Eighth Testimony
(End of the Soviet Union. Fall of the Berlin Wall. First Gulf War.)

Ninth Testimony
(The 90s: an epidemic of greed. Technology takes a leap, news & info accumulation speeds up – “Can I have some more, sir?”)

Tenth Testimony [Elegy]
(9/11, and the war in Iraq.)

Eleventh Testimony
(Barack Obama. Reemergence of the American Dream.)

Twelfth Testimony
(The dark cloud of Donald Trump. The rise of neo-fascism in America. The war on immigrants. The media demonized. “The best lack all conviction while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity” [W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”]. The end of honesty and truth. #Me Too.)

Thirteenth Testimony
(COVID-19. Black Lives Matter. A nation spiraling through fear, splintered by blame.)

Epilogue

[Commissioned for Music from Copland House and Susan Graham by Music Accord, Inc., of which the Kennedy Center is a member]

A Standing Witness

: Surely
Surely . . .

Surely there must be something beautiful to smile upon –
the umbered blue edge of sky as it fades into evening,
the brusque green heave of the sea. When I look up,
surely there will be a cloud or a lone star

dangling. Truth is, the Truth has gone walking –
left her perch for the doves and ravens
to ravage, hightailed it to the hills, to the quiet
beyond the rivers and trees. No matter

what ragged carnival may be thronging the streets,
what bleak homestead or plantation of sorrows
howling its dominion, Truth would say these are

arrogant times. Believers slaughter their doubters
while the greedy oil their lips with excuses
and the righteous turn merciless; the merciful, mad.
: Who comforts you now that the wheel has broken?
No more princes for the poor. Loss whittling you thin.
Grief is the constant now, hope the last word spoken.

In a dance of two elegies, which circles the drain? A token
year with its daisies and carbines is where we begin.
Who comforts you now? That the wheel has broken

is Mechanics 101; to keep dreaming when the joke’s on
you? ...
Grief is the constant now; hope, the last word spoken

on a motel balcony, shouted in a hotel kitchen. No kin
can make this journey for you. The route’s locked in.
Who comforts you now that the wheel has broken

the bodies of its makers? Beyond the smoke and
ashes, what you hear rising is nothing but the wind.
Who comforts you? Now that the wheel has broken,

grief is the constant. Hope: the last word spoken.
: Year of the moon, year of love & music:
Everyone in batik, dripping beads & good will;
peace to the world, peace to the Universe!
Sing along, kiss a stranger; blankets quilting the hill.

Three days of music – did you really imagine
this was all the excuse you would need?
Rain be damned; rock'n roll in the mud!
The bread can run low, but please not the weed –

then the last one steps onstage, fringed like a wild saint.
Do you see? he pleads. A scorched sound:
Hear it? Lost in combat, blind to love – your anthem
shredding the heavens as the bombs pour down.
: Butterfly, butterfly on the wall
Can’t you hear your country call?

Black man’s got no business being
both pretty and bold – with a right hook
as swift as his banter, his feet
a flurry of insults, disguised as dance.

There’s a war going on, but he’s having
none of it. He flicks his angry eyes,
then flings out a rhyme
quick as tossing a biscuit to a dog.

He’s our homegrown warrior, America’s
toffee-toned Titan; how dare he swagger
in the name of peace? No black man
strutting his minstrel ambitions

deserves those eloquent lips:
Swat him down, pin him to the mat!
And so they mutter, hellbent on keeping
their own destiny unscathed

& brazenly manifest.
: I’m not a crook he crowed, and people believed him,
persuaded by flags and honor guard;
that he had trusted his generals’ reports

did not justify terminating their trust in him,
leader of the free world balls-deep in the muck
of a war no one would claim to have started

... By any means necessary,
he was thinking, as he recorded another muddy deal,

then sent out his plumbers to plug the leaks.
Who wouldn’t prefer to be standing high and dry
with someone else’s fingers in the dike?

A little eavesdropping, a few ruffled papers
hardly constitutes a heist: let’s call it a domestic incursion;
and that the facts have been brought to light

means the system is working. No need for alarm:
a crook is just a bend in the road not yet traveled –
he’s simply waiting for the smoke to clear.
: She was a mother. She was a girl who dreamed of becoming
a mother someday. She was either a tease or a tramp, a lover
or a wife –still she had to do the counting; was accused of
lacking spontaneity, being a cold-hearted bitch;
but if the days didn’t add up, she’d end up
straddling a cold table in a dingy back room

or waving Goodbye Future. She was jogging. On the late shift.
Unlocking her car. And though she still remembered
the tart smack of his sweat when he held her down,
horseradish on his tongue –
none of this was she permitted to say

while lawyers argued her right to privacy citing
statute and precedent until the court declared Enough!

And she and her body were free to go.
: I wish I could describe how it felt to weather
the acetylene blare of their constant labor:

the bright chatter of Industry. Each day
the next card slipped into a disappearing deck;

each night dumped its used confetti at my feet
in grim, glittering heaps. But you’re not

interested. It’s your turn to watch as hours
flatten into days and weeks and months

until even the staunchest among you will shatter
when you catch yourself popping a beer

before settling down in front of the TV
where the countdown grows. Only then, perhaps,

would you let me console you by saying
that time empties with the waiting –

though you already know this by now.
: Anywhere. Anyone. Men, boys – but women, too, and
Children, babies unborn in the womb. ...
Every kind of diagnosis, fear fueling rumors as the flowers
Germinate and spread, voracious; a purple hemlock
Inching trunk to collarbone, jaw to ear to eye.
Kisses sicken; loving any body but your own
May kill. ...
Rail against the fleeing gods,
Spit into the wind; you’ll tire soon enough. The worst is always
Unimaginable, though you knew well before the verdict dropped –
Weakness. Fever. Chills. Those greedy, X-rated blooms. Now
You tell me: What’s a zero hour with no one left to count?
: Far away – can you hear it? Static pinging
at the edges of thought: the sound a wall makes
powering down. Can it be this easy –

one misspeak and crowds assemble;
the Evil Red Bear lies with the Cowboy
and Jericho topples under a jubilant swarm

of hammers chiseling for souvenirs?
Don't brood or marvel, just enjoy the music,
the death strip lit for photo ops, bananas for all –

History doesn’t cough up triumphs easily.
Even fear has grown tired of harboring rage
and sent it to play out in a desert

so far away, no one will notice . . . .
: Hubba Bubba Bubble tape,
chicken pita wrap to go,
Pop Rocks, Push Pops, Dipping Dots

Oreos!

Beanie babies by the handful
wool or pleather, felt or straw?
Mood rings for internal weather:

Wonderbra!

Page my PalmPilot when you’re done;
I’ll cut through the traffic mess
and pull up curbside in my Saturn

Thank you, GPS!

Who wouldn’t want to be a Millionaire.
Or a real live Princess or King of the World?
Map your genes and pierce your navel—

Spice Girl! ...

Gimme a logo to go with my Windows
eBay for old, Amazon for new;
A Hubble, a Canon, an Apple a day –

and we all shout Yahoo!
: [Instrumental Elegy]
: Surely there can be no more princes –
yet here we are, reinventing the magic
Year of Love, though the music is scarred
and there’s always a war or two going on.

At least the system seems to be working:
you’ve voted, done the counting, and there
he stands: America’s miracle, fruit of bold dreams
and labor. Ladies and Gents, the unimaginable

is open for business! Assemble your buoyant
prophesies: Who wouldn’t want to believe
in legends again, oblivious to everythingexcept
astonishment? Well done; felicitations!

And now the story is yours.
: Granted, it felt good at first to snicker,
But now the rooster won’t shut up.
How exhausting, waking to that imperious caw.

Old MacDonald’s downsized to a flowerpot;
Here a body there a body sent packing,
caged – everywheresomebody muddied.

Welcome to the Age of Babble!
Here a twitter, there a tweet; a tiki torch march
back to the Good Ol’ Times of mayhem and murder,

hollow-points blossoming all over!
Everywhere a body bloody;
even the earth is bleeding out.

Oh indolent friends, oh bitter patriots:
What have you triggered that can't be undone?
: Minute by minute
another falsehood, another death;
hour by hour
another firestorm, a stopped breath.
Each day an outrage, another spectacle,
microbes colonizing the air.
How many masks, how many protests,
how many sequestered?
Which will end first,
your shouts or your heart?
When it’s finally done,
what will you have left to count?
: I didn’t ask to stand under a crown of spikes
with my book and my torch, forgotten
like the lamp left burning in the corner.

My shoulder aches, my toes are throbbing.

I’d rather bathe in a park fountain
or cast benediction from the shadowy nest
of a cathedral’s gilded ribs.

Liberty’s pale green maiden, stranded.

Come [and] visit! Ascend to the crown and gaze out
at the nation I’ve sworn to watch over.
I stand ready to tell you what I have seen.

Who among you is ready to listen?

Program Notes

Crossings (2011)

by Pierre Jalbert

The inspiration for Pierre Jalbert’s Crossings came from the idea of wandering peoples, crossing into new territories and strange lands. He was especially interested in the migration of French-speaking people from France to Quebec and other parts of Canada in the 17^th century, and then from Canada to the United States in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, which represents his own family history. Crossings is not programmatic, but more reflective of the states of mind and being that can arise from any journey full of unexpected turns, trials, and discoveries.

The work is framed in a large three-part form, whose driving, sharply-accented outer sections surround a calm, mysterious center. The whole work is built around a simple, lyrical French-Canadian folk song, Quand j’ai parti du Canada (“When I left Canada”), which is characterized by its subtle, light-and-dark mixing of major and minor modes. The composer did not intend simply to arrange a folk song, but to synthesize it into his own musical language. While this striking melody does not appear in its entirety until it is played, simply, by the violin in the ruminative central portion of the work, nearly all of the material heard in the outer sections is derived from it. The use of open strings in the violin and cello throughout the work and a brief allusion to French-Canadian fiddle music impart a folk-like sound to the music.

Crossings was commissioned by Copland House for its Music from Copland House ensemble, which premiered it in 2011 and recorded it on a CD of four Jalbert chamber works on the Copland House Blend label.

– Michael Boriskin

Earning widespread notice for his richly-colored and superbly-crafted scores, Pierre Jalbert has developed a musical language that is engaging, expressive, and “immediately captures one’s attention with its strong gesture and vitality” (American Academy of Arts and Letters). Among his many honors are the Rome Prize, the BBC Masterprize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Fromm Foundation commission, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's Stoeger Award (given biennially "in recognition of significant contributions to the chamber music repertory"), and an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

He has drawn inspiration from a variety of sources, from plainchant melodies to natural phenomena. His music has been heard worldwide at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and London’s Barbican Center. Among his orchestral performances are those by the Boston, Cincinnati, Houston Symphonies, and the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra. His Violin Concerto was recently premiered by a consortium of three orchestras and soloists; Steven Copes, Margaret Batjer, and Frank Almond with, respectively the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and Milwaukee Symphony. His new orchestral song cycle for mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, From Dusk to Starry Night, was recently performed by l’Orchestre Métropolitain de Montreal, conducted by Cristian Macelaru. He has served as Composer-in-Residence for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, California Symphony, and Chicago’s Music in the Loft. Among his chamber music commissions and performances are those by the Ying, Borromeo, Maia, Enso, Chiara, Escher, Del Sol, and Emerson String Quartets. He is Professor of Music at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music in Houston, and co-founder of Musiqa, a new music collective in Houston.

Songs America Loves to Sing (2004)

by John Harbison

It is a distant, quaint vision: the family around the piano singing familiar songs, a Currier and Ives print, an album of sepia photographs. But I remember it well (or did I imagine it?). The album which our family sometimes used may have been called Songs America Loves to Sing. The present collection of solos and canons on some of these still familiar melodies is dedicated to my sister Meg (of five singers, now only two left). Ideally many of the tunes will still be recognizable. In the chorale preludes of the German Baroque, common melodies are embedded in the composer's invention (strict against free); if we know the tunes our enjoyment of the pieces is enhanced. It is my hope that choosing well-known musical material will make these settings transparent.

Songs America Loves to Sing was commissioned jointly by the Atlanta Chamber Players, with funding from Cherry Logan Emerson, and the Da Capo Chamber Players, with an award from the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University.

– John Harbison

Citing his most important influences as the Bach Cantatas, Stravinsky (whom he met in Santa Fe in 1963), and jazz, John Harbison's music is distinguished by its exceptional invention and deeply expressive range. Among America's most prominent artistic figures, he has received numerous awards and distinctions, including the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, Pulitzer Prize, Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities, and four honorary doctorates. Writing in every concert genre, he has composed music for most of this country’s premiere musical institutions, including the Metropolitan Opera (for which he wrote The Great Gatsby), Chicago Lyric Opera, Chicago and Boston Symphonies, New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Santa Fe and Aspen Festivals. His catalogue includes five string quartets, six symphonies, a ballet, three operas, and numerous chamber and choral works. More than 90 of his compositions have been recorded on the Albany, Nonesuch, Harmonia Mundi, New World, Decca, Koch, Naxos, Bridge, and Cedille labels. He served as Composer-in-Residence at the Pittsburgh Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, American Academy in Rome, and the Tanglewood, Marlboro, and Santa Fe Festivals, and is artistic director of the Token Creek Chamber Music Festival on his family farm in Wisconsin. He was recognized in his student days as an outstanding poet, and has been active for over a quarter-century as a conductor, leading the St. Paul and Scottish Chamber Orchestras, Boston Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and, in Boston, the Handel and Haydn Society, Harvard Bach Society Orchestra, Cantata Singers, and Emmanuel Music. Born into a musical family in New Jersey, he was improvising on the piano at age 5, and started a jazz band at 12. He studied at Harvard and Princeton, and then taught at MIT. Furthering the work of younger composers is one of his prime interests, and he served for many years as president of the Aaron Copland Fund for Music.

A Standing Witness (2020)

by Richard Danielpour

In 2018, I approached the great American poet Rita Dove about an idea that I had been seriously considering. I wanted to compose a work setting 13 or 14 poems for mezzo-soprano Susan Graham with a chamber ensemble. These poems would involve a woman who stands witnessing, giving testimony to the events of the last 50 years, including all the highlights and lowlights within that half-century. The work would culminate with two last songs about what was happening in our country at the time of the work’s composition in 2020, and ultimately a revelation of the identity of our Standing Witness. Although the result of her identity involves a bit of fantasy and metaphor, it is in keeping with the function of art that employs those two devices as a matter of course.

I was thrilled when Rita decided to collaborate with me on this project, and equally delighted when Susan agreed to sing this work. Copland House and its Artistic and Executive Director, Michael Boriskin, played an essential role in making this project a reality; they arranged for a commission of the work through Music Accord, a consortium of top-tier American concert presenters, and graciously agreed, before one note of the score was written, to premiere and tour the work.

A few lines in the various poems were omitted, so these are designated in the printed text by an ellipsis. And for several reasons, we decided that an instrumental elegy, without words, would be a more appropriate reflection on the events of September 11, 2001. This musical document, both historical and artistic in nature, has been created in order to ask two questions: where have we come from as Americans, and where are we going?

– Richard Danielpour

Grammy-Award winning composer Richard Danielpour is among the most gifted and sought-after composers of his generation. His music has attracted an illustrious array of champions, and, as a devoted mentor and educator, he has also had a significant impact on the younger generation of composers. He has been commissioned by some of the most celebrated artists and ensembles of our day, including Yo-Yo Ma, Dawn Upshaw, Emanuel Ax, Gil Shaham, Frederica von Stade, Thomas Hampson, Anthony McGill, the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, the Guarneri and Emerson String Quartets, the New York City, Pacific Northwest and Nashville Ballets, and the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Mariinsky and Vienna Chamber Orchestras, Orchestre National de France, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. With Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, he created the opera Margaret Garner. He is one of the most- recorded contemporary composers, with many CDs on the Naxos and SONY Classical labels. Among his many honors are two awards from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships, and The Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin. He was a long-serving faculty member at the Manhattan School of Music and Curtis Institute of Music, and is now a Professor of Music at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music.

Rita Dove served as Poet Laureate of the United States and Consultant to the Library of Congress from 1993 to 1995, and was Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. She has received numerous literary and academic honors, among them the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities, inaugural U.S. Presidential Scholars Award from the Presidential Scholars Foundation, and 27 honorary doctorates (most recently from Smith College and Harvard University in 2018). She is the only poet to have received both the National Humanities Medal (presented by President Clinton) and the National Medal of Arts (presented by President Obama). Born in Akron, Ohio, she received her B.A. summa cum laude from Miami University of Ohio, and her M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. She has published ten collections of her poetry, including this year’s Playlist for the Apocalypse; a book of short stories, Fifth Sunday; the novel Through the Ivory Gate; essays under the title The Poet's World; and the play The Darker Face of the Earth, which was premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and subsequently produced at the Kennedy Center, London’s Royal National Theatre, and other venues. Her texts have been set to music by Tania Leon, John Williams, Adolphus Hailstork, and many other composers.

Meet the Artists

All events and artists subject to change without prior notice.

Staff

Staff for the Terrace Theater

Theater Manager Xiomara Mercado*

Head Usher Randy Howes

Production Manager Kate Roberts

Master Technicians Richard Haase and Susan Kelleher

Box Office Treasurer Ron Payne

*Represented by ATPAM, the Association of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers.

iatse 868

The box office at the Kennedy Center is represented by I.A.T.S.E, Local #868.

Steinway Piano Gallery is the exclusive area representative of Steinway & Sons and Boston pianos, the official pianos of the Kennedy Center.

iatse 22 iatse 772 iatse 798

The technicians at the Kennedy Center are represented by Local #22, Local #772, and Local #798 I.A.T.S.E., AFL-CIO-CLC, the professional union of theatrical technicians.