≈ 90 minutes · No intermission
Last updated: October 30, 2020
Repertoire
Lyric for Strings
Starburst
Concerto for Guitar and Strings (Christ Habib, guitar)
Knoxville: Summer of 1915 (Jonelle Sills, soprano)
Commissioned by the American soprano Eleanor Steber, Knoxville: Summer of 1915 is a “lyric rhapsody” by Samuel Barber. Steber premiered the work in 1949, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitsky. The text is from an autobiographical prose poem by James Agee (1909–1955) and is a nostalgic reflection on a childhood summer in Knoxville, the year before his father’s death. Barber closely identified with the poem, who noted that it “particularly struck me because the summer evening he describes in his native southern town reminded me so much of similar evenings, when I was a child at home.” Moreover, it resonated with his experience of the long illness and subsequent death in August 1947 of his own father, to whom he dedicated this work.
Barber used a third of Agee’s original poem, specifically choosing the closing paragraphs, which “I put it into lines to make the rhythmic pattern clear.” Musically, as musicologist Benedict Taylor has aptly described, the “nostalgia and wistful tone of Agee’s poem is translated into Barber’s music by several markers for childhood, past time, and musical nostalgia.” These elements include a recurring lullaby refrain and a simple, folk song–like vocal line. The diverse timbres of the orchestra’s instruments vividly evoke the various sights and sounds described in the poem. To guide listening, the text is provided in full below with brief commentary on the music.
The introduction, with the sounds of the English horn, clarinet, bassoon, and harp create a pastoral setting, conjuring up a simpler time and place. The voice enters, with the words on the primary lullaby theme, and gentle, rocking accompaniment.
It has become that time of evening when people sit on their porches, rocking gently and talking gently and watching the street and the standing up into their sphere of possession of the trees, of birds' hung havens, hangars. People go by; things go by. A horse, drawing a buggy, breaking his hollow iron music on the asphalt: a loud auto: a quiet auto: people in pairs, not in a hurry, scuffling, switching their weight of aestival body, talking casually, the taste hovering over them of vanilla, strawberry, pasteboard, and starched milk, the image upon them of lovers and horsemen, squared with clowns in hueless amber.
An urgent episode disrupts the reverie with the noise and bustle of daily urban life, here represented by the sounds of a streetcar, emulated by staccato woodwinds and plucked strings, among other effects.
A streetcar raising into iron moan; stopping; belling and starting; stertorous; rousing and raising again its iron increasing moan and swimming its gold windows and straw seats on past and past and past, the bleak spark crackling and cursing above it like a small malignant spirit set to dog its tracks; the iron whine rises on rising speed; still risen, faints; halts; the faint stinging bell; rises again, still fainter; fainting, lifting, lifts, faints foregone: forgotten.
Another brief episode follows, that, with muted strings, has a wistful, magical quality, as the voice tenderly recalls this memory:
Now is the night one blue dew, my father has drained, he has coiled the hose.
Low on the length of lawns, a frailing of fire who breathes…
It then sinks back into the lullaby refrain.
Parents on porches: rock and rock. From damp strings morning glories hang their ancient faces.
The dry and exalted noise of the locusts from all the air at once enchants my eardrums.
The third episode introduces a new melodic motif, and the music becomes somewhat unsettled and intensifies—through wide leaps in the violins and the infusion of more chromatic harmonies—as the voice contemplates “their people” around them and the ephemerality of life.
On the rough wet grass of the backyard my father and mother have spread quilts. We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, and I too am lying there. … They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet, of nothing in particular, of nothing at all. The stars are wide and alive, they all seem like a smile of great sweetness, and they seem very near. All my people are larger bodies than mine, … with voices gentle and meaningless like the voices of sleeping birds. One is an artist, he is living at home. One is a musician, she is living at home. One is my mother who is good to me. One is my father who is good to me. By some chance, here they are, all on this earth; and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth, lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of the night.
The pastoral music from the introduction returns; the voice intones an impassioned prayer, to which the orchestra responds with an intense climax.
May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble; and in the hour of their taking away.
For one last time, the lullaby returns. On the final words, which, in Barber’s view, “expresses a child’s feeling of loneliness, wonder, and a lack of identity in that marginal world between twilight and sleep,” the voice soars to ethereal heights above the orchestra.
After a little I am taken in and put to bed. Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her: and those receive me, who quietly treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in that home: but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am.
On the lullaby’s rocking motif, the orchestra draws the rhapsody to a reflective close.
Knoxville: Summer of 1915 Libretto (PDF 188.91 KB)
Portrait of a Queen (Jonelle Sills, narrator)
Portrait of a Queen Narrative (PDF 107.8 KB)
Solace (Yosuke Kawasaki, violin; Julia MacLaine, cello)
Artists
George Theophilus Walker (1922-2018) was born in Washington, D.C. June 27, 1922 of West Indian-American parentage.
George Walker became the first Black composer to receive the coveted Pulitzer Prize for music, for his work Lilacs (1996). In 2003 he was selected for inclusion in the Washington Music Hall of Fame (Washington, DC).
He became the first Black composer to be performed at the Cabrillo Festival in 2011. Additional awards in 2011 were received from the National Council of Negro Women and the Newark School for the Arts.
With his “notable” debut, as it was described by the New York Times, he became the first Black instrumentalist to perform in Town Hall, New York. In 1945 he was the first Black instrumentalist to appear with the Philadelphia Orchestra. The second movement of his String Quartet no. 1 (1946), entitled Lyric for Strings, has become the most frequently performed orchestral work by a living American composer. In 1950, George Walker became the first Black instrumentalist to be signed by a major management, the National Concert Artists.
In 1956, he became the first Black recipient of a doctoral degree from the Eastman School of Music as well as an Artist Diploma in Piano.
George Walker has composed over 90 works for orchestra, chamber orchestra, piano, strings, voice, organ, clarinet, guitar, brass, woodwinds, and chorus. His works have been performed by virtually every major orchestra in the United States and by many in England and other countries.
“This composer has finally gotten the recognition he deserves.” Zubin Mehta, conductor (Star Ledger, April 14, 1996)
Jessie Montgomery is an acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator. She is the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, and her works are performed frequently around the world by leading musicians and ensembles. Her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of 21st-century American sound and experience. Her profoundly felt works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life” (The Washington Post).
Jessie was born and raised in Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the 1980s during a time when the neighborhood was at a major turning point in its history. Artists gravitated to the hotbed of artistic experimentation and community development. Her parents – her father a musician, her mother a theater artist and storyteller – were engaged in the activities of the neighborhood and regularly brought Jessie to rallies, performances, and parties where neighbors, activists, and artists gathered to celebrate and support the movements of the time. It is from this unique experience that Jessie has created a life that merges composing, performance, education, and advocacy.
Since 1999, Jessie has been affiliated with The Sphinx Organization, which supports young African-American and Latinx string players. She currently serves as composer-in-residence for the Sphinx Virtuosi, their Organization’s flagship professional touring ensemble. She was a two-time laureate of the annual Sphinx Competition and was awarded their highest honor, the Sphinx Medal of Excellence. She has received additional grants and awards from the ASCAP Foundation, Chamber Music America, American Composers Orchestra, the Joyce Foundation, and the Sorel Organization.
The New York Philharmonic has selected Jessie as a featured composers for their Project 19, which marks the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, granting equal voting rights in the United States to women. Other forthcoming works include a nonet inspired by the Great Migration, told from the perspective of Montgomery’s great-grandfather William McCauley and to be performed by Imani Winds and the Catalyst Quartet; a cello concerto for Thomas Mesa jointly commissioned by Carnegie Hall, New World Symphony, and The Sphinx Organization; and a new orchestral work for the National Symphony.
Jacques Hétu (1938-2010) was born in Trois-Rivières, Quebec. He learned piano as a youth and then, in 1955, went to study music for at the University of Ottawa. He went on to study at the prestigious Montreal Conservatory, where won the school's premier prix in composition in 1961. After graduating from the Conservatory, Hétu was awarded a scholarship to continue his studies in Paris.
One of Canada’s most esteemed and frequently performed composers, Hétu’s catalogue includes some 70 works, including symphonies, opera, choral and chamber music, and concertos for numerous instruments.
Hétu's career gained momentum with Glenn Gould’s recording of his Variations, Opus 8 for piano in 1967. In 1976, Hétu’s Fantasy, Opus 21 for piano and orchestra was the set Canadian piece at the Montreal International Music Competition. His Symphony No. 3 - judged by Eric McLean as “one of the most worthwhile creations of a Canadian composer in more than a decade” (Montreal Star, 26 Oct 1977) - appeared on the program of the National Arts Centre Orchestra’s European tour in 1990.
Jacques Hétu garnered many honours, winning SOCAN’s Jan V. Matejcek prize seven times, as well as both a Western Music Award and a Juno for the 2004 recording of Jacques Hétu: Concertos. In 1989 he was made a member of the Royal Society of Canada and in 2001 he was named an Officer of the Order of Canada.
Jacques Hétu taught 1963-77 at Laval University, giving classes in music literature and analysis, introducing an orchestration course, and establishing a composition class. Hétu also taught composition 1972-73 and 1978-79 at the University of Montreal and taught at the Université du Québec à Montréal 1979-2000, where he was director of the Music Department 1980-82 and 1986-88.
Christ Habib (born 1996) started playing classical guitar when he was six years old, and at 10 years old he was accepted at the Conservatory of Music in Gatineau.
Christ has distinguished himself in many competitions, the most recent ones being the National Music Festival in Saskatoon where he won first place, and the music competition of Pierre-de-Saurel, where he won the first prize in classical guitar as well as the chamber music category with his guitar duo partner Félix Dallaire. He was also a finalist in international competitions such as the international competition of the Guitar Academy of Boston where he won the 3rd place and the international guitar competition at Domaine Forget in 2016 and 2019 where he received the 2nd place.
As his career grows, he has made numerous video recordings and recently had his debut concert at the Montreal Place des Arts for the Mélodînes Concert Series (2020) and was recently named one of CBC’s Top 30 Classical Musicians Under 30.
He recently finished his Master’s Degree in music with Patrick Roux at the Conservatory of Music in Gatineau where he received a prize in chamber music and graduated with honours.
Christ plays on a 2017 traditional cedar top classical guitar made by Douglass Scott.
Samuel Barber’s (1910-1981) music, masterfully crafted and built on romantic structures and sensibilities, is at once lyrical, rhythmically complex, and harmonically rich. Born March 9, 1910 in West Chester, Pennsylvania, Barber wrote his first piece at age seven and attempted his first opera at age 10. At the age of 14 he entered the Curtis Institute, where he studied voice, piano, and composition. Later, he studied conducting with Fritz Reiner.
At Curtis, Barber met Gian Carlo Menotti with whom he would form a lifelong personal and professional relationship. Menotti supplied libretti for Barber’s operas Vanessa (for which Barber won the Pulitzer) and A Hand of Bridge. Barber’s music was championed by a remarkable range of renowned artists, musicians, and conductors including Vladimir Horowitz, John Browning, Martha Graham, Arturo Toscanini, Dmitri Mitropoulos, Jennie Tourel and Eleanor Steber. His Antony and Cleopatra was commissioned to open the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in 1966.
Barber was the recipient of numerous awards and prizes including the American Prix de Rome, two Pulitzers, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The intensely lyrical Adagio for Strings has become one of his most recognizable and beloved compositions, both in concerts and films.
Read more here: https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/composer/72/Samuel-Barber/
Canadian Soprano Jonelle Sills has been praised for her “...warm, full, elastic tone.” (Schmopera) Ms. Sills has recently been named as one of CBC Music’s classical “30 under 30” performers for 2020.
Some past roles include Mimì, Musetta (La Bohème), Countess (Le Nozze di Figaro), Roselinde (Die Fledermaus), Micaëla (Carmen) and Female Chorus (The Rape of Lucretia). Sills is a 2019 Dora award winner for “Outstanding performance of an Ensemble” in Vivier’s Kopernikus with Against the Grain Theatre.
Currently based in Toronto, Sills holds an Artist Diploma from the Glenn Gould School at The Royal Conservatory of Music and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from York University. Sills originated the role of Esther in Prestini’s, Vavrek and Strassberger’s Silent Light as a Resident artist at Banff Centre’s Opera in the 21st Century Program. Jonelle is honoured to be joining Vancouver Opera’s Yulanda M. Faris Young Artist Program for their 2020/2021 season.
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Carlos Simon is a native of Atlanta, Georgia whose music ranges from concert music for large and small ensembles to film scores with influences of jazz, gospel, and neo-romanticism. Simon was named as one of the recipients for the 2021 Sphinx Medal of Excellence.
Simon’s latest album, My Ancestor’s Gift, was released on the Navona Records label in April 2018. Described as an “overall driving force” (Review Graveyard) and featured on Apple Music’s “Albums to Watch”, My Ancestor’s Gift incorporates spoken word and historic recordings to craft a multifaceted program of musical works that are inspired as much by the past as they are the present.
As a part of the Sundance Institute, Simon was named as a Sundance Composer Fellow in 2018. His string quartet, Elegy, honoring the lives of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner was recently performed at the Kennedy Center for the Mason Bates JFK Jukebox Series. With support from the US Embassy in Tokyo and US/Japan Foundation, Simon traveled with the Asia/America New Music Institute (AANMI) in 2018 performing concerts in some of the most sacred temples and concert spaces in Japan.
Simon earned his doctorate degree at the University of Michigan, where he studied with Michael Daugherty and Evan Chambers. He has also received degrees from Georgia State University and Morehouse College. Additionally, he studied in Baden, Austria at the Hollywood Music Workshop with Conrad Pope and at New York University’s Film Scoring Summer Workshop.
The late Jocelyn Morlock (1969–2023) was one of Canada’s leading composers, who wrote compelling music that has been recorded extensively and receives numerous performances and broadcasts throughout North America and Europe. Born in Winnipeg, she studied piano at Brandon University, and later earned a master’s degree and a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of British Columbia, where she was recently an instructor and lecturer of composition. The inaugural composer-in-residence for Vancouver’s Music on Main Society (2012–14), she took on the same role for the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra from 2014 to 2019.
Jocelyn had close ties with the National Arts Centre Orchestra, who in 2015, commissioned My Name is Amanda Todd, a powerful work about the teen from Port Coquitlam, BC, who took her own life due to cyberbullying. It subsequently won the 2018 JUNO Award for Classical Composition for the Year.
“With its shimmering sheets of harmonics” (Georgia Straight) and an approach that is “deftly idiomatic” (Vancouver Sun), Morlock’s music has received numerous national and international accolades, including Top 10 at the 2002 International Rostrum of Composers, the Mayor’s Arts Award for Music in Vancouver (2016) and the JUNO award for Classical Composition of the Year (My Name Is Amanda Todd, 2018).
Most of Morlock’s compositions are for small ensembles, many of them for unusual combinations like piano and percussion (Quoi?), cello and vibraphone (Shade), bassoon and harp (Nightsong), and an ensemble consisting of clarinet/bass clarinet, trumpet, violin and double bass (Velcro Lizards). Cobalt, a concerto for two violins and orchestra, was her first commission for the National Arts Centre Orchestra, in 2009. Her first full-length CD, also titled Cobalt, was released on the Centrediscs label in 2014.
Yosuke Kawasaki currently serves as Concertmaster of the NAC Orchestra. His versatile musicianship allows him to pursue a career in orchestra, solo, and chamber music. His orchestral career began with the Montgomery Symphony Orchestra and soon led to the Mito Chamber Orchestra, Saito Kinen Orchestra, and Japan Century Orchestra, all of which he led as concertmaster. His solo and chamber music career spans five continents, collaborating with artists such as Seiji Ozawa, Pinchas Zukerman, and Yo-Yo Ma, and appearing in the world’s most prestigious halls such as Carnegie Hall, Suntory Hall, and the Royal Concertgebouw.
Kawasaki’s current regular ensembles are Trio Ink and the Mito String Quartet. His passion for chamber music led to his appointment as Music Director to the Affinis Music Festival in Japan. He is also an artistic advisor to a new chamber music festival, Off the Beaten Path, in Bulgaria.
As an educator Kawasaki has given masterclasses and performed side by side with students in schools across Canada. Well-versed in the string quartet literature he was entrusted by Seiji Ozawa as the youngest faculty member of the Ozawa International Chamber Music Academy at the age of 26. He was also an adjunct professor of violin at the University of Ottawa School of Music from 2013 to 2022 alongside the beloved pedagogue Yehonatan Berick.
Kawasaki began his violin studies at the age of six with his father Masao Kawasaki and Setsu Goto. He was subsequently accepted into The Juilliard School Pre-College Division and further continued his education and graduated from The Juilliard School in 1998 under the tutorship of Dorothy DeLay, Hyo Kang, Felix Galimir, and Joel Smirnoff.
Assistant Principal Cello of the National Arts Centre Orchestra since 2014, Julia MacLaine performs worldwide as a soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician in music ranging from classical to contemporary and from “world” to her own arrangements and compositions.
Most recently, she has performed with her string quartet Ironwood in Mahone Bay (NS), at the Indian River Festival (PEI), and at their own Classical Unbound Festival in Prince Edward County. The quartet has appeared at the Wolfgang Sessions and MFASA series in Ottawa, at Ritornello Festival (SK), and in Paris. Their programs combine classical warhorses (Beethoven, Ravel, Debussy) with very new music (works by Ana Sokolovic, Nicole Lizée, Bryce Dessner, Philip Glass, Esa‐Pekka Salonen), and occasionally veer off into their own arrangements of original songs and folk music.
During the ten years she spent living in New York City, Julia collaborated frequently with composers, giving voice to new works for solo cello. Most notably, she has been a champion of Pedro Malpica’s Pachamama’s Catharsis. MacLaine could often be heard on all three stages at Carnegie Hall. As a member of Ensemble Connect (previously ACJW), she performed numerous chamber music concerts at Weill and Zankel Halls, notably as the soloist in Tan Dun’s concerto Elegy: Snow in June. She also played frequently in Stern Auditorium as a member of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and as principal cellist for Osvaldo Golijov’s Pasion selun San Marcos. From 2005 to 2014, she was a member of the Brooklyn‐based chamber orchestra The Knights, with whom she performed the Schumann Cello Concerto in 2012 in Central Park and for live broadcast by WQXR. The Grammy‐nominated ensemble collaborates regularly with artists such as Gil Shaham, Renée Fleming, and Yo‐Yo Ma, and has recorded several albums for, among others, SONY Classical.
An entrepreneurial musician, Julia co-founded the New York group The Ikarus Chamber Players, an ensemble that married classical chamber music with other art forms in their own concert series in auction houses, art galleries, and other unique venues. With her colleagues in the Academy (Carnegie and Juilliard‐led fellowship connected to Ensemble ACJW/Connect), she formed the chamber music collective Decoda to develop community chamber music residencies around the world. With Decoda, Julia has performed at the Mecklenberg‐Vorpommern Festival in Germany, in Abu Dhabi, at Suntory Hall in Tokyo, and across the United States. She has also appeared at the Lanaudière, Bic, Mostly Mozart, Tanglewood, and Ravinia Festivals.
Julia has performed with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and Les Violons du Roy, and her chamber music collaborators include Itzhak Perlman, Jackie Parker, Pinchas Zukerman, members of the Orion String Quartet, Ani and Ida Kavafian, Inon Barnatan, and Cynthia Phelps.
Originally from Prince Edward Island, Julia studied with Antonio Lysy at McGill University (BMus), and with Timothy Eddy at the Mannes College of Music (Artist Diploma) and at The Juilliard School (MMus).
Since its debut in 1969, the National Arts Centre Orchestra has been praised for the passion and clarity of its performances, its visionary educational programs, and its prominent role in nurturing Canadian creativity. Under the leadership of Music Director Alexander Shelley, the Orchestra performs a full series of subscription concerts at the National Arts Centre each season, featuring world-class artists such as James Ehnes, Angela Hewitt, Joshua Bell, Xian Zhang, Gabriela Montero, Stewart Goodyear, Jan Lisiecki, and Principal Guest Conductor John Storgårds.
Alexander Shelley began his tenure as Music Director in 2015, following Pinchas Zukerman’s 16 seasons at the helm. Principal Associate Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and former Chief Conductor of the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra (2009 - 2017), he has been in demand around the world, conducting the Rotterdam Philharmonic, DSO Berlin, Leipzig Gewandhaus, and Stockholm Philharmonic, among others, and maintains a regular relationship with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie and the German National Youth Orchestra.
National and international tours have been a hallmark of the National Arts Centre Orchestra from the very beginning. The Orchestra has toured 95 times since its inauguration in 1969, visiting 120 cities in Canada, as well as 20 countries and 138 cities internationally. In recent years, the orchestra has undertaken performance and education tours across Canada, as well as the U.K. and China. In 2019, the Orchestra marked its 50th anniversary with a seven-city European tour that included performances and education events in England, France, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden, and that showcased the work of six Canadian composers.
The NAC Orchestra has recorded many of the more than 80 new works commissioned since its inception, for radio and on over 40 commercial recordings. These include Angela Hewitt’s 2015 JUNO Award-winning album of Mozart Piano Concertos; the groundbreaking Life Reflected, which includes My Name is Amanda Todd by Jocelyn Morlock, winner of the 2018 JUNO for Classical Composition of the Year; and from the 2019 JUNO nominated New Worlds, Ana Sokolović’s Golden Slumbers Kiss Your Eyes, 2019 JUNO Winner for Classical Composition of the Year.
The NAC Orchestra reaches a national and international audience through touring, recordings, and extensive educational outreach. The Orchestra performed on Parliament Hill for the 2019 Canada Day noon concert in a live broadcast for CBC Television.
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Alexander Shelley succeeded Pinchas Zukerman as Music Director of Canada’s NAC Orchestra in September 2015. The ensemble has since been praised as being “transformed... hungry, bold, and unleashed” (Ottawa Citizen) and Shelley’s programming credited for turning the orchestra into “one of the more audacious in North America” (Maclean’s).
Shelley is a champion of Canadian creation; recent hallmarks include the multimedia projects Life Reflected and UNDISRUPTED,and three major new ballets in partnership with NAC Dance for Encount3rs. He is passionate about arts education and nurturing the next generation of musicians. He is an Ambassador for Ottawa’s OrKidstra, a charitable social development program that teaches children life skills through making music together.
Alexander Shelley is also the Principal Associate Conductor of London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and, starting with the 2024–2025 season, Artistic and Music Director of Artis-Naples and the Naples Philharmonic in Florida, USA. In the spring of 2019, he led the NAC Orchestra on its critically acclaimed 50th Anniversary European tour, and in 2017, he led the Orchestra in a tour across Canada, celebrating Canada’s 150th anniversary. Most recently, he led the Orchestra in its first performance at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 30 years.
He has made eight recordings with the NAC Orchestra, including the JUNO-nominated New Worlds, Life Reflected, ENCOUNT3RS, The Bounds of Our Dreams, and the acclaimed Clara, Robert, Johannes four-album series, all with Canadian label Analekta.
The Music Director role is supported by Elinor Gill Ratcliffe, C.M., O.N.L., LL.D. (hc)
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