UMS Concert Program, Saturday Feb. 02 To 17: University Musical Society: 2002 Winter - Saturday Feb. 02 To 17 --

Season: 2002 Winter
The University Of Michigan

University Musical Society
of the University of Michigan 2002 Winter Season
Event Program Book Saturday, February 2 through Sunday, February 17, 2002
General Information
Children of all ages are welcome at UMS Family and Youth Performances. Parents are encouraged not to bring children under the age of three to regular, full-length UMS performances. All children should be able to sit quietly in their own seats throughout any UMS perfor?mance. Children unable to do so, along with the adult accompanying them, will be asked by an usher to leave the auditorium. Please use discretion in choosing to bring a child.
Remember, everyone must have a ticket, regardless of age.
While in the Auditorium
Starting Time Every attempt is made to begin concerts on time. Latecomers are asked to wait in the lobby until seated by ushers at a predetermined time in the program.
Cameras and recording equipment are
prohibited in the auditorium.
If you have a question, ask your usher. They are here to help.
Please take this opportunity to exit the "information superhighway" while you are enjoying a UMS evert: electronic-beeping or chiming digital watches, beeping pagers, ringing cellular phones and clicking portable comput?ers should be turned off during perfor?mances. In case of emergency, advise your paging service of auditorium and seat location and ask them to call University Security at 734.763.1131.
In the interests of saving both dollars and the environment, please retain this program book and return with it when you attend other UMS performances included in this edition. Thank you for your help.
A Solo Evening with Laurie Anderson 5
Saturday, February 2, 8:00pm Hill Auditorium
Children of Uganda 9
Friday, February 8, 7:00pm Saturday, February 9, 8:00pm Power Center
Harolyn Blackwell 19
Florence Quivar
From the Diary of Sally Hemings
Wednesday, February 13, 8:00pm Sunday, February 17, 4:00pm Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre
Dear UMS Patrons,
Welcome to this performance presented by UMS. I invite you to join us for our other theater, dance and music events this season. Check out our complete 2002 Winter Season offerings beginning on page 29.
UMS' mission is to bring a superlative "snapshot" of the vast and diverse world of performance to southeastern Michigan. We do this by (1) presenting traditional and contemporary performance; (2) educating about these performances; and, (3) creating new work in collaboration with artists by providing them with resources to practice their craft. The presentations contained in this edition of the UMS program book are all important examples of UMS' role as a creator of new work.
Laurie Anderson returns to Michigan with Happiness, her deeply unique musical synthesis of the world within which we live. She is the consummate "filterer" of our collective contemporary consciousness, this time--unlike with Songs and Stories from Moby Dick--with a decidedly low-tech result. UMS is a co-commissioner of this new work and helped Laurie make this piece of performance art a reality. Welcome back Laurie!
Children of Uganda, an East African music and dance ensemble, makes its Michigan debut this week. They will be with us in Ann Arbor putting the finish?ing touches on their new show. In addition to rehearsing and presenting their show for Michigan audience members, they will be performing youth perfor?mances for nearly 5000 students and collaborating with Hartford Memorial Baptist Church in Detroit. UMS has supplied the Children with a theater to make certain that all this important last-minute technical work is accomplished.
UMS asked William Bolcom, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and U-M faculty member, to write a new song cycle drawn from the diaries of Sally Hemings, the complex and vital American woman who cannot be simply labeled "Thomas Jefferson's mistress." Florence Quivar sings the cycle on a program which also includes Harolyn Blackwell singing Andre Previn and Toni Morrison's Honey and Rue. At the piano, U-M graduate, J. J. Penna.
Thank you for coming to this event. I would like to know your thoughts about this performance and about anything else you feel we can do to make your experi?ence with us the best possible. Drop me an e-mail at mkond@umich.edu.
Very best wishes,
Michael J. Kondzibrea Director of Programming
P.S. If you enjoyed your experience at this UMS performance, please tell a friend!
UMS
Educationau x jr? X C
UMS Educational Events through Wednesday, February 13,2002
All UMS educational activities are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted ($). Please visit www.ums.org for complete details and updates.
Teacher Workshop
Cuban Music in the Classroom:
Los Munequitos de Mantanzas.
Led by Alberto Nacif and Susan
Filipiak.
Monday, February 4:30-7:30 p.m.
Washtenaw Intermediate School
District. ($)
Children of Uganda
Master of Arts Interview
Interview with Frank Katoola, Choreographer and Artistic Director of the Children of Uganda.
Tuesday, February 5, 12:00 noon. 111 West Hall, Robert Hayden Lounge. A collaboration with the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies and the U-M Department of Dance.
Panel Discussion
"AIDS In Africa." Keynote: Dr. Vihn-Kim Ngynen, an expert in the bio-politics of access to AIDS drugs in Africa. Speakers: Frank Katoola, Artistic Director of Children of Uganda, and Alexis Heftly, President and Exeutive Director of the Uganda Children's Charity Foundation. This panel will also include a musical pre?sentation by the Children of Uganda.
Thursday, February 7, 3:00-5:30 p.m. Vandenberg Room and Concourse, Michigan League. A collaboration with the U-M Life Sciences, Values and Society Program, Medical Student's International Health Task Force, U-M Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, and the International Institute.
West African Dance Percussion Masterclass
Masterclass with Frank Katoola and members of Children of Uganda. For intermediate and advanced dancers. Thursday, February 7, 7:00-8:30 p.m. Studio A, U-M Dance Building, Department of Dance.
African Storytelling
with Members of Children of Uganda.
Saturday, February 9, 1:00-2:00 p.m. Ann Arbor District Library, 343 S. Fifth Street. A UMS collaboration with the Ann Arbor District Library.
Performance
Children of Uganda-Love Offering.
A free public presentation of Children of Uganda. Proceeds go towards support of the orphanage that houses 850 other children who have been orphaned due to their parents' death from the AIDS virus. For more info contact Penny Godboldo at 313.927.1304. Sunday, February 10, 5:00p.m. Hartford Memorial Baptist Church Sanctuary, 18700 James Couzens Hwy.
(at West 7 Mile Road, Detroit).
; A collaboration with Hartford
: Memorial Baptist Church Liturgical Dance Ministry,
R.E.A.C.H., and the Youth
Ministry.
From the Diary of Sally Hemings
Study Club 3
Led by Sandra Seaton, Professor
of English, Central Michigan
University.
Tuesday, February 5, 7:00p.m.
Hussey Room, Michigan League
Panel Discussion
"The Double Helix of History and Science."
Keynote: Eugene A. Foster, MD, author of Jefferson Fathered Slave's Last Child. Speakers: Martha Jones, PhD, U-M Center for Afroamerican and African Studies and U-M Department of History. Wednesday, February 13, 4:00-5:30 p.m. U-M Hospital, Ford Amphitheater. A collaboration with the U-M Historical Center for the Health Sciences, and the Life Sciences, Values and Society Program.
Pre-Performance Lecture
Composer William Bolcom and playwright Sandra Seaton dis?cuss the process of creating From the Diary of Sally Hemings. Wednesday, February 13, 7:00 p.m. Koessler Library, 3rd Floor, Michigan League.
Meet the Artists
Post-performance discussion from the stage. Wednesday, February 13. Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre.
Lecture
History of the American Art Song Lecture 6: "American Song Cycles," led by Richard LeSueur. Sunday, February 10, 3:00 p.m. Ann Arbor District Library, 343 S. Fifth Street, Basement.
UMS
presents
A Solo Evening with Laurie Anderson
Program
Saturday Evening, February 2, 2002 at 8:00 Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Happiness
Conceived and Performed by
Laurie Anderson
Thirty-seventh
Performance
of the 123rd Season
Fourth Annual
New Directions Series
The photographing or sound recording of this concert or possession of any device for such photographing or sound recording is prohibited.
Support for this performance provided by media sponsors WDET and Metro Times.
Laurie Anderson's new solo work was commissioned in part by Cal Performances, University of California, Berkeley, CA; Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH; PICA (Portland Institute for Contemporary Art) and Leslie B. Durst, Portland, OR; University of Florida Performing Arts, Gainesville, FL; UCSB Arts & Lectures Santa Barbara, CA; University Musical Society of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI; Scottsdale Center for the Arts, Scottsdale, AZ; Society for the Performing Arts, Houston, TX.
Large print programs are available upon request.
Artist Statement
For the past year I've been looking for ways to escape my own perspective by putting myself in weird situations. But shock in the form of terrorism propelled me into a different place. I imagine it's like this for a lot of people now, in uncertain times we find ourselves living more intensely in the present and ask?ing the questions that have been lurking uncomfortably in the background, like what do we really believe in after all
Happiness is my way of looking at some of the things that both interest and trouble me: the evolution of behavior, how we learn and what we remember, expectations, the meaning of justice and the effects of increasing speed; colored by the darker elements of doubt and fear.
Every story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but as Godard has said "not necessarily in that order." I have never really trusted traditional narrative and in this piece I am trying to move even further away from it and express the way my own mind actually works. In Happiness stories float and images recur in different guises. I am not looking for conclusions but for another way to look at the world.
Happiness is also in part a self-portrait. In my past work, I have often mentioned things that I've seen or heard. This is the first time I've used so many experiences from my own life, which in this case has become a kind of touchstone for thinking about deception and fiction, the stories we tell ourselves so that we can go on.
In Happiness the music is a pulse and a metronome. The sounds are a combination of keyboards, violin, and digital processing as well as several MIDI triggers. Finally, I get a lot of pleasure out of DJ'ing these sounds, which allows me to improvise. Unlike the technically more complex multi-media shows I often do, Happiness is meant to be flexible and in the moment.
Laurie Anderson is one of the pre?miere performance artists in the world. Anderson has consistently intrigued, entertained, and challenged audiences with her multimedia presentations. Anderson's artistic career has cast her in roles as various as visual artist, composer, poet, photographer, filmmaker, ventriloquist, electronics whiz, vocalist, and instrumentalist.
Laurie Anderson's O Superman launched her recording career, rising to number two on the British pop charts and subsequently appearing on Big Science, the first of Anderson's seven albums on the Warner Brother's label. Other record releases include Mister Heartbreak, United States Live, Strange Angels, Bright Red, and the soundtrack to her feature film Home of the Brave. A deluxe box set of her Warner Brother's output Talk Normal was released in the fall of 2000 on RhinoWarner Archives. This past fall 2001, Anderson released her first record for Nonesuch Records entitled Life on a String. Anderson has toured the US and abroad numerous times with shows ranging from simple spoken word to elaborate multime?dia events. Major works include United States I-V (1983), Empty Places (1990), The Nerve Bible (1995), and Songs and Stories for Moby Dick, a multimedia stage performance based on Herman Melville's novel. Anderson toured Songs and Stories internationally throughout 1999 as well as in London in May 2000. She has also presented many solo works, her most recent being The Speed of Darkness (1997-1998). This past fall 2001, Anderson toured the US and Europe with a three-person band, performing music from Life on a String.
Anderson has published six books and recently published Laurie Anderson by RoseLee Goldberg (Abrams, 2000), a retrospective of her visual work. Text from Anderson's solo performances appears in the new book Extreme Exposure edited by
Jo Bonney. Her visual work has been pre?sented in major museums throughout the US and Europe. Anderson is represented by the Sean Kelly Gallery in New York.
Having created numerous videos and films, Anderson has contributed music to films by Wim Wenders and Jonathan Demme; dance pieces by Bill T. Jones, Trisha Brown, Molissa Fenley, and a score for Robert LePage's theater production, Far Side of the Moon. She has created pieces for National Public Radio, The BBC, and Expo 92 in Seville. In 1997 she curated the two-week Meltdown Festival at Royal Festival Hall in London. Her orchestra work Songs for A.E. premiered at Carnegie Hall in February 2000, played by the American Composers Orchestra, conducted by Dennis Russell Davis.
Recognized worldwide as a leader in the groundbreaking use of technology in the arts, Anderson collaborated with Interval Research Corporation, a research and devel?opment laboratory founded by Paul Allen and David Liddle, in the exploration of new
creative tools, including the Talking Stick. She wrote the entry about New York for the Encyclopedia Britannica, hosted the PBS special Art 21, and mostly recently, received the 2001 Tenco Prize for Songwriting in San Remo, Italy and the 2001 Deutsche Schallplatten prize for Life On A String.
Tonight's performance marks Laurie Anderson's fourth appearance under UMS auspices. She made her UMS debut with Songs and Stories from Moby Dick in September 1999 at the Power Center for the Performing Arts.
For Laurie Anderson
Bill Berger, Production Manager Ned Steinberger, Violin Design
For more information on Laurie Anderson please visit www.laurieanderson.com
For Pomegranate Arts
North American Tour Representation for Happiness Pomegranate Arts Email: info@pomarts.com
Linda Brumbach, Director
Alisa E. Regas, Associate Director
Kaleb Kilkenny, Business Manager
Jim Woodard, Company Manager
Orit Greenberg, Communications Coordinator
For more information on Pomegranate Arts and Laurie Anderson's Happiness tour please visit www.pomegranatearts.com
UMS
presents
Children of Uganda
Frank Katoola, Choreographer and Director
The Company Emmanuel Anguyo Alex Juuko Francis Kalule Ronald Kibirige Rose Kokumbya Francis Lubuulwa Peter Muga Jacintha Nabawanuka Betty Nakato Veronica Nakatudde
Lighting Design Brenda Dolan
Prossy Namaganda Annet Nambalirwa Teddy Namuddu Zaam Nandyose Ireen Nassaka Jane Ndagire Stella Novate Patrick Nyakoojo Paul Olaja Bob Ssebandeke
Produced by
Uganda Children's Charity Foundation
Alexis Hefley, President and Executive Director
Program
Friday Evening, February 8, 2002 at 7:00 Saturday Evening, February 9, 2002 at 8:00 Power Center, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Tour of Light 2002
Tonight's program will contain one 15-minute intermission.
Thirty-eighth and
Thirty-ninth
Performances
of the 123rd Season
Eighth Annual World Culture Series
The photographing or sound recording of this concert or possession of any device for such pho?tographing or sound recording is prohibited.
The Saturday evening performance is co-presented with the Office of the Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs.
This is a Heartland Arts Fund Program, with major support from the National Endowment for the Arts and Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs.
Additional support provided by media sponsor WEMU.
The Kennedy Center: African Odyssey, Wyndham International is the national tour sponsor of Tour of Light 2002.
Special thanks to Elizabeth James, Center for Afroamerican and African Studies; Amy Schoem, U-M Life Sciences, Values and Society Program; Beth Genne and Jessica Fogel, U-M Department of Dance; Tim Grimes, Ann Arbor District Library; Penny Godboldo, Hartford Memorial Baptist Church; and Shirley Martin, Bethel AME Sunday School for their involve?ment in this residency.
Large print programs are available upon request.
Dance in Africa is not merely for entertainment but is a deeply embedded part of life itself. Its heart-throbbing rhythms regulate our pulse at life's intervals and at different stages of development, laying the foundation for each of us to absorb and embrace the values, ideals and practices of our society. The performing arts also add spice, offer spiritual renewal and nourish culture. In these difficult times for Africa, I find that my artistic choices favor material that leads toward holistic fulfillment, enriching the body, the mind and the soul. I also emphasize the joy that emanates from the works themselves and from the act of performing them.
African songs, dances and music all have educational roots to the communities where they originated and are performed. When training children in Uganda, I not only teach the movement, songs and lyrics
but also the cultural setting and seminal intent for each work we study. In this way, I can do my part to ensure the continuation of indigenous, authentic African values that have never been recorded except within these songs and dances.
The Children of Uganda are jewels who carry with them a deeply-rooted experience, representing the beauty of authentic African art in such a gracious manner. These chil?dren are orphans who have seen suffering in its true sense yet their backgrounds do not inhibit them from dancing with joy. They perform with an enthusiasm that is clearly beyond training. They sing and dance with hope in their hearts, which is reflected in their bodies. They represent communities that have lost hope, bearing a candle that will light the way for the rest of us.
--Frank Katoola, Director and Choreographer
The dances and songs that the Children of Uganda perform reflect the history, culture, legends and beliefs of East Africa. These works may be less familiar to American audiences than others from Africa in part because of the greater exposure to West African culture in the Western Hemisphere. Slave traders found it easier and less expen?sive to transport slaves from the West Coast of Africa to the US and Caribbean. Most of the slaves who survived the passage across the Atlantic Ocean were brought from the 3,000-mile coastline between North Senegal and South Angola. Far fewer came to the Western Hemisphere from the central and eastern parts of Africa. (The East African slave trade primarily sent slaves to Asia and Arabic countries.)
Each of Uganda's fifty-two distinct ethnic groups has its own dance and music traditions. The dances performed by the Children of Uganda can be loosely classified into histori?cal, social and festival dances. The historical dances, like Bakisitnba from Buganda, tell stories and impart lessons. Their primary purpose, other than to entertain, is to pass on the story from one generation to another. The social dances, like the Congolese Dance and Gaze include snapshots of contemporary life; others like Ekimandwa, emphasize ideas of community, stability and societal responsi?bilities. The festival dances, like the Orunyege, are created to commemorate significant events in the calendar. A courtship dance, Orunyege was traditionally held for young men and women to select their future partners.
The songs and dances performed tonight feature a number of Ugandan dialects as well as English and Swahili. Tonight's program will consist of the songs and dances listed below:
Bakabaka, Jambo and Tubariki-A suite of contemporary African rhythms, welcoming all to the performance. Songs are in Swahili and English. Note also the Agawara trumpets filling the air.
Bakisimba--A traditional dance of the court of Buganda, the central tribe of Uganda. It celebrates the creation of banana wine for the King. The drummers' rhythms and the dancers movements mirror the king's words of thanks, "speaking" for him and reflecting his celebratory mood.
Embaire-Ensweezi Suite--The xylophone (embaire) is a key instrument in African music. Its large size enables its musical tones to be heard from far away. The ensweezi is a spiritual set of drums whose rhythms are the mother to the dance steps that accompany them.
Gaze--Originating in northern Uganda on the border with the Congo, Gaze is danced by girls while boys accompany them on the drums. Each new generation of children builds on and creates new steps. Lyrics now use a lot of contemporary vocabulary. Gaze demands high energy and agility--truly a dance for the young.
Kadodi Drums--Around the Elgon Mountains on the Kenya-Uganda border, live the Bamasaaba or Gissu peoples. In this culture, one does not become a man by the right of birth alone. Between the ages of fourteen to sixteen, young men undergo a cultural ritual that qualifies them for man?hood. During the ceremonies Kadodi drums sound and successful candidates are celebrated with the Imbalu dance.
Amadinda--A xylophone, this is an important instrument to which all other instruments are tuned. Amadinda can be played as a solo, duet, trio or quartet. It most often accompanies dances, but the instrument can also accompany a good storyteller. This xylophone is tuned to a pentatonic scale.
Ekimandwa--Ekimandwa are another spiritual set of drums that traditionally served to communicate with the gods. In the past, these drums were played at various community rituals to summon the interven?tion of higher powers. With the drumming
ever increasing in intensity, one of these rit?uals was used to bring sinners to a point of remorse so they would confess their sins.
Abato--A dance featuring the two youngest members of Children of Uganda, Teddy Namuddu and Bob Ssebandeke.
Ekitaguriro--This dance belongs to the nomadic tribe of Banyankole who hail from the western district of Uganda. The Banyankole tend cattle for a living and cherish them. This dance praises the long-horned cows of Ankole and Rwanda-found nowhere else on earth. The dancers imitate the sounds, rhythms, and the move?ments of the graceful cows.
Rwemeza--Uganda is bordered to the southwest by Rwanda, home of the Banarwanda. Rwemeza are drums of the Banarwanda royalty, played to announce the King's entrance to attend state duties. Following the drummed procession, several dances would be performed. We present one of these dances, Amaaraba, here paired with Entore, a dance preparing young men prior to enter battle.
Addungu Harps--are found on Uganda's northern border with Sudan and to the northwest where Uganda and Congo meet. These beautiful instruments, which come in various sizes and sets, are used in both traditional and contemporary music. They can be tuned to pentatonic and dia?tonic scales. Sometimes the two scales are used together, producing a unique sound, approximating a minor sixth chord.
Congolese Dance--This dance borrows motifs from Congo and Uganda. Congolese are known throughout Africa for their sen?sual dancing and music. Usually this dance takes on a contemporary mode and the lyrics that accompany the dancers reflect common happenings.
A Story--Storytelling is central to all African cultures. We are told stories while in our mother's wombs. Values, culture, his?tory... all are instilled through stories told
throughout our lives. One's role in society is sometimes predetermined, so the stories you are told often help you reach the stature society expects of you.
Orunyege--A courtship dance among the Banyoro-Batooro people of Western Uganda, this exuberant and demanding dance gives everyone a chance to show their individual talents and styles. In the past, young men and women would be brought together in front of the community in a cer?emony to choose their future mates. This ceremony was a critical event, especially for the boys, since poor dancers risked rejection from girls. The girls were expected to dance well in return, exhibiting generosity of spirit, kindness, grace and style.
The Children of Uganda features twenty children ranging in age from six to seventeen. The performers live in one of several orphanages supported by the Uganda Children's Charity Foundation (UCCF) in and around Uganda's capital city, Kampala. The Children of Uganda serve as goodwill ambassadors for the 1.7 million orphans living in the Uganda today.
Selected as "Best Performers" at the International Children's Festival at Wolf Trap in Washington DC and hailed as "first-rate" and "inspiring" by The New York Times, the Children of Uganda have toured the US biennially since 1994. In 2000, the group visited eleven cities, winning thou?sands of fans through performances at The Kennedy Center, Stanford University, The White House, Macy's Passport in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and on The Late Show with David Letterman. In 2002 the children will perform at the following venues: Long Island University; Montclair State University; The Kennedy Center; University Musical Society of the University
of Michigan; Fairfield University; Queens Theatre in the Park; University of Massachusetts Amherst; Northeastern University; University of California San Diego; University of California Riverside, California State University Long Beach; Stanford University; Washington Center for the Performing Arts; and Everett Performing Arts Center.
The dual crises of civil war and AIDS in Uganda combined with a high illiteracy rate and the absence of free education have posed a serious threat to the complex fabric of family and village life that previously nurtured and depended on a rich and varied oral culture. The Children of Uganda was originally founded to teach orphaned children the songs, dances and stories that were in danger of being lost. In Uganda, the ensemble includes approximately thirty young people who live and study in one of several orphanages in and around Kampala. The Tour of Light gives twenty of the most tal?ented of these performers an opportunity to share their stories in the US, promoting East African culture and increasing awareness of the AIDS-related crisis in their homeland.
This weekend's performances mark the Children of Uganda's UMS debut.
Uganda Children's Charity Foundation
(UCCF) was established in 1995 to enhance the ability of Ugandan orphans to fulfill their educational, economic and social needs by providing them with the opportu?nity to obtain an education. The foundation currently supports 850 children in three orphanages in Uganda, providing education, food, shelter and medical care. This includes financial support to 200 children living with HIV positive single mothers, and resident care and education for thirteen handicapped children. Since 1995 the organization has
doubled the number of children it supports and initiated a US Scholarship Program to support the education of Ugandan children abroad. Every two years UCCF organizes and produces a nationwide tour of the Children of Uganda. In 2000, the children raised $670,000 to support their fellow orphans; UCCF has set a fundraising goal of $1 million dollars for the 2002 tour, with which it plans to support 1200 children. UCCF is an American 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with offices in Dallas, Texas and Kampala, Uganda. UCCF is also a regis?tered NGO in Uganda. Please visit www.uccf.org for more information.
Uganda is a lush and beautiful East African country, called "The Pearl of Africa" by Winston Churchill. It is a country rich in wildlife and natural resources and is inhab?ited by twenty-four million people of fifty-two distinct ethnic groups and languages. A landlocked plateau straddling the equator and bordered by Sudan to the north, Congo to the west, Rwanda and Tanzania to the south and Kenya to the east, Uganda lies in a cradle of mountains and is home to half of Lake Victoria and the source of the Nile River.
After winning its independence from Great Britain in 1962, Uganda was ruled by two brutal dictators, Idi Amin and Milton Obote, who were responsible for the death of nearly one million people. In 1986 General Yoweri Museveni and his National Resistance Movement party seized power and estab?lished a democratic government that is still in place today, and since then the country has gone through a dramatic recovery.
Despite Uganda's recent successes, the HIV virus has emerged over the past decade as an overwhelming threat. Uganda has the highest number of reported HIV cases in all of Africa. AIDS is a leading cause of death in
Ugandan adults, killing more than 300 people a day, devastating the twenty-five-to-forty-year-old segment of the population and leaving more than 1.7 million orphans. Despite Uganda's aggressive and effective campaign against AIDS in the past decade, which has reduced HIV infection rates from 30 of the population in 1993 to 10 in 1999, the country still has a long way to go to con?tain the epidemic and rebuild its society.
Emmanuel (Emmy) Anguyo, 17, is in the eleventh grade at Uganda Martyrs Senior Secondary School in Namugongo. He's from northern Uganda and has four brothers and sisters. His parents both died of AIDS. Emmy enjoys plays, listening to music, soccer and aspires to become a lawyer. He performed in the Tour of Light 2000.
Alex Juuko, 15, Assistant Narrator, is in the ninth grade and attends Tender Talents Magnet School where he studies music, dance and drama. His mother died when he was two years old, and he was taken to live with an uncle. His father died of AIDS when he was four. Alex enjoys acting, singing and playing sports.
Francis Kalule, 13, is in the ninth grade at Tender Talents Magnet School and has studied singing and dancing since meeting Frank Katoola in 1997. He has a sister and three brothers who live with his parents, who are too poor to pay school fees. Besides music, Francis enjoys telling jokes.
Ronald Kibirige, 16, Lead Drummer, is in the eleventh grade at Tender Talents Magnet School, where he primarily studies science. His mother died when he was very young, and he lived with his father for many years until he became ill. Ronald enjoys soccer and listening to classical music. After gradu?ating he hopes to become a pilot. He per?formed in the Tour of Light 2000.
Rose Kokumbya, 10, is in the third grade at Sabina Primary Boarding School and lives in the orphanage with her two sisters Betty and Stella. Both of her parents died of AIDS when she was very young and in between terms she visits an aunt, her only surviving relative. Rose loves reading novels and mag?azines as well as singing and dancing.
Francis Lubuulwa, 14, is a seventh grader at Kampala Quality School. He lives with Frank Katoola during school terms and vis?its his grandmother during holidays. Both his mother and father died of AIDS. Francis enjoys reading, playing soccer, singing, and dancing.
Peter Muga, 13, is in the ninth grade at Tender Talents Magnet School, located in Kasangati. His father died from AIDS when he was a child and he went to live with his grandmother along with three brothers and two sisters. Peter's mother disappeared after his father's death and her whereabouts are unknown. He enjoys playing soccer and the drums.
Jacintha Nabawanuka, 17, Lead Vocalist, attends Tender Talents Magnet School where she is in her final year. Her father passed away in 1993 and her mother is alive but struggles to care for facintha's two younger sisters and brother. She spends her free time reading novels, plays, and playing various musical instruments.
Betty Nakato, 12, is in her final year of ele?mentary school at Sabina Primary Boarding School in Rakai. Both of her parents died of AIDS when she was very young. She has three brothers and a sister who live with an aunt, but they are unable to afford school. Besides singing and dancing Betty loves watching movies.
Veronica Nakatudde, 12, is in the fifth grade at Sabina Primary Boarding School. Her father died of AIDS and her mother is
sick with the disease. She lived in Kampala for most of her life and then was taken to an orphanage in the Rakai district. Veronica enjoys singing and dancing and spending time with her friends.
Prossy Namaganda, 14, Lead Dancer, is a seventh grader at Mother Kevin Primary School. Her father died when she was two and her mother's whereabouts are unknown. She has one brother, Vince, but she has lost track of him as well. Prossy plays basketball and loves reading and listening to music. She performed in the Tour of Light 2000.
Annet Nambalirwa, 13, her three sisters, and one brother have lived in an orphanage since her family was forced to leave their home during the civil war. Her parents are still living and unable to work due to poor health. Annet is in seventh grade at St.
Peter's Primary School and enjoys listening to music and playing sports and games. She was a member of the Tour of Light 2000.
At the top of her class at Dorah Infant School in Kasangati, Teddy Namuddu, 6, lives with Frank Katoola's family with whom she practices her singing and dancing. Her father died of AIDS when she was four and her mother is HIV positive and works odd jobs to care for her younger brother. Her two sisters and three brothers reside at the Kiwanga Orphanage. Teddy was a member of the Tour of Light 2000.
Zaam Nandyose, 13, is in the seventh grade at the Sabina Primary Boarding School, an orphanage in the Rakai district. Her father died when she was very young and her mother works odd jobs to help care for her two brothers and sister. She enjoys playing netball.
Ireen Nassaka, 13, is in the fifth grade at Sabina Primary Boarding School and lives with her brother in the Rakai orphanage. Her father passed away and her grandmoth?er takes care of her mother, who has dia?betes and lost her job selling curry powder at a local market. Irene enjoys music, dance, and drama.
Jane Ndagire, 13, attends Sabina Primary Boarding School in Rakai. Her father died when she was very young and her mother is very sick and cannot support herself. Jane has two sisters, Charity and Brenda, and enjoys music and discovering new things. She performed in the Tour of Light 2000.
Stella Novate, 12, is a sixth grader at Sabina Primary Boarding School in Rakai. She lived on the Uganda-Tanzania border until both her mother and father died of AIDS and then moved to the Rakai orphanage. Stella loves singing, dancing, playing basketball, and drawing.
Patrick Nyakoojo, 14, is in the eighth grade at Tender Talents Magnet School in Kasangati and visits his uncle in Mbuya on holidays. He has four sisters and three brothers. Patrick's father died when he was very young and his mother is very ill, living in a refugee camp in Rwanda. He enjoys music, soccer, and telling jokes.
Paul Olaja, 16, is a junior at Tender Talents Magnet School. He has five brothers. After losing his father to AIDS at the age of eleven he was brought to live in an orphanage. His mother currently has AIDS. Paul is an avid painter and enjoys playing basketball and listening to classical music.
Bob Ssebandeke, 9, is in the fifth grade at Namillyango Primary School. His father left home when he was very young, and during holidays he visits his mother, who is a school matron at a nearby orphanage.
Bob loves reading novels and playing table tennis. He performed in the Tour of Light 2000.
Frank Katoola (Director and Choreographer) has taught music, dance and drama in Kampala, Uganda since 1989 and has directed Children of Uganda since 1996. He received a Diploma in Performing Arts for Music, Dance and Drama from Kampala's
Makere University and a Diploma in Teacher Education specializing in Pedagogy from the Institute of Teacher Education in Kyambogo. He has since worked with World Vision Uganda, Vision in Action,
American Peace Corps, Habitat International, The British Council, the National Theatre, and the Uganda Children's Charity Foundation.
Mr. Katoola has performed with Ndere Troupe Cultural Performers, touted as the "most outstanding cultural troupe in the country," since 1987. He has conducted workshops and seminars in Uganda and other parts of the world, including Germany and the US. His focus has been on develop?ing children's theatrical talents. His groups have participated in the East Africa's Winners Festival and Ligen, Germany's International Theatre Festival of Children. Frank has written, produced and directed three theater-in-education dramas: The Sweet Filth (1993), Your Choice (1994) and This Evil Chain (1995).
He is founder of the Tender Talents Theatre Company, an umbrella organization for children's theater work in Uganda. Through drama and performing arts, the company focuses on issues of child abuse and the welfare of children and youth in his
Frank Katoola
country. Frank has since founded the Tender Talents Magnet School, which pro?vides secondary education to young people in Kampala with focused training in music, dance and theater and its pedagogical approaches.
Alexis Hefley, President and Executive Director of the Uganda Children's Charity Foundation (UCCF), initially traveled to Uganda at the invitation of First Lady, Janet Museveni in June of 1993. Ms. Hefley lived and worked with AIDS orphans for eighteen months in Kampala. It was then that she saw the overwhelming need for international humanitarian assistance to address the AIDS and orphan crisis in Uganda. She returned to the US in 1994 having organized the first national tour of the Children of Uganda. Upon completion of this tour, Ms. Hefley founded UCCF, a US-based not-for-profit charitable foundation, to continue her efforts to assist these children.
Ms. Hefley graduated from Texas A&M University and worked in the banking industry for ten years. Through a volunteer commitment with the International Foundation, she had the opportunity to meet Congressman Tony Hall and his wife Janet Hall. Their commitment to God and their personal and political commitment to third world countries sparked Ms. Hefley's interest in Uganda. Since 1994 Ms. Hefley has traveled regularly to Uganda and con?tinues to devote her life to AIDS-related orphans.
Luke FHose (Tour Manager) joins the 2002 Tour of Light in charge of marketing, public relations and logistics. He was most recently an associate at New Venture Marketing, a strategic communications consulting firm, where he worked with Silicon Valley start?up companies, writing marketing collateral, and managing press and analyst relations. Luke holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science from the University of California,
Berkeley where he edited and managed The Heuristic Squelch, an award-winning student-run satire magazine. As a stand-up comic, producer and writer he has performed and worked with some of the country's most successful comedians. Luke participated in the Children of Uganda, 2000 Tour of Light as a tour volunteer. He wishes to thank Alexis Hefley and Robin Stavisky for making his role as Tour Manager possible, his family for their love and support, and the Children Of Uganda for bringing joy and inspiration into his life and the lives of those around them.
Milton T. Tatum, Jr. (Technical Director and Stage Manager) is as comfortable on stage as he is backstage. He has performed with Dancers Unlimited, Dallas Black Dance Theatre, and as a guest artist with Dallas Ballet, Wichita Falls Ballet, and the Bella Lewitzsky Dance Company in the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival. Mr. Tatum danced the leading roles in Porgy & Bess (Porgy), choreographed by Rick Braim in 1982, Deep Ellum Blues (Jesse), choreographed by Louis Johnson in 1985, and in the Reminiscing in Tempo European Tour in Southern France with Jon Hendricks and Louis Johnson in 1987. He toured the US and South Africa in Pretoria, Sun City, Soweto, Johannesburg, and Cape Town in 1998, and all over the US and Hampton, England, Bermuda, St. Polten, Austria, and Germany with Dallas Black Dance Theatre as TouringCompany Manager and Technical Director from 1997 to 2000. Currently, Mr. Tatum is on leave from his teaching duties at Brookhaven College and serving as Artistic Director for the Inner City Dance Institution in Oklahoma City, where is also resident choreographer.
Brenda Dolan (Lighting Designer) designs for many New York-based dance companies including Ronald K. Brown--Evidence, Notario Dance Company, RythMEK, and
Carlota Santana--Flamenco Vivo. She has also designed numerous ballets for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater including Serving Nia (Ron Brown), Lettres D' Amour (Redha), Ascension (Troy Powell), and Days Past, and Not Forgotten (Earl Mosley). Recently, Brenda designed Guangdong Modern Dance Company's Joyce premiere; a staged reading of Largo, a new rock musi?cal, for New York Stage and Film; and 50 Minutes w Harriet and Phillis, a dance-play written and performed by Francesca Harper and Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, Margo Sapington.
Peter Kasule (Tour of Light Intern) is a musician and composer who is happy to return to the Children of Uganda in 2002 as an assistant to Frank Katoola and Milton Tatum. He performed with the Tour of Light in 1994 and 1996. He is currently a student at the College of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he studies Music Technology with a focus on composition, recording, and blend?ing African and Western music. Peter was born in Kampala, Uganda in 1981 and lived in the Daughters of Charity Orphanage from 1989-1996. He met Frank Katoola in 1994 and studied with him for two years, focusing on music, dance and drama. In 1994 Peter traveled to Germany for the International Children's Festival where his dance troupe was awarded "Best Performers." After being selected for the Uganda Children's Charity Foundation's US Scholarship Program and moving to the US in 1996, Peter won "Best Percussionist" at the 2000 International Jazz Festival in New Orleans and "Best Performer" at the Collin County Jazz Festival in 1998, 1999, 2000. Between 1998-2001 he was the lead drum?mer for the African Dance Ensemble at Dallas' prestigious Booker T. Washington High School for the Visual and Performing Arts. Peter would like to thank Sr. Rose Muyinza, Frank Katoola, and Alexis Hefley for their love and support and for helping him discover and develop his talents.
Children of Uganda Tour of Light 2002
Producer
Uganda Children's Charity Foundation
Staff
Alexis Hefley, President and Founder
Isabel Turner, Director of Ugandan Operations
Tim Allen, Director of Operations
Mel Holder, Donor Relations Coordinator
Tailor Blaylock, Office Coordinator
Board of Directors
Roxann Thomas Chargois, The Links, Inc.
Eleanor Donaldson, New York City
Pat Davies, World Bank
Catherine Dial Easley, Chairperson
John Harrison, San Antonio, Texas
Alexis D. Hefley, President
Sheila Jenkins, Georgia Medical Institute
Sharon Kuhn, R.S.V.P. Software Corp.
Sandra D. Malone, The Links, Inc.
Verna Mitchell, The Links, Inc.
Leslie Moritz, Arlington, Texas
Susan Oelsen, Dallas, Texas
T.C. Roberson, American Airlines
Elizabeth Shaw, Dallas, Texas
Jan Smart, International Monetary Fund
Robin Stavisky, New Venture Marketing
Charlie Webber, US Homes
Tom Wilkes, Post Properties
Elise Wilkes
Ann Williams, Dallas Black Dance
Tour Scheduling
Lisa Booth Management, Inc. Lisa Booth, President Deirdre Valente, Vice President
Production Staff
Frank Katoola, Director and Choreographer
Luke Filose, Tour Manager
Milton T. Tatum, Jr., Technical DirectorStage Manager
Brenda Dolan, Lighting Designer
Peter Kasule, Tour Intern
Doug Varone, Artistic Advisor
The Uganda Children's Charity Foundation (UCCF) would like to thank the following who have played a key role in this production of the Children of Uganda: Lisa Booth Management, Inc.--for your amazing work; Alicia Adams; Dave Johnson; The i2 Foundation; i2 Cares; The Links Inc.; Frank Katoola--for teaching the children the value of music, dance and drama; Sister Rose Muyinza--for your undying commitment to the children of Uganda; Isabel Turner--for your diligent work in Uganda; Luke Filose; Milton Tatum; Brenda Dolan; Peter Kasule for sharing your gifts with the next generation; the UCCF board members for your support and dedication; individuals, churches, and corporations for your overwhelming generosity--without you none of this would have been possible.
The Uganda Children's Charity Foundation acknowl?edges with great thanks past and present support.
Sandra Seaton's text,From The Diary of Sally Hemings, was set to music by composer William Bolcom. After reading widely on the era of Jefferson, she cre?ated an imaginary set of diary entries by Sally Hemings. Although the details of Hemings' life have been the subject of much speculation, there are no known letters or written documents by the historical Sally Hemings; it is important to emphasize that the work is entirely fictional. Mezzo-soprano Florence Quivar gave the world premiere of From The Diary of Sally Hemings in Coolidge Auditorium, Library of Congress on March 16,2001.
Sandra Seaton spent her early childhood in Columbia, Tennessee accompanying her mother Hattye to the one-room country schools where she taught. Her three aunts and her grandmother Emma, whose stories of the past remain one of her inspirations, also raised Sandra. Grandma Emma also instilled in her granddaughter great pride in the work of their relative Flournoy Miller, who wrote the book and starred in Shuffle Along, a musical that inaugurated the Harlem Renaissance and preceded Show Boat in integrating songs and story into an artistic whole. Composer William Bolcom, who told the story of Shuffle Along in his book Reminiscing with Sissle and Blake (written with Robert Kimball), has dedicated the score of From The Diary of Sally Hemings to Flournoy Miller.
Sandra Seaton currently lives in East Lansing, Michigan. Her play The Bridge Party, for which she won a Theodore Ward Prize for New African American Playwrights, was chosen for inclusion in Strange Fruit: Plays on Lynching by American Women, edited by Kathy Perkins and Judith Stephens (Indiana University Press, 1998). The renowned actor Ruby Dee appeared in a 1998 production of The Bridge Party at the University of Michigan along, with a cast that included Adilah Barnes and Michele Shay. Adilah Barnes and Amentha Dymally headed the cast when The Bridge Party played to sell-out houses at Michigan State University in January 2000 for which William Bolcom's piano rags provided musical back?ground. Sandra Seaton's other plays
include The Will and The Audition. Her plays have been performed in Chicago, Los Angeles, and in New York. Most recently she has written Do You Like Philip Roth, the first play of a planned trilogy about African American college students and the civil rights movement of the early sixties, which was performed in East Lansing in May 2001. She is presently at work on a one-woman show about the life of Sally Hemings.
The author is a Professor of English at Central Michigan University, where she teaches playwriting, fiction writing and African American literature. As an undergraduate at the University of Illinois, she studied under George Scouffas, John Frederick Nims, and Webster Smalley. At Michigan State University, where she earned her MA in Creative Writing, she studied with Robert A. Martin and Linda Wagner-Martin. Besides writing plays, she also publishes fiction and criticism. Her scholarly work, which has been microfilmed by the Tennessee State Archives, focuses on the local histories of African American communities and institutions in the South.
UMS
presents
Harolyn Blackwell
Soprano
Florence Quivar
Mezzo-Soprano J.J. Penna, Piano
Program
Wednesday Evening, February 13, 2002 at 8:00 Sunday Afternoon, February 17, 2002 at 4:00 Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Andre Previn
William Bolcom
I
Honey and Rue
First I'll try love Whose house is this The town is lit Do you know him I am not seaworthy Take my mother home
Ms. Blackwell II
From the Diary of Sally Hemings
Part One
They say I was born old
Martha and Maria
White waves
Paris, c'est la ville vivante
The master brings music to his sitting room
I was carrying a tray when he called me Part Two
They say I was born old...The rage, the anger
Come back to America
Back home at Monticello
Purple hyacinth begins to bloom
My sister ghost
Ms. Quivar
INTERMISSION
Bolcom
William Grant Still
III
From the Diary of Sally Hemings
Part Three
Peonies, a perfume box Mister, our child is frail A dark winter blue-black evening Old shoe!
Part Four
A wild man home from the woods Papers! I've never seen so many Night watch till early morn
Ms. Quivar
IV Songs of Separation
Idolatry
If you should go
Florence B. Price
Song To The Dark Virgin Resignation
Ms. Blackwell
Traditional
Arr. Margaret Bonds
Vocal duet arr. Joseph Joubert
He's Got The Whole World In His Hand
Ms. Blackwell and Ms. Quivar
The audience is politely asked to withhold applause until the end of each group of songs. Please do not applaud after the individual songs within each group.
Fortieth and Forty-first
Performances
of the 123rd Season
Seventh Annual Song Recital Series
The photographing or sound recording of this concert or possession of any device for such pho?tographing or sound recording is prohibited.
This performance is made possible in part by a grant from Michigan Humanities Council, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional support provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.
UMS is grateful to the University of Michigan for its support of the commission of From the Diary of Sally Hemings.
Additional support provided by media sponsors WGTE and Michigan Radio.
The Steinway piano used in this evening's performance is made possible by Hammell Music, Inc., Livonia, Michigan.
Special thanks to Sandra Seaton, William Bolcom, Amy Schoem, U-M Life Sciences, Values and Society Program, Barbara Meadows, Ann Arbor Chapter of Links, Inc., and Joyce Meier for their involvement in this residency.
Ms. Blackwell and Ms. Quivar appear by arrangement with Columbia Artists Management, Inc. Please visit Columbia Artists Management on the Internet at www.cami.com.
Ms. Blackwell appears on RCA Victor, EMI Angel and Telarc.
Ms. Quivar records for CBS Masterworks, Philips, Deutsche Grammophon, Angel and Decca.
Large print programs are available upon request.
Both Honey and Rue and From the Diary of Sally Hemings, the cen?tral works on tonight's program, are the result of a powerful collaboration between a leading musical visionary and an equally distin?guished author. The twentieth century saw outstanding contributions made in the area of vocal literature by American composers in a myriad of genres and styles. The 1990s in turn saw a number of composers, includ?ing Mr. Previn and Mr. Bolcom, turning their attention to the song cycle and its unique marriage of intimate narrative, dramatic through-line and musical story telling. Though supremely different in conception and organization, Honey and Rue and From the Diary of Sally Hemings reveal two composers' emotionally-charged and stylistically-eclectic readings of the dis?tinguished authors who accompany them.
Andre Previn's stunning musical virtu?osity and unparalleled versatility have made him an icon of American musical culture. As pianist, conductor, composer and arranger, there is virtually no genre or repertoire which he has not explored and mastered. Though both his deft "crossover" ability and his long career as a film composer and arranger might make him ideally suited to the world of vocal music, it was only in the 1990s that a remarkable series of com?positions heralded Previn's arrival as an outstanding composer for voice. During that decade alone, no less than seven com?positions, ranging in scope from the epic A Streetcar Named Desire to the intimate Sallie Chisum Remembers Billy the Kid, Four Songs on Texts ofToni Morrison, The Giraffes go to Hamburg, Vocalise and Honey and Rue, were premiered by an A-list of American sopranos. The image we have of Previn, as the preco?ciously talented dynamo who easily assimi?lates a lyrical vocal arch with a saucy rhythmic punch, is very much a hallmark and a dis?tinguishing characteristic of all of his works,
including tonight's song cycle on texts of Toni Morrison, Honey and Rue.
Toni Morrison needs no introduction to tonight's audience. Her writings have defined a generation with their powerful mixture of human tragedy and spiritual awakening. During this recital, we experience a more distilled wordscape from the extend?ed canvas of Morrison's novels. Written at the behest of the soprano Kathleen Battle, for whom the work was commissioned, Morrison has chosen words here as much for their color as their meaning. In an interview with writer Matthew Gurewitsch, Morrison stated, "I worked with images rather than a story: images of yearning, sat?isfaction, resolution [which] were not a kind that establish some sort of privilege over the music. I come from a musical family, but I was always interested in language--the music in language rather than instruments." As the title suggests, the cycle is less a cir?cumspect narrative than it is a bittersweet emotional journey, featuring alternating tones of alienation and empowerment. Previn has scored the work for chamber orchestra, which gives him ultimate freedom for word-play and creating a canvas on which the words can resonate. In "First I'll Try Love," Previn matches the innocent awe of Morrison's text with a bouncy, sweeping orchestral landscape. "Whose House is This" is a dramatic recitative, whose wide angular intervals and striking changes of orchestral timbre reveal the longing and alienation of Morrison's text. The sectional nature of "The Town is Lit" pairs the idyllic fantasy of the opening lines of text with a rollicking, jazz-influenced romp. "Do You Know Him" is a soul-searching a cappella vocalise. In "I Am Not Seaworthy," a Britten-esque accompaniment of pulsating chords under?lines a soaring vocal line whose span and arch reveal sorrow, regret and estrangement. In the concluding "Take My Mother Home," Previn uses a recitative-aria form in a work
that owes much to the long tradition of the Negro spiritual, full of resolution and empowerment.
Honey and Rue was premiered by Kathleen Battle and the Orchestra of St. Luke's conducted by the composer at Carnegie Hall on January 5, 1992. The soprano Harolyn Blackwell has performed this cycle on many occasions with Andre Previn both at the piano and at the podium.
A tour-de-force musician of our time, William Bolcom has composed works for virtually every genre and instrumental com?bination, infusing into them a staggering array of styles handled with a technical and expressive mastery. Himself an encyclopedic wizard of musical style, his curiosity and command of a wide-ranging repertoire is reflected in his rich catalogue of vocal works. Whether in the "serious" (a term with which Bolcom would take issue) realm of works such as the song cycles A Whitman Triptych, Briefly It Enters, Open House, I Will Breathe A Mountain, and the recent opera A View From The Bridge, or in the "lighter" Cabaret Songs on texts by Arnold Weinstein, Bolcom revels in the texture, color, emo?tional weight, and theatrical qualities of the sophisticated authors whose work he sets. If Andre Previn is the composer of the small-celled, "groove-driven" canvas, then William Bolcom is the symphonist--a European-trained contrapuntalist who slyly assimilates blues scales, ragtime bass lines, and borrowings from stride and ragtime mas?ters into so-called "classical" organizations.
The poet and playwright Sandra Seaton has created an intricate series of portraits detailing moments in the life of Sally Hemings, the longtime mistress and former slave of Thomas Jefferson. Hemings' jour?ney, from early reminiscences of childhood and ancestry from Africa through the thirty-eight complex and passionate years with Jefferson including intervals in Paris and America, is traced by Seaton through
vignettes of public dialogue and personal disclosure. In the program notes for the pre?miere performance in 2001, Sandra Seaton wrote:
In preparing to write the text for From the Diary of Sally Hemings, I read a great many books on history, but the song cycle that resulted from my collab?oration with William Bolcom is ulti?mately a work of the imagination, albeit an imagination constrained by historical possibility. The words and ideas of Thomas Jefferson have been preserved in his voluminous writings. The thoughts and feelings of Sally Hemings, on the other hand, cannot be recovered through research. The fictitious "diary entries" that form the text of the song cycle represent my attempt to give a voice to Sally Hemings by the only means available, that of imaginative recreation.
In From The Diary of Sally Hemings, Bolcom has crafted an extended song cycle that traces Hemings' life and relationship through dramatic recitation, long-lined poetic lyricism, and playful, dance-like "child" music. The haunting, modal left-hand scalar figure that constitutes the osti-nato pattern of the first song is only one of the many melodic and rhythmic motives that bind the cycle's various vignettes together. In addition, a number of referen?tial elements are used throughout the work, from the quote of Mozart's Das Veilchen at the opening of Part Three, to the Mahlerian breadth of "Paris," "My sister ghost," and "A wild man...," to the Brahmsian "A dark win?ter...," the jazz-influenced James Weldon Johnson quote in the middle section of "White waves," and the distinctly French influence of "Purple hyacinth..." and "I was carrying a tray...." The work was, of course, conceived for the mezzo-soprano Florence
Quivar, whose own affinity for the works of Mahler, Brahms, and others in the late Romantic school, can be heard in the rich, roomy writing of many of the songs, includ?ing "My sister ghost," "A dark winter..." and "They say I was born old." The work con?cludes with a retrospective of the cycle's the?matic material, in a poignant recounting of Jefferson's final moments and Hemings' legacy, followed by a plaintive, spiritual-like epilogue.
William Grant Still is known to audiences today mainly through his many symphonic and instrumental works which have entered the standard repertoire. Educated at Oberlin College and studying privately with George Whitefield Chadwick and Edgard Varese, his lush, neo-Romantic assimilation of folk materials and usage of jazz idioms sets him apart among his contemporaries. Still's large catalogue of vocal works, which include six operas, eight extended works for voice and orchestra, and over one hundred songs and spiritual arrangements, is characterized by a variety of distinguishing features which remain an important part of his legacy. He often turns to texts by African-American authors, including Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Countee Cullen, Anna Bontemps and Langston Hughes. Many of his songs, including this evening's "Idolatry" and "If You Should Go," reveal a sensuous chromatic language, bluesy impressionism and a dis?tinctly contemporary harmonic vocabulary. Also a student of George Whitfield Chadwick, Florence Price was the first African-American woman to establish herself as a composer in the concert world. Like Still, she writes in a style that owes much to German Romanticism, and is known primarily for her large-scale orchestral works. Her Piano Concerto had its premiere in 1934 with Margaret Bonds, another extraordinary African-American composer, at the piano. "Song to the Dark Virgin" is a lush, almost operatic, setting of Langston Hughes' haunting text, and
"Resignation," for which Price has written her own text, has echoes of the Negro spiri?tual tradition in its folk-like melody and martial, minor-chord accompaniment.
Program note by J.J. Penna.
One of the brightest stars on stage in the US and abroad, charismatic soprano Harolyn Blackwell has been hailed by audiences and critics alike as a model of agility and charm with a silvery tone. Recognized for her expressive and exuberant performances, as well as for her radiant voice, she is making a wide and varied career on the opera, concert and recitals stages of the world.
Following her studies at The Catholic University of America in Washington DC, Ms. Blackwell's performing career began on the Broadway stage in Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story. Her transition from musical theater to opera occurred shortly after, when she was selected as a finalist at the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. Since that time, the soprano has performed with many of the major national and international opera companies and at festivals around the world, including the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Glyndebourne Festival, Thetro Colon de Buenos Aires, San Francisco Opera, Netherlands Opera, Seattle Opera, Opera de Nice and Aix-en-Provence. At the Metropolitan Opera she has appeared in several productions, including La Fille du Regiment, Un Ballo in Maschera, Le Nozze di Figaro, Manon, Die Fledermaus and Werther. Her symphonic and operatic engagements have included appearances under the baton of Herbert Blomstedt, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Charles Dutoit, James Levine, Andrew Litton, Kurt Masur, Trevor Pinnock, Andre Previn, Simon Rattle, Leonard Slatkin, Gerard Schwarz and David Zinman.
Highlights of Ms. Blackwell's 19992000 season included an invitation to the Vatican to perform in Haydn's Die Schopfung with Gilbert Levine and the London Symphony Orchestra; Carmina Burana with James Judd and the Florida Philharmonic, Mozart's Mass in c minor, and arias from Die Freischutz with Gerard Schwarz for the closing of the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York. She also performed her first Lakme with the Seattle Opera and was a featured artist on national television for the Memorial Day Concert from Washington DC.
Ms. Blackwell has also been featured on numerous television broadcasts, including the Met's Un ballo in Maschera; the 1990 Grammy Awards telecast, and "I Hear America Singing" on PBS. Her performance of Blondchen in Mozart's Die Entfurung aus dem Serail in the Aix-de-Provence Festival was aired throughout Europe. She has also been seen on the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Salute to the Kennedy Center and several Fourth of July concerts, which have cele?brated Gershwin and Bernstein. Having been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, she was afforded the opportunity to
study with both Renata Tebaldi and Carlo Bergonzi. Her other awards include the Baltimore Opera's Puccini Foundation Award, the WGN--Illinois Opera Guild's "Audition of the Air" award, an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Siena College and most recently, an Honorary Doctorate of Music from George Washington University.
This week's recitals mark Ms. Blackwell's UMS debut.
Renowned for her vibrantly rich mezzo-soprano voice, Florence Quivar is considered one of America's most distinguished artists. She is a regular guest of the world's leading opera companies, orchestra and music festivals. She has collaborated with most of the leading conductors of our time, and has appeared as a guest with major orchestras and festivals worldwide. Her extraordinarily broad concert repertoire includes a Carnegie Hall concert perfor?mance of Four Saints in Three Acts honoring Virgil Thomson's eighty-fifth birthday, a Bach 3OOth birthday celebration at Alice Tully Hall with Gerard Schwarz, a recital as part of the Great Performers Series at Alice Tully Hall, as well as performances of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis; Nicholas Maw's Scenes and Arias; Szymanowski's Stabat Mater, Schumann's Parodies und die Peri; Rossini's Stabat Mater, Beethoven's Symphony No. 9; Dvoak's Requiem; Mendelssohn's Elijah and Messa per Rossini; Brahms' Alto Rhapsody, Mahler's Kindertotenlieder, Songs of a Wayfarer, Das Klagende Lied, Resurrection and Symphony No. 3; Handel's Messiah; Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky, Verdi's Requiem, for which she received par?ticular international acclaim; and Berlioz' La Mort de Cleopatre at the Berlin Festpiel.
A perennial favorite of New York audi?ences, Ms. Quivar has enjoyed many seasons at the Metropolitan Opera. In the past, she has portrayed Mother Marie in Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmalites, Jocasta in Oedipus Rex, Isabella in L'ltaliana in Algeri, Fides in Le Prophete, Frederica in Luisa Miller, La Zia Principessa in Suor Angelica and Serena in the company's first production of Porgy and Bess. She has appeared in a telecast perfor?mance of Un Ballo in Maschera and has traveled with the Met to Seville, Spain, for more performances of this same opera. Ms. Quivar appeared in the Met's Gala Opening of the 19941995 season in the role of Frugola in Tabarro, a spectacular event that was televised nationally on PBS and later released on video.
As a recitalist, Ms. Quivar is especially acclaimed for her program of music by Africa-American composers. Her impressive discography includes a solo album of spiri?tuals, Ride on King Jesus, as well as numerous opera recordings and a wide range of orato?rios recorded with conductors like James Levine, Carlo Maria Guilini, Sir Colin Davis, Thomas Schippers, Lorin Maazel, Seiji Ozawa, Zubin Mehta, Andrew Davis, Simon Rattle,
Charles Dutoit and Robert Shaw.
A native of Philadelphia, Ms. Quivar is a graduate of the Philadelphia Academy of Music and a former member of The Juilliard Opera Theatre. She is a winner of the National Opera Institute Award, Baltimore Lyric Opera Competition, and the Marian Anderson Vocal Competition.
This week's recitals mark Ms. Quivar's third and fourth appearances under UMS auspices. She made her UMS debut in May 1993 in Verdi's Requiem with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
One of the most gifted pianists of his generation, J. J. Penna has already performed in recital with such notable singers as Kathleen Battle, Harolyn Blackwell, David Daniels, Kevin McMillan, Florence Quivar, Sharon Sweet, Christopher Trakas, Indra Thomas, and Ying Huang. Mr. Penna has been heard at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, at Weill Hall and Merkin Recital Hall in New York City, at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, and in Seizi Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, as well as on concert tours throughout the US, Europe, Asia, the Far East, South America, and the former Soviet Union. He has participated in masterclasses with Marilyn Home, Barbara Bonney, Regine Crespin, and Giorgio Tozzi. In March of 2001, he gave the premiere per?formance of William Bolcom's latest song cycle with mezzo-soprano Florence Quivar, and in June of 2001 performed in recital with soprano Roberta Peters.
Mr. Penna has performed and held fel?lowships at prestigious festivals such as Tanglewood, Chautauqua Institution, Banff Centre for the Arts, Norfolk, the Music Academy of the West, and San Francisco Opera's Merola Program. He has worked on
over twenty operatic productions at Tanglewood, Michigan Opera Theatre, University of Michigan, San Francisco Opera Center, and Tri-Cities Opera. Mr. Penna holds a doctoral degree from the University of Michigan, where he studied with Martin Katz.
Mr. Penna devotes much of his time to the teaching of art song literature, and is currently Assistant Professor of Accompanying and Coaching at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey. He is the artistic director of an annual song festival in Princeton, and maintains a coaching studio in New York City. He will spend the summer of 2002 as the coordinator of the vocal pro?gram at the Bowdoin Festival, then will be in residence as a Young Artist at the Stean's Institute of the Ravinia Festival in Chicago.
This week's recitals mark Mr. Penna's VMS debut.
Composer and pianist William Bolcom was born in Seattle, Washington in 1938. Exhibiting early musical talent, he entered the University of Washington at the young age of eleven, studying composition with John Verrall and piano with Berthe Poncy Jacobson, earning a BA in 1958. Further studies followed with Darius Milhaud at Mills College in California and later at the Conservatoire de Musique in Paris. He completed his doctorate in com?position at Stanford University in 1964, studying with Leland Smith.
Mr. Bolcom's compositions have earned him several honors, including two Guggenheim fellowships, the Marc Blitzstein Award in 1966 from the Academy of Arts and Letters for his opera Dynamite Tonight, as well as earning the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1988 for 12 New Etudes for Piano.
He has also been commissioned by numer?ous orchestras, soloists and chamber music organizations worldwide for his compositions. Some of his recent commissions and collab?orations have included the opera A View from the Bridge, written in collaboration with Arnold Weinstein and Arthur Miller, which premiered at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and is scheduled to open at the Metropolitan Opera in December 2002. In addition, his Piano Quartet in honor of Isaac Stern's eightieth birthday had its world premiere at the Kennedy Center in March 2000.
Mr. Bolcom has taught at the University of Michigan since 1973, where he was named the Ross Lee Finney Distinguished University Professor of Music in 1994. His other awards include the 1977 Henry Russell Award, the Michigan Council for the Arts Award, the Governor's Award from the State of Michigan, and honorary doctorates from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Albion College. In 1992, he was invested into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 1995 was asked to be com-poser-in-residence for a week with the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Leonard Slatkin.
World premiere March 16, 2001, at the Library of Congress, Washington DC.
From the Diary of Sally Hemings has been com?missioned by Music Accord, Inc., a consortium of music presenters, including the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood; the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; the Fortas Chamber Music Series of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC; the Krannert Center at the University of Illinois in Urbana; the Library of Congress in Washington, DC; the Ravinia Festival; San Francisco Performances; and the University Musical Society of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.