Category: Classical music

When Red Bull approached Jason Ikeem Rodgers, the founder and musical director of Orchestra Noir in Atlanta, about collaborating with Rick Ross for their global Symphonic series, the moment seemed like destiny. The project pairs contemporary musicians with classically trained orchestras, and Rodgers says he “grew up on Rick Ross.” When he was younger, he remembers spending two years driving around his native Philadelphia with a broken CD player that looped three songs. One was Ross’s 2013 Jay-Z collaboration “Devil is a Lie.” 

“Rick Ross’s music helped me navigate my life and inspired me to be a boss,” he says.

On Friday night, he stood over his players on stage at the Atlanta Symphony Hall, and Rick Ross stood before him. For a split second, the room fell silent, and the lights went crimson before Ross leaned into the mic mischievously and called the devil a liar. Horns blared royally, the drums trudged with force, and after Ross delivered his last syllable, he turned to Rodgers, and they shared a proud nod. 

Established in Atlanta by Rodgers six years ago after a globe-trotting, high-achieving career as conductor, composer, and arranger. He first became fascinated with classical piano in the 6th grade via Virginia T. Lam, a talented and attentive music teacher who grew into a mentor, then a mom, and now the production manager and board member of the orchestra. As a teenager, Rodgers would dart from freestyling with his buddies on Philly street corners to his piano lessons, feeling like a part of two different worlds. Now, his orchestra blends traditional symphony and Black pop music: Red Bull caught wind of them through their “Beethoven Meets 90s Vibe” show. “I feel like, for the first time in my life, I’m me,” he says. Tasked with translating an hour of Rozay’s discography into music for his orchestra, Rodgers says the song’s arrangement poured out of him.

“This is the black caviar of hip-hop,” Ross said over Zoom after rehearsing the Thursday before the performance. “This is a great example of Black excellence.” He echoed the sentiment on stage the next night, where dozens of Black artists showcased the synergy between genres that could seem disparate but had coalesced in all their lives. First, of course, there was Ross, whose lush production made perfect fodder for the drama of an orchestra: “It sounds futuristic and classical at the same time,” Questlove once told him of his “Maybach Music” song series. But before Ross, there was Mapy, a classically trained solo violinist, a New Yorker by way of Paris, who’s played unmistakable hip-hop, reggae, dancehall, and Afrobeats hits. Sainted, an incredible choir performing trap music standards like gospel, followed.

Though Ross had never played with Orchestra Noir before the Symphonic, he was familiar with their work and had reverence for them. “I’m happy,” Ross beamed after Thursday’s rehearsal. Cameron Moore, a Savannah State University freshman, is one of several HBCU student musicians that joined the orchestra on Friday. Moore, who plays the trumpet, said the rapper energized the rehearsal. “We just got to playing the music, and then Rick Ross just pulled up out of nowhere, had a drink on stage,” she recalled. “Something just changed when he walked in the room.” Let Ross tell it, though, and he’ll tell you he was mesmerized watching the musicians work, flipping their pages and playing with focus. “I may have just had one or two things to tweak. And it wasn’t even with the orchestra. It was more about just small technical things.”

Sam Sneak — the DJ and A&R who works closely with Rick Ross — was Rodgers’ point person to gel his musical direction with their camp. “To be honest, I just laid back,” Ross admitted when asked what his role was in the process. “Whenever Sam’s involved, it always comes together.” Sneak has been collaborating with Ross for over a decade and had his own instrumental experience to call back on, too, from playing percussion in a marching band to a live band at a strip club. Nevertheless, sneak was enthusiastic about the Symphonic, partly because of its conceptual alignment with Ross’s sound. “He spits that luxurious… Ross could rap about a burger and make it feel like you eating steak, the finest steak, the elegance of the wordplay,” said Sneak.

While Sneak’s input was essential to Rodgers, Sam said it was vital for him to communicate to the Maestro that he trusted his vision: “Do everything you see fit, and from there, that’s how we going to rock out,” he remembered telling Rodgers. “Ain’t no cap on your creativity.” Sam got a first look at what the show would be at chamber rehearsal with half the orchestra in October, and he was more than impressed, especially with their rendition of “Hustlin, Ross’s breakthrough hit, the grit that came before the glamour. 

“It’s just this thing where he has the trumpet sounding you’re listening to like a Dolby sound effect. It’s going from left to right,” Sneak said before the show, still mystified. “I was blown away when I heard it in rehearsal. I was like, ‘Oh yeah, we going to have a fucking ball.’” On Friday night, the rowdier anthems populated the latter part of the setlist, with — “B.M.F.,” “Bugatti,” and “Hold Me Back” were particularly explosive. When “Hustlin’” rolled through amongst them, its grand horns seemed to balloon across the room at the start. 

Per his memoir Hurricanes, Rick Ross made “Hustlin’” as a newly signed but cash-poor rapper, having put his entire $30,000 advance towards the down payment for his first house whose mortgage he couldn’t afford. Ross found the breadth of the setlist inspiring, a robust curation of his career, from “Hustlin’” to “God Did.” “It made me just reflect,” said Ross. “And I appreciate everything I’ve done.” He can now add a Symphonic to his list of successes, having his music performed in a context Black people rarely have access to professionally. “For a long time, the statistic was with American orchestras, only 1.8% of American orchestras were African-American,” said Rodgers. “It’s been that way for years. I think it’s changed slightly, but probably not by much.”

Mapy — the French violinist who started the party on Friday — has been able to build an extraordinary solo career playing hip-hop, reggae, and soca on her violin. Still, the Symphonic was her first time doing so with an orchestra. She was set on this path around the age of 10 when she realized when she could play “Juicy” by Notorious B.I.G. by ear. 

At six years old, she had begun studying the violin at her mother’s behest, a poor immigrant from Reunion Island, east of Madagascar, who could not read, write or play music herself but knew it would open doors. “I used to play in a symphony orchestra back in the day, when I was still in France, in Paris, but we were playing classical music, and that’s not really what I listened to,” Mapy explained Thursday night as she settled in her Atlanta hotel. “So, this show is a dream come true.” From Cameron Moore, the young trumpeter, to Rick Ross himself, many artists that performed that night felt a sense of alignment with the Symphonic, pulling together the different musical approaches they’ve been weaving together their whole lives.

Twentieth century music is at an interesting point in its history from the perspective of recordings. Contemporary music, for obvious reasons, is always the most under-represented, whereas works from the last hundred years are beginning to reach the stage where’s there’s a more meaningful range of recordings available. In the case of some repertoire, though, there’s a question to be asked with regard to interpretation, and to what degree different recordings not merely do but can bring something genuinely new to the listening experience. Perhaps that sounds naïve or ridiculous: after all, isn’t each individual performance, live or recorded, entirely unique? Maybe so, but when i consider concerts and recordings i’ve heard of music by, for example, Messiaen (especially his later work) and Penderecki (especially his earlier work), the differences between them have, for the most part, felt more than usually slight. i attribute this in part to the very particular, unique musical languages of these two composers. Aside from accuracy of performance, what scope is there for wide varieties of interpretation in, say, Messiaen’s Chronochromie or Penderecki’s Threnody?

i pose the question not because i believe the answer is “none”, but because it’s something i’ve genuinely wondered about in recent times. Late last year, listening to Kent Nagano and the Bavarian Radio Orchestra’s 3-disc box set featuring Messiaen’s Poèmes pour Mi, Chronochromie and La Transfiguration, i was struck by how anonymous it sounded. All of it was 100% recognisably Messiaen, yet i’d be hard pushed to say how much of it was 100% recognisably Nagano or Bavaria. Does that make them bad performances? or does it, perhaps, make them all the better because the conductor and orchestra haven’t got in the way of the composer’s voice? Is it enough for a performance to be merely faithful? As contemporary and avant-garde music becomes ever more part of history and more widely recorded, these are vital questions. After all, we live at a time when if we want to hear, for example, a symphony by Beethoven, we have literally hundreds to choose from; will the time come when there could be over a hundred versions of Chronochromie or Threnody? Would that be desirable? Would it be meaningful? Again, i don’t necessarily believe the answer is “no”, though the actual answers to all these questions no doubt lie in the hands of each individual orchestra and conductor who decide to explore these works and present them, hopefully, afresh.

Earlier this year, while making my way through SWR Classic’s epic 10-volume Michael Gielen Edition, i couldn’t help noticing that, despite its generous broad sweep of 20th century music (explored in volumes 7 and 10, the latter of which i reviewed in February), some significant composers were entirely absent. Messiaen and Penderecki were two such names, and i particularly wondered about them at the time, not simply because they weren’t included but more because i felt that if anyone could find something genuinely new in their interpretation of this music, then Michael Gielen – with his gift for teasing out amazing amounts of detail plus his penchant for unflinchingly exposing the raw emotional core of the music – surely could. This gap in the catalogue has now been filled thanks to two recent releases on the Orfeo label (who seem to be trying to prove they’ve got just as many previously unheard Gielen recordings in their archive as SWR Classic), both featuring the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra: one a portrait disc of Messiaen, the other focusing on music by Szymanowski and Penderecki.

Though stylistically extremely different, what unites the music on the latter disc, in addition to both composers being Polish, is its focus on lamentation. In the case of Szymanowski’s 1926 Stabat Mater, though, the music is often so opulent that the case for it being a lament can be hard to make. Gielen’s approach is therefore not to try, but instead to focus on the passion that drives the piece. That being said, the opening taps into a poignant sense of melancholy – albeit captured in lush language – with each phrase like a separate outburst of mourning, not increasing over time but simply continuing, in a sequence that therefore fascinatingly combines richness with a kind of dazed agony. For anyone who doesn’t share its religious sentiments it’s impossible to take the texts seriously (indeed, as they progress they become downright nauseating), yet Gielen, the quartet of soloists and the singers of Chorus sine nomine all treat them as if they believed each and every word. As such, the third and fourth movements are especially effective (almost affecting), turning inward and intimate, the orchestra suffusing the voices with tenderness and soft radiance. Likewise the anguished development of the penultimate movement is rendered a ferocious twist from intense depth to full-blown fire, closing the work in an atmosphere of unmistakable ecstasy.

The extent to which Gielen ensures a fully-committed authentic response to such manic sentiments indicates what’s going to happen when his attention is turned to Penderecki. In the Dies Irae, composed in 1967 as a memorial to the victims murdered at Auschwitz, both the solemnity and scale are immediately apparent. Furthermore, in a move that at first seems disorienting, the piece is presented as inhabiting a kind of schizoid state, veering irrationally between passages that seem ordered and ostensibly random blurts, howls and abstract noise. Over time, though, the performance indicates that the default position of the music is in fact cacophony and clamour, and that everything else – anything approaching clarity – is merely holding itself together just long enough to emote and draw breath before losing it all again. The whispered syllables at the start of the central ‘Apocalypsis’ thereby become deeply unsettling, both for the way they’re articulated by the Vienna Concert Chorus as well as for the implication of what’s inevitably to come, soon enough breaking apart completely in a dazzling but horrifying collapse. On the one hand, Penderecki’s wildly dramatic imbalance begs the question of whether it all sounds a bit over the top, less an authentic lament than the composer’s conception of what an authentic lament might sound like. Yet, how else could any response to the hell of Auschwitz sound? What capacity is there for clarity, or for anything approximating order or control? Again, Gielen’s full-throttle commitment makes the Dies Irae sound like the only true Day of Wrath ever adequately captured in sound.

As for the Threnody, much is often made of the fact that Penderecki’s naming it as a tribute to the victims of Hiroshima was an afterthought, but who cares – what difference does it make? Appropriately, it’s the composer at his most aloof and immediate, music that simultaneously means nothing and means everything, captured in not so much a narrative as a collage of disparate, desperate, archetypal sound masses. Bearing in mind what i said previously about interpretation, it’s a relief (though not a surprise) to hear Gielen delicately personalise Threnody in this performance. The sound shapes themselves are wonderfully vivid – the weaker string clusters sound like the abject wheezing of a knackered squeezebox – but beyond this it’s the way Gielen taps into that fundamental abstract / emotional, meaningless / meaningful dichotomy that makes this recording so compelling. There’s a recurring impression that the music is at once numb while also keening. Another way of putting it would be to say that Gielen simply makes the music “open”, enabling it to not so much convey anything itself as serve as a vehicle for whatever feelings we want to project onto it. All the same, he prevents the piece from ever becoming just a blank litany of abstruse textures, imbuing it with character and detail, where possible making some of Threnody’s transitions surprisingly telling moments of small-scale drama. One of the more notable occurs halfway through, when a wall of noise reduces to a single unison pitch, then reduces further to just a single instrument, its subsequent wavering suggesting the entire weight of all the players has been brought to bear on its shoulders. Perhaps there’s no such thing as a definitive performance of Threnody, but if i had to pick just one, this excellent recording would be tough to beat.

Volume 7 of the Michael Gielen Edition, exploring late 19th and early 20th century music, includes a disc questioning ‘Kitsch or Art?’ Featuring music by Wagner, Richard Strauss and Puccini, Messiaen’s early orchestral work Les Offrandes Oubliées (1930) would fit perfectly alongside them. Contrary to the general trend to have befallen his music over the years, Gielen and the ORF orchestra don’t in any way linger excessively over Messiaen’s emollient string writing (indeed, this performance is around a minute shorter than most), though even without milking it there’s no way to counter the work’s sheer oleaginous weight. Yet unlike many performances of Messiaen’s ‘ecstatic’ music, Gielen prevents it becoming a homogeneous mush; instead, we hear it as a texture comprising distinct timbres blending together. It’s an important distinction that makes a significant sonic difference. In such a context as this, it would be hard not to make the short, central sin-inspired section sound aggressive, yet Gielen obviates the usual mistake of simply turning it into a superficial diabolical dervish, instead presenting it as an engaging tilting between order and chaos, integrating its recurring high shrieks into the texture rather than exaggerating them.

The success of this performance of Poèmes pour Mi (1937) is as much thanks to soprano Sarah Leonard as to Gielen and the orchestra. Together they create an amazing sense of rapture, as if the piece were caught up in one place even as it continually drives along. This is matched by a balance, conveyed in the surreal texts, between ecstasy and a more relaxed form of happiness, illustrating the divine / mortal aspects of love at the heart of the work. While the latter are exquisite, the former are utterly heightened, to the extent that, at its most extreme, the music becomes truly terrifying, Leonard sounding wonderfully unhinged. One of the loveliest aspects of this performance is the way the sections are heard not as separate movements but like different exhalations of the same air into the same atmosphere, a single extended (melo)dramatic articulation of twin conceptions of love. Throughout, Gielen continually teases out textural details, such as the inner movement in ‘Ta voix’, made to sound here like concentric wheels moving at different rates while the soprano soars overhead. Without minimising the quasi-romantic and impressionistic qualities of the music, Gielen manages to make Poèmes pour Mi sound like it’s not made of musical ‘substance’ at all, but fashioned from light and air. Though it’s up against some competition, this is the best performance i’ve yet heard of this piece.

The disc ends with the work i cited at the start, Chronochromie (1960), which coming in the wake of such unchecked bliss could hardly be a more startling contrast. As with his approach to Penderecki, Gielen avoids letting the music sound like a conveyor belt of wildly dissonant blurts, clangs and flurries, bringing his laser focus to ensure the intricate details and structural shape of the score all emerge clearly. As a result, the ear continually leaps all over the place in response to these individual elements and layers that blend and intermingle. The highlight comes in the two ‘Antistrophe’ movements, each presented as a weighty back-and-forth between robust wind phrases and busy xylophones heard over shining tremolandos, the first culminating in a massive multiplicity of sound strata, the second in a dense discordant chorale that finally splinters apart. In a similar way to Threnody, i’m not sure if there could ever be a definitive performance of Chronochromie, but what sets this one apart is that it doesn’t merely ‘sound like Messiaen’, it goes deeper, revealing what it is that makes Messiaen sound like Messiaen.

Michael Gielen’s Messiaen disc was released in July, his Szymanowski and Penderecki disc in September; both are available on CD and download.

Two classical musicians — double bassist Bill Koehler and pianist Amanda Huff-McClure — will give a concert Sunday afternoon at the Alhambra Theatre. 

It is titled “Medieval to Modern: An Eclectic Recital for Double Bass and Piano,” and plans for the concert grew out of a collaboration that began several months ago. 

Koehler and Huff-McClure were both searching for a collaborator when a mutual friend suggested they should met. 

“In a small community where there are not a lot of classical performance opportunities it felt really fortuitous,” said Huff-McClure, a Caldwell County resident who owns and runs The Corner Coffeehouse in Hopkinsville with her wife, April Huff-McClure. 

Koehler, who resides at Eddyville, is a professor emeritus at Illinois State University, where he taught bass and other music courses for 35 years. A composer, he has performed with major orchestra throughout Europe. 

Huff-McClure has taught piano for more than 20 years. For the past nine years, she has been teaching students at University Heights Academy and in her private studio in Hopkinsville. Most her opportunities to play classical music have been in churches. 

For the past six months, Koehler and Huff-McClure have meet every Thursday at First Christian Church in Princeton to practice the selections they will play for the Alhambra concert. 

“It’s such a very personal thing,” Huff-McClure said, describing how musicians are able to form a partnership. 

“When you are playing together … you have to click on a fundamental musical level or it doesn’t work,” she said.

The fact that Koehler and Huff-McClure did not know each other but were both looking for a collaborator at the same time in rural Kentucky felt serendipitous, she said. 

The concert will begin at 2 p.m. The theater doors will open at 1 p.m. Tickets are $10 for adults, or $5 for students and military, and can be purchased online.

“This is an opportunity to see if there is a market for classical performances in Hopkinsville,” Huff-McClure said. 

Sunday’s program will last about two hours, including a brief intermission. Koehler will have CDs of his music available for purchase at the Alhambra.

In his ruling, Biery said the union was engaging in unfair labor practices that could cause CMI “substantial and irreparable harm.”

An email obtained by the Express-News that alerted union members to the ruling said Biery had not heard the union’s position.

At the center of the dispute is Opera San Antonio’s staging of “Pagliacci,” which will be presented today and Saturday at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts. CMI, a classical music educational and performance organization, had contracted musicians to play in an orchestra for the production.

Local 23 asserted that the musicians’ contracts do not meet local standards for pay and benefits, which is why the national union placed CMI on its unfair list.

On ExpressNews.com: SA musicians union escalates battle with Classical Music Institute ahead of opera

Union members are advised against performing for any employer on that list. In an email sent out to the musicians Sunday, union members were advised that they could face steep fines from their local unions if they took part in the opera and also would have to cross picket lines to reach rehearsals and performances.

In a complaint filed in federal court,  Classical Music Institute said six musicians pulled out of “Pagliacci” rather than taking that risk. CMI paid for the rehearsals the musicians had completed and reimbursed their travel expenses. Some other musicians still under contract had expressed concerns about possible fines for performing and skipped three rehearsals, according to the complaint.

Union members picketed Tuesday’s rehearsal.

In his ruling, Biery noted that the musicians had been contracted before CMI was placed on the unfair list, and that none of the contracted musicians are members of Local 23. He also enjoined union members from any picketing of the production going forward.

CMI’s complaint alleges that the picketing that did take place was unlawful and that the union did not follow its own requirements when CMI was placed on the unfair list. According to the union’s website, a primary labor dispute must exist between the union and an employer before the employer can be placed on the list. CMI says there was no such dispute.

On ExpressNews.com: CMI receives $300,000 grant from Bexar County during contentious meeting

Richard Oppenheim, president of Local 23, declined to comment for this story.

In a statement, Donald Mason, executive director of CMI, said he is excited that the production will go on.

“Our objective is to promote artistic excellence in Bexar County and provide outstanding service to our fellow Tobin Center resident companies,” Mason said.

David Van Os, one of the union’s attorneys, said the American Federation of Musicians’ legal position is that it has not committed any legal violations and that it should be able to enforce its own bylaws.

Donna K. McElroy, a lawyer who is representing CMI, was unavailable for comment.

A hearing on CMI’s request for a preliminary injunction against the union has been scheduled for Nov. 10.

dlmartin@express-news.net | Twitter: @DeborahMartinEN

The move represents an escalation of a dispute between the American Federation of Musicians’ Local 23 and CMI that first became public at a Commissioners Court meeting last month. At the meeting, union representatives spoke out against a grant that CMI received from the county to enable it to provide music for performances by the opera and Ballet San Antonio. 

“The wages and conditions offered for the work by CMI to professional musicians are substandard and therefore unacceptable to the union in San Antonio,” said Raymond Hair, president of the national union. “Furthermore they do not pay any benefits — they don’t pay into the AFM  pension fund, which is a feature of that kind of work.”

READ MORE: CMI receives $300,000 grant from Bexar County during contentious meeting

Classical Music Institute officials did not respond to specific questions about the impact of being placed on the unfair list, but they did release a statement.

“The Classical Music Institute’s $300,000 grant from the Bexar County Commissioners Court to provide classical music for Ballet San Antonio and Operal San Antonio allows these valuable organizations and artists to showcase their passion and talent, enriching our city,” the statement reads. “Let the curtain rise for the performing arts this season. Let’s work together, not separate, to elevate our classical musicians.” 

Rehearsals are taking place this week for “Pagliacci,” which is to open Thursday at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts.

The union sent musicians who had contracted to play for CMI an email Sunday notifying them of its concerns. It warned them that if they played “Pagliacci,” they might face picket lines as well as financial penalties from their local unions.

Union members picketed outside the Tobin Center Tuesday night.

Richard Oppenheim, president of Local 23, said some musicians pulled out of the production after they learned that CMI was on the union’s unfair list.

E. Loren Meeker, general and artistic director for Opera San Antonio, said in a statement that the opera will go on.

“We are very pleased that CMI, a fellow resident company of the Tobin Center, has made an incremental step to become a full orchestra, and hopeful that the attempts to keep it from playing for (Opera San Antonio) are not successful,” she said. “We don’t want the performing arts in our city to be dictated by one group trying to have a monopoly. We are resolved that these efforts will not prevent Opera San Antonio … from bringing the great music and theater of Pagliacci to our community.”

RELATED: SA Philharmonic buys assets of defunct San Antonio Symphony

The San Antonio Symphony, which folded in June following a strike by musicians and decades of financial turmoil, had played in many productions by the opera and the ballet in the past. The former symphony musicians have resumed performing independently as the San Antonio Philharmonic.

Staff writer Jacob Beltran contributed to this report.

dlmartin@express-news.net | Twitter: @DeborahMartinEN