Leonard Bernstein

Duke Ellington

Charles Ives

George Gershwin

Aaron Copland

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American Celebration Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington, Charles Ives, George Gershwin and Aaron Copland Introducing the Junior Providence Singers (A project with the Music School of the R.I. Philharmonic) With Special Guest Robert Page Grammy Award-winning conductor of the Mendelssohn Choir 3 p.m. Sunday, February 29, 2004 Sayles Hall at Brown University Pre-concert discussion with Robert Page begins at 2 p.m.

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Julian Wachner and Andrew Clark, conductors

The Providence Singers
The Junior Providence Singers

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I. The Providence Singers

Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990): Songs from Candide (arranged by Robert Page)

• Life is Happiness Indeed
• It Must be So  (Robert Rappa, tenor)
• The Best of all Possible Worlds
• Candide’s Lament
• Make our Garden Grow

II. The Junior Providence Singers

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (1899–1974): Come Sunday

Charles Ives (1874–1954): At the River

George Gershwin (1898–1937): Songs from Porgy and Bess

• A Woman is a Sometime Thing  (Michael Trogolo, baritone)
• My Man’s Gone  (Melynda Davis, soprano)
• Oh Lawd, I’m on My Way

III. The Providence Singers and the Junior Providence Singers

Aaron Copland (1900–1990): Old American Songs

• The Little Horses
• Zion’s Walls  (Bess Brooks, soprano)
• The Golden Willow Tree  (Andrew Arcello, tenor)
• At the River
• Ching-a-Ring Chaw
• The Dodger  (Ashley Hayes, mezzo-soprano)
• Long Time Ago
• Simple Gifts
• I Bought Me a Cat

Copland: Songs from The Tender Land  (Robert Page conducting)

• Stomp Your Foot
• The Promise of Living

Julian Wachner
Artistic Director
The Providence Singers

Notes on the Concert

Candide. How better to introduce the Junior Providence Singers than with Voltaire’s tale of youth, optimism, trials, tribulations and – at least in Leonard Bernstein’s version – the triumphant determination “to do the best we know?”

Candide (1758) is, after all, a coming-of-age tale in which four young people, supersaturated with Dr. Pangloss’ most optimistic philosophies, must learn for themselves whether “life is happiness indeed” in this “best of all possible worlds.” Their plunge into the real world is rapid and dismal – abductions, earthquakes, war, the Bulgarian army, slavery, pirate attacks, robbery, death and worse: being on the wrong side of the Holy Inquisition. Voltaire’s biting satire brought a swift reaction: a place on the Vatican’s list of banned books and book-burnings in many of the great cities of Europe. Not a promising premise for a Broadway musical comedy.

Two hundred years later, Bernstein also had his struggles writing the show. After its nominal premiere in 1956, Candide continued to evolve – with lyrics changed, songs added or deleted, one-act and concert versions developed – until Bernstein himself conducted “the final revised version” more than 33 years later in a recording session at Abbey Road Studios. At Bernstein’s personal request, our special guest Robert Page arranged the choral versions that the Singers and Junior Singers perform today.

As a designated Wunderkind of the classical music world, Bernstein raised a few eyebrows when he began composing for the Broadway stage. Duke Ellington, on the other hand, raised eyebrows when he moved in the opposite direction – from the world of the Cotton Club and the scruffy heritage of American jazz to the higher spiritual plane of sacred music.

The sacred element had always been there, but Ellington brought it front and center only in the last decade of his life. In 1964, he received a commission for a liturgical work as part of the year-long dedication of San Francisco’s Grace Episcopal Cathedral. His first “Concert of Sacred Music” was premiered in September 1965. It incorporated earlier works including “Come Sunday” from his 1943 long-form work, Black, Brown and Beige. He would compose two more Sacred Concerts, which reached audiences numbering several thousand in churches and cathedrals from New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine to London’s Westminster Abbey. “Come Sunday” endures as Ellington’s most famous Gospel theme and was among the works performed at a White House concert in 1969, when Ellington received the Medal of Freedom from President Richard Nixon.

“Shall We Gather at the River,” a hymn written in 1864 by Robert Lowry, is nearly omnipresent in American music and literature. The hymn connotes revivals, tent meetings, reed organs, urban soup kitchens, country churches, missionary zeal, and Protestant Americana – exactly the raw material to excite the idiosyncratic passions of the incomparable Charles Ives, who set the tune in 1916. This afternoon’s concert offers a chance to compare that setting with a 1954 setting by Aaron Copland.

During seven decades since its premiere in September 1935, Porgy and Bess has established itself as a uniquely American opera. George Gershwin found the story in DuBose Heyward’s 1924 novel, Porgy, was immediately convinced of its potential as an opera, and immersed himself passionately in the project. He traveled to South Carolina and lived for two months among the Gullah People – Porgy’s people – then spent 20 months sketching the opera and composing the score. Gershwin was very proud of the work: “I think the music is so marvelous,” he said, “I don’t believe I wrote it.” Songs from the opera, particularly “Summertime,” continue to percolate through American music, from jazz clubs to the concert hall.

More than most twentieth-century American composers, Aaron Copland developed a musical style that seemed to capture the American essence. To be sure, he drew heavily on American folk themes and hymn tunes for many of his most famous works, but he created music that was distinctly and recognizably his own.

He was born in New York City to Russian Jewish immigrants, was taught to play the piano by his older sister, and had determined to become a composer by the time he was 15. Like many young American artists, writers and musicians of the 1920s, Copland spent several years in Paris mastering his craft. He was the first American to study composition with Nadia Boulanger, and it was Boulanger who gave him his first major commission on his return to the States.

After experimenting with a number of styles, from jazz to more abstract music, Copland came to believe that composers were in danger of losing their essential connection to the music-loving public, of writing only for themselves. He began working toward music that was at once new and accessible, producing his best-known and most frequently performed scores during a highly productive period from the mid 1930s through the 1940s. He developed and refined a distinctly American musical idiom, of which he later said, “I no longer feel the need of seeking out conscious Americanism. Because we live here and work here, we can be certain that when our music is mature, it will also be American in quality.”

Andrew Clark
Music Director of the
Junior Providence Singers

The Junior Providence Singers

Today’s concert marks the first public appearance of the Junior Providence Singers @ The Music School, a new chorus for talented, motivated high school musicians in southeastern New England. Led by music director Andrew Clark, the two-month program supplements students’ school experiences, offering intense rehearsals, professional vocal instruction and exciting performance opportunities. The Junior Providence Singers is co-sponsored by the Providence Singers and The Music School of the Rhode Island Philharmonic.

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