After a sold-out appearance by cellist Yo-Yo Ma last weekend I wondered if the BPO could continue on that high note. Yesterday’s (5/12) morning concert with jazz violinist Regina Carter proved that if the right soloist is featured, especially one with “crossover” appeal, there will be an audience and a wildly enthusiastic one at that! The concert repeats at Kleinhans Music Hall this Saturday night at 7:30 pm.
In the standard format for a classical concert, there was a shorter opening work to get us in the groove, followed by a concerto with the soloist, and after intermission a larger work, usually a symphony. The 18-minute opening here was by American jazz legend Edward “Duke” Ellington himself titled Black, Brown, and Beige Suite, a work that the BPO has played before and even recorded on the NAXOS label. In the (always) excellent program notes by Chaz Stuart and Edward Yadzinski we read that Ellington said that the music represents “… the importance of the Negro’s participation in his country’s destiny, ending with patriotic phrases revealing that Black, Brown, and Beige are truly Red, White, and Blue.”
Then it was time for the featured soloist, Detroit-born jazz-blues-country-classical-you-name-it-she-can-play-it violinist Regina Carter with her amped-up violin. Ms. Carter now sports snowy white hair and may walk across the stage with a more measured step, but once she tucks that fiddle under her chin, her playing is ageless. She played the 25-minute Four Sisters: Concerto for Jazz violin and Orchestra, written in 1977 by American composer David Schiff in 1997, but featuring a new solo written in 2004 just for Regina Carter.” The four sections are Soul: Aretha Franklin, Scat: Ella Fitzgerald, Satin: Billie Holiday, and Sassy: Sarah Vaughan.
Following that, the audience wasn’t about to let Carter go without an encore, and it was a wild ride that started off like Malaguena, morphed into Amazing Grace, and ended with Danny Boy. Wow.
Carter’s appearance on stage began by taking the microphone and reading out loud the IN MEMORIAM that was included in the program, with all ten names of the victims of the racist homicides at the Top Supermarket last May 14. Note that the BPO invites the community to a free Concert of Unity at the Johnnie B. Wiley Pavilion on Friday, July 21 at 7pm. The Pavilion is located between Dodge and Best Streets in the northeast corner of Masten Park, at 1100 Jefferson Avenue.
The concert concluded with the 33-minute Symphony No. 2 by Tchaikovsky, which used Ukrainian folk songs (in the way that Ellington’s Black, Brown, and Beige Suite used a work song and a spiritual) it so was known as the “Little Russian” symphony. (For decades Ukrainians have hated that nickname for their country, now more than ever, and there is a movement to change the title from “Little Russian” to “Ukrainian.”) Before beginning the symphony, guest conductor Michael Francis (who began his career as a bass player in the London Symphony) spoke to the audience about the origins of the work. Explaining music is his forte and it was quite enlightening to hear him talk about how this symphony fit with the rest of the concert.
When you go, budget a little time to walk through the lobby where there are many very large portraits of African-American musicians (including Billie Holiday and Aretha Franklin) created by students in the Grade 9 Studio Art class at the Buffalo Academy for Visual & Performing Arts. Between the artwork by those BAVPA kids and the music on stage, the whole concert felt like a fitting response to the tragedy of May 14. The In Memoriam included a quote from Leonard Bernstein: “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”
The concert repeats this Saturday evening at 7:30 at Kleinhans.
Also note that tomorrow afternoon, Sunday, May 14, WNED Classical radio (94.5 or wned.org/classical) will observe the one-year anniversary of the mass shooting at the Jefferson Avenue Tops by reading the ten victim’s names each accompanied by classical music that has for generations offered consolation and hope (including Barber’s Adagio, Schubert’s Ave Maria, Mahler’s Adagietto, et. al.) The broadcast will begin at 1:00 pm with African-American composer Florence Price’s Adoration and will conclude with JoAnn Falletta and the BPO performing African-American composer George Walker’s Lyric for Strings.
Starting at around 2:30 pm the special Sunday broadcast will conclude with the 82-minute long An African-American Requiem by contemporary African-American composer Damien Geter. You can listen to his “Why I wrote this” here:
Kleinhans Music Hall is at “3 Symphony Circle” Buffalo, 14201 where Porter Avenue, Richmond Avenue, North Street and Wadsworth meet at a traffic circle. Visit www.bpo.org or call 716-885-5000. Full-service bar in the lobby or across the lobby in the Mary Seaton Room. Masks are optional.
Lead image: Wikimedia Commons/bobtravis