Nicholas Phan, artistic director and co-founder of the Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago, was doing research for a previous installment of the organization’s annual art song festival and discovered the breadth of compositions in the form of Chicago composers past and present.
So he and his collaborators decided to make Chicago’s prolific music history the focus of the 2022 installment of the event, known as the Collaborative Works Festival. Performances of “Chicago Song” are set for Sept. 7 and 8 at Roosevelt University’s Ganz Hall, 430 S. Michigan, and Sept. 11 at the Epiphany Center for the Arts, 201 S. Ashland Ave.
“Chicago has a really rich history of producing a ton of composers and poets who have done incredible work,” Phan said.
Famous classical composers from Franz Schubert and Johannes Brahms to Charles Ives and Ned Rorem have written art songs. But these intimate concert works, usually settings of poetry with piano accompaniment, do not have the same visibility or popularity as other vocal forms such as opera.
“CAIC’s mission is to promote the art song repertoire,” said Phan, “and the art of vocal recital, and this Festival of Collaborative Works aims to do that by choosing a theme each year and exploring that theme through song.”
The Sept. 7 program, “Chicago’s Own,” features a compilation of composers who were born or spent time in the city, including Rorem, Joseph Schwantner and Reena Esmail. Chicago’s rich history of black composers will be on display Sept. 8 with works by composers such as Florence Price and Nora Holt, who became the first African-American to receive a master’s degree in music in 1918.
“I’m excited about all three programs, but I’m especially excited about this program,” Phan said, “because it’s telling a story that’s been overlooked, and it’s a really important story.”
The festival concludes on September 11 with a tribute to Carl Sandburg, who in addition to writing poetry, also famously collected American folk songs in a 1927 anthology titled “The American Songbag.” This concert will feature arrangements of some of those songs by composers such as Ernst Bacon, Ruth Crawford Seeger and George Walker, as well as settings of some of Sandburg’s poems.
In keeping with the festival’s theme, all performers except Phan will be Chicago-based, including lunga tenor Eric Hallam, mezzo-soprano Zoie Reams, baritone Robert Sims and pianist Yasuko Oura.
Here’s a look at 11 other classical music events worth checking out:
“My Son” at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Photo courtesy of Lyric Opera
September 10, October 9. 1, Verdi’s “The Boy,” Lyric Opera of Chicago, Enrique Mazzola, conductor, Lyric Opera House, 20 N. Upper Wacker (lyricopera.org). Based on a play by Victor Hugo, this dramatic opera centers on a messy love quadrangle, with one of three suitors for the same woman being the king. First presented on the Lyric stage in 1984, this work is the fourth in a series of early Verdi operas led by the company’s music director, Enrique Mazzola.
September 18, “Jephthah” by Handel, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie; and Sept. 19, Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph, Music of the Baroque, Jane Glover, conductor (baroque.org). Handel’s Christmas and Easter oratorio, “Messiah,” is well-loved, but the great Baroque master wrote more than 25 other oratorios, including his latest, “Jephtha,” based on a biblical story. These concerts are the first performances of the work’s baroque music in more than three decades, and they inaugurate Glover’s 20th season with the group.
September. 22-25, “The Coronation of Poppea” by Monteverdi, Jarvis Opera Hall, DePaul University, 800 W. Belden (haymarketopera.org); and Oct. 16, Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, Apollo’s Fire, Alice Millar Chapel, Northwestern University, 1870 Sheridan Road, Evanston (apollosfire.org). Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) did not invent opera, but his groundbreaking creations significantly defined the medium as we know it, and they continue to be performed regularly. The Haymarket will offer its first historically informed production of Coronation, the composer’s last opera, and Apollo’s Fire presents his earlier musical setting of the Catholic evening prayer service known as vespers.
22-24 and 27 September, Coleridge-Taylor’s “Solemn Prelude”, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Hall, 220 S. Michigan (cso.org). To kick off its 2022-23 season, Riccardo Muti’s last as music director, the CSO will perform a program that includes the American premiere of “Solemn Prelude.” (The other works vary in the September 24 line-up.) The manuscript for the long-lost work was discovered in the archives of the Three Choirs Festival in Great Britain, where it debuted in 1899 and was performed again last year. Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912), who had an English mother and Sierra Leonean Creole father, gained considerable respect in England during his short life, including early support from the famous composer Edward Elgar.
Latin American Quartet.
October 15, Quartet of Latin America, Music Institute of Chicago and International Latino Cultural Center of Chicago, Nichols Concert Hall, 1490 Chicago Ave., Evanston (musicinst.org/nch). Classical music may have originated in Europe, but that continent has no monopoly on the genre. This is the message of this 40-year-old ensemble from Mexico City, which commissions new works and champions famous Latin American composers such as Héitor Villa-Lobos, Alberta Ginastera and Silvestre Revueltas, all of whom will appear in this program.
October 20, Yunchan Lim, pianist, Skyline Piano Artist Series, Galvin Recital Hall, Northwestern University, 70 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston (music.northwestern.edu). That conductor Marin Alsop was said to be wiping away tears in June after conducting the Piano Concerto No. 3 of Rachmaninoff at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition with competitor Yunchan Lim, was a good indication that he would be the winner. And indeed, the jury chose the 18-year-old as the youngest pianist ever to win gold at the famed competition in Fort Worth, Texas.
October 26-28, “Music from Paris”, Quatuor Diotima, University of Chicago Presents, Performance Hall, Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago, 915 E. 60 (chicagopresents.uchicago.edu). Formed in 1996 by graduates of the Conservatoire National de Paris, this ensemble has become one of the most sought-after string quartets in Europe. This three-concert series was originally planned last season when the band was in residence at the University of Chicago, but the event had to be postponed due to “unforeseen difficulties associated with international travel.”
November 3, “Falling Out of Time: A Tone Poem in Voices” by Golijov, Silkroad Ensemble, Harris Theater Presents, Harris Theater (harristheaterchicago.org). Based on a book by David Grossman about parental grief over the death of a child, this song cycle “portrays a musical, mythic journey that traverses vast and varied emotional landscapes,” according to Silkroad’s website. The work, which premiered as part of an American tour in 2019, was the first in a decade for this famous composer to sink into a creative malaise.
November 9-25, “Don Carlos” by Verdi, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Lyric Opera House (lyricopera.org). Although Verdi wrote his original version of Don Carlos in French, most modern productions contain an Italian translation known as Don Carlo. With this production, Lyric Opera will present the 1886 Modena version in five acts in French for the first time. A slightly different five-act French version was presented last year by New York’s Metropolitan Opera to considerable acclaim, and the Lyric is clearly hoping for similar success with its production with the same director, David McVicar.
November 18 and 20, Szymanowski’s King Roger, Chicago Opera House, Lira Ensemble and Apollo Chorus, Lidiya Yankovskaya, conductor, Harris Theater (chicagooperatheater.org). Written in 1918-24, Polish composer Karol Szymanowski’s King Roger was partly inspired by the mix of cultures and religions in the Mediterranean basin. Performances of the work were relatively rare after its debut in 1926, but the opera has been rediscovered in recent decades and productions have become more frequent. This will be its Chicago premiere.
