Director’s Corner Address from Christopher Kendall

We head into the future of the new 2011-2012 season carrying an especially acute awareness of the Consort's past, engendered by the near-miraculous work of our late, beloved colleague Curt Wittig. A packet of recordings of the Consort's very first concerts, restored to an astonishing level of fidelity from deteriorating reel-to-reel tapes unearthed in somebody's basement, arrived at my home in Ann Arbor. These were the culmination of the monumental project that had occupied much of Curt's energy for the last few years, aided, abetted and inspired by Consort Board member Dennis Deloria. Curt had recorded, restored and processed to a fine and faithful edge hundreds and hundreds of Consort performances, and these last reached back to the beginning of Consort time to our very first concert in the Lincoln Gallery of what is now our home, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. I wrote to Curt as soon as I had a chance to listen, telling of the revelation of re-examination, nostalgia and pleasure they provoked.

Curt died suddenly, in early August, before my message reached him. Though his health had not been especially good for some time, it was a shock to the many of us who counted Curt as an enduring part of the Consort family, a beloved friend and colleague. We all, the entire Consort family, feel a deep loss. He leaves a palpable legacy, not only in the superb recordings of the Consort, but also in so many other musical recordings. His deep love of music and his sweeping appreciation of so many kinds of music define his legacy. He was equally thrilled to make field recordings in Africa, to record renowned choral groups here, and to record our Consort and other cutting edge ensembles. He brought a passionate connection to the challenging, deeply personal business of making all that music. He had a performer's temperament, and approached his work with the agony and ecstasy of the artist he was.

Tony Ames, co-founder of the Consort and its brilliant percussionist during the first years, now re-captured and restored by Curt, wrote this apt description from his memories: "Curt is always that gruff, beleaguered, warm-hearted bohemian, on the cusp of disaster, bringing off one huge recording feat after another. Now he's no longer an "is". It's not easy to process . . . ."

Looking Forward to our Fall 2011 Concerts . . .

I’m aware that by the end of the last ice-age early humans, leading lives wholly bound to nature, had established both tool-making skills and sophisticated art and music (evidenced in cave paintings and a recently-discovered, 35,000 year-old “cave flute”). It seems to me that the uneasy relationship among these inescapable conditions of human existence – nature, art and technology - is vividly expressed in the 2011-2012 exhibition schedule of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. So the 21st Century Consort plans a series of four concerts that provide a performative corollary to the exhibition theme of “Nature and the machine.” We'll focus in the first half of the season on authors whose work embodied these forces in the 19th century (Whitman, Emerson and Dickens), and in the second half with two concerts moving toward their 20th century expressions in issues and art.

On November 5th and December 3rd the Consort presents two programs inspired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum's exhibition "The Great American Hall of Wonders." The November concert plays with the six "elements" featured in the works of the exhibition dealing with the period of the industrial revolution and the relationship of nature and machine. The “nature” elements include Niagra Falls, giant sequoia and the buffalo. The “machine” elements include the clock, gun and railroad. The concert includes a set of works reflecting these elements in short, pithy pieces (including a TV jingle and popular American folk song along with pieces by Joan Tower and others, and settings of Walt Whitman fragments by Wlliam Brehm)

John Harbison's "Songs America Loves to Sing" is the composer's fond and sometimes wry treatment of familiar songs harking from the American period addressed in the exhibition. In the set of instrumental "songs" that opens our program, Harbison imagines an idealized - if also really grounded in his childhood experience and that of so many others in earlier generations of Americans - environment of familial and communal sharing of a common repertoire of songs and sentiments.

The concert also features works by the quintessential poet of the period, Walt Whitman, and also by Ralph Waldo Emerson in a song cycle by David Froom. The "Emerson Songs" is included on the recently released CD of David Froom's music by the Consort available at Arkivmusic . In these vocal works, we'll be welcoming a mezzo-soprano new to the Consort, Olivia Vote . We look forward very much to working with Olivia, about whom you can learn more by visiting Olivia Vote and hear her performing as Giovanna Seymour in Donizetti's "Anna Bolena" .

I hope to see you at our upcoming concerts. Those who have attended Consort concerts past know it’s possible to make an evening of them: the 4:00 pre-concert discussion draws a large percentage of our audiences and provides an opportunity to hear from composers whose works will be performed later, and after the 5:00 concert the reception allows casual conversation with artists, composers and fellow-audience members. Some even dine at the plethora of excellent restaurants in the neighborhood. And somewhere in all that is an actual concert which, we hope, will provide challenging, stimulating, fun and inspirational experience to all who attend.

Regards,

Christopher Kendall

Artistic Director, 21st Century Consort