by Daniel Hathaway
As we turn the calendar page to the last month of 2020, my inbox has replaced notices about Black Friday deals with reminders of what we might have missed buying on Cyber Monday, and added Giving Tuesday appeals (a fine opportunity to support your favorite non-profit organizations). But in the middle of the COVID-19 Pandemic, we shouldn’t forget the continuing plague that led to the establishment of World AIDS Day, observed on December 1 each year since 1989.
In May, 2019, the New York Philharmonic dedicated an end-of-season concert to John Corigliano’s First Symphony, his 1990 tribute to those who lost their lives to AIDS. (Watch a Nashville Symphony video where the composer talks about the work, and hear a full performance by the Chicago Symphony under Daniel Barenboim).
In a New York Times article, Joshua Barone notes that a “Nightcap” Series performance at the same time remembered five young composers whose voices were silenced before they reached their full musical maturity. Corigliano, who arranged the program of music by Robert Savage, Deolus W. Husband Jr., Robert Chesley, Kevin Oldham, and Chris DeBlasio, said, “The Philharmonic is playing my First Symphony, but it is not a complete evening until you hear the music of the young composers who didn’t make it. The real people who died need a voice, too.”
One Northeast Ohio-raised composer who didn’t make it was Calvin Hampton, who grew up in Ravenna, graduated from Oberlin in 1960, and enjoyed a distinguished career on the New York church music scene before his untimely death in 1984. Known for his Friday midnight organ concerts at the Parish of Calvary, Holy Communion and St. George’s in Manhattan and for his imaginative hymn tunes, Hampton was “a prolific and eclectic composer, utilizing such diverse elements as rock, gospel hymns, synthesizers and quarter tones in his works. In 1977, the New York Philharmonic performed the local premiere of Mr. Hampton’s Concerto for Saxophone Quartet, Strings and Percussion” (Times obituary).
Listen to Hampton’s Alexander Variations for two organs as performed by Brian Harlow and Christopher Jennings at the 2015 Mid-Atlantic Convention of the American Guild of Organists at Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh.
And did you know that December 1 is Rosa Parks Day in Ohio? (I didn’t). The unassuming seamstress was arrested in 1955 for breaking Montgomery Alabama’s segregation laws, leading to a bus boycott that rocketed her to fame as a civil rights icon. Parks talked about that event at the City Club of Cleveland thirty years later on March 8, 1985. Watch here.
But wait — there’s more. On this date in 1707, British organist and composer Jeremiah Clarke took his own life in London at the age of 33, perhaps as the consequence of an unhappy love affair. Countless brides in happier relationships have marched down the aisle to his Prince of Denmark March (often titled Trumpet Voluntary and mis-attributed to Henry Purcell).
And among today’s death anniversaries, British-Irish composer E.J. Moeran died in Kenmare, County Derry, Ireland in 1950, as did American choreographer Alvin Ailey in New York in 1989 at 58, and French classical and jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli in Paris in 1997 at 89.
We’ll just suggest one work or performance to honor each of those figures. For Moeran, that would be his “somber and Sibelian” Symphony in g (1934-1937), performed live by the Ulster Orchestra in 2000. For Ailey, his frequently performed ballet Revelations, preceded by Chroma, Grace, and Takademe in a full-length program by his American Dance Theatre from Lincoln Center. And for Grappelli, his performance at the Montréal Jazz Festival in 1984 with Martin Taylor.
TUESDAY MUSICAL SCHOLARSHIPS
Akron’s Tuesday Musical Association announces that applications are being accepted beginning today for its 65th annual Scholarship Competition, which offers $26,000 in awards to university students embarking on careers as music educators and performers. This year’s competition will be conducted entirely online. Visit the TMA website for application details.
INTERESTING READS:
New Yorker music critic Alex Ross considers the many different ways that orchestras are reacting to the challenges of the pandemic. Read What Does It Mean to “Reimagine” an Orchestra Season here.
And British pianist and polymath Stephen Hough hopes that the ubiquitous pre-COVID formula of two hour performances interrupted by an intermission (“interval” in England) won’t survive the pandemic. Read Don’t go breaking my art: it’s time to axe the mood-ruining, bar-scrambling interval in The Guardian here.