‘Something deep and profound ’
PRO MUSICA PERFORMS THE HISTORY OF RED
Since Janus was the Roman god of beginnings and transitions, it seems especially fitting that January in Santa Fe showcases new music written by young female composers and features young female soloists. The Santa Fe Symphony’s mid-month concert included Vivian Fung’s trumpet concerto for Mary Elizabeth Bowden. Now Santa Fe Pro Musica closes out January by performing Reena Esmail’s The History of Red, with soprano Kathryn Mueller as the vocal soloist.
The 38-year-old Esmail is best known for works that blend the traditions of Western and Indian classical music. She studied composition at The Juilliard School and Yale University and received a FulbrightNehru Fellowship to study Hindustani music in India. Her new works include pieces for the Seattle Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the Amherst College Choir and Orchestra.
Most commissions start with a musical organization contacting a composer. But in keeping with our theme of new beginnings and changes, this one began with Mueller, who has performed several times at Pro Musica’s Baroque Christmas and springtime Holy Week performances. She approached the group’s then-artistic director Thomas O’Connor about creating a consortium to commission a new work from Esmail, and he responded enthusiastically.
Next, Mueller made the artistic equivalent of a cold-call sales pitch to Esmail. “I tend to have collaborators I work with many times,” the composer says, “but sometimes I go on an intuition, and Kathryn was one of those. I just got such a nice feeling from talking with her.”
In discussing possible subjects, Esmail and Mueller discovered they shared a passion for Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Samuel Barber’s “concert scene” for soprano and orchestra set to a text by James Agee. Mueller has often performed it, and Esmail credits her interest in classical music composition to hearing it at age 15.
The idea for the text — The History of Red by Chickasaw poet Linda Hogan — came from Esmail’s visit to an unlikely place for inspiration. “I was visiting someone in a jail and met a nun who heard this piece of mine that had been performed there. The nun gave me a card with a Linda Hogan quote printed on it, which I loved. So I looked at more of her work and The History of Red just spoke to me, as well as to Kathryn.”
Hogan’s poem was published in 1993 in The Book of Medicines. It tells the creation story from the point of view of a Native American woman, using recurring images of the color red as representing her will to live despite what her people have suffered.
A wildness swam inside our mothers, desire through closed eyes, a new child wearing the red, wet mask of birth, delivered into this land already wounded, stolen and burned beyond reckoning.
Mueller’s and Esmail’s concept for their piece placed Hogan’s poem in the context of Knoxville: Summer of 1915: a young person grappling with and trying to understand the world around them. “We wanted to create something deep and profound,” Esmail says, “but also accessible for younger singers to perform. Young people coming into the classical music world these days are asking all these fundamental questions, and I wanted to have something that would be an opportunity for them.”
The work’s creators make their point of view manifest with The History of Red Challenge, in which young sopranos submit a video of themselves performing two short excerpts from the piece. Mueller and Esmail will then post their three favorites on their social media sites and provide a private coaching session with each singer.
Pro Musica’s partners in the commissioning consortium are Houston’s River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, Florida’s Orlando Philharmonic, and Brooklyn’s The Knights. The History of Red’s world premiere was originally scheduled for Santa Fe in January 2021 but was canceled due to the pandemic; the Houston group gave the first performance instead, in April 2021, on a virtual concert series. (A well-produced video of their performance can be seen at youtube .com/watch?v=ZvTkA7OQ65M.)
For Esmail, writing for a consortium brings many benefits and one real challenge. “I always try to write with the qualities of the person or the group who will be performing it first in mind,” she says, “especially since I usually work in two different traditions simultaneously. You can’t really do that with a consortium piece, so I have to put that mindset aside.”
The obvious benefits are the multiple performances and wider exposure a consortium brings. There’s also
a less obvious one for Esmail. “By hearing a new piece played by different groups, it’s easier to identify places you might want to tweak. I’ve made some changes in The History of Red based on its first performance, and now I’ll get to hear whether they work.”
In addition to Esmail’s new piece, Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony No. 4 and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 15 are on the program. The latter features Pro Musica Artistic Director Anne-Marie McDermott as the soloist. “It’s one of the less-frequently played Mozart piano concerti,” she says, “but for me, it’s in the top three.
“I love Mozart in B-flat major. This piece is so fresh, dynamic, alive, sparkling, and energetic. There’s lots of humor in it too. The cadenzas were written by Mozart, and they’re ridiculously fun to play. Millions of notes, but they’re very pianistic.” (McDermott is currently recording all the Mozart piano concertos for Bridge Records. See the sidebar for details on the latest release.)
While the Esmail commission predates McDermott’s appointment with Pro Musica, it very much fits in with her plans for the group’s future.
“I’m a growing fan of commissioning and co-commissioning here and with Bravo! Vail [the summer music festival where McDermott is also artistic director]. In Santa Fe, I feel blessed that the audience has embraced them more than in quite a few other places.”
Pro Musica’s soon-to-be-announced 2022-2023 season will include another O’Connor commission, from Aaron Jay Kernis, and McDermott has just commissioned a new piece from a “hot young composer,” with details to be announced later.
Meanwhile, the concerts on Jan. 29 and 30 bring a familiar musician to the podium — David Felberg —although it’s one most Santa Feans associate more with the violin bow than the conductor’s baton. Felberg is the Santa Fe Symphony’s concertmaster and a Pro Musica orchestra member, but “I hope conducting will occupy a larger part of my future. I’ve been taking more music theory courses during the pandemic as part of it.”
As artistic director of Chatter, the Albuquerquebased chamber music group, Felberg often conducts their larger-scale contemporary pieces. In doing so, he’s discovered that the more complex the piece, the more basic his conducting needs to become. “Counting and clarity are essential in making them work.”
Felberg has become a fan of Esmail’s music through learning The History of Red and by a more unusual route. “During the pandemic,” he says, “I decided to learn how to play the viola d’amore [an archaic instrument with six or seven strings that are actively played, plus others that are sounded by sympathetic vibration]. “I found a piece by Reena for solo viola d’amore called “Nishani,” and learned how to play it, which was very exciting. Her combination of Indian and Western elements is seamless and fascinating.”
With a frequently played work such as the Mendelssohn symphony that ends the program, Felberg’s approach is different. “Here, I’ll be getting into the DNA of the piece and the composer and trying to internalize it as much as possible,” he says. “For instance, the last movement has these Italian folk dances, the saltarello and the tarantella. While their qualities are notated in the music, I hope we can play them in a way that makes the audiences feel like they’ve been dancing on their way out.” ◀
details
▼ Santa Fe Pro Musica Winter Orchestra Concert
▼ 7 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 29, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 30
▼ Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211. W. San Francisco St., 505-988-4640, sfpromusica.org
▼ $25-$90, with student discounts available
▼ All patrons must wear masks; age 12 and up must provide proof of full vaccination or recent negative test results.