Promusica to kick off its Southern Theatre season
Growing up in Austria, Promusica Chamber Orchestra Music Director David Danzmayr was accustomed to learning about the horrors of history.
“When you learn history in school in Austria, the main focus is on the Holocaust, the Second World War, then, of course, the First World War,” Danzmayr said.
Since moving to the United States, though, Danzmayr has found that there isn’t always the same emphasis placed in his new country on learning about, and from, the injustices of the past.
“I think this has to change in some way,” he said. “I think countries need to look inward and (ask), ‘What did we do bad in history? What can we learn from that?’ I think that’s not un-patriotic or unpleasant.”
For its season-opening concert Oct. 10 in the Southern Theatre, the Promusica Chamber Orchestra will wrestle with what is commonly called America’s original sin: slavery.
The concert will be the orchestra’s first during which certain pandemicera measures will be enforced: To attend, audience members must furnish
proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test, and mask-wearing must be honored throughout the concert. Tickets will be sold until the theater reaches 70% of its capacity, said CEO Janet Chen.
Among the works to be performed is a short piece composed by bassist Xavier Foley titled “For Justice and Peace,” which was written to recognize the 400th anniversary of African slaves arriving at the Jamestown colony in Virginia in 1619. Foley’s composition premiered in 2019.
“The whole point of the piece is to raise awareness of the history (of) African American slaves and how it all started,” said Foley, who is Black. The 27-year-old musician is originally from Georgia and currently lives in Kansas City.
With the orchestra behind them, Foley and violinist Eunice Kim will serve as soloists on the piece.
“I think ‘haunting’ is a great word for it,” said Kim, 29, a member of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in Minnesota. “There’s an air of heaviness to the bookends of the piece, in the beginning and at the end. It reminds us of the heaviness of history. It’s a really powerful time to be playing it.”
In addition to the historical significance of the piece, Danzmayr was also intrigued by the prospect of Foley playing his own composition.
“It’s always good — the idea of the composer playing his own music,” Danzmayr said. “I listened to videos of Xavier, and I was like, ‘Wow, that guy can play the bass like crazy.’”
But, for Foley, the pressure is off when performing his own music.
“When I play, I’m in performer mode,” he said. “I’m just trying to get the feeling right (and) worrying about making the audience feel good.”
Foley will also be heard as the soloist on Giovanni Bottesini’s “Concerto for Double Bass No. 2,” which, along with Clarice Assad’s interpretation of works by J.S. Bach, “Suite for Lower Strings,” will make up the first half of the program.
For the second half, the orchestra — which will number 34 musicians — will perform Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 7,” a piece chosen to mark the ensemble’s return to its home turf of the Southern Theatre following a yearand-a-half of performing at other venues due to the pandemic.
“Between the incredible heartbreaking, thoughtful second movement, and the incredible joyful finale, there is this emotional content in that symphony,” said Danzmayr, who was keenly aware that Promusica, for its return to the Southern, needed to open with something of a blockbuster.
“We need to convince people to come back to the hall,” he said. “It’s very important for the first concert to have a big impact and to really draw the biggest crowd that we can.”
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