Something unusual is happening at the Cincinnati May Festival this year. The season, “Beethoven, Bernstein and Brotherhood,” which opens Friday, will feature an African-American work on each program. The idea, says James Conlon, May Festival music director, is to “give a much larger role to the African-American culture and experience.”

        With the first anniversary of the riots last month and major black entertainers boycotting Cincinnati, it's more urgent than ever for arts groups to “reach out” to minority constituents and integrate their offerings. Cincinnati is 43 percent African-American; Hamilton County is 23 percent African-American.

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra performs a free concert at the Lincoln Heights Missionary Baptist Church in 1999. (Enquirer file photo) | ZOOM |

        “The most extraordinary thing, when you start to do this, you find some pretty extraordinary music which is not heard that often,” Mr. Conlon says.

        African-Americans have a distinguished music history rooted in spirituals, jazz, blues and ragtime. But people are surprised to learn that there are many fine African-American composers of classical music.

        “That has been one of my career missions — not just to let them know that there are African-American composers, but there are African-American composers writing complex symphonic music that could have them leaping out of their seats at the end of the piece,” says Adolphus Hailstork, whose oratorio, Done Made My Vow, will receive its Cincinnati premiere Friday.

        Nationally, orchestras are beginning to program music by African-American composers as part of their regular seasons, or in special concerts, such as Martin Luther King Day programs. Last month, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra received a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to expand its community outreach. That will include bringing two concerts of music by African-American composers to black neighborhoods (June 8 and July 10).

        “We're not just about jazz, spirituals and gospel,” says Chelsea Tipton II, associate music director of the Savannah Symphony, and former conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra. “This music is as good as Brahms, as Beethoven, as Bach. You need to put it in regular series, so people can look at it and respect it from that perspective.”

        First of all, it takes a knowledge of African-American literature, says Anthony McDonald, a Columbus conductor who has compiled a list of 100 pieces of music honoring Dr. King.

DIVERSITY IN THE ARTS

This is the second in a four-part series on blending Western classical music with other cultures.    Next month: Music by Latino composers

        “Orchestras run out of repertoire, because they haven't really looked around. It's hard to maintain something like that over the years. If it doesn't go all the way to the top, to the conductor and the management, it's really not going to go anywhere,” Dr. McDonald says.

        Dr. Hailstork agrees.

        “People want to hear their favorite masterworks, money goes toward the familiar, and you've got to keep the boards happy,” he says. “But conductors must make up their minds that they are going to find out about minority composers, and get beyond the Beethovens and the Brahms.”
       

Detroit takes the lead

        The Detroit Symphony Orchestra has been a leader in exploring diverse repertoire. In the 1970s, the DSO participated in the first comprehensive series featuring music by African-American composers, the CBS Records' Black Composers Series. Detroit recently reissued its contributions on CD.

        The orchestra, led by Neeme Jarvi, father of CSO music director Paavo Jarvi, tackles diversity in programming from numerous angles, from its “Classical Roots” series, a tradition since 1978, to its African-American Composer program, the first of its kind in the nation when it started in 1989.

        Other orchestras are catching on. In New Jersey last month, the New Jersey Symphony gave the world premiere of God, Mississippi and a Man Called Evers, by Hannibal (jazz trumpeter/composer Hannibal Lokumbe), an oratorio on the life of Medgar Evers, the civil rights leader slain in 1963. It was conducted by Cincinnati-trained maestro Leslie Dunner.
       

Kick to Ellington

        Hannibal's African Portraits has been performed almost 80 times in the past decade and recorded by Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

        Mr. Tipton, who leads “Black Heritage Concerts,” a series in its 17th year at the Savannah Symphony, enthusiastically endorses this little-known body of music.

        “I've done great pieces by Hailstork and William Dawson,” he says. “I've been real interested in (Duke) Ellington. He wrote this wonderful suite called Harlem — 16 minutes long and it is just kickin.' There's also Three Black Kings. These are pieces which don't often see the concert stage. There's just fantastic swing to his music.”

        William Grant Still's Afro-American Symphony, a work often programmed by orchestras has “a spiritual feel to it, whereas Ellington is more jazz-blues influenced,” he says.

        There are also fine composers of African origin from earlier times, such as Chevalier de Saint-Georges, an 18th-century violinist who wrote concertos and a symphony.

        “It sounds like early Mozart,” Mr. Tipton says.

        That is a marked contrast to Bata, a work by Cuban-born composer Tania Leon, that Mr. Tipton recently programmed.

        “It's very atonal; it was a seven-minute shock for the audience,” he says, laughing. “But you have to be willing to say we're not just about jazz, spirituals and gospel. We have these composers who write in different styles. You have to take a risk; otherwise, you're not going to grow.”
       

Tragic tale

        Opera companies, too, are exploring new territory. In 1999, Opera Columbus commissioned an opera, Vanqui, using slave narratives from the Underground Railroad, by composer Leslie Burrs with the distinguished black poet John A. Williams as librettist.

        It tells a chilling tale: two 18th-century slaves who are husband and wife are murdered. Their souls “ride the wind” in search of each other, witnessing critical moments in African-American history along the way.

        Columbus Dispatch critic Barbara Zuck praised the production for “fusing diverse influences into something entirely new,” and compared the score to American composers Carlisle Floyd and Samuel Barber.

        In 1995, Dr. Hailstork's opera, Paul Laurence Dunbar: Common Ground, was premiered by the Dayton Opera.

        The idea, composers say, is that programs should not just resonate with black audiences, but with white audiences, too.

        Donald McCullough, director of the Master Chorale of Washington whose Holocaust Cantata was performed in April by the Cincinnati Choral Society, is completing a new work about the Underground Railroad, using spirituals that formed a “secret code” for escaping slaves.

        “I'm trying to create something that is something all people want to hear,” says Mr. McCullough, 45, a former student of Dr. Hailstork. “It tells a story that the black community knows well. But it's not a black piece of music for black people.”
       

Perpetuating ignorance

        True cultural exchange will take education, says Donna Cox, professor and chair of the music department at the University of Dayton.

        “Ethnic music is left out of the curriculum, almost across the board. So we perpetuate the same kind of ignorance,” Dr. Cox says. “We have a wonderful history and heritage of American music — our indigenous art forms — which are just not respected in American departments of schools of music. That's going to have to change the tide if we're going to impact orchestras and opera companies.”

        And it will take champions like the May Festival's Mr. Conlon, Dr. Hailstork says.

        “I tell my students, "Orchestras don't play your music — conductors do,' ” says Dr. Hailstork, who is the most performed African-American composer in the country.

        “There are going to be some people in the concert with Done Made My Vow, who possibly have never heard a work by an African-American composer, and are going to be skeptical,' he says. “But if you do things skillfully . . . you can open people's eyes.

        “You could easily have a mind set that dead guys from Europe were the only guys able to do that. In fact, I've admonished black composers to watch out about following the super-avant garde or the 12-tone guys into what I call "12-tone oblivion.'

        “Hell, we're not even in the door, and we're already spitting on the tradition. What I wanted to do was get in the room and show my wares and hopefully have a positive impact.”

        He believes the audience will come away with a different perspective about music by African-Americans.

        “They'll never be able to say, "I've never heard a work by an African-American composer that was rousing and touched some people,' ” he says. “Some people will say, "I will never say again they don't have the skill, they don't know how to handle large forces, they can't write in a symphonic way.'

        “African-American culture does not have to stop at the doors of symphony hall.”

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