Michael Abels: Detroit Free Press 2003

WEDNESDAY , FEBRUARY 5, 2003

Lift every voice: DSO efforts for African-American composers go far beyond Black History Month

Mark Stryker
Free Press Staff Writer

DETROIT

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra has just begun rehearsing composer Ozie Cargile II's "Creation of the Universe and the Second Movement" when the 22-year-old University of Michigan student gets lesson No. 1 in working with a professional orchestra:

Make sure the road signs in the conductor's score match the players' parts.

Conductor Thomas Wilkins has discovered that the measure numbers in the score aren't the same as those in the parts, but he handles the goof-up graciously. In the third row, veteran composer Adolphus Hailstork turns to Cargile.

"He's sparing you a tirade," the mentor warns the student. "Some highfalutin conductors would try to embarrass you."

It's Saturday morning at Orchestra Hall, and Cargile is one of four African-American composers from around the country who've been invited to have their music performed by the orchestra in reading sessions designed to promote music by black Americans. Each composer will leave with a recording to shop around to ensembles, and with critical feedback from Hailstork, Wilkins, orchestra members and their own ears.

In February, Black History Month, a cynic might suggest that last weekend's reading sessions are little more than a sop to political correctness. But the reality is that no American orchestra has done more to promote African-American composers than the DSO. February remains a locus for many of the events, but no orchestra weaves its African-American initiatives deeper into the fabric of its year-round activities.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the DSO's Classical Roots concerts, and the 14th season that the concerts have been included on the subscription series. This year's concerts will be held Feb. 22 and 23. Hailstork, the DSO resident African-American composer for 2002-03, is represented by his large-scale oratorio "Done Made My Vow."

Hailstork also will be feted with a lifetime achievement award at a preconcert gala Feb. 22. The two previous galas have raised $70,000 for the DSO's black composer programs and recordings.

The DSO began recording African-American works in the mid-1970s when Paul Freeman, resident conductor from 1970-79 and an African American, led a pioneering black-composers series on the Columbia label. The DSO has reissued its contributions to the series on CD, including music by Hailstork, Hale Smith, Roque Cordero and George Walker.

The DSO has performed music by dozens of black composers. Music director Neeme Jarvi has been a particular champion, programming and recording works by Duke Ellington, William Levi Dawson, William Grant Still, Olly Wilson, Anthony Davis and others. Jarvi even took Still's "Afro-American Symphony" to Europe on the DSO's 1998 tour.

Since 1990, the DSO also has run a fellowship program that places talented young black musicians in the orchestra for a year of apprenticeship.

These programs do not come cheap. The reading sessions, which began in 1990, cost the orchestra $115,000 annually.

"This is an orchestra that gets it," says Wilkins, an African American and the DSO's resident conductor.

The rich heritage of black composers remains largely invisible, buried beneath generations of racism, ignorance and cultural politics reluctant to recognize the mulatto energy of American culture. Most orchestras rarely program black composers; the exceptions are often segregated in February. Equality in the concert hall, like wider social justice, remains as elusive as the highest aspirations of American democracy.

Eileen Southern points out in the New Grove Dictionary of American Music that black composers in the European tradition date back more than 200 years, to a former slave named Newport Gardner (1746-1826), a Rhode Islander who taught singing and wrote songs.

Early in the 19th Century, a school of black composers formed around Philadelphia bandmaster Frank Johnson. Later, Blind Tom Bethune, a pianist and composer, wrote 100 piano works in a parlor style. In the early 20th Century, as Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong were codifying jazz, Harry T. Burleigh and his contemporaries, strongly influenced by Dvorak, forged a black musical nationalism, blending spirituals and folk songs with European forms. The movement reached an apex with Still's blues-based "Afro-American Symphony" of 1930.

Black composers today -- like American composers from any ethnic stock -- represent all stylistic camps, from atonalists to postmodern eclectics to those bridging classical and vernacular styles. Their visibility has improved; the muscular neo-romantic George Walker became the first black composer to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1996.

Still, black composers face the same general neglect that burdens all contemporary composers, plus a legacy of prejudice.

"It's better than it was, but we still don't get the gigs the white guys get," says Hailstork, 61. "The important thing is to keep working, not get bitter. It will be better for the next generation."

The DSO reading sessions have had a measurable impact. Los Angeles-based Michael Abels was just out of school when his "Global Warming" was played at the 1992 sessions. After hearing the piece in Detroit, an administrator from the Dayton (Ohio) Philharmonic programmed it there. Since then it has had more than 100 performances.

"The African-American program was an absolute breakthrough for me," says Abels, 40. "I was suddenly in Detroit talking to a bunch of professionals I had never met. I was learning, experiencing, being inspired and getting my piece played."

Flint native Jonathan Holland was a senior at the Curtis Institute when his quirky "Martha's Waltz" captured Jarvi's imagination at the 1994 reading sessions. Jarvi used the piece as an encore when the DSO performed at Carnegie Hall that spring and later took it to Europe. Holland recently began a composer residency with the South Bend (Ind.) Symphony.

Back at Orchestra Hall on Saturday, Cargile stands in the lobby after the rehearsal, beginning to process an avalanche of information. A Detroit native who aspires to a career as a film composer, he dissects orchestration details, dynamics and phrasing.

"Talk about going to school," he says. "You hear it one way in your head, but when you hear it played you suddenly realize, 'Oh, if I want to make it sound like I heard it in my head, I have to write it differently.' "

Contact MARK STRYKER at 313-222-6459 or stryker@freepress.com.