Mighty Sinfonietta music begins Freeman’s final season

Chicago Sun-Times
By Bryant Manning
October 5, 2010
original link

Entering his 24th year as Chicago Sinfonietta music director, Paul Freeman walked on stage for his last season-opener on Sunday afternoon to a standing ovation. As incoming director Mei-Ann Chen takes over next fall, Freeman used the occasion to briefly reflect on the orchestra’s maiden days of 1987.

“Clap if you were here for our very first concerts,” he said, before an impressive round of applause rung out in Dominican University’s Lund Auditorium. “Now, will the original performers stand up?” This time, only a handful of orchestral musicians did, which says a lot about this organization’s identity: Programming and personnel may continue to change and evolve, but its support remains strong as ever.

But the Sinfonietta isn’t one to get overly sentimental and nostalgic about its beginnings, especially with its sharp eye for young talent and its increasing concern for future generations of musicians of color. Tai Murray, a 27-year-old Chicago native and brilliant violinist, was the standout on Sunday afternoon’s concert built around the theme of the common man.

She performed with fierce intensity Michael Daugherty’s moving concerto for violin and orchestra, “Fire and Blood” (2003). If Sinfonietta subscribers only identify Daugherty’s name with his silly bassoon concerto “Dead Elvis” –heard here last November — they were in for a pleasant surprise with this sweeping and affecting homage to the workers of old Detroit Ford factories. With guest conductor Harvey Felder on the podium, Murray played her solo line with impressive range and vigor, and was most astonishing in the remarkable and despairing middle movement, “River Rouge.” The music traces the experience of Mexican painter Diego Rivera, who was commissioned by Edsel Ford to paint several extensive murals of the Motor City’s then thriving industry. Daugherty’s use of mariachi brass calls and sonorous assembly line imagery made for an absorbing listen.

After intermission, the unflinching troupe that is the JASC Tsukasa Taiko drummers provided thunderous advocacy to Sinfonietta violist Renee Baker’s “Sundown’s Promise.” In this world premiere, orchestra and Japanese drumline rigidly swapped turns over the course of its 13 brief movements, and while the sheer percussive power certainly held interest, the orchestral score lacked identity and felt needlessly long.

Felder also led a shapely version of Leonard Bernstein’s rare concert-hall film score, “On the Waterfront,” and Freeman — whose health has required a significant reduction in conducting these past couple of years — began the program with spirited and uplifting accounts of Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” and Dvorak’s “Slavonic Dance” in C Major, Op. 72, No. 7.

Bryant Manning is a local freelance writer.