{"id":2430,"date":"2023-01-29T21:42:02","date_gmt":"2023-01-30T02:42:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=2430"},"modified":"2023-01-29T21:47:01","modified_gmt":"2023-01-30T02:47:01","slug":"michael-morgan-the-oakland-symphony-and-william-dawson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2023\/01\/michael-morgan-the-oakland-symphony-and-william-dawson.html","title":{"rendered":"Michael Morgan, the Oakland Symphony, and William Dawson"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Michael Morgan 1957-2021<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The death of Michael Morgan, last August 20, was a heartbreaking loss to American music. As music director of the Oakland Symphony since 1991, he was a singularly impactful conductor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The evidence, as I discovered Friday night at an Oakland Symphony concert that in many respects invoked his memory, is a symphonic audience unique in my experience. \u201cDiversity\u201d is a term so over-used today as to lose all meaning. The dictionary says: \u201cincluding or involving people from a range of difference social and ethnic backgrounds.\u201d So variegated is the Oakland Symphony audience \u2013 in age, ethnicity, attire, and attitude \u2013 that it resists generalization. The resulting ambience, in the impeccably restored downtown Paramount Theatre, was casual, alert, appreciative, demonstrative. The downtown itself is funky, surprising, quiet, and beautiful \u2013 and devastated, economically, by the pandemic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The program at Friday\u2019s subscription concert was worthy of the audience at hand. The main offering was William Levi Dawson\u2019s\u00a0Negro Folk Symphony \u2013\u00a0<\/em>music I have extolled\u00a0in\u00a0<\/em>this space<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0and in\u00a0Dvorak\u2019s Prophecy and the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music<\/a><\/em><\/strong>.<\/em>\u00a0Triumphantly premiered by Leopold Stokowski in 1934 and subsequently forgotten, this 35-minute symphony is the real deal. It is certainly one of the most formidable ever composed by an American. As I\u2019ve written: \u201cIf the symphony\u2019s governing mold is European, Dawson retains proximity to the vernacular: he seizes the humor, pathos, and tragedy of the sorrow songs with an oracular vehemence.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conductor of the Oakland performance was Andrew Grams \u2013 new to me, and also new to the Dawson. The Negro Folk Symphony<\/em> is easy for audiences \u2013 its emotional fortitude and depth register unmistakably. But it\u2019s hard for orchestras. The textures are thick with incident. The trajectory is not straightforward but pliable, eventfully plotted. The rhythms are sharp, physical, lightning quick. Grams\u2019 careful rehearsals resulted in a go-for-broke reading. The symphony\u2019s most striking, most original moment \u2013 the second movement coda, with its threefold seismic throb of chimes and timpani \u2013 was bravely distended, even slower than on Leopold Stokowski\u2019s wonderful 1963 recording<\/a><\/strong>. The impact stunned the eager audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last summer I heard an equally memorable performance of the Dawson, quicker and more brilliant, led by Mei-Ann Chen at Houston\u2019s Texas Music Festival. I see that the Philadelphia Orchestra, which gave the 1934 premiere (also with Stokowski), is at long last returning to the Negro Folk Symphony<\/em> on February 2 and 3 under Yannick Nezet-Seguin. Performances will surely proliferate in seasons to come. We should quickly approach a moment when it will become possible to compare different understandings of Dawson\u2019s complexly poised \u201cportrait of a race.\u201d Also: for young American composers aspiring to fuse the Black vernacular with concert genres, Dawson’s score could become a textbook. My Dvorak’s Prophecy<\/em> mantra is: use the past. That’s how lasting results are obtained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first half of the Oakland program featured Gershwin\u2019s Second Rhapsody for piano and orchestra \u2013 terrifically ignited by Sarah Davis Buechner. Like Dawson\u2019s symphony, which feeds on spirituals, this jazzy confection fulfills the prophecies of Dvorak and W. E. B. Du Bois that \u201cNegro melodies\u201d would foster a vital and original American classical music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the Harlem Renaissance, however, Langston Hughes and Nora Zeale Hurston expressed misgivings about the prospect of a Black classical music. They worried that turning the African-American motherlode into symphonies and operas could prove \u201csanitizing,\u201d \u201cwhitening.\u201d The Oakland concert began with selections from Florence Price\u2019s Folksongs in Counterpoint <\/em>for string quartet, revisited by a string orchestra. Price\u2019s polyphonic elaboration of \u201cSwing Low, Sweet Chariot\u201d is the kind of Black classical music that recalls the apprehensions of Hughes and Hurston. It was my pleasure, in Oakland, to undertake a series of presentations in middle and high schools \u2013 schools musically enriched by a series of initiatives undertaken by the Oakland Symphony under Michael Morgan. I was partnered by a wonderful African-American soprano, Shawnette Sulker. Our program included Harry Burleigh\u2019s arrangement for voice and piano of \u201cSwing Low.\u201d For Sulker, this and other historic Burleigh spirituals created opportunities for a selfless expression of sorrow and exaltation. They do not register as \u201csanitized.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure some will find my reservations about Florence Price gratuitous. Without a doubt, she is an important part of the story of American music. As I urge in Dvorak\u2019s Prophecy<\/em>, this is a story that impatiently awaits a genuine curatorial initiative by our major orchestras. The symphonies of John Knowles Paine, likewise, are an essential component of a narrative we need to know. They are not \u201cmasterworks.\u201d But they lead, indispensably, to George Chadwick (whose witty symphonic scherzos already \u201csound American\u201d), thence to the symphonies of Charles Ives and William Levi Dawson, in which native variants of a European genre discover fruition.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daniel Weiss, in his up-to-date meditation\u00a0Why the Museum Matters<\/a><\/em><\/strong>,\u00a0<\/em>documents the\u00a0\u00a0movement toward thematic exhibits some half a century ago \u2013 explorations necessarily infused with \u201cnew scholarship and didactic materials.\u201d In the 1990s, I was the lucky beneficiary of Harvey Lichtenstein\u2019s state-of-the-art Brooklyn Academy of Music, where innovation was a ceaseless priority. Curating \u201cThe Russian Stravinsky\u201d for the Brooklyn Philharmonic, I engaged Moscow\u2019s Pokrovsky Folk Ensemble, the late Stravinsky scholar Richard Taruskin, the art historians John Bowlt and Elizabeth Valkenier, the ethnomusicologists Dmitri Pokrovsky and Theodore Levin, and the conductors Dennis Russell Davies and Lukas Foss. There were two symphonic programs and a six-hour cross-disciplinary \u201cInterplay.\u201d Brutal folk rituals and pungent concert works were directly juxtaposed. The talks and discussions were heated, informed, and productive. The essays within the copiously illustrated program companion totalled 38 pages. The principal funder was the National Endowment for the Humanities. In short: it was, all of it, what museums do. This is the type of curatorial initiative that Black classical music deserves \u2013 and that Florence Price deserves, alongside Burleigh, Gershwin, and Dawson, among many others.\u00a0There is a story here as yet unglimpsed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I have previously reported<\/a><\/strong>, George Shirley has precisely observed of Dawson\u2019s symphony that it is a work that surprises at every turn \u2013 and that every surprise \u201csounds right.\u201d Put another way: Dawson\u2019s compositional skill and originality enable him to sustain an illusion of improvisation. And I would say the same of Gershwin. It is crucial. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I digress. My memories of Friday\u2019s concert are all of Gershwin and Dawson, and of an enthralling and empowering ambience inculcated over three decades by a musical leader who was equally a community leader. The Oakland Symphony has experienced a great loss. It faces a great challenge. Thanks to Michael Morgan, that challenge is at the same time ripe with opportunity.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The death of Michael Morgan, last August 20, was a heartbreaking loss to American music. As music director of the Oakland Symphony since 1991, he was a singularly impactful conductor. The evidence, as I discovered Friday night at an Oakland Symphony concert that in many respects invoked his memory, is a symphonic audience unique in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2430","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-Dc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2430"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2447,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2430\/revisions\/2447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}