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The 2021 Collaborative Works Festival: Strangers in a Strange Land explored themes of immigration and migration in song.
Featuring the works of a wide-range of composers, many of whom immigrated or migrated during the course of their own lifetimes, the festival was presented with three live, in-person performances and one master class in October 2021 followed by delayed broadcasts which aired in October and November 2021.
CRITICAL ACCLAIM
TOP TEN PERFORMANCES OF 2021
“The enterprising Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago explored the migrant experience as reflected in classical vocal music from the English Renaissance through Schubert to Ruth Crawford Seeger and the local premieres of absorbing song cycles by Errolyn Wallen and Nico Muhly…Migrant journeys were explored, painful truths lost to history unearthed and timely resonances created, and Phan and friends have brought us no more thoughtful or absorbing a program.”
“The closing recital of the Collaborative Works Festival was a stand-out on this year’s calendar…This roster gave superb advocacy to songs in the folk tradition from Bartok, Britten, Gabriela Lena Frank, Ginastera, and others, capping the festival with intelligence and trademark vocal splendor.”
COLLABORATIVE WORKS FESTIVAL RETURNS WITH COMPELLING SONGS REFLECTING IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCE
“An absorbing, thoughtfully planned, deftly executed program spanning four centuries…In all, a tantalizing start to another Collaborative Works Festival that no one who cares about contemporary art song can afford to miss.”
CAIC WRAPS FESTIVAL WITH FAR-ROVING SURVEY OF FOLK SONGS
“The Collaborative Works Festival, presented annually by the Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago (CAIC), is a gem of the city’s fall concert calendar. Since being founded in 2010 by now-artistic director Nicholas Phan, each autumn CAIC reliably presents compelling art song programing in intelligently curated programs performed by world-class singers and pianists. In its 10th iteration, this year’s festival proved no exception.”
PROGRAM I:
SONGS OF THE NEW WORLD
The Festival’s opening program, Songs of the New World, showcased songs about the immigrant experience.
Songs by composers Ian Cusson, Missy Mazzoli, Mohammed Fairouz, and Ruth Crawford Seeger features on this program alongside songs by Franz Schubert, who wrote many songs on the themes of wandering and pilgrimage. A highlight of this performance was the Midwest premiere of Nico Muhly’s, Stranger, in which Muhly juxtaposed settings of accounts of immigration through Ellis Island with settings of texts protesting the United States’ Chinese Exclusion policies of the late 19th century, which persisted through the years of World War II.
ARTISTS
Amanda Lynn Bottoms, mezzo-soprano | Nicholas Phan, tenor | Yasuko Oura, piano | Avalon String Quartet
PROGRAM
MISSY MAZZOLI: The World Within Me Is Too Small from Songs from the Uproar
ERROLLYN WALLEN: My Feet May Take A Little While
RUTH CRAWFORD SEEGER: Chinaman! Laundryman! from Two Ricercari
MOHAMMED FAIROUZ: Refugee Blues
IAN CUSSON: Where There’s A Wall
THOMAS CAMPION: Never Weather-beaten Sail
NICO MUHLY: Stranger
FRANZ SCHUBERT: Heliopolis I | Pilgerweise | Der Wanderer an den Mond
PROGRAM II:
STRANGERS
The Festival’s second program, Strangers, featured the music of composers who themselves immigrated to the United States, including Rebecca Clarke, Erich Korngold, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Igor Stravinsky, and Irving Berlin. In addition, the program not only explored the work of composers who immigrated to the US from other countries, but also the songs of Florence Price who migrated to Chicago from Arkansas in 1927 as part of The Great Migration.
Also featured on this program were songs of the composer, pianist, and actor Robert Owens, who remained in Europe for much of his life after serving in the US army during World War II, completing his musical studies in Paris and eventually settling in Münich, Germany.
This performance was presented in a special partnership with the Richard H. Driehaus Museum.
ARTISTS
Helen Zhibing Huang, soprano | Amanda Lynn Bottoms, mezzo-soprano | Anna Laurenzo, mezzo-soprano | Nicholas Phan, tenor | Anthony Reed, bass | Ronny Michael Greenberg, piano
PROGRAM
IRVING BERLIN: God Bless America | Supper Time
CHEN YI: Bright Moonlight
REBECCA CLARKE: The Cloths of Heaven | Up-Hill (first known performance)
ERICH WOLFGANG KORNGOLD: selections from Fünf Lieder, Op. 38
ROBERT OWENS: Heart | Havana Dreams
FLORENCE PRICE: Sympathy | Out of the South Blew a Wind
SERGEI RACHMANINOFF: Vocalise
IGOR STRAVINSKY: Two Poems of Paul Verlaine
JORGE SOSA: A Letter Home
PROGRAM III:
THE SONGS WE CARRIED
The third performance of the 2021 Festival, The Songs We Carried, examined the ways in which song is both an important method of cultural exchange as well as an art form that many rely on to preserve their cultural identity upon arriving in a new location.
The program featured folk song arrangements by composers such as Benjamin Britten, Béla Bartók, Rebecca Clarke, Percy Grainger, alongside spiritual arrangements by Florence Price, Margaret Bonds and more.
ARTISTS
Helen Zhibing Huang, soprano | Amanda Lynn Bottoms, mezzo-soprano | Nicholas Phan, tenor | Adriane Post, violin | Shannon McGinnis, piano
PROGRAM
arr. BÉLA BARTÓK: Elindultam szép hazámbul, BB. 42, No.1
arr. MARGARET BONDS: He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands
arr. BENJAMIN BRITTEN: The Ash Grove | The Last Rose of Summer
arr. REBECCA CLARKE: I Know My Love | I Know Where I’m Goin’ | It was a Lover and his Lass | Phillis on the New Made Hay | The Salley Gardens
GABRIELA LENA FRANK: Cuatro Canciones Andinas
ALBERTO GINASTERA: 5 Canciones populares argentinas
arr. PERCY GRAINGER: Hard Heartened Barbara (H)Ellen | Irish Tune from County Derry | The Spring of Thyme
arr. JULIA PERRY: I’m a Poor Li’l Orphan in This Worl’
arr. FLORENCE PRICE: My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord