Joel Thompson.
The hints of boldness are scattered throughout the catalog for the New Haven Symphony Orchestra’s 2022 – 23 season. Maybe you only counted Brahms once. Beethoven three times, but two of them are concerti. You might have noticed the number of names a casual fan of the orchestra might not be as familiar with. But the boldness is especially apparent in this Sunday’s season opener, which features the New England premiere of contemporary composer Joel Thompson’s “To Awaken the Sleeper,” paired with Dmitri Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony — two works that show classical music’s ability to speak to the issues of its time.
For Shostakovich, the issue was the Russian Revolution of 1905 (also known as the First Russian Revolution). For Thompson, the issue is the continuing deep relevance of the work of author and orator James Baldwin, and the mixture of the personal and the political he deployed to illustrate the Black male experience in the U.S. and abroad. Thompson will narrate Baldwin’s words as a companion to the orchestra, under the baton of music director Alasdair Neale.
The orchestra occupies a unique place in the ability of classical music to interface with the public. The visual and sonic bombast of a dynamic conductor, paired with a responsive orchestra, can make a compelling case to those with no formal training in classical music. But American orchestras, especially outside of major cities like New York, often focus on a very narrow slice of the canon. Symphonies, ballets, and tone poems from a 150-year span are an easy sell, with shorter works by American composers like Aaron Copland trailing not far behind.
With every concert in their announced season, however, the NHSO is reaching into a deeper pool, in an effort to expand the borders of the orchestral canon. Take the second concert — “the closest to a conventional program,” according to Neale — which features Brahms’s 2nd Symphony and Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto. This program also showcases “Ballade” by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a Black British composer from the late 19th century who has long been underrepresented on orchestral programs.
Eisaku Tokuyama Photo
Neale.
Neale confirmed that in making programming choices for an orchestra, a music director is beholden to themselves, to the audience, and to the orchestra — “with my own desires being lowest on that list,” he said. With the works that open the season, he said that while it is an unconventional season opener, the two works complement each other to make a compelling pairing, each work unflinchingly responding to history and its ripples into the present.
But the whole season features this kind of juxtaposition — some familiar orchestral workhorses alongside some examples of music by, for example, living women composers. Names from the historically white European canon, like Schumann, Strauss, and Dvorak, have settled in comfortably alongside Black American composers like Florence Price, William Levi Dawson — and Joel Thompson.
Thompson himself sees this kind of programming as natural. His music is often paired with Beethoven on orchestral programs.
“My entry into the composition world was through the personal. I wrote a piece called ‘Seven Last Words of the Unarmed,’ and that was my first published work. I wrote that for myself, but through some happenstance and circumstance, it found its way to Dr. [Eugene] Rogers at the University of Michigan. And then I had to contend with this very personal diary practice piece being now on a public stage.”
When premiered, “Seven Last Words” — a choral piece that uses as text the last words spoken by seven Black men before they were killed by police or authority figures — received a lot of pushback. Thompson said that has declined in the intervening years, that people are now better at having some of these uncomfortable conversations.
”Music can facilitate the removal of those defensive mechanisms,” Thompson said, and this can make audiences more receptive to the issues music is in dialogue with.
Thompson’s intermingling of the personal and political is part of what has brought his work to orchestras around the country. It also makes the words of James Baldwin — who demonstrated how inextricable those two qualities are for the Black experience — a natural fit for Thompson’s music.
“To Awaken the Sleeper” was developed with the assistance of conductor Peter Oundjian and Dr. Eddie Glaude, author of a biography of James Baldwin, who helped Thompson select some of the texts featured in the piece. But rather than setting the text to song, Thompson chose to feature the natural rhythm of Baldwin’s words, infused with the musicality of the Black church of the author’s upbringing.
“I wanted to keep it so that one didn’t have to understand how to read music in order to be the narrator,” says Thompson. This has allowed for each of the regional performances to engage different community figures as the narrator. For the original performance, the role of orator was performed by Dr. Glaude. For Sunday’s performance, Thompson will assume those responsibilities himself.
“With spoken word, there’s no question that there’s a different kind of emotional impact than with a singer,” Neale said. “I’m particularly excited to work with Joel on this … he embodies Baldwin’s texts, and he delivers them so powerfully and potently that he really does channel Baldwin through himself. I’m excited to see that come to life next to me on stage.” Neale’s enthusiasm for all facets of the orchestra’s repertoire this season — not just the less or unfamiliar works — is clear.
The works constituting the orchestral canon have succeeded only partially because of their memorable melodies and compositional mastery. Another part of their success is being presented in constant dialogue with each other, in essence gerrymandering the concept of Western classical music. By presenting composers like Thompson and Shostakovich side by side, the NHSO is helping undo such strictures, celebrating the orchestra as a living tradition, and setting new and underperformed works in a direct dialogue with history and the present.
The New Haven Symphony performs “To Awaken the Sleeper,” featuring the works of Thompson and Shostakovich, on Oct. 23 at Southern Connecticut State University. Visit the symphony’s website for tickets to that concert and for tickets and information about the full season. Click on the link below for a conversation among Thompson, Neale, and Babz Rawls-Ivy on WNHH.