Music of the Ages (and Ages to Come)

The Bluff City’s thriving classical music community is embracing innovation on all fronts.

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As I heard the familiar opening strains of Puccini’s La Bohème, staged by Opera Memphis at the Scheidt Family Performing Arts Center this May, the performance seemed on par with the countless versions that companies have staged over generations: The Memphis Symphony Orchestra’s brass galloped, the strings swelled. But then I noticed the first scene-setting title card projected on the back of the stage: “Beale Street, 1915.” This was not my grandparents’ La Bohème.

Indeed, that was the point. As conductor Jeri Lynne Johnson pointed out just before the premiere, Opera Memphis was determined to maintain the integrity of Puccini’s original vision. “Audience members who are fluent in Italian may realize that a couple of things have changed,” Johnson said, “but for the most part, we’ve done this without actually changing the text, which the singers have grown up learning for years and years in the Italian language. Of course, Puccini’s music is so tied to the language, so in order to avoid changing too many actual words, and making sure they stand with the music, there are just a couple of word changes, and some of those are simply within the subtitles.”

Compared to the New Ballet Ensemble’s 20-year history of Nut Remix, which not only sets Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker on Beale Street but also adds much new music, from Booker T. and the MGs to Duke Ellington, this La Bohème would have seemed nearly unchanged if your eyes were closed. And yet there was a deep power in this reimagining of it, lending historical resonance to an opera already known for its gritty realism.

“Because Paris in 1830s was a place where artists and musicians and philosophers and writers came together, it was a cultural center for its time,” stage director Dennis Whitehead Darling told me. “And the same thing was happening here in Memphis. I think that’s what sparked the idea for setting La Bohème on Beale Street.”

Remixing History Through Innovation

Opera Memphis is not alone in simultaneously embracing tradition, history, and bold creativity in a single performance. The premiere of the Harriet Tubman Oratorio in February — produced in collaboration between Memphis Symphony Orchestra and the National Civil Rights Museum, and performed at the Cannon Center — also captured what is fomenting in the Memphis classical world today. While honoring the historical figure of Tubman, devoted abolitionist and leader in the Underground Railroad, the oratorio itself was absolutely contemporary, the latest from Memphis’ self-taught composer, Earnestine Rodgers Robinson.

Though her first major work, The Crucifixion Oratorio, premiered at Carnegie Hall as early as 1997, this was the first time any of Robinson’s orchestral works would be presented in her hometown. As such, the performance was a tacit recognition of both Tubman and the composer herself, two Black women whose voices were set to be lifted to glorious new heights by no less than the MSO, four star singers from Opera Memphis, the Memphis Symphony Chorus, and the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church Choir.

As it turned out, Robinson’s new oratorio lived up to the moment in all its gravitas, juxtaposing Tubman’s own words, brought to life by storyteller and griot Janice Curtis Greene, with Robinson’s memorable melodies woven into the intricate orchestrations of her arrangers, Heather Sorenson and Francisco Núñez, the chorus of voices sometimes exploding with earthshaking power. It was a testament to Robinson’s vision, matched with the vision of a major symphony orchestra embracing works from outside the conservatory. The fact that it was happening in Memphis made clear how far Robinson had come since her first forays into writing devotional music half a century ago.

“I have to have the words first. Then the words dictate the mood. They tell the story and that tells you how the music goes. It dictates to your spirit and you go with the flow.” — Earnestine Rodgers Robinson

Encouraged by her late husband, Charles, an accountant who played classical piano (and worked at Mercury Records for a time), Robinson began composing songs in the 1970s and has continued over the years in much the same way. “I have to have the words first,” she says of her process. “Then the words dictate the mood. They tell the story and that tells you how the music goes. It dictates to your spirit and you go with the flow.”

Working out the melodies in this way, Robinson then records herself singing her compositions and mails the recording to herself, the dated postmark serving as proof of her authorship. “Once I’ve done that, I’m ready to give it to a person to score for me,” she says. “They tell me these melodies I write are intricate. I don’t know they’re intricate, though. I just know I’m singing what I heard.”

Now 86, Robinson still seems a little stunned that she’s found such acceptance in the classical milieu. When her work was performed in Prague, she says, “I was intimidated. I said, ‘Oh, my goodness! I’m in the wrong place, with all these supposed composers.’ I didn’t know how they were going to accept me. I’m Black, and I’m a woman, so I’ve got two strikes against me.”

Illuminating the Role of Race

The classical establishment’s embrace of Robinson’s work reveals an increasingly expansive tendency in the classical world, and in other organizations’ recognition of the fine arts. It was no accident that the National Civil Rights Museum signed on as a sponsor of the concert. As Kyle Dickson, the MSO assistant conductor who led the orchestra through the Harriet Tubman Oratorio, says, “In the last four years many classical organizations have embraced this idea of performing more composers of color, or just simply presenting more concerts that are more inclusive, that reflect more of the communities that they exist in. These are composers whose contributions have been swept under the rug for so long.”

Indeed, there are other signs that composers of color, both historic and contemporary, are being taken more seriously. Pianist Artina McCain, associate professor of piano at the University of Memphis Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music, often curates Celebration, a Black composers festival in Austin, Texas, that’s now in its 18th year. That in turn has led her to program local concerts with a similar goal in mind, most notably spotlighting Black and other underrepresented composers in her Mahogany Chamber Music Series at Crosstown Arts, which she began in 2019.

A major element in the revival of Black composers has been reaching back into history to revive writers who were neglected at the time, such as William Grant Still or Florence Price, who “is making a resurgence these days,” McCain told the Memphis Flyer in 2019. “She seems to be the composer of preference as far as being a female of color that symphonies are programming. People are becoming more aware of her musical style. And the rhythms and harmonies that she uses are very familiar in American folk music. Black composers wanted to fuse the genres that were more readily associated with Black Americans — jazz, blues, gospel — with their training. So they came up with this genre that’s a thing in itself.”

“Memphis really is leading the way. You just don’t see the level of diversity in other orchestras, compared to what you see here in Memphis.” — Michelle McKissack

That “genre” is regularly being celebrated by the MSO, as in their recent concert celebrating the 100th Anniversary of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, which opened with four compositions by Still, who was blending jazz with classical years before Gershwin’s famous work. Also including the eerie harmonies of Kurt Weill’s take on American jazz, and pianist Zhu Wang on the Gershwin piece, the concert was a study in diversity, from the repertoire to the audience to the musicians themselves.

Robinson’s daughter, Michelle McKissack, who sits on the MSO board, feels this diversity makes the MSO unique. “Memphis really is leading the way,” she says. “You just don’t see the level of diversity in other orchestras, compared to what you see here in Memphis.”

That goes for the city’s operatic talent as well, on display when Opera Memphis presented a recital of art songs crafted around the writings of Langston Hughes, including works by Still and Price. It felt as though the Harlem Renaissance, in which both Hughes and the composers were key players, had sprung to life once more, a century after the fact, through the voices of Marcus King, Kayla Oderah, and Marquita Richardson — opera singers who all happen to be Black.

The production of La Bohème was very much in keeping with this consciousness-raising. As Jeri Lynne Johnson noted at the time, that production revealed a culture that’s often rendered invisible. “I’ve done world premieres for the Santa Fe Opera and for the Chicago Opera Theater that had predominantly African-American casts, having canonical works reimagined with African Americans in the roles. But what makes this particular production so interesting is, it isn’t just the casting. It is really transplanting that bohemian lifestyle into a uniquely Memphian historical period on Beale Street. The setting and the cast together really give you a sense of African-American life at that time. It adds an element of questioning what art is, and who makes art, where moral judgments are embedded into the aesthetic ones.”

Discovering Tomorrow’s Music

Local ensembles are also embracing diversity in terms of sounds and musical styles. Championing what is sometimes called “New Music” has become a fundamental mission of some groups here, to the point where they’re helping bring new music into being by commissioning the works directly.

The U of M’s McCain, for example, while introducing the works she and her husband, Martin (a trombone instructor at the university), performed at Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in late January, noted that “ninety percent of what you’ll hear in this program is music that’s been commissioned by us.” Music for piano-trombone duets being rare, this is partly out of necessity, but also springs from the McCains’ commitment to fuel the continued evolution of classical music.

They’re not alone in commissioning new works. What was once called the Iris Orchestra, now the Iris Collective, has fostered new music for over two decades. Conductor Michael Stern, onetime artistic director of Iris and still an advisor to the collective, noted in 2022 that “commissioning new works is part of our mission statement. When we started Iris 22 years ago, the express intention was, in part, to nurture and promote the music of our time, especially American composers.”

One notable Iris commission, in 2020, celebrated the city of Memphis itself, in a symphonic tour de force by Conrad Tao inspired by Charlie Patton’s “A Spoonful Blues,” simply titled Spoonfuls. The piece’s inventiveness was bracing, as samples of Patton’s original recordings were followed by a brash, playful symphonic commentary that echoed the bluesman’s original singing, but with stop-start sonic blasts that made full use of an orchestra’s power.

Another work that Iris co-commissioned at the time was slated to enjoy its world premiere in Memphis, but was delayed when pianist Awadagin Pratt contracted Covid in 2022. This March, at the Germantown Performing Arts Center, Pratt returned to the city and to the piece with his performance of Jessie Montgomery’s Rounds for Piano and Orchestra.

As Stern noted at the time, “Jessie Montgomery is one of the most compelling voices to rise to the top of the scene over the last two or three years, for good reason.” And commissioning Rounds revealed just how prescient Iris’ commitment to contemporary works can be. This year the piece won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Classical Composition, and Pratt is being recognized as one of the most accomplished pianists of his generation. It shows how great an impact commissioning new works can have, not to mention how the inventiveness of new music overlaps with challenging deep cultural preconceptions.

The City of Tomorrow, a wind quintet with two members at the University of Memphis, is another ensemble committed to commissioning new works, creating some of the most inventive music in the city because of it. After their January performance in the Green Room at Crosstown Arts, one fellow audience member confessed to me, “I never knew that symphonic instruments like that could make so many sounds!”

The pieces favored by the ensemble did indeed lean into the unorthodox, sometimes relying on the sounds of valves clicking, spoken-word interludes by the players, or strangely expressive growls and toots from the flute, oboe, French horn, bassoon, and clarinet players comprising the group.

The final piece of that night, The Faculty of Sensing, had been co-commissioned by the group and featured another composer being widely celebrated now, George Lewis, who has won MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships. Elise Blatchford, the City of Tomorrow’s flutist, notes that Crosstown Arts has played a pivotal role in presenting such cutting-edge work locally.

In such ways, the new music of today creates unexpected, inventive frames for our own history, just as Spoonfuls incorporated the voice of Charlie Patton, or Robinson’s oratorio evoked Harriet Tubman through her own words. In pushing the sonic limits of traditional instruments or resuscitating the works of undeservedly obscure composers of color, new music is not discarding the past, but reimagining it.

“I think Crosstown Arts is a big part of the story here,” she says. “Where I used to feel like if I wanted to see some really hard-edged new music, or anything that I’ve been reading about in the New Yorker, I’d have to take a trip to New York. But now I just pay attention to what they’re scheduling over at Crosstown and I go there. That’s really been a shot in the arm artistically, for me personally, having cool shows to go to.”

Crosstown Counterpoint, commissioned by Crosstown Arts and written in honor of the very building where it was to be performed. With members of Blueshift Ensemble (since 2016, a key group in promoting new music locally) stationed in disparate parts of the concourse’s atrium, the work made full use of the echoing space which inspired it.

Subtitled “for two antiphonal string quartets and audio playback,” Crosstown Counterpoint made use of the concourse’s multiple levels, with one quartet on the ground floor and another on the mezzanine above. The stereo strings responded to each other’s hypnotic patterns as recordings of community voices were heard on the P.A. In one moving passage, a Memphian observes, “The building has a personality,” then adds, “and layers of history,” a phrase which repeated as the strings played on, the words echoing through the very walls being remembered.

In such ways, the new music of today creates unexpected, inventive frames for our own history, just as Spoonfuls incorporated the voice of Charlie Patton, or Robinson’s oratorio evoked Harriet Tubman through her own words. In pushing the sonic limits of traditional instruments or resuscitating the works of undeservedly obscure composers of color, new music is not discarding the past, but reimagining it.

Appropriately enough, local classical ensembles are keeping their eyes on the future. The coming season will feature plenty of innovation, including a collaboration this October between Opera Memphis and the Iris Collective in staging Gregg Kallor’s 2016 opera, The Tell-Tale Heart, based on the famous Edgar Allen Poe story.

Next spring, Iris will also host an appearance by violinist Elena Urioste, which will include Recomposed by Max Richter, an imaginative interpretation of Vivaldi’s iconic Four Seasons. The MSO, for its part, will feature the Memphis premiere of a new Michael Gandolfi piano concerto with legendary soloist Marc-André Hamelin. And, as the ultimate feather in the cap of Memphis classical music, Opera Memphis will host the annual Opera America conference next May.

As Marc Scorca, president of Opera America, said in a statement, “Opera Memphis is a model for companies across the country, so it will be a special pleasure to convene there to learn about and celebrate opera’s position in the rich culture of the city.”