What would happen if we could transcend time, if Fred Astaire could collaborate with Ludwig von Beethoven?
A question both goofy and silly, I know – but the one that crossed my mind, last Sunday afternoon at the Hemmens Auditorium. It was there that I witnessed the most graceful conductor I have ever seen, wrestle, or shall we say dance with, the most powerful piece of music I have ever heard, not so much into the submission of his will, but towards the glory of it all.
As you may suspect by now, this column is written from my heart rather than my head. So be it. Those of us that work with words, when truth is told, envy those that work with music. We write about music because music is gone the second after it is expressed, yet all cultures of the world make music —because they must.
But Beethoven himself was deaf when he wrote what both Maestro Robert Hanson and I believe may be the greatest piece ever composed, but that doesn’t mean that Beethoven did not hear it. In his case, and at that time, his mind and his heart were one, which is as good a definition of “genius” as any other.
In fact, listening to the third movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is as close as I have gotten to heaven in my corporal life. It may not be paradise gained, but it is the stairway. The fourth movement and its choral ecstasy is what it says it is, an “Ode to Joy.”
Now all this fancy talk commits me to the very thing I wished to avoid on BocaJump—journalism that taunts us by saying “you should have been there” instead of information that encourages us to consider what events are coming to our hometown. So here I’ll make two notations; 1) I did write about all this two weeks ago, so you were warned, and 2) the performances were recorded and a limited edition CD will soon be available. You are warned once again.
There are many things admirable and fascinating about Elgin, things I have tried to write about in this space in the few months I have been privileged to do so, But the one thing that I find most unique about Elgin is that a city of this size could and has produced a symphony orchestra and ongoing program of such excellence. To me, this is also a harbinger of Elgin’s embrace of and hospitality to all the arts. The recent art showcases and the Short Film Festival were both well-attended and for lack of a more embellished description, just plain “cool.”
My unsolicited nugget of advice to the powers that be in our burg, might be that if you want to develop Elgin, your dollars, your effort, and your spirit might be most rewarded in developing the arts. Fortunately, that seems to be a conclusion I do not hold in isolation. Many things and many people are travelling down that road already, and readers of this website will have an excellent handle on the ‘whats’, the ‘whens’, and the ‘wheres’. (This concludes the promotional portion of today’s column.)
Two more things need to be said.
First, it was not only our local genius, Mr. Hanson, that made this spectacle spectacular last weekend, but everyone in that orchestra and magnificent choir. It was obvious to even a soul as unsophisticated as mine, that all were pushing both the envelope and themselves into realms of beauty. Now that is language more florid than I usually allow myself, but they left me no choice. Music can be democracy attained, far better than words.
Second, the opening piece to the concert was a brilliant brass fanfare—and ‘brilliant’ will always be the most appropriate word ascribed to brass—composed by a native Elginite, Daniel Brewbaker. Mr. Brewbaker is not only a world-class composer, but one who is still alive (he was with us at all three concerts) and one of our own.
Not only was the piece itself, “Tree of Life”, sophisticated, beautiful, and glorious via a resolution of joy, it was the work of the kid with the magic chops on a trumpet, a year behind me at Elgin High School.
So there you go, arts in the schools, arts in the streets, arts in our buildings, arts in our lives.
Ben Sidran, an artist who grew up about the same time as Danny Brewbaker and me, just a little north of here, once put out an album entitled “I Don’t Make Art, I Lead a Life.” While I empathize with his attitude, especially in those over-theorized, over-commodified, over-compartmentalized times, I’m going to take the less belligerent renascence stance, and say that—at least here in Elgin—one can do both.
What would happen if we could transcend time, if Fred Astaire could collaborate with Ludwig von Beethoven?
A question both goofy and silly, I know – but the one that crossed my mind, last Sunday afternoon at the Hemmens Auditorium. It was there that I witnessed the most graceful conductor I have ever seen, wrestle, or shall we say dance with, the most powerful piece of music I have ever heard, not so much into the submission of his will, but towards the glory of it all.
As you may suspect by now, this column is written from my heart rather than my head. So be it. Those of us that work with words, when truth is told, envy those that work with music. We write about music because music is gone the second after it is expressed, yet all cultures of the world make music —because they must.
But Beethoven himself was deaf when he wrote what both Maestro Robert Hanson and I believe may be the greatest piece ever composed, but that doesn’t mean that Beethoven did not hear it. In his case, and at that time, his mind and his heart were one, which is as good a definition of “genius” as any other.
In fact, listening to the third movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is as close as I have gotten to heaven in my corporal life. It may not be paradise gained, but it is the stairway. The fourth movement and its choral ecstasy is what it says it is, an “Ode to Joy.”
Now all this fancy talk commits me to the very thing I wished to avoid on BocaJump—journalism that taunts us by saying “you should have been there” instead of information that encourages us to consider what events are coming to our hometown. So here I’ll make two notations; 1) I did write about all this two weeks ago, so you were warned, and 2) the performances were recorded and a limited edition CD will soon be available. You are warned once again.
There are many things admirable and fascinating about Elgin, things I have tried to write about in this space in the few months I have been privileged to do so, But the one thing that I find most unique about Elgin is that a city of this size could and has produced a symphony orchestra and ongoing program of such excellence. To me, this is also a harbinger of Elgin’s embrace of and hospitality to all the arts. The recent art showcases and the Short Film Festival were both well-attended and for lack of a more embellished description, just plain “cool.”
My unsolicited nugget of advice to the powers that be in our burg, might be that if you want to develop Elgin, your dollars, your effort, and your spirit might be most rewarded in developing the arts. Fortunately, that seems to be a conclusion I do not hold in isolation. Many things and many people are travelling down that road already, and readers of this website will have an excellent handle on the ‘whats’, the ‘whens’, and the ‘wheres’. (This concludes the promotional portion of today’s column.)
Two more things need to be said.
First, it was not only our local genius, Mr. Hanson, that made this spectacle spectacular last weekend, but everyone in that orchestra and magnificent choir. It was obvious to even a soul as unsophisticated as mine, that all were pushing both the envelope and themselves into realms of beauty. Now that is language more florid than I usually allow myself, but they left me no choice. Music can be democracy attained, far better than words.
Second, the opening piece to the concert was a brilliant brass fanfare—and ‘brilliant’ will always be the most appropriate word ascribed to brass—composed by a native Elginite, Daniel Brewbaker. Mr. Brewbaker is not only a world-class composer, but one who is still alive (he was with us at all three concerts) and one of our own.
Not only was the piece itself, “Tree of Life”, sophisticated, beautiful, and glorious via a resolution of joy, it was the work of the kid with the magic chops on a trumpet, a year behind me at Elgin High School.
So there you go, arts in the schools, arts in the streets, arts in our buildings, arts in our lives.
Ben Sidran, an artist who grew up about the same time as Danny Brewbaker and me, just a little north of here, once put out an album entitled “I Don’t Make Art, I Lead a Life.” While I empathize with his attitude, especially in those over-theorized, over-commodified, over-compartmentalized times, I’m going to take the less belligerent renascence stance, and say that—at least here in Elgin—one can do both.
