World premiere of music and narrative on life and times of FDR comes to Ganz Hall on March 27

Posted: 03/19/2012

A world premiere work on the life and times of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, featuring music by renowned composer and conductor Victoria Bond and narrative written by Myles Edwin Lee, will be performed March 27 at Roosevelt University, 430 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago.

Presented by Roosevelt’s Chicago College of Performing Arts (CCPA), the free event will begin at 6:30 p.m. with a panel discussion on music of the New Deal period. A world premiere of The Indispensable Man: A Roosevelt Portrait, to be broadcast live on WFMT radio, will be performed by CCPA’s Wind Ensemble and narrated by CCPA’s Head of Voice and acclaimed Metropolitan Opera baritone David Holloway, beginning at 7:30 p.m.

The symposium, entitled “Listening to the New Deal: Reflections on FDR and Music in the Great Depression,” and the concert (which also includes the Chicago premiere of Bond’s and Lee’s Pater Patriae: A Washington Portrait, about the life and times of George Washington), will be held in Roosevelt’s seventh-floor Ganz Hall. An exhibit of FDR and New Deal artifacts related to music of the time period, which are from the University’s Center for New Deal Studies collection, will be displayed in the Ganz Hall foyer.

A major force in 21st century concert music, Bond is a composer whose works have been commissioned by American Ballet Theater, Pennsylvania Ballet, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Houston and Shanghai Orchestras, Cleveland and Indianapolis Chamber Orchestras, Women’s Philharmonic and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Performed by the Dallas Symphony, New York City Opera, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and members of the New York Philharmonic, among others, Bond’s work has been praised by the New York Times as “powerful, stylistically varied and technically demanding.” The winner of the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Walter Hinrichsen Award and currently principal guest conductor of Chamber Opera Chicago, Bond also has been acclaimed for her conducting, which the Wall Street Journal has called “impassioned” and the New York Times has described as “full of energy and fervor.”

Pater Patriae and The Indispensable Man came about after the composer met cardiothoracic surgeon Myles Edwin Lee by chance in 2004 and the two discovered they had a mutual interest in American history. Both pieces are influenced by Lincoln Portrait, about the life and times of Abraham Lincoln, which was composed by Aaron Copland, and which debuted in 1942.

Using FDR’s own words and music from the Big Band tradition popular during Roosevelt’s presidency, The Indispensable Man: A Roosevelt Portrait brings to the forefront FDR’s dynamic character, his triumph over the adversity of his disability and the unforgettable words of some of his speeches, as well as a turbulent time 75 years ago in American history when massive union strikes and massacre of striking steel workers in Chicago were big news.

“There could be no better place for The Indispensable Man to debut than at Roosevelt University,” said CCPA Dean Henry Fogel, who will recite Copland’s Lincoln Portrait during the program. Founded in 1945, Roosevelt University was named in honor of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, whose social justice ideals and principles are at the core of the University’s historic mission today.

The world premiere concert will be conducted by Roosevelt Professor of Conducting Stephen Squires. Pater Patriae will be narrated by Roosevelt alumnus and composer Adrian Dunn. Symposium panelists will include New Deal historian Margaret Rung, head of Roosevelt’s Center for New Deal Studies, and two Roosevelt musicologists: Gregory Reish, who will talk about folk music and the New Deal, and Colin Roust, who will discuss the intertwining of Copland’s music with politics.

Also on the program is Nawruz by Roosevelt student composer Parisa Sabet. The winner of the 2011 Timothy Munro Solo Flute Competition and CCPA’s 2011 Wind Ensemble Composition Contest, Sabet wrote the piece in honor of this month’s Persian New Year.

For more information, contact the CCPA performance activities office at 312-341-2238 or cbernstein@roosevelt.edu.

Chicago 430 S. Michigan Ave.Chicago, IL 60605(312) 341-3500 Directions & Maps

Schaumburg 1400 N. Roosevelt Blvd.Schaumburg, IL 60173(847) 619-7300 Directions & Maps

Roosevelt Online http://www.roosevelt.edu/ruonline/