2010 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Samuel Barber. The Hannah Kahn Dance Company is honoring this great American composer with the creation of a new dance set to his music. Here is some information about the Barber music which will be performed live with Kahn’s new dance:
Knoxville: Summer of 1915 is a 1947 work by Samuel Barber. The text is taken from a 1938 short prose piece by James Agee. It is a lush, richly textured work. Setting music to excerpts from James Agee’s short story Knoxville, Barber paints an idyllic, nostalgic picture of an evening in the American South, narrated by a child who seems, at times, to transform into an adult. Barber’s musical imagery is very vivid throughout the work, meshing perfectly with the voice which often
sings a description of the sounds shortly after they are heard. Musical portrayals of a rocking chair, machinery, and prayer (among others) all figure prominently. The voice of this text seems to vacillate between that of the child-narrator and the adult-narrator remembering his childhood thoughts. Childlike simplicity and dark emotions alternate with increasing duress, culminating in the speaker’s desperate prayer for the well-being of his people: “By some chance, here they are, all on this earth; and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth, lying, on quilts, on the grass in a summer evening, among the sounds of the night. May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother my good father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble; and in the hour of their taking away.” The rocking music returns, all the more comforting. As the voice of the adult and child fuse, the speaker realizes that with all their regard and love, his family will not- in fact, could not, even when they were still alive- tell him who he is, who he should be. This could seem fatalistic or even tragic, however, in this aloneness, lies also the hope that one’s spirit, since it must be cultivated alone, will develop on its own terms and flourish.
The summer of 1915 was a significant year for James Agee, it was not long before his father died in 1916. According to Agee, it was the point around which his life began to evolve. When Barber was writing his own Knoxville, his father, Roy Barber, was losing his health and rapidly approaching death. Barber dedicates the work to his father suggesting that his father’s deteriorating health had something to do with his identification with the piece. Barber was touched by the familiarity of Agee’s childhood memories and the fact that both he and Agee were five years old in 1915. The two men were so compelled by nostalgia and inspiration that they wrote their pieces quickly and without much revision. The two had much in common. Knoxville: Summer of 1915 premiered on April 9, 1949, conducted by Sergei Koussevitzky at the Boston Symphony Orchestra and is considered Barber’s most ‘American’ work.
Spinto Soprano Irene VanHam Friedlob’s career is a varied and dynamic one with the proven ability to invest whatever she performs with new levels of musical understanding and excellence. Ms Friedlob’s voice has captivated audiences throughout the United States as she continues to demonstrate her dramatic and musical versatility with a wide range of styles. She has been praised for her deft comedic abilities as Anne Page in Nicolai’s The Merry Widow, and Rosalinda in Die Fledermaus, as well as her dramatic intensity in the title roles in Madama Butterfly, Tosca, La Boheme, Salome, Cavalleria Rusicana, and I Pagliacci.
Ms. Friedlob has performed on Artists’ Series in Texas, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona, as well as a serving as soloist with the Denver Symphony Orchestra, Lake Charles Symphony, Central City Opera, Centennial Philharmonic, the Community Arts Symphony, the Colorado Chorale, the National Chorale Council and the Colorado Chamber Players, performing such works as Handel’s Messiah, Madama Butterfly, Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Chausson’s Chanson Perpetuelle.
In 1994 Ms. Friedlob founded Colorado Opera Troupe, serving as General Director and performing artist. She was accepted into the Rocky Mountain Women’s Institute Associate program for 2006-07 where she performed Carlisle Floyd’s tour de force monodrama for soprano Flower and Hawk based on the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine.
Ms. Friedlob has collaborated, coached and performed with Dr. Mutsumi Moteki (pianist for these performances) for fourteen incredible years and is delighted to collaborate for the second time with the Hannah Kahn Dance Company in these performances of Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915.
