Dallas Symphony A special Place for Performance
by: Jean Hurley
Ironically, as the phenomenon of television,
a medium that is experience in isolation, becomes the medium for
our culture's communal experience, teh live performance is one of
the last bastions of a true human form of communication.
There is something thrilling about a performer communcating
inside a full hall by sheer personality and physicality. It
is human and it is heroic. A performance in the Morton H.
Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, Texas, represents the best of
live performance, because it is a place both communal and
intimate, mass and personal. Within the hall, its impact
plays upon the senses of the audience and inspires the best from
its performers. And, from its vantage point, built upon a
site within the city of Dallas as part if a city developement
programm the structure takes on more significance than just as a
house of performance. It becomes a source of community
pride. Indeed, the Meyerson Syphony Center (though not the
first), may be the most advanced manifestation of a theater yet
built that incorporates art with urban developement. Its
success in this area takes on greater importance also, because it
might not have happened at all, but through sheer determinism by
just a few hardy souls.
The idea of an Arts District in downtown
Dallas started in the mid 1970's. But the Mayor's effort in
1978 to approve a $45 million bond issue that would fund the
district failed. That might have defeated a less determined
group of arts committed citizens, but it didn't. The very
next year proponents the of the Dallas Museum of Art won a $54
million bond issue for three downtown projects, including a
provision for $2.25 million to acquire land for a new concert
hall. With the Consultants hired in August of 1982, and property
in hand, a $28 million bond issue was finally passed, making
construction funds available for a Symphony Center. The
Dallas Symphony Association undertook the most comprehensive
capital fundraising campaign ever undertaken byan American arts
institution. Called "The Cornerstone Campaign",
more then $50 million was raised, much of it dedicated toward
construction. In late 1984, the Ross Perot family gave $10
million to assure that the new hall would meet or surpass all
international standards. Perot was asked to name the
facilty, and he chose to honor his friend, chairman of the
building committee, Morton H. Meyerson.
(rest in the magazine)
Arkansas Symphony Presents New Mornig of the World
by: Elizabeth Ellison
Sometimes both words and music are needed to
create the best perfomance. On February 28, at the Robinson
Center in Little Rock, it will happen that way on a special
evening planned to honor the momory of Martin Luther King.
When Maestro David Itkin steps onto the stage to conduct the
Arkansas Symphony he will present the featured performer for the
evening, the poet, Maya Angelou. Angelou will narrate
Joseph Schwantner's special tribute for narrator and orchestra.
Ms. Angelou came
to the forefront of the country's attention in 1995 when she
wrote and delivered the moving poem,"On the Pulse of
Moring", at President Clinton's Inauguration. On this
special evening, however, in the tribute to Martin Luther King,
she will recite words that honor a man she knew personally, even
worked for back in the 1960's. It was back then a young
woman from Stamps, Arkansas, was asked by King to be his northern
coordinator for his Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
The orchestral/narrative composition by
Schwantner is New Morning for the World (Daybreak
Freedom). It joins his growing list of impressive
compositions by this American composer. Others include, Aftertones
of Infinity (Pulitzer prize of Music in 1979), Diaphonia
Intervallum Chronicon, "Autumn" Canticle, Consortium,
The Mountains Rising Nowhere, and Sparrows.
(rest in the magazine)