EUROPEAN ROOTS * INTERNATIONAL FLOWERINGS
We can still almost all recall in detail the world as it was when we were born. But whatever our ages, we can all agree: times sure have changed! And the pace of innovation only continues to accelerate. Perhaps our best consolation is that our access to whatever we consider as our own history and cultural legacy has kept pace. We have indeed become the first culture to have such breadth and depth from the world -- news, language,entertainment and food as well as music -- continuously available to us.
But this connection to other nations -- what does it mean for Americans? For some, the sense of 'belonging' somehow in part to another place or time is learned through family albums and stories. For others, the enjoyment of diverse arts is an entry point leading to more serious study. A lucky few are born as inheritors to more than one living cultural tradition.
Our international theme for 2002 explores the ethnic 'roots' of some of the European folk who give distinctive flavour to American life: the Celtic peoples of the British Isles, whose music still lives in pockets of Spain and France in addition to the international 'folk' concert scenes of the last two centuries (Concert I: CELTIC CARAVANS); the Italian peoples, who even as waves of Italian 'art' music swept across Europe from the late Middle Ages to the age of Grand Opera, have kept traditional music strongly regionalized into local styles (Concert IV: ITALIAN FOLK & BAROQUE); and the Spanish folk, whose 'home' and court musics include ingredients from Arab, Gypsy and Native American cultures (Concert V: SPANISH FOLK & BAROQUE).
Our theme also gives an opportunity to explore 'exotic' ingredients of European cultures: the Austro-Hungarian craze for the so-called 'Gypsy' music of the Rom tribes who continue to wander Europe even today (Concert III: GYPSY CLASSICS), and the High Renaissance contrapuntal style which 500 years later still inspires musicians all over the world, including innovative groups such as Japan's Yukimi Kambe Viol Consort (Concert II: RENAISSANCE ROOTS * GLOBAL FLOWERINGS).
Without doubt, music of distant times and places, -- like the paintings of Old Masters, -- shows us other skies and lands, and speaks through eerily familiar lines and colors of lives we might have lived, songs we once had sung, and gives us rhythms that make our hearts beat faster. In our love for the tangled roots of the international music scene we all enjoy, we become one with the many beautiful flowerings of folk music into concert music.
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