U Ideas of General Interest -- October 2000University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Contact: Melissa Mitchell, Arts Editor (217) 333-5491; [email protected]
MUSICOpera star to perform premiere of song cycle inspired by Sandburg
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- More than 80 years after it was written, Carl Sandburg's 1918 prose poem "Prairie" is being reinterpreted in musical form, thanks to the efforts of another Illinois native son whose artistic ambitions have taken him far from his prairie roots.
Internationally acclaimed opera star and University of Illinois alumnus Jerry Hadley will return to Illinois Nov. 14 to perform the world premiere of "The Song and the Slogan," a song cycle inspired by the epic Sandburg poem. Hadley commissioned Daniel Steven Crafts to compose the piece. Its text is drawn primarily from "Prairie," but also incorporates other Sandburg poems, among them, "The Road and the End," "My People" and "The Journey and the Oath."
Hadley, a three-time Grammy Award winner, will perform the new chamber work for tenor, piano and instrumental ensemble at 8 p.m. Nov. 14 at the UI's Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. Joining Hadley in the concert -- a benefit for the UI's School of Music -- will be members of the school's faculty and regional professional musicians, conducted by UI professor emeritus Paul Vermel. The program also will feature American songs that reflect the life, work and spirit of Sandburg, performed by Hadley and UI music professor and pianist Eric Dalheim. An added attraction will be a reading of selected Sandburg poems by longtime Hadley friend David Hartman, a former host of ABC television's "Good Morning America."
Hadley, who was raised in Manlius, Ill., and received his master's degree from the UI, is known for his expertise with 20th century and American operas. He has performed with the world's most prestigious operas, among them the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, London's Royal Opera at Covent Garden and the Paris Opera Bastille. He is equally at home in the realms of Broadway musical theater, operetta and popular song, and is singing the lead role of Jay Gatsby in the Lyric Opera of Chicago's production of John Harbison's adaptation of Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby."
A devotee of Sandburg, Hadley said the poet's "evocation of Midwestern life has always spoken to me in a very personal way, and 'Prairie' has been a particular favorite. To those of us who grew up in small-town Illinois, like Sandburg, the rough-hewn words of this poem have a very special meaning." With each reading of the poem, Hadley said he becomes re-enchanted by Sandburg's elegiac portrayal of the prairie -- from its changing landscape to the people who have inhabited it throughout history.
Aside from the sentimental connection to his alma mater, Hadley cited the UI's Central Illinois location as well as the University Library's Sandburg Archives among the reasons he decided that the university was a logical place for the work's first public performance. "It felt wrong to do it anywhere else."
A one-hour program, also titled "The Song and the Slogan," is being produced by WILL-TV, the broadcasting service of the UI. The program, which will be available for national distribution to Public Broadcasting Service stations in 2001, will examine Sandburg's legacy and life in Illinois, and will feature a performance of Crafts' composition in a natural, prairie setting.
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