National Women’s Music Festival 2018 – Nan Washburn, Conductor
Selected Program*
Like Our Foremothers, We Persist
Sunday, July 8, 2018
The Journey of Phillis Wheatley
for orchestra with narrator
Music by Nkeiru Okoye
with text by Carolivia Herron and Nkeiru Okoye
Sitting down to write The Journey of Phillis Wheatley, I began by asking myself what music shaped her world. My answer to this question unfolded into an unusual juxtaposition of sounds that portray her story.
Phillis would have heard drums from her childhood in Senegal. These would contrast sharply with the drum cadences of soldiers in colonial-era Boston. Walking through town, Phillis would have observed her fellow Africans, toiling along Boston’s docks. The music they created to make the day go faster would be the precursors to blues, jazz, and gospel. Additionally, having been adopted into the affluent home of John and Susannah Wheatley, Phillis undoubtedly had exposure to classical era music. Her writings mention dancing in ballrooms while wearing a stylish gown. She must have been familiar with the waltz and other period compositions.
Listeners encounter the characters and events shaping Phillis’ life as unique themes, each associated with a different orchestral instrument or ensemble. Since Phillis remains a child of Africa, the drums of her homeland are never far behind.
Nkeiru Okoye ©2005
About Nkeiru Okoye
The music of Nkeiru Okoye has been performed on four continents. An exciting voice in symphonic contemporary classical and educational/family repertoire, her music is notable for its accessible style, appeal to diverse audiences, and combining of contemporary classical, African-American, popular music, and West African influences. Her best-known pieces include Voices Shouting Out, a short orchestral work; The Journey of Phillis Wheatley, a narrated demonstration piece; African Sketches, a piano suite; and Songs of Harriet Tubman, a song cycle from her upcoming folk opera about Tubman.
Dr. Okoye’s compositions have been performed by the Philadelphia, Detroit, Virginia, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Richmond, and New Jersey Symphony Chamber orchestras, among others. Her music has been recorded by the Moscow Symphony and Prague Radio Orchestras, and has been published by Oxford University Press. Conductors of her works include Thomas Wilkins, Charles Ansbacher, Marlon Daniel, Julius Williams, John Varineau, Wes Kenney, and Julius Karr-Bartoli.
Dr. Okoye has won awards and/or commendations from the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM), Meet the Composer, Composers Collaborative, Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music, Detroit Symphony, Ford-Mellon Foundation, ASCAP, Beneva Foundation, and Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies British-American Project. Her music has been presented at the International Consortium for Music of Africa and its Diaspora (ICMAD) (Oxford University, UK), Dialogue Between China and Africa in Music & Halim el-Dabh Symposium (Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing, People’s Republic of China), and conferences of the College Music Society, National Association of Schools of Music, and National Association of Teachers of Singing.
Born and raised in New York, Nkeiru Okoye was the second daughter of a Nigerian father and an African-American mother. She studied piano at the Manhattan School of Music Preparatory Division, and went on to earn a B.A. in music theory and composition at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in theory and composition at Rutgers University. Her composition teachers and mentors have included Noel DaCosta, Adolphus Hailstork, Wendell Logan, and Robert Sirota. Among her teaching credentials, she was an assistant professor of music at Morgan State University in Baltimore from 2001-05, John Hopkins University. Dr. Okoye currently is director of Music Theory and Composition at the State University of New York at New Paltz.
Sweet Woman
Cris Williamson (music) Jennifer Wysong (words)
@1975 Cris Williamson/Bird Ankles Music (BMI)
Arr: Mary Watkins
Marianna Martines (1744-1812) Sinfonia in C major (1770)
Allegro con Spiritu
Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1805-1847) Oratorium nach den Bildern der Bibel (1831)
Introduction: Allegro moderato
Melanie Bonis (1858-1937) Suite en forme de valses
Interlude et valse lente
Chen Yi (b. 1952) Chinese Folksongs (1998)
Fengyang Song
Guessing and Thinking of My Darling
Mayila
Charlotte Blake (1885-1979) That Poker Rag (1909)
Gloria Estefan and Kike Santander Let’s Get Loud (2000)
Lady Gaga (Stefani Germanotta) Born this Way (2011)
*Program order to be determined.
About Nan Washburn:
Winner of The American Prize in Orchestral Conducting, professional division 2013, The American Prize Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music, professional division, 2016, and 19 ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming from the League American Orchestras, Nan Washburn is one of the most innovative and dynamic conductors working in the U.S. today. For her engaging performances and fresh approach to concert programming, critics have hailed her work as having “perspicacity, nerve, imagination and all-around savvy.”
She is beginning her 19th season as the Music Director of the Michigan Philharmonic. Under her leadership, the orchestra has experienced unprecedented growth in artistic excellence and in the scope and diversity of its programs throughout Southeast Michigan. National recognition for the orchestra during Washburn’s tenure includes 6 ASCAP Awards, several prestigious grants from Knight Foundation and 2nd Place honors from The American Prize, professional orchestra division.
From 2009-2017 she also served as the Artistic Director and Principal Conductor for the Michigan Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, an ensemble that she founded in 2003. For five years she was the Artistic Director and Conductor of the West Hollywood Orchestra. She has also held the posts as Music Director of Orchestra Sonoma, the Camellia Symphony in Sacramento, Principal Conductor of the Channel Islands Symphony, the Acalanes Chamber Orchestra, the American Jazz Theater, and Director of the San Francisco State University Symphony Orchestra. She made her opera conducting debut in Los Angeles with the full production of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel with the El Dorado Opera Company. This season she returned to California to make her debut with the San Luis Obispo Symphony.
For her pioneering work, Washburn has been featured on National Public Radio, in WESTWAYS MAGAZINE, COASTLINES MAGAZINE, SAN FRANCISCO FOCUS MAGAZINE, and the American Symphony Orchestra League’s SYMPHONY MAGAZINE. She has worked with and performed works by many of the leading composers in the U.S. today, including Ned Rorem, Libby Larsen, Ellen Zwilich, Zhou Long, John Corigliano, Joan Tower, Frank Ticheli, Alvin Singleton, Chen Yi, Lou Harrison, Tobias Picker, Lowell Liebermann, Harold Farberman, Alice Gomez, Michael Daugherty, Jennifer Higdon, and Mary Watkins. Notable soloists include Sharon Robinson, Donald McInnes, Norman Fischer, Kaaren Erickson, Geraldine Walther, Judy Collins, Mark O’Connor, Mason Williams, Ann Hampton Callaway, Jason Graae, Bruce Vilanch, Jo Anne Worley, Blair Underwood, John Walz and Sharon Isbin.
Born in Denver and raised in Southern California, Nan Washburn has conducted throughout the United States, including the symphony orchestras of Richmond, Sacramento, Wyoming, Eugene, Berkeley, Marin, Cheyenne, Dubuque, Perrysburg, Stockton and Napa Valley. Other guest appearances have been with Oregon Mozart Players, Women’s Philharmonic, Colorado and California All-State Honor Orchestras, the University of Michigan Philharmonia and the Firelands Symphony in Sandusky, Ohio. This season she will make her debut guest conducting the San Luis Obispo Symphony.
Washburn first came to national attention as a co-founder, the Artistic Director, and Associate Conductor of the San Francisco-based Women’s Philharmonic from 1980 to 1990, during which time she became one of the leading authorities on and advocates for orchestral works of women composers. She researched and reconstructed historical scores, commissioned new works, and programmed and performed dozens of works by women. In addition, she created some of the orchestra‘s most successful projects, such as their educational concerts and the New Music Reading Sessions, and was also Musical Producer of their first CD.
Washburn earned her Bachelor’s of Music with highest honors from the University of California at Santa Barbara, receiving the Chancellor’s Scholar Award, and earned her Master’s degree in performance from New England Conservatory of Music. She received the Alan Marlowe Memorial Woodwind Award while attending the Music Academy of the West.
A professional flutist for a number of years, Washburn began her studies in conducting in 1984 working with Denis de Coteau at CSU Hayward and continued studies with Harold Farberman for three years at the Conductors Institute, and at the Aspen Music Festival as a scholarship student of Paul Vermel. In addition, she has participated in several masterclasses, working with Daniel Lewis, Gustav Meier, Donald Thulean, and Lawrence Leighton Smith. During the summer of 2002, she was on the faculty at the Conductors Institute at Bard College in New York.
Washburn has been honored with the Distinguished Service Award from New York Women Composers, the Sonoma County Independent Indy Award, the Girl Scout Role Model Award, Outstanding Local Hero Award from KQED, San Francisco and the Women’s Foundation of California and has been recognized among “Women in Leadership” by the city of West Hollywood, honored as an Sigma Alpha Iota National Arts Associate and, in 2016, she received the Jeanine C. Rae Award for the Advancement of Women’s Culture.