Appalachia and neograssiclassicana explained…

Jason Thornton of Bath Phil talks with Jordana Greenberg of Harpeth Rising about the roots of their music and their exciting collaboration with the Bath Phil at St John’s Church on Saturday 17th. Contact the festival box office (01373 455420) for tickets and details. See article below on Bath Phil for full details of the Appalachian evening.

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Shake along to classical showpiece

Frome Festival music director Jason Thornton conducts Bath Philharmonia & Harpeth Rising in Copland’s Appalachian Spring

Frome Festival’s music director aims to create one of the most talked about classical events of the year as he embarks on his most ambitious festival project to date.

To celebrate the festival’s 10th anniversary, Bath Philharmonia’s Jason Thornton has chosen works by two American composers – Aaron Copland and John Adams. Copland’s Appalachian Spring and Adams’s Shaker Loops drawtheir inspiration from Shaker folk songs written in the late 18th century. To add an authentic twist, Thornton has asked Harpeth Rising, an American bluegrass band, to play with the orchestra amid the celestial splendour of St John’s Church, Frome, on Saturday 17 July.

Thornton said: “The collaboration came together by pure coincidence. Festival director Martin Dimery mentioned he had signed up a bluegrass band to play the festival this year and I immediately saw the link. Harpeth Rising, Copland and Adams draw from the same source and put the ordinary man at the heart of their music. Though this is most definitely a classical event, my hope is to weave the folk and classical traditions together during the concert to see what transpires.”

Thornton hopes Harpeth Rising, who play a solo gig at The Granary on Monday 12, will improvise with the orchestra

Nashville bluegrass band Harpeth Rising join Bath Philharmonia for this year’s classical showpiece

 during Simple Gifts (Lord of the Dance), the rousing finale to Appalachian Spring. “This is not how Copland intended. To my knowledge, a bluegrass band has never before joined an orchestra to perform these works. It’s unique,” he said.

Harpeth Rising are a four-piece band from Nashville, Tennessee, who have never toured outside the US before. Band spokesperson Jordana Greenberg said: “The great coincidence is we are all classically trained musicians. Although we play bluegrass, our music has deep roots in the very programme that Mr Thornton is presenting with the Bath Philharmonia,” she said. Greenberg found Frome Festival online. “It looked so lovely I emailed Martin Dimery right away. We are truly excited about performing in Frome.”

Two members of Bath Philharmonia have a professional connection with Copland and Adams. The last time principal bassoon player Martin Gatt played Appalachian Spring as a member of the London Symphony Orchestra in the 1970s, Copland conducted. And Thornton met Adams in Reading during an education education project with Berkshire Young Musicians and the London Symphony Orchestra in 2002. “I had to take John Adams for tea. Nowhere in Reading was open though so we ended up in a Burger King and he bought me a Whopper Meal and Fries. Charming man,” Thornton said.

At the time, Adams had almost finished On The Transmigration of Souls, a score commissioned by the New York Philharmonic after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. “John showed me the Transmigration score over a Whopper meal. Not even the music director of the New York Philharmonic’s music director had seen it. Quite bizarre,” he said.     
          
Copland (1900-1990) wrote Appalachian Spring as a ballet for Martha Graham, who performed the lead in the 1944 premiere. The following year Copland received a Pulitzer Prize for Music. The piece centres on American pioneers in Pennsylvania in the 1880s as they hold a great celebration after finishing a house for a newlywed couple. The title comes from a poem by Hart Crane, with ‘spring’ referring to water rather than the season. Adams (1947-) wrote Shaker Loops in 1978 and a version for string orchestra premiered in 1983. The title refers to the energetic repetitive dancing of The Shakers and the ‘shaking’ of strings as they oscillate between notes.

Shakers originated in the Manchester area in the mid-18th-century. Their spiritual leader Mother Ann Lee left England with eight disciples and arrived in New York in 1774. Despite repeated persecution, they established Shaker communities best known for their minimalist furniture. The Shaker song tradition is less well known. They developed a form of music notation known as the letteral system’, which used letters of the alphabet (a-b-c-d-e-f-g) rather than conventional notes so tunes could be copied down quickly.
Full details of this year’s events can be found at our What’s On pages. For news on tickets and other curiosities follow the festival at twitter.com/Frome_Festival