RSS 2.0 FeedJune 16, 2010, Cover Stories, Classical
Splendid music in the grass
The fifth annual Symphony in the Flints Hills went on as scheduled this past Saturday, June 12, despite the threat of storms throughout the day and the buckets of rain that fell everywhere but on Ed Bass’s flint hills ranch, Bluestem Cattle Company, in Bazaar, Kansas. Over 6000 people descended on the prairie, traveling unimproved gravel and dirt roads to reach the South Clements Pasture and get in touch with nature—complete with porta-potties.
The fifth annual Symphony in the Flints Hills went on as scheduled this past Saturday, June 12, despite the threat of storms throughout the day and the buckets of rain that fell everywhere but on Ed Bass’s flint hills ranch, Bluestem Cattle Company, in Bazaar, Kansas.
Over 6000 people descended on the prairie, traveling unimproved gravel and dirt roads to reach the South Clements Pasture and get in touch with nature—complete with porta-potties. If you have never attended a Symphony in the Flint Hills event, it is rather hard to imagine the fabulous incongruity of it all. The Flint Hills: rugged, green, beautiful beyond words, populated by prairie chickens, coyotes, birds and wildflowers, crossed over by cattle and cowboys. The Kansas City Symphony: big stage, sound system, portable air conditioning, expensive instruments, musicians dressed in black and white. The Audience: city slickers sipping wine, buying art, taking covered wagon rides and wildflower walks. The juxtaposition of it all is staggering – yet, it works.
This year’s event theme was ranching on the tallgrass prairie and several of the educational activities involved panel discussions with lifelong ranchers, explaining their way of life and work and why the flint hills in its current state is important to all of us. In fact, the 90 minutes of music from the Symphony is really only one event in a day-long celebration of history, nature and flint hills heritage. The development of these educational programs adds immeasurably to the goals of the Symphony in the Flint Hills event. There were demonstrations of ranching techniques and horses, histories of cattle drives in the tallgrass prairie, discussions of ranching sustainability and conservation as well as considerations of the prairie as inspiration for artists, composers, musicians and writers.
And oh yes - there was some music. After a rousing introduction by Governor Mark Parkinson, the Symphony, conducted by Associate Director Steven Jarvi, presented a very appropriate program of prairie-inspired music, including Morton Gould’s “Cowboy Rhapsody,” Copland’s “Prairie Journal” and “Buckaroo Holiday,” Peggy Stuart Coolidge’s “Pioneer Dances” and the themes from Lonesome Dove (Basil Poledouris) and The Big Country (Jerome Moross). The orchestra was joined by fiddler Marvin Gruenbaum in the toe-tappin’ locomotive-inspired “Orange Blossom Special” that eventually turned the entire violin section into old-time fiddlers.
The evening’s special musical guest was county singer Lyle Lovett, who fit right in with the orchestra on “Which Way Does that Old Pony Run,” “If I had a Boat,” and “Natural Forces.” The evening was complete with cattle choreography as about twenty riders drove a herd of three or four hundred head behind the orchestra shell and over the ridge during Virgil Thompson’s vigorous “Symphony on a Hymn Tune” only to send them thundering down the ridge again as narrator Laurie Hamilton quoted Willa Cather’s My Antonia: “There was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running.” Lovett then sang his paean to the life of a cowboy in “If I Had a Boat.” Contrived as it might have been, the majestic, MGM-lure of the thing was well-nigh irresistible. The audience loved it.
During one of the panel discussions, one audience member asked 88-year-old rancher Pat Sauble, whose family has been in the flint hills since 1856, if he ever thought he’d be participating in an event with a symphony orchestra: “Hell, no,” he said.
Symphony in the Flint Hills hit all of the right emotional, educational, historical and musical points, melding two oddly complementary worlds: the music of the grasslands and the music of the symphony hall are really not so different from one another after all.
REVIEW:
Symphony in the Flint Hills
Kansas City Symphony
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Bazaar, Kansas
www.kcsymphony.org
Classical and Musical Theatre Contributor
Sarah Young is a freelance writer and performer in opera, theatre, choral and musical theatre. She has been seen locally with Wichita Grand Opera, Kansas City Symphony Chorus, Kansas City Civic Opera, Lawrence Community Theatre, Chestnut Fine Arts Center and in other local venues. She studied voice at the University of Kansas, and has been trained in artist programs at Indiana University, Aspen Opera Theatre and the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria.
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