CLASSICAL MUSIC : Chicago’s 2nd Orchestra Leads Way With Minorities

In the competition for public funding, mainstream arts organizations have come under increasing pressure to improve their dismal record of minority involvement. From personnel to programming to representation on governing boards, government agencies such as the California Arts Council are requiring orchestras and opera companies, for example, to demonstrate a more inclusive racial mixture.

Orchestra conductor Paul Freeman, in town to lead a pair of San Diego Symphony summers pops concerts this week, could give a seminar on this topic. He organized his Chicago Sinfonietta to be racially inclusive from its inception, rather than worrying about minority involvement after the fact. After conducting one of Chicago’s Grant Park concerts in 1986, Freeman was invited by local leaders to start a chamber orchestra.

“I told them what I wanted to do--to scout out the top minority talent in the Chicago area,” he explained. “My goal was to make at least a third of the orchestra composed of minority musicians, but we were equally careful to articulate that the orchestra’s social mission is secondary to its musical goal.”

In a Chicago Tribune commentary last fall, music critic John von Rhein described Freeman’s Chicago Sinfonietta as “the city’s mid-sized, affirmative-action, community-outreach orchestra.”

When Freeman started the Chicago Sinfonietta in 1987, he was music director of Canada’s Victoria Symphony and principal guest conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic. It was the political chemistry of Chicago at that time that encouraged him to set down musical roots in yet another city far from his home in British Columbia.

“There was a certain vibrancy in the air then, especially during the administration of (the late Chicago mayor) Harold Washington.”

In three short years, Freeman has achieved many of his musical and social goals. Chicago Sun-Times music critic Paul Marsh dubbed the young Chicago Sinfonietta, “Chicago’s second orchestra,” a distinction of no small stature: Several Chicago area musical ensembles vie to be ranked adjacent to Sir Georg Solti’s Chicago Symphony.

Freeman is equally pleased about his orchestra’s racial mixture of black, white, Asian and Latino players.

“With 30% of our 40 musicians minority, I think we’re a model orchestra. The membership of our board is also 40% minority. Some orchestra directors ask me what they can do for community outreach and minority participation--we have that built in our orchestra.”

Another musical project close to Freeman’s heart is a series of nine recordings he made for Columbia Records of works by black composers. Although the four-year project was completed about 15 years ago, Freeman stated that its benefits are still being felt. Especially for conductors who knew nothing of the works of Chevalier St. George, William Grant Still, Ulysses S. Kay, the recordings provided a crash course in orchestral repertory left out of the orchestra canon largely because of the composers’ race.

“Many conductors have used music from the series in their programming. And, for the (living) composers represented in the series it has been a tremendous thrust. George Walker, for example, received a commission from (conductor Lorin) Maazel in Cleveland and then another commission from the New York Philharmonic.”

Freeman noted that the idea for undertaking the Columbia recording project came from Robert Shaw, who was sharing the podium with Freeman at a conference on black music at Atlanta’s Spelman College. Shaw, at that time the Atlanta Symphony’s music director, was appointed principal guest conductor to the San Diego Symphony last year.

Freeman has not put all of his eggs in the Chicago basket, however. Earlier this year, he was appointed principal guest conductor of the Zagreb, Yugoslavia, Symphony Orchestra. One of his main duties with the Zagreb Symphony is to make recordings. Before he flew to San Diego for his all-Tchaikovsky assignment with the San Diego Symphony, Freeman was in Zagreb recording works by Beethoven, Bloch and Shostakovich. And by the black American composer Hale Smith.

“Things are opening up in European countries musically,” said Freeman.

And, if the activist conductor continues to have his way, other doors will be opening in this country, too.

Time to subscribe. San Diego Opera general director Ian Campbell will take over the KFSD-FM (94.1) air waves from 5 to 7 p.m. Sunday to solicit subscriptions to the opera’s upcoming season. As listeners call in their subscriptions, Campbell will play recorded arias and selections from the five operas the company will present at the Civic Theatre from January to May next year.

South Bay music. For several seasons, the Chula Vista public library has offered a commendable series of free chamber music concerts in its F Street auditorium. Last week, the library announced its fall series, beginning with a vocal recital by soprano Ann DeVries and baritone Martin Wright on Sept. 17. The Gennaro Trio (violinist Ronald Goldman, cellist Mary Lindblom and pianist Ilana Mysior will perform Oct. 15, and the brass quintet Classic Brass will complete the fall term Nov. 19.