The Baroque Artists of Champaign-Urbana perform Saturday at Illinois Wesleyan University with a program called “The Three Bs.” By name, the choral group has a focus on old music — very old. But director Sarah Riskind’s vision is bigger than baroque.
“My goal has been to keep the foundation of baroque music for the ensemble, but to use that as a jumping off point,” Riskind said in an interview. In addition to directing the Baroque Artists of Champaign-Urbana—a role she’s had just two years—Riskind is a music professor at Eureka College. She currently lives in Bloomington-Normal and is anxious to spread the chamber choral group’s unique musical offerings across central Illinois.
“’The Three Bs’ is a program that intentionally challenges our idea of which composers become known as the great masters,” Riskind said. “’The Three Bs’ colloquially represents Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. We think of those composers as some of the best, but let’s think about all the composers who get put off to the side.”
Riskind’s take on the "Three Bs" focuses on three 19th and 20th century figures: French composer Lili Boulanger and two Americans, Harry Burleigh and Margaret Bonds.
Boulanger was a child prodigy who only lived to age 24. But during her short life, Boulanger became the first woman to win the Prix de Rome, a top prize for composers. Saturday’s concert includes her “Hymne au Soleil.”
Bonds hailed from Chicago and studied at Northwestern University beginning in 1929 at age 16. At the time, she was one of very few Black people permitted to study there—permitted to study, but not to live on campus. Bonds was also the first ever Black person to perform with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
“Composers like Margaret Bonds achieved some status during their lifetimes,” said Riskind. “However, I would say—even based on my own experiences in the choral world—until recently, most conductors have studied what we have considered the 'greats,' which have been mainly white men from the baroque, classical and romantic periods."
Bonds discovered writings by Langston Hughes in the basement of Northwestern's library. She’d later form a professional kinship with the poet. Saturday’s concert will feature Bonds’ “Credo,” however, a musical adaptation of writings by W.E.B. duBois.
"The fact is, it just takes a lot more effort and a lot more research to find other music that is very high quality but may not be in our textbooks or may not be in our grad programs,” said Riskind.
The social justice messages imbued in Bonds' "Credo" stands in stark contrast to Burleigh’s art song, “Five Songs for Laurence Hope.” Burleigh is perhaps best known for introducing Antonín Dvořák to Black American music, strongly influencing the Czech composer’s work created from his time in America.
“Burleigh was successful with his spiritual arrangements, but he really wanted his art songs to become better known by the public,” said Riskind. “Laurence Hope was a pen name for a woman poet named Adela Florence Cory Nicolson. I just love particularly that song cycle; it has extremely stunning harmonies and the text is very sensual love poetry.”
For Riskind, the “Three Bs” is part of her larger mission to regularly infuse the ensemble’s programming with diverse composers.
“It’s really important to me that it is a consistent element in my programming,” she said. “Each concert program should have a specific amount of diversity in it—not just so that I can say that I did that, but so that we hear these amazing voices and the amazing music that has come from all sorts of people.”
“The Three Bs: Music by Bonds, Burleigh and Boulanger” takes place at 7:30 p.m. Saturday in the Westbrook Auditorium at Presser Hall on Illinois Wesleyan University’s campus, 1210 Park St. Tickets are $10-$20 at baroqueartists.org.
