Concert teams Riccardo Muti, Yo-Yo Ma with young talent
BY ANDREW PATNER May 15, 2011 7:44PM
Yo-Yo Ma (center) performs with a string ensemble made up of musicians from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Civic Orchestra of Chicago and Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras during Sunday’s Orchestra Hall concert wrapping up the Youth in Music Festival. |
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Updated: June 17, 2011 12:31AM
The combine of Riccardo Muti, Yo-Yo Ma and the tireless staff and players of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra wrapped up their 11-day Youth in Music Festival Sunday having worked with hundreds of young people from Chicago and Mexico and recruiting the two first families of Illinois to their cause.
At a free noontime program at Orchestra Hall framed by the Children’s Choir of Morelia (in Central Mexico) and a multi-generational ensemble of Chicago instrumentalists, Gov. Quinn declared May 15 “Citizen Musician Day” in Illinois and told of a cello “lesson” he had received in January from Ma, who in addition to his busy international performance career is the creative consultant at the CSO, focused on youth and education.
Quinn, who was introduced to the festival and the CSO’s ongoing new Citizen Musician initiative by his companion, investment manager Monica L. Walker, a board member of the Chicago Children’s Choir, also brought along his “93 years young” mother, Eileen, and saluted the love of classical music she shared with her late husband.
Thirty festival events blanketed the city over the last two weeks — 11 of them in local schools and seven at sites of 16 area partner organizations. There were 18 live performances, CSO Association President Deborah F. Rutter told the crowd of young people, music teachers and patrons.
Muti, just before flying home to Italy, concluded his spring residency and inaugural season as CSO music director by recalling how when he was leading the Philadelphia Orchestra in the 1980s he had run into Muhammad Ali at an airport, on a promotional tour for a reissue of his autobiography. “In the copy that he gave me, “ Muti said, “he wrote, ‘Music is the heartbeat of the universe.’ And he added, ‘You are the greatest — and so am I!’ ” By that “he meant that you are the greatest for making and sharing music.” A hot-off-the-editing-program video then offered clips of Muti leading a joint rehearsal of young Chicago musicians with the Carlos Chavez Youth Orchestra of Mexico City.
Emotional salutes were offered to outgoing Chicago First Lady Maggie Daley, an honorary CSO trustee, for her work in youth arts education, including a moving letter from the CSO’s own first lady and fellow honorary trustee Valerie Solti. Ma presented her with a solo performance of Mark O’Connor’s “Appalachian Waltz.” And in perhaps the most unusual endorsement of the CSO program’s efforts, Daley; her daughter Nora; son Patrick, and at least one granddaughter, were joined by her husband Richard M. on his last full day as mayor doing two things he was almost never seen doing in his 22 years in office, attending an open event on a Sunday and singing along in public: all the verses of a new song, “Music Makers,” composed by a group of students working with CSO composer-in-residence Anna Clyne.
Andrew Patner is critic at large at WFMT-FM (98.7).
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