• Cumberland Children's Chorus Featured on February 7 Concert
• I Dream of Peace
• Robert Jager, composer
• Preview Luncheon
• From the President of the Board
• THE CONDUCTOR'S NOTES
• February Concert Sold Out - Parents Still Hoping for Tickets
• BSO Education Committee Plans Community Projects

The Bryan Symphony Orchstra at TTU thanks
Bank of Putnam County
and
Cumberland County Bank
for sponsoring the February 8 concert

• Preview Lecture at 2:00 p.m.
• Symphony T-Shirts on Sale: $10.00

Cumberland Children's Chorus Featured on February 7 Concert

The Cumberland Children's Chorus will present Robert Jager's I Dream of Peace and Debussy's Noel des Enfants Qui N'ont Plus de Maisons during the February 7 Bryan Symphony Orchestra's concert.

The chorus is directed by Linda Ferreira, assisted by Mitzi Groom, Associate Director, and Clarissa Miller.

The choral music education and performance program is open to all young singers in grades 3-12 who live in the Upper Cumberland region of Middle Tennessee. Emphasis is placed on development of musicianship and vocal techniques through the singing of choral music from many centuries.

Admission to the chorus is based on interest, enthusiasm, commitment , and the desire to experience and express great music ideas. The choral experience allows young singers the opportunity to work with conductors, voice specialists, composers and instrumentalists, and other choral singers in a variety of collaborative projects.

The chorus has been the recipient of a Reader's Digest/Meet the Composer Grant, received an award for excellence by the National Parks and Recreation Association, and was named to the Cultural Olympics. They have performed with The Cluster Pluckers, Patsy Montana, The Gregg Smith Singers, The Cumberland Woodwind Quintet, the Miami Choral Society and the Stetson University Children's Chorus.

Members of the chorus have been chosen to participate in Honor Choirs and Festivals in Washington, D. C., San Diego, Chicago, and London, England. In March, 1999, the chorus will perform at the United Nations as the highlight of their concert tour to Washington, D. C. and New York City. Jager's I Dream of Peace headlines the group's concert repertoire. In May, 2000, the chorus will celebrate its 10th birthday.

I Dream of Peace

1993, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) published an important book, I Dream of Peace: Images of War by Children of Former Yugoslavia. This book contains drawings, letters, and poems from schools and refugee camps in former Yugoslavia. The children represented in the book reveal the hopes and fears of thousands of children from the region whose world has been shattered by the death and destruction of war.

Composer Robert Jager had been considering text sources for a work he wanted to write for children and orchestra. The voices of the children of former Yugoslavia seemed to jump from the book. With permission from UNICEF, Jager began composing.

"I do not want to grow old while still a child. . . . Like Anne Frank fifty years ago, we wait for peace. She did not live to see it. Will we? . . . . War is the saddest word that flows from my quivering lips. . . . . My father is a Croat, my mother is a Serb, but I don't know who I am. . . . . Where has our laughter gone? Where is our happiness? . . . . I send you this message: Don't ever hurt the children. They are not guilty of anything. We are children without a country and without hope. . . . . If I were president, the tanks would be playhouses for the kids. All the world's children would sleep in peace unbroken by alerts or by shooting. . . . . I beg you in the name of the Bosnian children never to allow this to happen to you or to people anywhere else. . . . . When I close my eyes I dream of peace."

Robert Jager, composer

Robert Jager has over one hundred published works for band, chorus, orchestra, and various chamber combinations. His I Dream of Peace was premiered at the 1998 American Choral Directors Association Southern Division meeting in Charleston, SC.

Composer Jager was born in Binghamton, New York, and received his education at the University of Michigan. For four years he served in the U. S. Navy as Staff Arranger at the Armed Forces School of Music. Currently, he is Professor of Music and Director of Composition and Theory at Tennessee Tech.

He has received commissions from the U. S. Marine, Air Force, Army, and Army Field Bands; the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra; and the Universities of Michigan, Arkansas, Illinois, Purdue, and Nebraska Wesleyan.

He is the only three-time winner of the American Bandmasters Association's "Ostwald Award." In addition, he has won the "Roth Award" of the National School Orchestra Association; the American School Band Directors Association's "Volkwein Award"; the "Friends of Harvey Gaul Award"; as well as numerous others. In 1997, he was the recipient of the prestigious Caplenor Faculty Research Award at Tennessee Tech.

From the President of the Board

The February 7 concert is sponsored jointly by the Bank of Putnam County and the Cumberland County Bank. We appreciate their support and encourage you to thank them next time you are in one of their banks.

THE CONDUCTOR'S NOTES

It might seem odd to place Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber with music focused upon images of war and hopes for peace as sung by children's chorus.

At least for me, they belong together, partly in context of this century's at times rather tortured history and partly for purely musical purposes.

In the 1930's, Hindemith's masterful music to Mathis der Mahler was banned by the Nazis. This political act led to the resignation of the Berlin Philharmonic's Music Director from his post. This resignation was an act of conscience by a musician who thought that politics and art must operate independently of one another. Somewhat naive about the ways of the world particularly the sinister regime in which he found himself - Furtwanger later bowed to political pressure, and continued to conduct the Philharmonic during the Second World War (sometimes in the presence of Hitler himself), but he never assumed the title of Music Director again as long as the Nazis were in power. After the war, his career was forever tainted by his decision to stay in Germany during the war. Indeed, a sense of tragedy can be heard in the recordings of his performances both during and after the war. The artist must have felt inner conflicts as he realized the ramifications of his decision to stay in Germany and act on behalf of its culture even as its contemporary politicians acted as barbarians.

As for Hindemith, he soon left Germany for the United States where he taught at Yale and influenced a generation of American composers who benefited from his teaching, lectures, and study of his many new compositions. His music from the 1930's onward looked back to the Baroque Period for its inspiration, and Hindemith developed theories of harmony and counterpoint which place his art in the line of German composers from Bach through Reger, even as he came to grips with the implications of musical practices of the Twentieth Century. Hindemith is, then, conscious of history, active as a continuance of history, and even comparatively conservative in his mature language with respect to history. This is the very language which was banned by the Nazis.

We have a tendency to think of war as the destruction of things: buildings, bridges, and other objects which allow for the continuance of war-making potential. Of course, we all know the human cost as well, and the poetry in the Debussy and the Jager works speaks poignantly to that subject. I wonder if we think of the cultural costs; the architectural treasury, the intellectual treasury, the cultural integrity of a war-making society, the loss of history. When the Nazis began burning books and banning art which did not meet their political agenda, they embarked on a path which could make Auschwitz possible - rising ashes of books, art, and human beings melding into a single act of murderous destruction.

In a book I recently read, Symphonic Metamorphosis on themes by Carl Maria von Weber is described as being full of "optimism, joy and vitality." To write such a thing during the cataclysm of the Nazi regime is more than simply to continue to make art. It is a statement of the human spirit's capacity to rise, Phoenix-like from the ashes born of hate. It is a reminder of our capacity to believe - even when the events of the day look bleak. I hope you'll join us on a journey which, even as it includes despair, always dreams of peace.