'Black Keys' shows Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra's outreach

 A capacity audience at Schrott Center for the Arts Saturday night got  to see the fullest expression yet of Joshua Thompson's status as "Creative Partner" of the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra.

Joshua Thompson curated and played piano.

The manifestation carried the promising title of "Black Keys: The Evolution of the Black Classical Arts." Lest there be any underestimation of the seriousness with which the word "evolution" was taken, the bulk of the program following intermission opened with stunning visual imagery evoking the development of the universe from the Big Bang on into the appearance of human beings in Africa. Thompson's recorded narrative sketched in the difficulty people of African descent have had historically in having an accepted place in composed music of a cultivated kind intended for re-creation in the concert hall: "classical," to use a term that in itself often seems a barrier.

The scope of  Thompson's vision was filled out by the use of the Kenyetta Dance Company through most of the concert's second half. The overriding message was to indicate that progress of the black race is linked to overall human progress, including the values that shaped Western classical music. 

The ICO reported that all 475 seats sold well in advance of the concert, and the audience reception

Kenyetta Dance Company added cultural content to show.

throughout the program demonstrated the feeling of high reward that likely everyone shared. The opening half focused on the polish and thorough preparation of the host ICO under music director Matthew Kraemer. After intermission, the dancers were given an array of musical accompaniments, all by black composers, through which to display their disciplined artistry. The choreography of artistic director Nicholas Owens was fitting in style and compatibility with rhythm and phrasing.

The occasional absorption into the classical mainstream permitted to black creative artists was illustrated by Coleridge-Taylor's "Petite Suite de Concert," with its trim English pastoral quality, contrasted with William Grant Still's more restless, occasionally distracted piece titled "Darker America," which easily allows for both the negative and the positive sides of the title's first word.

Between these two representative works came "Pieta," by Ulysses Kay, a frequently programmed mid-20th-century composer. The soft-spoken, expressively rich work for English horn and strings received a warm, well-proportioned account of the solo role from Pamela Ajango, a tenured member of the ICO.

Matthew Kraemer conducts the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra 

Kay commanded a lyrical gift that rarely turned to brooding. Still perhaps painted from a wider emotional palette and three more of his pieces made for a fine accompaniment to the flowing, radiant choreography Nicholas Owens came up with to bolster the historical narrative of music in context.

Via a classical-period symphony, the orchestra represented the Enlightenment sensibility that helped shape a composer of Caribbean origin who later became prominent in France as both musician and fencer: Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. To introduce Bologne to the audience, Thompson included slides with portraits and quotations from Diderot, Rousseau, and Voltaire. That indicated the cross-fertilization between black and white cultures throughout their coexistence. 

The down side, as James Baldwin and other commentators have observed, is that blacks historically have known a lot more about white lives than vice versa. There was  perhaps no more searing insight into revealing the hidden compromises and pain that victimization has caused black women in particular than Nina Simone's song "Four Women." On Saturday night that was one of several songs interpreted by PsyWrn Simone (AshLee Baskin). With Joshua Thompson's deft piano accompaniment, it was probably the most intense demonstration of her theatrical style, and it was as moving as anyone's memory might be of how Nina Simone recorded it decades ago.

"Black Keys" carried a message that was overall uplifting and indicative of progress, but a reminder as penetrating in its truthfulness as "Four Women" was certainly not out of place. The intensity was also delivered nonverbally with as much passion and worthy elaboration in Jared Thompson's soprano-sax improvisation on the "MLK" movement of Duke Ellington's "Three Black Kings," which climaxed this memorable concert.

[Joshua Thompson photo by Faith Blackwell; production photos by Benjy Rose]