Burleighhalle

Brahms, Beethoven and Burleigh? Erie’s native son get a long overdue local premier Friday night.

PREVIEW by John Chacona - Contributing writer
Thursday, May 10, 2007 / Visit at GoErie.com

Imagine living in Hamburg Germany, not New York, and not hearing the music of Brahms. Similarly, think what musical life in Bonn would be like without a note of Beethoven.

Sounds impossible, no? And both those august composers are rightly honored in their home-towns. Bonn’s concert hall and the orchestra that plays there both bear the name Beethovenhalle.

Yet in Erie, the music of Harry T. Burleigh is too seldom heard. And that’s a shame, because the old Negro spirituals he collected, transcribed, and arranged are the foundation stock of American music.

If you don’t believe me, ask Burleigh’s teacher and colleague, Anton Dvorak.

As to redress this hole in our local musical life, the Young Artists Debut Orchestra, under the direction of Frank Collura, will present the Erie premiere of two Burleigh arrangements for voice and orchestra, in a concert at the Mary D’Angelo Performing Arts Center at Mercyhurst College tomorrow night, that also includes a movement from a Vivaldi Violin Concerto to be played by Andrew Grunauer.

You know the tunes. “Go Down Moses” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” which will be sung by Savanity Davis, a voice student at Mercyhurst, are two of the most familiar melodies in the canon. But it’s the orchestrations that may provide the greatest interest.

“The way Burleigh uses the chords and the voicing of the instruments are unusual, and his modulations are unique. He doesn’t take you where you think he’ll go,” Collura told me on the phone last week. “This is clearly orchestration that came from his own genius.”

The project got underway, Collura said, when Charles Kennedy, the noted Erie vocalist and keeper of the Burleigh legacy, attended one of the orchestra’s concerts last year.

“About three months ago, Charles called Frank, and said that for over 10 years he’s been praying for an Erie performance of these original orchestrations of traditional spirituals,” said Jessie Collura, the conductor’s wife and the orchestra’s executive director.

She added that to her knowledge, these arrangements had been performed by orchestras in New York (by the Philharmonic), Houston and Toronto, but never in Erie.

“The publication date is sometime in the ‘20s,” Collura said. “But my guess is that he did these in the early part of the century.

“Go Down Moses’ is very heavy and thick. “Swing Low” is very light and transparent. There’s ethereal writing, especially in the strings.”

Student musicians, such as the ones who make up the Young Artists Debut Orchestra, surely embark on a musical career with the dream of someday making history.

Tomorrow night sooner than they ever thought possible, they’ll get their chance.