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As President John F. Kennedy (far right) advanced plans for a National Cultural Center in Washington, DC,

which were formally begun by President Eisenhower in 1958, he regularly sought collaboration with Leonard

Bernstein (far left), who had begun his tenure as music director of the New York Philharmonic in 1958, the first

American-born and trained conductor to hold that position. From Kennedy’s Inauguration, where Bernstein led

the National Symphony Orchestra in a fanfare he composed for the occasion, the Bernsteins were permanently

on the First Couple’s guest list. In November 1962, Kennedy organized “An American Pageant of the Arts”

as a fundraiser for the cultural center—naturally, Bernstein was the Master of Ceremonies for the star-studded

evening, which featured the US debut of a 7-year-old cellist by the name of Yo-Yo Ma and his 11-year-old

sister on piano (below). After the cultural center was announced to be named after Kennedy in his memory,

his widow, Jacqueline, asked Bernstein to be its music director. Unable to make the time commitment, Bernstein

declined, instead accepting a commission to create a new work for its opening—the project that became

Mass.

This transformation of perceptions

has been especially pronounced when it

comes to

Mass

, which will be the center-

piece of the more than a dozen concerts

paying tribute to Bernstein the con-

ductor, composer, educator, and social

activist that course through the present

summer season at Ravinia. When Welz

Kauffman, the president and CEO of

Ravinia, engaged internationally recog-

nized conductor Marin Alsop to be the

festival’s first-ever artistic curator for the

series of events about five years ago, they

immediately agreed that

Mass

should be

the key item of this first of the multiyear

celebration. Alsop calls it nothing less

than one of the most important works of

the th century.

“Bernstein was the greatest storyteller

ever,” says Alsop, now 1, one of Bern-

stein’s last protégés and his only female

one. “Everybody loved it when he would

start a story. It was fantastic. And this

[

Mass

] would be the ultimate story for

Bernstein. This is a story with a huge

moral. This is the search for truth, the

search for the meaning in life.”

This rare performance of

Mass

—the

first by either Ravinia or the Chicago

Symphony Orchestra—will take place

July , with the Alsop leading 7

singers and musicians, including the

1-voice adult choir Vocality, an on-

stage children’s chorus of  from Chi-

cago Children’s Choir (another  sing

from the wings), and  members of the

Highland Park High School Marching

Band, along with a cast of two dozen as

the Street Chorus and Altar Children

plus baritone Paulo Szot in the central

role of the Celebrant. “The biggest chal-

lenge is just harnessing all those forces,”

says director Kevin Newbury. “There are

so many people involved. Just the sheer

scale of it is a little overwhelming the

first time you do it.”

But Newbury, who made his Lyric

Opera of Chicago debut just four years

ago, has staged the work often enough

that he barely has to consult the score

anymore. He and Alsop worked together

on

Mass

in , when the Baltimore

Symphony Orchestra and a group of

collaborators performed it in Baltimore,

as well as at Carnegie Hall and the

Kennedy Center, and recorded it for the

Naxos label. In addition, he did another

version with the Philadelphia Orchestra

in 1.

with the

Kennedys during their

White House years, and

Jacqueline Kennedy On-

assis commissioned him

to write a major work

for the inauguration of

the arts center that was

to be named in honor

of her late first husband.

The Jewish composer chose to create a

daring, forward-looking variation on

the Roman Catholic Mass, subtitling it

A Theater Piece for Singers, Players, and

Dancers

. In keeping with his wide-rang-

ing musical interests, he fused rock,

jazz, and Broadway idioms with 1-tone

serialism and a host of other sacred and

secular classical traditions.

“The thing about Bernstein is that

he really was the model of the artist-cit-

izen,” Newbury says. “And he really

engaged with everything that was going

on in the world around him. And I

think

Mass

is really his magnum opus

about the way he saw the world.” Rooted

in the socio-political tumult of the late

19s and early ’7s, the work confronts

a crisis of faith and takes audiences on

a communal journey to a reimagined

world of renewed peace and spirituality.

“I think it was his Mahler Eight in a

way,” Alsop says, referring to Mahler’s

Eighth Symphony, the so-called “Sym-

phony of a Thousand,” a vocal and

orchestral hybrid that extols the eternal

human spirit. “It was his outreach. It was

work about inclusion, about embracing

[others]. It was also a very American

experience for him, because he was

close with Kennedy. He was close with

JOHN F. KENNEDY PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM/NARA (TOP)

RAVINIA MAGAZINE | JULY 23 – AUGUST 5, 2018

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