For the last 25 years, the Boston Landmarks Orchestra has brought free orchestral music to people across the city through its Summer Hatch Shell Concert Series.
The milestone earned them a nod from the Joy Beat. Music Director Chris Wilkins joined GBH All Things Considered host Arun Rath to talk all about the ensemble’s 25th anniversary celebration. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation:
Arun Rath: Wonderful to have you and I can’t believe it’s been 25 years. Although, I’m at an age where 25 years goes by super fast.
Chris Wilkins: Yes.
Rath: Tell us about how it has grown and changed over the years.
Wilkins: Well, it’s funny, I actually was one of the people that the founder, Charles Ansbacher, consulted about the orchestra way back when. And he said it’s going to be a top professional orchestra because also — relative to your introduction — yes, it provides music for Boston, which, you know, a lot of it otherwise is out in the western part of the state. But it also provides work to these great professional musicians who have less of it in the summer. So, that was part of the idea. But then he added in his phone call to me, “And we’re never going to charge admission for anything.” And I thought, “Wow, I mean, that’s ambitious.” And you just wonder how long that’s going to last, and here we are 25 years later. So it’s thrilling and obviously the mission itself has caught on.
Rath: And we’ll add to the things that you were talking about in terms of being a top-flight orchestra and musicians. One of the things I love about this — it’s the programming. It’s more adventurous than one might expect free concerts to be. Next week, you’ll be performing Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” but the version recomposed by Max Richter. I wonder if you could talk about the selection. You know, that’s sort of an unusual work that turned into a crowd-pleaser.
Wilkins: Right, and it’s become sort of a cross-genre pop hit. And you might know the Boston Ballet danced to it this past year in one of their greatest hits. I mean, so this is widely known music. But I think the idea is that, yes, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky appeal best and help with box office. I mean, we don’t have a box office, we don’t sell anything, but it helps drive audience. But it only helps drive audience amongst people who already know what Beethoven and Tchaikovsky are, which, year-after-year, is an ever-shrinking percentage of the population. So we also program in ways that appeal to people who like different kinds of music. And so we’ve performed, you know, music that relates to Haitian culture and Puerto Rican and Caribbean and Syrian and Armenian and Korean. So that’s part of it, and I think another part of it is that we try to program not just accessible music but perform in accessible ways. We’re very friendly, we’re very family-friendly. We encourage people to bring picnics but also their dogs out on the Esplanade. We tend to favor programs that have meaning for people in their lives.
We’ve worked with the New England Aquarium on climate change, Museum of Science. There’s often an element of storytelling or visual elements, so that’s part of it. And then the other thing, which you mentioned at the outset, is that we really do intend to be there for all Bostonians. We celebrate Boston the place and Boston the people, and consider this professional symphony orchestra to be an aspect of public art — available to everyone, free to everyone. We try to develop amenities, as it were, that would appeal to people from all different walks of life, and then we offer it free of charge. But of course, you also don’t expect your public parks to pay for themselves. So the challenge for us is to make the mission case strong enough that the philanthropic community gets excited about it enough to keep it going — and they certainly have.
Rath: I want to hear you talk more about some of the diverse composers that you were talking about— partly so I don’t spend the whole time talking about the “Verdi Requiem,” which I will. But you were talking about composers that we’re not hearing even in the concert hall that much.
Wilkins: That’s right. And actually, a point I’ve made this summer — since it’s our 25th anniversary, but it’s also America 250 — is that Boston has played a really important role for a century and a half in developing careers, both as performers and as composers, of people from different backgrounds that are not central white European background. So the New England Conservatory and the Boston Conservatory in particular were very welcoming to students of color going back to the 19th century, and that had a major impact. A big name now is Florence Price, and we’ve done a lot of music of Florence Price. We’ve done even more music of William Grant Still, probably the most prominent Black American composer in our history. We’ve performed 14 different works by William Grant Still, but he also was student of the president — the director of the New England Conservatory at the time, George Chadwick.
But we also do a lot of contemporary work so that the composers can be here or be involved. This particular program that you mentioned with the Max Richter version of the Vivaldi “Four Seasons” features work by this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner Gabriela Lena Frank based on Peruvian, Chinese, Lithuanian, Jewish heritage that’s in her family.
So I think that, you know, we often say, “Yes, I like the music, but I don’t see that it reflects me or my heritage.” We’re trying to change that in a really fundamental way.
Rath: I’m super-excited about the “Verdi Requiem” because that is one of my all-time favorite pieces. And when I saw that on the schedule at first, I was thinking, “Wow, outside? Huh.” The more I thought about it, I thought, “Wow, outside, the ‘Verdi Requiem,’ that big, amazing piece about death.” I can actually imagine it.
Wilkins: Well, there are not that many pieces in the repertoire that just stop you in your tracks and are just filled from beginning to end, 82 minutes of “Oh my God” moments; but that’s the “Verdi Requiem” as you described it. It is big and it’s appropriate for the Esplanade because of the size of the space out there. As you know, there’s a moment where the last trumpet sounds and the audience will be surrounded by images of the trumpets sounding from behind them, behind the Oval, as they’re sitting on the grass. It’s incredibly dramatic music and by the way — speaking of big — we have the largest natural skin bass drum in the world on hand to perform the “Dies Irae,” that most famous heart-pounding moment. The Harvard Marching Band bass drum will be delivering those absolutely spellbinding, crashing notes. And one other thing I want to say about this is that we’re featuring the One City Choir, which we’ve done now for many years, and it’s, I think, a wonderful symbol of our programming style, which is that we welcome people from all over Boston and beyond to participate as members of the chorus, the One City Choir, not auditioned, just y’all come and we’ll train you up in the “Verdi Requiem.”
So that’s a wonderful program that we’ve had for many years. But there’s also an anchor chorus, which is one of the most prestigious in the region, the Cantata Singers. They’re making their Landmarks debut this — for the “Verdi Requiem,” but we’ve wanted to work with them for many years, so we’re very pleased that they’re with us.
If you would like to make a nomination for the Joy Beat, leave us a voicemail at 617-300-BEAT [2328].
