"Architecture Inspires Chicago Sinfonietta’s Latest Program" - Chicago Sun-Times

Chicago Sun-Times previews "City-Scapes" and "Aqua", including a brief interview.Sure, the Chicago Sinfonietta regularly performs works by such classical standard-bearers as Tchaikovsky and Copland, but the plucky ensemble also likes to stretch beyond typical repertoire and explore the new, forgotten and ignored.Indeed, music director Mei-Ann Chen and the orchestra were honored for their derring-do last year by the League of American Orchestras with a prestigious ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming.The Sinfonietta continues its musical adventures June 8 and 9 with “City-Scapes,” a thematic program featuring as its centerpiece a suite of newly commissioned short works inspired by four of Chicago’s iconic pieces of architecture.After the conceiving the idea for the suite in partnership with the Chicago Architecture Foundation, the orchestra turned to noted composer Jennifer Higdon to act as a kind of “curator” for the project, which is titled “ChiScape.”Her main task was choosing the four diverse emerging composers who each wrote a 4- to 6-minute musical evocation of a landmark chosen from a list provided by the foundation.“Because I’m around so many young composers and I try to keep up with what everyone is doing, Mei-Ann asked me if I could figure out who might write in a way that it would all go together,” Higdon said.After the pieces were finished, she checked them over and decided on the most suitable playing order.“I was impressed by what they’ve come up with, because I thought, ‘How do you capture the essence of a building in a piece?’ Higdon said. “It’s a clever idea.”Among the four composers selected was Vivian Fung, 38, a Canadian native who earned her doctorate at the Juilliard School in New York City. Her Violin Concerto won a 2013 JUNO Award (the Canadian version of a Grammy) for classical composition of the year.Fung decided to musically evoke the Aqua Tower, an 82-story skyscraper designed by Jeanne Gang. The structure at 225 N. Columbus Drive has a distinctive, undulating exterior that suggests waves.“There were a few buildings that I was interested in, but this really caught my eye,” she said.Fung was able to discuss the skyscraper’s conception with Gang via a series of e-mails, and she bought the architect’s book, “Reveal,” which includes conceptual sketches of the structure.“If I were to do this for every piece, I don’t think I could do it,” she said of focusing on architecture. “But for that particular building, I was just so curious and so thrilled that I could talk to Jeanne and get an inside look at the process, and it blended nicely with my composition.”The composer wrote the piece, simply titled “Aqua,” in about two months. She found that the composition’s concise length actually made it harder to write.“To really pinpoint everything you want to say in five minutes, for me, was quite challenging,” Fung said, “because I could see it could easily becoming a bigger work.”The Canadian premiere of “Aqua” has already been set for the spring of 2014 when the Toronto Symphony is scheduled to perform it in three cities.The other three sets of composers and buildings featured in “ChiScape” are:Armando Bayolo, Modern Wing, Art Institute of Chicago, Renzo PianoJonathan Holland, S.R. Crown Hall, Ludwig Mies van der RoheChris Rogerson, Jay Pritzer Pavilion, Millennium Park, Frank Gehry.Also on the program are a selection of other urban-related works, including the final movement of Michael Daugherty’s “Metropolis Symphony,” the second movement of Higdon’s “City Scape” and an orchestral arrangement of Duke Ellington’s “Harlem.”-Kyle MacMillan, Chicago Sun-TimesSource.