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Coming up, a composer dives into northeast Ohio neighborhoods to write new music for the Cleveland Orchestra.

Plus, a Columbus artist creates work by connecting with her ancestors.

And an Oberlin College jazz prof jams with a few of his top students.

Hello and welcome once again to your arts and culture hangout.

APPLAUSE I'm ideastream public Media's Kabir Bhatia.

Chicago born composer and flutist Alison Loggins.

Hull was shocked when she learned Fran's vocals are most wanted her to write music for the Cleveland Orchestra.

Now is the orchestra's 11th composer fellow.

Loggins Hall is immersing herself in the Cleveland community to find inspiration.

The Cleveland Orchestra reached out to my team and initially asked for some scores.

So I thought, Oh, maybe their artistic team is considering like programing something of mine and some concert.

And then several, several weeks later, the invitation to the fellowship came and I was just like, Is this really happening?

It's a huge opportunity for me as a composer, just being able to write for this group and to add to my own catalog.

I am very artistically, very much a departure from other composers who have held this position.

Truth be told, there hasn't been that many Americans, there hasn't been that many women and people, from my perspective in life, experienced.

And so the original can you see, was a nonet that was commissioned by the New Jersey Symphony, and I was asked if I could write a piece that was in response to the Star Spangled Banner.

This was during COVID.

This was during George Floyd.

So I decided to do like a very long, stretched out quotation of thematic material from the Star-Spangled Banner.

And I tried to do a play on the lyrics.

Can you see?

Because I'm thinking about the prompt for the piece, you know, and this in the lyrics of The Star-Spangled Banner, Like, can you see in the home of the brave and the land of the free and and thinking about, you know, the validity of that, or if we're really living up to these these words?

France asked me to do an arrangement of that for the orchestra, a larger, fuller version.

So the piece was shifting into a more optimistic tone, and I decided to add some more material, a new section.

And it's very flute centric, very flute heavy, which truthfully is a little bit of nepotism.

I'm a flutist and I love the flute section here, so that was my way of just being like, Here you go, guys.

And then I ended it on this really nice happy chord.

It just kind of landed there.

And I love how it ends.

It just ended up taking a very different turn from the original, which I thought was kind of cool.

I was very, very excited and a little anxious, but I so relieved when I got there and it all worked.

I just felt very like scene, I guess you could say, as a composer.

And I also really felt genuinely like they were enjoying it too, which is awesome.

I didn't know much about Cleveland itself, but I did know it was home to this enormous, fantastic orchestra.

I was really curious to learn about this place.

After a lot of discussion about how this fellowship can look, I proposed really centering it and working with the community here and the people here and learning about the history of Cleveland.

I will say that over time I really, really learned and come to value the importance of that willingness to be so open and so able to listen and to hear people's stories and to go where they are going into their communities.

Last season I went to Cleveland for the Arts.

I worked with a number of high school students, instrumentalists and singers, and we divvied up into several different smaller groups.

And each I worked with each group on creating their own compositions, so I gave them the prompt to work together and think of either a story or a theme or something that was significant to them.

As it relates to Cleveland, as it relates to this place.

And I think we had maybe four or five different groups and each one did something very, very different, but all inspired by something that had to do with Cleveland.

And they all gave me permission to use this music to reference in the larger work that I'm creating for the orchestra, which will premiere next May.

That's how I'm compositionally integrating their voices into this larger piece.

Our partners this season, which we worked together on developing a chamber music series, a collaborative chamber music series, we called it in community, and it was an opportunity to have some of their community musicians play alongside trio players and our partners.

This year was the H-k Bender School, Fatima Family Center and Karamu House.

All very different organizations, very different histories, very different places in Cleveland with the band Daughters School.

That was the first time I ever heard the band Dora, which is a Ukrainian folk instrument string instrument.

It sounds very much like a combination of a guitar and a harp.

It's very delicate sounding and it's very angelic sounding, and it's a beautiful instrument living in that sound world and thinking about other pieces that would complement that instrument.

So from a musicological standpoint, that was great.

My favorite memory from being with the community at that time, a family center.

I had an afternoon that I spent with members of their senior choir who we collaborated with in our concert with them, and they sang and it reminded me so much of my own grandmother.

They shared a lot of their stories, either growing up and raising their family and Hough.

I just felt so grateful for how generous they were and their sharing and just how sweet they were.

So it just felt like very warm and just homey.

And then lastly, we karamu That was a great way to to do some more interdisciplinary work.

We did a program where we worked with some of their actors and dancers.

That was a great opportunity to also work with artists and musicians necessarily, but who worked in other mediums as well, and how to make that work with the orchestra members.

It's been a mixed bag, but I'll say overall, what's been like the thread in all of them?

Everybody has been like, So welcoming and hospitable and flexible in the orchestra to everybody.

We've had packed houses, we've brought in people from all over the city.

It's been really, really great.

This whole experience has really shown me the power in that and that a symphony orchestra, an institution like this can do something like that and it can be incredibly impactful.

And I'd like to believe that at the end of this fellowship we can look at the work that we've done here, and it'll be a continued practice, hopefully here, but also hopefully in other orchestras or other similar arts institutions.

That's my hope.

That's what this is going to mean for me.

Really.

Alison Loggins Hall's culminating composition for the Cleveland Orchestra gets its world premiere next spring.

We're off to Columbus, where the family history of artist Antoinette Savage inspires her to no end.

As you'll see, her sculptures become an artistic link to her ancestors.

This is my family.

This is what I call my family room.

These are the people that I loved.

Love me.

My heart is in honor of my ancestors.

Inspirations from God designed by the ancestors.

So God inspires me.

The ancestors give me the ideas in terms of what stories they want me to tell.

I have one of those accordion strings, and they are right there in my stereo.

So when I go in my studio, one of the first things I do out right now and then I walk around, I'm like, okay, ancestors, you know, I need you to tell me who am I supposed to be talking about?

I'm the embodiment of who they were, who they wanted to be.

So we're looking at the dawn at a time when black people had land.

A lot of the slave owners who lands were confiscated by the union were given to the black folks.

That period and shortly thereafter that when they started returning everything back.

So those are the time periods for me.

My art, I call them Slinkys.

They have very long, scaly elan and I gave it an X.

It's for me, it's the regal ness.

You know, they're up there proud.

They're willowy, which means they can move my pieces.

Talk to you.

They don't have faces.

And because they don't have faces.

However I dress them gives you the persona of who they are.

Without faces, I have to make them move so their arms may not move.

But you've got to allow colors.

You know, you've got the position of the arms.

Someone's holding a purse, someone might be holding a fishing pole.

But there's in all of my pieces, there's some form of movement.

I'm proud of them.

I'm proud of where I came from.

I'm proud of the fact that they were able to take nothing and make it into something.

They take the scraps of the pig, you know, and make the most beautiful, tasty, yummy.

Hmm.

Mm hmm.

Make you want to smack your mama food.

You know, that is just a gift.

And what you'll see in my artwork, it's repurposed.

It's repurposed fabric.

It's repurposed rusty items, you know?

So it's.

I'm taking what they taught me, Work with what's readily available to you.

And this is what I call putting on the skin.

This is the part that I like the most in the least.

Because what it does, this is when a piece starts talking to me and I begin to get a feel for who they're becoming.

You know, generally, I'm playing some really nice jazz up in here or some oops, some nice African music or some old school like felonious.

This is a little bill night.

She was the midwife.

She was also the root woman.

You know, so when a child had to be birthed, she burst them.

When someone was sick.

She had her medicines in her sack and she was a woman.

So she had to walk with that cane.

So she's there's just a simplicity about her.

Her cane in her bag.

So she's the woman this constantly walking, you know, to wherever it is she needs to go when she couldn't get a ride.

Is here is in honor of Oscar Micheaux, who was the black film director.

When I made him, I cried when I made all of them.

It's hardly special.

Excuse me.

I did not realize I had my gift until 2007.

You never told me I would be an artist.

When I see what comes out of me, I know what that means.

I know it's my ancestors talking to me.

I have a gift in this gift.

It's just all inspiring.

I didn't know I had skin.

So when I see something, it comes out of me.

It makes me feel special.

It makes me feel chosen.

It makes me want to do more.

Makes me want to learn more.

And I will say this.

And you can cut it out or whatever, if you need to.

I'm bipolar, so.

And I'm also an incest survivor.

So when I see what comes out of me, I see the possibilities of what I can be, what anyone can be.

Just because something happens to you doesn't mean you have to stay in a place or live in that place.

So where I'm at now in my art is just like I did that, you know, I did that.

On the next applause, Martinez says, but is shares his experiences dancing and choreographing for film and stage, including Jesus Christ Superstar at the Board House Theater.

Plus kids from the Oberlin College Conservatory break out a new work by a contemporary composer.

All that and more on the next round of applause You can watch past episodes of APPLAUSE with the PBS app.

Cincinnati's King Records is a historic R&B label that helped launch the careers of musicians like James Brown.

Let's learn more from the artistic team behind an original musical about King Records, staged at the Cincinnati Playhouse.

King Records is a record label that started here in Cincinnati, Ohio.

It was founded by Syd Nathan in the forties, produced records in the fifties and sixties, early seventies.

It was James Brown's first record label.

It was the record label of great artists like Hank Ballard and Freddie King, Little Willie John.

It went from absolutely nothing, run by a guy who didn't know anything about making records to the sixth largest record label in the world in the flash of a moment.

I mean, it's incredible story of a company that came and went but had a lasting impact on everything we know about rock, blues, country, American music.

I've known K.J.

Sanchez for years, and when I had the good fortune to come to Cincinnati and take this position as artistic director, I invited her to come here to do a quintessentially Cincinnati story.

We didn't really know what that was, but she arrived in town about six years ago and we started asking around and we kept hearing over and over, over and over King Records.

And I was just like, you know, Googled it, and 15 minutes later called him and said, Yes, please.

Blake is such a great artistic director to work with because he trusts you.

And so he's not he doesn't get in anybody's hair micromanaging anything.

But he also has a really good, great eye.

And so he comes in for a particular run through or in the development of this piece.

He has an ability to give me a handful of notes that help me adjust the entire play by took a couple of years of just just create just creating a pile of resource material, transcriptions from interviews, research, a catalog of music.

And then I look for the heart of my piece.

I figure out how to put a frame around it.

I figure out who are my key individuals.

And I try to bring balance some joy.

One of the first things that emerged when I was putting together this story was what it was like to be a studio musician in King Records.

So I have to ask myself, can I write a play that can only be done as a play?

It can't do the same things that a documentary film can do and a documentary film you can be maybe more true to journalistic principles.

But with making a play, I have to develop my own ethical compass, you know?

And I do have a set of rules.

I do have my own compass and I do define what I feel is ethical and unethical.

So that first day, the ritual of the director giving a speech and the designers showing the set and costumes is informative, but it's also your first chance to inspire everybody and invite them to be as passionate about the subject as you are.

The development of King Records is the backdrop, but the play is really about particular things that are interesting to me as an artist.

The play is about making music.

The music direction developed really organically.

And then we had a long short list of our favorite songs, and then we went through the story to find the songs that were emotionally appropriate for those moments.

After that, Richard started working with Phil Rundle, the production manager here, figuring out what the instrumentation was.

You know, little things like should we have an organ?

Should we have an upright piano?

Should we have a grand piano?

Thinking about how the music is going to live in this room, because this room has very particular a very particular sound quality.

And what we want to do with the piece is we want to be as authentic to the time as possible.

And what was that?

With the scenic designer, there's this balance between artistic gesture and practical needs and I think the same holds true with all of the designers, that that's what they're balancing, is they're all really great artists in their own right.

And so their design is an artistic interpretation of what I'm putting in the play.

They're all incredibly committed to the show.

It's it's pretty spectacular.

The actors come in every morning with K.J.

was working on this section last night back at my apartment, and I said, What if we do this?

And so two of the designers, it's always on their minds.

And I'll get random texts from from Rachel Healey, the costume designer of like, Oh, I just thought of this.

What if we add this one splash of color here?

What if when Syd Nathan turns into Bill Brown, What if there's a hat that's thrown in?

We do have characters turning into other characters in the play, too, which will.

It might give the historians a heart attack, but we're hoping they're well, they'll survive the journey to be able to share these stories with audiences.

It definitely is a labor of love on my part as well.

I just feel like everyone has a beautiful story to tell.

As long as you take some time to listen to it.

Representation is a very important thing to all of us right now.

I'm not intending to get it wrong.

I know there will I will get it wrong in some ways because you just you just can't be perfect and satisfy everybody's agendas and needs.

But I do feel that way.

And responsibility to represent it as best as I can.

But it's just it's just a really good story and great music.

So I'm also just having a blast working on this show.

Since you're watching, it's safe to assume you're a fan of the arts in Northeast Ohio.

So why not sign up for our free award winning newsletter, The to Do List.

Find out more online at Arts dot Ideastream Dawg.

Okay.

It's time to wind things down on this round of applause.

Thanks for watching.

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bashir.

As we say, our goodbyes.

Here's northeast Ohio sax man Chris Coles performing at Cleveland's Bob Stop with a few of his students from Oberlin College.

Enjoy.

Production of applause and ideastream.

Public media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.