(melodic chiming music) (upbeat music) - [Matt] Ellen Blalock gives voice to marginalized communities.

Jose Daniel Flores-Caraballo gives a preview of Albany Pro Musica's upcoming season.

And hear a glorious performance from Albany Pro Musica.

It's all ahead on this episode of AHA, A House for Arts.

(upbeat music ends) - [Program Announcer] Funding for AHA has been provided by your contribution and by contributions to the WMHT Venture Fund.

Contributors include the Leo Cox Beach Philanthropic Foundation, Chad and Karen Opalka Robert and Doris Fischer Malesardi and the Robison Family Foundation.

- At M & T Bank, we understand that the vitality of our communities is crucial to our continued success.

That's why we take an active role in our community.

M & T Bank is pleased to support WMHT programming that highlights the arts and we invite you to do the same.

(mid tempo music) (mid tempo music ends) - Hi, I'm Matt Rogowicz and this is AHA, A House for Arts a place for all things creative.

Ellen Blalock is an artist with a mission.

She works to tell the stories of people that need to be heard and represented and she does this with photography, video, drawing, and fiber.

I took a trip to Syracuse to learn more.

(gentle electronic music) - I am a narrative artist and documentarian.

As a narrative artist, what I do is I like to work with stories, stories from the African diaspora mainly focusing on African American experiences.

People will probably know me as a quilter but I surprise people and tell them that my favorite medium is video.

And it's all, it's centered around with telling stories.

(gentle electronic music continues) I was hired by a producer to go to one of the world's largest refugee camps in the desert of Kenya.

I followed a young man back to reconnect with his mother.

He was brought here as a preteen and he had not seen his mother in probably over 15 years.

That work was very important.

I followed him, reconnecting with his mother getting that first hug.

He was concerned the whole time how his mother would take him, if she loved him.

Why did she give me up?

And he had all those questions answered.

The film was never made.

It's going through some, I guess, litigation problems on who owns the rights to the footage.

But I did work out with the producer that the photographs would be mine.

(gentle music) Another piece I can talk about.

A few years ago, while being a journalist for the Post-Standard, I kept on running into young men who were premature fathers, okay?

They're a father at 16 years old.

And they were talking about their experiences.

So I said, hmm, we keep on doing stories at the newspaper on single moms, but nobody is talking to these young fathers on what it is for them to be a father.

So I decided to do a art piece on that.

I interview fathers and I asked them all those kinds of questions.

Who are you?

How do you take care of your children?

What do you see for yourself?

All those kinds of questions just to give them a voice.

The photographs that I had taken with these fathers, I am imagining years from now, this child will grow up and they will have this picture that is proof that this man loved me.

In my life, not in my life, this man loved me from the womb.

(gentle instrumental music) (gentle instrumental music ends) One day I asked the family historian, Aunt Garnet did women in our family make quilts.

She says, yes, but somebody came along and took them.

A very polite woman.

I translated that and somebody came along and stole our family quilts.

So one day, someone saw this photo album I did for my family.

And they're like, Ellen, I love this photo album.

Can I do an exhibition with it?

We can blow these pages up and put 'em on the wall.

And I'm like, this is a work of art.

Why, and you wanna give me an exhibition, right?

They're like, yes.

Said, so when do I do quilts?

Quilts?

Have you ever did a quilt before?

No, but I know how to sew.

So every stitch I do on a quilt is in honor of the women in my family who have quilted generations before me.

And it is to replace the quilts that have been taken and stolen from my family.

So that's why in a lot of the quilts I do are family stories.

(gentle orchestral music) This quilt is one of my first quilts.

It's a lot of people's favorite.

It's called the Angel Quilt.

My cousin Thomasina, I interviewed her for the family album.

And I said, tell me something about your mother because I want to, you know, 'cause I wanna give her a page in the book.

She says, my mother came to me in a dream and it was these two angels that I followed up the stairs in this dream.

And the door was open.

My mother was sitting on the edge of the bed.

And she was well.

She died of cancer.

And when she discovered she had cancer, it was terminal.

So her mother said to her, I know you miss me, and I know you miss the mother-daughter relationship that we had.

But that is going to continue but this time you are going to be the mother.

What my cousin was telling me that at that time she didn't know she was pregnant.

She was probably about maybe two weeks pregnant when she had this dream.

And sure enough, you know, a few months later she found out she was pregnant.

But her mother came to her in the dream to tell her that she was gonna have a little girl.

And the quilt, the woman that is holding the baby is my Aunt Curly.

That baby is Thomasina's daughter.

And those two butterflies?

Those are the angels.

(soft symphonic music) I usually start with a drawing and I might sketch out a little bit in the beginning.

And then when I get an idea on how I wanna tell a story then I will draw it on a paper and that will become my pattern.

And what I do with that large piece of paper is sections that I have drawn, I just would trace that and then the tracings I cut into fabric.

And then I would sew that down.

It's applique work, and that is my traditional quilting.

(bright instrumental music) I want to be able to share my work.

I want to be able to love the work that I produce.

I want be able to see the work that I produce, which is hard.

The reason why I do the type of work I do is because I like to stimulate dialogue.

I like people to reflect by using my work and to go inside themselves and find or find a little bit more information about themselves.

That's what happened a lot of times in the room with my quilts, people are discovering or rediscovering their own family stories.

And that's kind of fun.

(low symphonic music fades) - Albany Pro Musica is Chorus in Residence at the historic Troy Savings Bank Music Hall.

So what can we look forward to this season?

Jade sat down with Albany Pro Music's Opalka family artistic director, Jose Daniel Flores-Caraballo to find out.

- Hey Jose, welcome to AHA.

I'm so excited to speak to you again.

- Oh, thank you.

It's wonderful to be here.

- Well, last time we spoke, you had this amazing international choral festival working with high schoolers in the region.

And how did it go?

Can you give us a little bit of background?

- Oh, I tell you, you know there was so much anticipation built into that.

It was nine years of planning for that.

And I can, you know, enough to say that it was beyond our best expectations.

We're so happy with the result.

We had 150 students from across the United States and Canada.

We had a world class faculty.

We had two world premieres.

This festival was all funded by a grant that paid full tuition room and board for each participant students.

It's basically unheard of.

Albany Pro Musica went there to perform together with, we had other three visiting choirs including a professional choir from Canada another choir from Puerto Rico, from my homeland.

So, you know, it was fantastic.

- Now, could you give us a little bit of background?

Like, how did you find these students?

- So we advertised nationally, internationally, actually.

So there was great interest.

We went to all these conferences, choral conferences and there was great interest because of the quality of the educational offering that we had and the quality of the faculty.

- And did you get any feedback from the students?

Or any, like, and how did they feel after this?

- We did, and it's hard to get to the last one.

There's so much that they decided to write.

They were very generous in their feedback.

And they basically said this, for many of them this was the best musical experience of their life.

It's planned to happen every other year.

And the next one will be here in the Capital region, so stay tuned.

We're going to give more information about that soon.

- Oh, yay, that's gonna be really great for our youth who wanna be involved.

- Yes, absolutely.

- Love those opportunities.

Well I'm glad that that was really successful.

Was there anything else in the current season or previous season that you want to highlight for us that's, like, successful or something that you feel really joyful about that got done?

- Well, you know, the previous season was fabulous.

We were very happy with the response from our audience.

But there's something very special that happened.

We were able to perform a work for the first time here in the Capital region, it's called "Star Song" by our Composer of Residence, then, Dr. Bradley Ellingboe from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

And this work, we were also able to record it.

So we created a professional recording.

As we speak, I'm in the process of the final editing of that.

So we are soon going to announce the launching of that recording.

- I know you're having your upcoming season happening and I know that you're, that Albany Pro Musica is trying to be more experimental and outside the box.

So, what are some things that y'all are doing to create that atmosphere of experimental outside of the box, more diversity within your upcoming season?

You wanna give us a little bit of overview?

- Perhaps I would say that what makes Albany Pro Musica unique in what we offer is that every concert becomes an experience for people.

There's a narrative into our concerts.

People come to our concerts knowing that they can expect to be moved.

In fact, the motto of Albany Pro Musica is choral music that captures the human spirit.

So we work very hard for that to happen at every concert.

So in this coming season, people will experience that from the very first concert in which we're going to be celebrating called "Composers in Residence".

We invite composers to be in residence with us.

In that way, we extend the legacy of choral music, we extend the legacy of these composers.

And Albany Pro Musica is, in a way also celebrating my own legacy because this is, by the way, my 10th anniversary season.

- Congratulations.

- So, yes.

So everybody is celebrating that and I am, as well.

I'm so happy to be here.

In this concert, we're going to celebrate those composers, but in particularly, we're going to be celebrating our honorary Composer of Residence, Steve Murray, who is a very, very talented composer and who is with us every year composing.

And, in fact, his music will be so much fun.

People will find humor in some of those pieces.

In addition to that, you know, that repertoire goes from classic choral repertoire, to jazz, to Bossa Nova.

So it is going to be a lot of fun.

- Very variety, of many varieties.

- Then after that, we have the "Many Moods of Christmas" which is the favorite of our audience.

It's hard to get there.

People get tickets early.

You could say it gets sold very rapidly.

And then after that, in March, we're going to have a program called "Seascapes".

The theme is on the oceans.

It's because there's a work that is called "Oceana" by a composer named Farias.

And for that, we are bringing a wonderful ensemble that specializes in music from Latin America.

This work is based in a poem of Pablo Neruda and it's in Spanish.

So we're going to be singing in English for the first half of the concert, but we finished with this business in Spanish.

And it's very unusual.

It features a Charanga guitar and viola.

So it's very, very unique and a lot of fun.

And then to close, I have decided to climb Mount Everest.

So what that means is this.

You know, in the choral world we have what you would consider milestone repertoire.

So I decided that this year being my 10th anniversary I wanted to finish with a work that for all of us in the choral music, we consider Mount Everest because of the complexity, because of how difficult it is but also because of the incredible beauty.

So I'm talking of Johann Sebastian Bach "Mass in B Minor" which we are going to perform with an ensemble of period instruments coming from Boston and New York City.

So it's spectacular.

The chorus is very excited.

The audience is already asking about it because it's a phenomenal work.

- That's amazing.

And why is this important for you to reach that Mount Everest height?

Is this because your 10 year anniversary or is this something that you just wanna reach in your career?

Or is this just for fun?

- That sounds like a word, like a question coming from a psychiatrist.

- I know, right?

Like, tell me.

- So let me, let me try to answer that.

I guess it's the nature of the work that I do.

It's the way I see it.

Every year you want to make it more challenging.

You want to make it more exciting.

It's also the result of a work of 10 years.

In other words, it's not the kind of work that I would attempt to do with my group during the first year although I found a very good choir when I came here.

But you want to have a chorus that responds to your own artistic vision, and that takes time.

And so it's 10 years of training that we have had.

And I think the codas, even though they did it before with my predecessor, for the vision that I have for this particular work, the group is absolutely ready.

This was the time for them to do it.

- So you mentioned the experience, the immersion piece to it.

So why for Albany Pro Musica, why is that piece so important for audiences to be immersed and have this beautiful experience with these complex pieces that you're putting together?

- One of the most wonderful characteristics of the music that we do is that you find yourself performing pieces that were written three centuries, four centuries ago, or pieces that are being written now.

And when people come to a live performance you want to make sure, or I want to make sure that they receive an experience that is memorable that they will remember.

Because if it's a matter of just playing or singing a piece of music, you could get that from the radio or from the TV, or you could get that from a CD.

So to make the effort that people make actually in going into a concert, I want to make sure that it's special, that it's something that they will remember, something that will touch their sensitivity, their lives.

So when I put together a concert it's almost like writing a composition.

It's because I think of a narrative or a story that I want to tell, I think very much on the problems we are going through as a society.

For instance, we had a concert in the previous season that was called "I Dream A World".

And it was, you know, on that idea that we should all be in a world where everyone is accepted, regardless of the color of their skin or who they are.

The arts offer a wonderful opportunity for us to reflect on who we are and who we want to be without being preachy, without telling people in their faces this is what you need to do.

- Exactly.

- Rather to, to give them opportunity to reflect and to perhaps think of problems in a different way and provide some inspiration that will provoke change.

Otherwise, then why do we do what we do?

If it doesn't matter, if it doesn't provoke that change?

I will not be as excited as I am on my job if I think it's not that relevant.

- Yeah, I mean, the last 10 years, I think you're gonna have that passionate piece.

Passion truly is a catalyst to change specifically within the arts.

Well, thank you Jose.

It was amazing talking to you today.

- Thank you, it's always a pleasure.

- Please welcome Albany Pro Musica.

(soft symphonic music) (choral music) (vocalists singing in a foreign language) (soloist singing in a foreign language) (vocalists singing in a foreign language) (soloist singing in a foreign language) (vocalists singing in a foreign language) (soloist singing in a foreign language) (vocalists singing in a foreign language) (symphonic music ends) - Thanks for joining us.

For more Arts, visit WMHT.org/aha and be sure to connect with us on social.

I'm Matt Rogowicz.

Thank you for watching.

(mid tempo music) - [Program Announcer] Funding for AHA has been provided by your contribution and by contributions to the WMHT Venture Fund.

Contributors include the Leo Cox Beach Philanthropic Foundation, Chad and Karen Opalka Robert and Doris Fischer Malesardi and the Robison Family Foundation.

- At M & T Bank, we understand that the vitality of our communities is crucial to our continued success.

That's why we take an active role in our community.

M & T Bank is pleased to support WMHT programming that highlights the arts and we invite you to do the same.