Art, poetry, and music to fill Figge concert
A varied, unique, collaborative concert is in store next Sunday in the next Quad City Symphony Orchestra “Up Close” chamber music series.
The program at 5 p.m. Sunday, May 19, at the Figge Art Museum (225 W. 2nd St., Davenport) spotlights Marc Zyla, principal horn for the QCSO and director of community engagement for WVIK, Quad Cities NPR.
The host of the public radio station’s weekday “Allegro Molto” (6 to 9 a.m. at 98.3 FM), Zyla has certainly assembled an engaging program, with partners pianist Marian Lee, poet and spoken-word artist Aubrey Barnes and Rock Island painter Zay Williams.
“One of the really cool things about the Up Close series is it’s an opportunity for the musicians of the Quad City Symphony to perform, but also to program,” Zyla said in an interview Thursday, May 9. “This is a fun opportunity to both come up with the concept of the performance, choose the music and of course, perform it for the Quad Cities.”
Zyla is in his late 30s and has been feeling philosophical about life. Among the quartet of pieces on the May 19 concert, he chose a 1996 sonata by Margaret Brouwer (born 1940) because he played it during his senior recital in 2007 at West Virginia University, after it was recommended by his professor Virginia Thompson, who passed away at 59 in 2015.
“A very interesting point about her is that she’s a native of Davenport, she performed in the Youth Symphony growing up,” Zyla said, noting Thompson became assistant principal horn for the QCSO while she was a doctoral student at University of Iowa.
“In my relationship with the Quad Cities being from West Virginia, I wasn’t really aware of the Quad Cities,” he recalled. “When I came to audition, that’s when I first kind of engaged with this area. And so as soon as I won the audition, my first call is always my wife, second call is always my dad and my third call was Virginia. I had no idea that she was a native of here.
“So it was kind of this really cool, like full-circle moment with the two of us that, I’m kind of like in her old stomping grounds,” Zyla (who moved to the QC in 2011) said. “When I was an undergraduate student, really like playing Mozart and totally accessible music, I wasn’t really all that interested in solo repertoire, so I didn’t really dig much into it, but when it came time to choose my senior recital stuff, Dr. Thompson said, dude, you can’t just play Mozart and stuff for the rest of your life.”
The Brouwer is “really quite beautiful and takes you on quite a musical journey and I think that last movement it really does make you feel like you’re flying through the clouds. So, it’s a piece I really like to play,” he said.
Based on a spiritual
Three of the four pieces on the program were penned in the 20th century, including Frederick Tillis’s Spiritual Fantasy No. 7 (1982), that the African-American composer wrote based on the spiritual, “Calvary.”
“It’s a challenging piece in the sense that he creates a lot of space within the music. And so there are times in which the piano and the horn are really working together and there are times in which the horn and the piano seem as if they’re distant,” Zyla said.
“It’s a really cool way to express some people’s experiences with spirituality and definitely an expression of my own,” he said. Tillis was a very unassuming person and “he liked to gift pieces to folks,” Zyla said. “And so this was a gift to the horn professor at the school where he taught.”
Text and poetry are a key part of the May 19 program, including the Gustav Mahler “Songs of a Wayfarer” (1884-85), with poetry written by Mahler.
“What I’ve always identified with Mahler is that everything that happened in his life or every emotion that he felt was at like 110 percent and I really think that the poetry within ‘Songs of a Wayfarer’ is like kind of akin to the way that it felt when you broke up with your first girlfriend or something like that,” Zyla said. “Like, am I ever gonna love again?
“I’ve kind of been that guy throughout my life and I’m in this kind of mode right now of being just extremely grateful as to how my life has turned out.”
In the Paul Hindemith Sonata for Alto Horn and Piano (1943), there is a “Post Horn” poem written into the piece.
“The horn is this call back to simpler times and nature and I love that piece,” Zyla said. “I’ve played it maybe three or four times now. And I’m excited to play it with Marian and I’m excited to play it for the Quad Cities for the first time, which is cool.”
He’s including Rock Island poet and spoken word artist Aubrey Barnes in the Sunday program to recite the poetry, since they’ve gotten to know each other in the past few years.
“His spoken word is really captivating and I love it. I think it’s quite amazing,” Zyla said, noting Barnes also has been on his WVIK podcast, “What’s Happening QC.”
“I can’t think of a better person to both present the text of the works, but also he’s written reactionary pieces to the work,” he said of the music. “I’m really excited to see what he’s come up with. It is a little bit of a unique way to present a solo recital…But if you know me, I like to try to do things a little different.”
Art created on the spot
The multidisciplinary aspect of the concert is further extended by including a live painting by Rock Island artist Zay Williams, whom Zyla also has featured on his podcast.
“He has a very vibrant social media presence and the thing that I liked about his art is that it’s extremely colorful,” Zyla said. “It’s very diverse, from doing figures of notable people and presenting those in certain ways, to abstract things.”
He recalled while he lived in Evansville, Ind., Zyla played with the Owensboro Symphony (Kentucky) and during a concert of Debussy, they featured a live painter, doing a canvas inspired by the music.
“I asked Zay if he’d like to do that, and he thought it sounded awesome,” Zyla said. “Because we’re at the Figge, it feels good to make some art.”
“I am all about this community and I am all about taking these opportunities to introduce people to new artists in their own community, but also showcase the artists that folks know,” he said. “People know me, and people know Aubrey and Zay, but they don’t know the three of us together.
“And so like to me, it’s an exploration of what is possible when Quad-City artists get together and say, you know, what does this concert speak to you and how might you add to that value?
“So I’m excited to see how it all comes together because in my brain, it seems amazing,” Zyla said. “So I really think it’s gonna come together in a really cool way.”
Tickets for the 5 p.m. concert are $25 for adults, and $10 for students, available HERE.
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WHBF - OurQuadCities.com.
