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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 1, 1995)
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C huck F loyd Hairstylist Call 648-8851 for an appointment 1640 NE 16th Portland, OR 97232 out rorfU,^c{ I n t h e I n t e r m e d i a t e T h e a t r e of the P o r t l a n d C e n t e r for t h e P e r f o r m i n g A r t s B o x O f f ic e : (503) 2 7 4 -6 5 8 8 T i c k e t s : $ 1 1 .0 0 - $ 3 3 .0 0 TIC KETS ALSO AVAILABLE FASTIXX 224-TIXX AT for Women & Men 936-4213 S coring the L osses Composer John Corigliano pays homage in his first symphony to friends lost to AIDS T by Bob Roehr Q uiet strings and a wistful piano yield phony as a remembrance of three life-long friends to the fortissimo cacophony of an who were musicians. “In the third movement I expanded orchestra playing at full planned my little quilt for other friends. And an tilt. John Corigliano (pronounced epilogue in which I leave the audience with, ‘All core-lee-AH-no) is hunched in a seat right, you’ve lost all these people. The rage is making notations on the score, then leaps to the his loss is there, the remembrance is there. there, feet and bounds to another point in the concert What hall now? How do you face all of that? How do of the Kennedy Center to check the sound bal you go on?’ ance. “That was the first thing that I wrote, the He is a striking figure of grace and passion in chords of the epilogue. You have to come to terms with that. All of us in the gay community have to come to terms with what you do when you have lost hundreds of people, and you get up the next morning. You don’t dismiss it, but if you walk around truly depressed about it you aren’t doing a collarless hunter green knit shirt and well-worn any good either. How do you face life then? jeans. The merest shadow of a paunch and a “You go on and be true to the ones you love. frosting of gray in his hair hint of middle age, not The way for me was the idea of eternal memory as the 57 years he has lived. a way of keeping people alive. I’m not saying it With a swipe of the maestro’s hand there is was a new thought, I’m just saying it is how we get silence. The percussionists playing chimes on the through.” wings of the stage are confused, which is left and He continues, “The fact that I talk about Shelly which is right? “John, does that make a differ a lot in interviews— I love that because it gives ence?” asks Leonard Slatkin. “No,” comes the him life. That remembrance keeps Shelly alive. reply. And with that the conductor returns to It’s wonderful. That gives me a feeling of joy. rehearsing Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1. “So the epilogue is floating in a sea of waves The work is an homage to friends lost to AIDS, of forevemess with friends. They are there. You which premiered in 1990 with the Chicago Symphony Or ch estra. The reco rd in g snatched a Grammy Award and stayed atop the classical charts for months. The sym phony vaulted C origliano from journeyman to the ranks of the country’s most promi nent living composers. More than 600 performances later, it has entered the repertoire of many of the world’s major orchestras. There is an added edge of excitement to this particular rehearsal, because the perfor mance will be recorded later in the week. Slatkin has cho sen the Symphony No. 1 as the first work he and the National Sym phony O rchestra will record together. RCA Red Seal will release it next fall, when he officially moves to Wash ington, D.C., to take over as music director of the NSO. Corigliano shares the loss of “all these people” to AIDS, saying, “I stopped counting at a hundred in my phone book.” When his best friend of 30 John Corigliano years, Shelly Shkolnik, came down with pneumocystis, it crystallized his deci have to remember them, and not forget them, and sion to write the symphony. “It became a passion bring them up in conversation. Keep them alive.” for me,” he says. Corigliano consciously did not include AIDS The pair continued their long-distance tele in a descriptive title of the work because he phone conversations on the work in progress over “didn’t want to beat people over the head.” Loss its two-year gestation. But they never spoke of is loss, regardless of the reason. The symphony Shkolnik’s role in its genesis. “I would play him can be understood as an evocative emotional other parts of the work, but never the parts that work by all. concerned him. It was very strange,” says He recalls a performance last year in Kiev in Corigliano. "It was always an abstract piece we Ukraine: “They had never heard of AIDS; there were talking about. were no program notes, they just heard a sym "The irony and the horror of doing it was that phony. And they responded that way.” I would talk with him and laugh. And then I would So, too, did the audience that night in the go and continue to write his memorial piece.” concert hall of the Kennedy Center. From the The charade dropped a few weeks prior to the Queen of the Netherlands ensconced in the presi premiere, as the deadline for program notes ap dential box to black-tied supporters of the Whitman proached. “Will you accept the dedication?” asked Walker Clinic in orchestra seats to students in the Corigliano. "Yes," said Shkolnik to the honor. He upper balcony, the audience responded to a work attended rehearsals and the concerts, and died a the Washington Post music critic called “a terrific week later. piece— wrenching, original, aschallenging as it is Corigliano explains the structure of the sym accessible to a careful listener.” PHOTO B Y TONI ...is to help clients achieve their financial objectives. As an advisor my role is to educate and motivate them to take the actions necessary to reach those financial goals.