music
BY BRETT CAMPBELL
American Music Legends
From Gershwin to Anne Dhu McLucas
T
here’s a possibly apocryphal story that an American
in Paris, George Gershwin, once asked one of his
idols, the great 20th-century French composer
Maurice Ravel, for music lessons. Ravel is said to have
politely declined. “Why should you be a second-rate Ravel
when you can be a first-rate Gershwin?” Ravel may have
also responded by asking the young songwriting superstar
how much money he made, and upon hearing the answer,
replied, “Then I should take lessons with you.”
Ravel admired Gershwin’s genius so much that he
quoted Gershwin’s jazzy Rhapsody in Blue in one of his
own greatest hits, the dazzling Piano Concerto in G. We’ll
get to hear both jazz age classics Thursday, Sept. 20, at the
Hult Center when the Eugene Symphony and the excellent
guest pianist perform two of the greatest combinations of
jazz and classical music — not to mention piano and
orchestra — ever created. The concert opens with another
American classic, Leonard Bernstein’s rollicking Candide
overture, and closes with one more danceable 20th-century
delight: excerpts from Manuel de Falla’s ballet score, The
Three Cornered Hat.
Classical and pop music collide again on Friday, Sept.
21, at Corvallis’s Majestic Theater, when the Portland
Cello Project (which is winning increasing national fame
thanks to its clever covers of rock, hip hop and classical
tunes) teams up with the award-winning, Chicago-based
wind quintet City of Tomorrow (two of whose members
live in Portland), Portland’s Alialujah Choir (featuring
Weinland frontman Adam Shearer) and Portland singer
Stephen Marc Beaudoin (who has worked with Pink
Martini and FearNoMusic). Together, they’ll perform a
classically inflected version of Radiohead’s OK Computer.
28 SEPTEMBER 20, 2012
EUGENE WEEKLY
It’s fitting that this week’s column concerns American
music because it was a guiding passion of the late former
dean of the UO School of Music and Dance, Anne Dhu
McLucas. A pioneering female scholar in the hitherto
male-dominated field of ethnomusicology, McLucas
transcended the narrow overemphasis on 19th-century
European sounds and shone the spotlight on equally
important music from the Americas and the rest of the
world, including folk traditions. She served as president of
the Society for American Music and the College Music
Society.
McLucas reached beyond the ivory tower to connect the
UO to civic institutions like the Oregon Festival of
American Music, Oregon Bach Festival, Oregon Mozart
Players and Eugene Opera, all of which she served as a
board member. She continued to teach even while serving
as an administrator. “She was first and foremost an
advocate for the students,” says UO music professor Brian
McWhorter, who knew McLucas well when he was a
student at the school in the ’90s and later as a faculty
colleague. “I’ve seen it from both sides.”
The UO had already planned to honor McLucas, who
was due to retire from teaching this December, at a
symposium exploring one of her primary research interests:
oral traditions in American music featuring scholars from
around the world. Presentations are scheduled for Sept. 29,
Oct. 19 and Oct. 20. A memorial service, open to the
public, will be held Saturday, Oct. 20, at 4 pm in the UO’s
Beall Concert Hall.
The honors are appropriate. McLucas helped vault the
school to greater recognition, not least by her effort to
refurbish the crowded, outdated music school building
before stepping down as dean in 2002. However, her
Herculean fundraising efforts weren’t quite enough to
entirely fulfill her vision. As I wrote in Oregon Quarterly,
the “rebuilding omitted a major proposed item that had to
be left off the list, as it would have consumed the entire
budget: a new, flexible performance hall that can stage the
kind of multimedia, dance, and theater performances that
Beall Hall’s concert-only setting can’t. Nevertheless, the
architects made sure that the redesigned space could easily
accommodate a new hall someday.” When that day comes,
they should name it after one of Oregon’s greatest advocates
for music, Anne Dhu McLucas.
ew
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