The Chicago River runs through Orbert Davis` new musical creation

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PAGE 30 | CHICAGO SUN-TIMES | MONDAY, MAY 20, 2013
As he wrote his musical piece about the
reversal of the Chicago River, Orbert Davis
(left) drew inspiration from a book of historical photos assembled by Michael Williams
(center) and Richard Cahan. | RICH HEIN~SUN-TIMES
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The Chicago River runs
through Orbert Davis’
new musical creation
BY DAVE HOEKSTRA
Staff Reporter/@cstdhoekstra
M
ost people see a boat
rolling down the Chicago
River.
Orbert Davis hears a tuba.
The Chicago composer is finishing a five-movement piece for the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s
ambitious “Rivers: Nature. Power.
Culture” series.
Davis is using the acclaimed
Richard Cahan-Michael Williams
coffee table book “The Lost Panoramas: When Chicago Changed
its River and the Land Beyond” as
a pilot for a piece that looks at the
river’s reversal. Davis’ 60-piece
Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, which
blends elements of classical music
and jazz, will debut the piece Friday at Symphony Center.
“The Lost Panoramas” features
crisp black-and-white photographs
from 1894-1928 that Williams
discovered in a glass plate photo
collection taken by the Sanitary
District of Chicago. The book was
published in 2011 on the authors’
own CityFiles Press.
The Chicago River runs just
156 miles. You can take a boat on
the Chicago River through the
Sanitary and Ship Canal to the Des
Plaines River, where it meets the
Kankakee River and builds to the
Illinois River, which flourishes to
the magnificent Mississippi.
That’s the kind of American song
that needs to begin with a solo.
“There are thousands of connections,” Davis says during a conversation in Marina City along the
river. “A river starts at being small.
In music that represents one voice.
As other voices join that voice,
they can be on that same melodic
figure or it could be in harmony.
We see the river as one entity.”
The trumpet player looks out
the window at gentle ripples in the
river. He continues, “The water we
see now is soon gone. So there’s always the sense of being refreshed.
And there’s change around the
river. We can see it in the images.
“Look at the river. Right now I’m
hearing a drumroll, but I’m also
hearing a flute playing a trill. We
see movement based on the natural
flow, but we also see movement affected by environment. A boat just
passed, so we see waves and the
wake going in a separate direction.
Actually, my childhood home was
on the banks of the Kankakee River.
I didn’t realize it, but I spent a lot of
time studying water just by being
there day after day. Looking at the
pictures gave me a sense of being
home again, especially the cover.”
The book’s cover image was
taken in 1907 at Buffalo Rock in
LaSalle County.
“The single figure sitting next to
a large body of water — that was
me.”
The photos were made with
large-format view cameras using
glass negatives in the days before
film. The original stash contained
21,834 photographs, and about 175
were used in the book. In 2000, Williams found the pictures in boxes in
a giant metal shed in Springfield.
“These pictures were taken for
engineers, scientists and bean counters,” Williams says. “These were
never intended to be pictures that
would be inspirational or trigger the
imagination. But you add 75 years
and this collection that was about
absolute right angles is now something we look at with incredible
inspiration because they document
the last part of a natural Illinois.”
Davis had spent hours looking at
the pictures, but he did not refer to
them as he composed.
Between seven and 10 photographs per movement will be
shown at Friday’s performance.
The first movement will use photos
from the Illinois River. Davis
referenced titles from the book. He
calls the first movement “A Lost
Panorama,” the second movement
“Brewing the Toxic Stew.”
“So my job is to answer, ‘What
PULSE
MONDAY, MAY 20, 2013 • CHICAGO SUN-TIMES •
31
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ORBERT DAVIS’ CHICAGO
JAZZ PHILHARMONIC
When: 8 p.m. Friday
Where: Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan
Tickets: $23-$74
Info: (312) 294-3000; cso.org
does that smell sound like?’ ” he says with a
laugh. “Wait until you hear it. I broke every
rule of traditional harmony. Think about
it: from the stockyards to human waste to
the tannery, all these things mixed together,
created all these gases. That’s the sound.
The third movement is ‘Retrograde,’ which
in music is taking a theme and playing it
backwards, like the reverse of the river.”
His second movement, “Fortress of Solitude,” honors his youth along the Kankakee.
“I would just sit for hours and play over
the river,” Davis explains. “And I would have
this natural reverb and natural echo.”
Davis won a 2011 Emmy for the composition and production of the original score for
the PBS documentary “Du Sable to Obama:
Chicago’s Black Metropolis” and was a 2010
Arts Legend Award recipient from the
Arts Alliance Illinois. Davis met Cahan, a
former Sun-Times picture editor, when he
had an office in the same building where the
photographer was directing the City 2000
project.
Davis bought “The Lost Panoramas” as
soon as it came out. He was reading it when
CSO director of programming James Fahey
asked him to compose a piece connected to
the 160-page book.
“I had already started [composing]!”
Davis said. “I compose through making
connections. When I saw the pictures the
music started writing itself. That was about
a year ago.”
How did the photos hook Davis?
“The clarity,” he answers. “There’s so
many devices of creating time and imagery
through music. Through our history we
can picture what 1917 sounds like by the
music that was recorded. But the pictures
become timeless. Because of the clarity of
the picture, I started hearing modernized
music. If I had never read the story behind
the pictures, I would have sworn the pictures were created for the sake of art. The
same thing happens in music. Sometimes
music can be playful or a bar song, and once
it filters through tradition, ‘It’s the greatest
work ever, let’s be quiet and serious.’ ”
On the cover of “The Lost Panoramas” is this 1907 photo of Buffalo Rock in the Illinois River,
which stirred childhood memories for Orbert Davis. | THE LOST PANORAMAS~CITYFILESPRESS.COM
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Crews work on straightening the South Branch between Polk and Taylor Streets in a 1917 photo
from the glass plate collection of the Sanitary District. | THE LOST PANORAMAS~CITYFILESPRESS.COM
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