The use of cameras or recording equipment during the

performance is not allowed. Please be sure that cell phones,

pagers, and other electronic devices are turned off.

Please note that late entry or reentry of

the West Building after 6:30 pm is not permitted.

Music Department

National Gallery ofArt

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, DC

Mailing address

2000B South Club Drive

Landover, md 20785

www.nga.gov

cover: Paul Stevenson Oles, 1971, National Gallery of Art Archives

The Sixty-seventh Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,708th Concert

Leon Bates, pianist

Presented in honor ofAfrican American History Month

February 25, 2009

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

East Building Auditorium

Admissionfree
Program

Edward MacDowell (1861-1908)

Sonata in E Minor (1901)

Maestoso

Semplice, teneramente

Molto allegro con fuoco

H. Leslie Adams (b. 1932)

Two Etudes

G Minor (1998)

G Major (1998)

Pat Metheny (b. 1954)

Arranged by Leon Bates

So May It Secretly Begin

R. Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943)

Barcarolle Morning

Juba Dance

(Lrom In the Bottoms, 1913)

The Musician

A versatile and exciting artist, Leon Bates has performed in major concert

halls in the United States and on five continents. Since winning the Philadelphia Orchestra Senior Auditions as a student, Bates has emerged as

one ofAmerica’s leading pianists. His performances at Carnegie Hall, the

Kennedy Center, and Philadelphia’s Academy of Music and Kimmel Center,

have warranted accolades from critics and audiences alike.

A native of Philadelphia, Bates began his formal study ofmusic at age six

on both piano and violin. The late Irene Beck formulated his early training at 

the Settlement Music School, and he continued his studies at Temple University’s Esther Boyer College of Music. Among the awards he has received are

the Collegiate Artist Award from the Music Teachers National Association, 

the National Association of Negro Musicians Competition, the Symphony of

the New World Competition, and the National Endowment for the Arts Solo

Recitalists fellowship Grant. His extensive work with children was honored

with the Raoul Wallenberg Humanitarian Award.

Bates has appeared with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra,

the Quebec Symphony Orchestra, the Sinfonica dell’Academia di Santa

Cecilia in Rome, and the symphony orchestras of Strasbourg and Vienna.

He toured South Africa after apartheid and performed in Johannesburg with

the National Symphony Orchestra and the Natal Philharmonic. His large

repertoire includes over thirty works by major composers, including several

contemporary concerti, and music by Duke Ellington. In the United States

he has performed with the American Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago

Sinfonietta, and the symphony orchestras of Atlanta, Cleveland, Detroit,

Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia.

Some ofBates’ career highlights include performing with Lorin Maazel

and the Orchestra of France; participating in the Steinway Foundation’s Gala

Celebration commemorating the building oftheir 500,000th piano at Carnegie Hall; and appearing in a televised program from La Scala in Milan. Leon

Bates appears at the National Gallery by arrangement with Joanne Rile Artists

Management, Inc., ofJenkintown, Pennsylvania.

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Program Notes

Edward MacDowell was bom in New York City to a father whose own artistic 

leanings had been squelched by his Quaker parents, and to a mother who 

insisted that her son study music. At age eight he began his formal studies and

quickly surpassed the abilities of his teacher. As was often the case with

American musicians ofthis period, the fifteen-year-old MacDowell went to

pursue his studies in Europe, complete with a scholarship at the Paris Conservatoire. After two years in Paris he moved to Germany, where he continued

piano and also began to study composition. The music that MacDowell composed during the years he was in Germany (1885-1888) established him as one 

ofAmerica’s finest composers ofthe time. He returned to the United States in

1888 and settled in New England, where he would stay until his death twenty 

years later. His dream ofestablishing a colony for artists was realized a year 

before he died in Peterborough, New Hampshire, where he and his wife had a

home. The MacDowell Colony was the first ofits kind, and has been a haven

for many great artists and composers since its founding.

The majority of MacDowell’s compositions are for piano, and they include

transcriptions of eighteenth-century keyboard pieces. MacDowell gave each

ofhis four piano sonatas a suggestive title—“Tragica,” “Eroica,” “Norse,” and

the fourth, in E Minor, “Keltic.” Though he was strongly influenced by the

European romantic style, the flora and fauna of New Hampshire were a great

inspiration for him as well. Both these aspects can be heard in the E Minor

Sonata—the German sturm and drang combined with the uniquely American

landscape to create MacDowell's idiom.

H. Leslie Adams was bom in Cleveland, Ohio, and studied at the Oberlin

College Conservatory of Music (composition with Herbert Elwell and Joseph 

Wood, voice with Robert Fountain, and piano with Emil Danenberg), where

he earned a bachelor ofmusic degree in 1955; at California State University at 

Long Beach, (composition with Leon Dallin) where he graduated with a master

ofmusic degree in 1967; and at Ohio State University, Columbus, (composition with Marshall Bames), where he earned a Ph.D. in 1973. He also studied

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orchestration with Edward Mattila, Eugene O’Brien, and Marcel Dick (1978-

1983) and composition with Robert Starer (1959) and Vittorio Giannini (i960).

He spent years as a musical show director, choral conductor, and teacher

before dedicating himselffull-time to composing in 1979. Adams’ compositions have been performed by the Cleveland Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony,

the Iceland Symphony, and the Prague Radio Orchestra, among others, and

he has been on the faculties of Florida A&M University and the University of

Kansas in Lawrence.

Best known for his opera, Blake, Adams incorporates jazz rhythms,

neoromantic harmonies, and a strong sense ofmelody into his work. He

has composed many pieces for voice, but his twenty-six Etudesfor Solo Piano

stand out among his works for keyboard instruments. The Etude in G Minor

and Etude in G Major are numbers one and two ofthe twenty-six etudes,

published in 1998.

Pat Metheny was born in Kansas City, Missouri, into a musical family.

Starting on trumpet at age eight, Metheny switched to guitar at age twelve.

By age fifteen, he was working regularly with the best jazz musicians in

Kansas City. Metheny first burst onto the international jazz scene in 1974.

Over the course of his three-year stint with vibraphone great Gary Burton,

the young Missouri native already displayed the playing style that eventually

became his trademark, which blended the loose and flexible articulation

customarily reserved for horn players with an advanced rhythmic and harmonic sensibility—a way ofplaying and improvising that was modern

in conception but grounded deeply in the jazz tradition ofmelody, swing,

and the blues. With the release of his first album, Bright Size Life (1975),

he reinvented the traditional “jazz guitar” sound for a new generation of

players. Throughout his career, Pat Metheny has continued to redefine

the genre by utilizing new technology and constantly working to evolve

the improvisational and sonic potential ofthe guitar.

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The descendant ofslaves who settled the town of Drummondsville,

Ontario, Robert Nathaniel Dett began taking piano lessons in 1901, and three

years later was admitted to the Oberlin Conservatory, where he majored in

piano and composition. His biggest professional achievement was the work he

did at the Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia, where he trained the choir.

He would eventually become the first African American to rise to the position

ofdirector ofmusic at that school. Dett continued his education throughout

his life, completing a master ofmusic in 1932 at the Eastman School of Music,

and receiving honorary doctorates from Howard University and Oberlin. After

retiring from the Hampton School, he continued working as an advisor to

various choral groups, including the United Services Organization.

Dett’s greatest contributions as a composer are his choral works and the

numerous folksongs and spirituals he arranged for his choir at the Hampton School. He also wrote many pieces for organ and piano, and a volume of

his complete piano works was published in 1973. The suite In the Bottoms

gained widespread popularity in the years following his death, and incorporates his beliefthat musicians should seek out their folk roots. Rich in color 

and imagery, each ofthe movements ofthis suite describes the life and

spirit ofthe African American farm workers in the south. One section, Juba,

became so popular that it came close to making Dett a household name.

Program notes by Danielle DeSwert

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Next Week at the National Gallery ofArt

Ellen Hargis, soprano

Paul O’Dette, lutenist

Music by Camphuysen, Huygens, Vallet, and van den Hove

Presented in honor of Pride ofPlace: Dutch Cityscapes ofthe Golden Age

March 1, 2009

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

The 63rd American Music Festival, concert one offive

David Amram, composer and pianist

Music by Amram

Presented in honor of Looking In: Robert Frank’s “The Americans’’

March 4, 2009

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building Lecture Hall