A celebration of America

Atlantic Symphony to present works by US composers

Atlantic Symphony Orchestra music director and conductor Jin Kim chose particularly American works for the concert. (Michael Weymouth)

As he prepares for the opening of the Atlantic Symphony Orchestra's new season, Anthony Everett says he is "channeling Lincoln."

Everett , co-host of WCVB-TV's "Chronicle" news magazine show and a Cohasset resident, will speak the words of America's 16th president in a performance of Aaron Copland's "Lincoln Portrait."

Written during World War II, when American principles were called on to justify the war effort and rally the nation, the quintessentially American composer chose passages from Lincoln's letters and speeches to combine with his music.

According to musicologist Steven Ledbetter, who wrote the program notes for the concert, Copland's use of a narrator "creates a musical portrait in which the sitter himself might speak."

For a concert to take place three days before the presidential election, music director Jin Kim chose peculiarly American works, including Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man," George Gershwin's "An American in Paris," and Symphony No. 6 by Antonin Dvorak, a Czech composer who spent a decade in this country.

A Lincoln admirer currently rereading "Team of Rivals," in which historian Doris Kearns Goodwin connects Lincoln's success in the presidency with his strength of character, Everett said Lincoln's perspective on his own divisive times has wisdom to offer ours.

"As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew," Everett said, quoting from the "Lincoln Portrait" narrative. The excerpts chosen by Copland for the piece, said Everett, "remind us that our nation has endured many tumultuous periods, testing many generations before us."

While this will be his first time serving as Lincoln's mouthpiece, the Tufts graduate got his feet wet on the concert stage by narrating "The Night Before Christmas" for the Boston Pops last year, taking his cues from Keith Lockhart. He's been studying for his part in Saturday's concert by listening to recorded versions of Copland's musical portrait.

Copland's majestic "Fanfare for the Common Man" was also commissioned under the stress of war, debuting in 1942.

Audiences will recognize it, as the piece's commanding trumpet declaration - "the noble, soaring theme in the horns and trumpets, later emulated by the trombones and tuba," Ledbetter writes - has been borrowed countless times since to give dramatic underpinning to soundtracks. The brief, stirring fanfare "captures the determination and idealism of the wartime '40s, according to Ledbetter.

"Chronicle" uses music to set the mood for stories as well, Everett said, and has used Copland's music at times. "His music has a majesty and a uniquely American aspect that no one else has equaled."

Like Copland, Gershwin was a musical ambassador for his country, said Kim, who has overseen the emergence of his orchestra from a community ensemble to a fully professional regional orchestra (last year cementing the transition with a name change from the Hingham Symphony Orchestra).

"Their style was immediately embraced as 'American,' " Kim said of the two composers.

A Broadway musical composer and cross-genre genius, Gershwin produced classical work famous for importing the flavor of jazz, the signature sound of the American century, into the concert hall.

"An American in Paris" was inspired by Gershwin's visit to the French capital in 1926, when "he walked all over the city, soaking up the atmosphere and inventing the title of the work and its opening theme," Ledbetter writes. The jaunty opening theme is said to reflect his own walking pace.

Dvorak infused American folk music themes into some of his symphonic and chamber works, such as the popular "New World Symphony" and the string quartet known as "The American."

Composed in 1881, Symphony No. 6 reveals Dvorak as "the unspoiled child of nature, always direct and unself-conscious in his directness," Ledbetter states.

Robert Knox can be contacted at rc.knox@gmail.com.