Phenomenal Women Overlooked No More: Acclaimed Pianist Lara Downes Shines Light On Extraordinary Music
A musician can make the world a better place just by playing the standard repertoire beautifully. But pianist Lara Downes goes farther. By introducing audiences to diverse composers who have been overlooked and disenfranchised, she not only gives ravishing performances of beautiful music, but widens artistic horizons and enriches our cultural life.
Lara Downes. Credit Max Barrett.
Downes’ two recent virtual concerts with the Oregon Bach Festival, which can be viewed through July 11, are a shining example of her efforts. Phenomenal Women Parts 1 and 2 feature masterful works by female composers who were neglected and disregarded by a male-dominated establishment.
Downes herself is a phenomenal woman. Her fierce intelligence, original creativity and commitment to justice have their roots in her unique American background.
Her father was a biochemist who grew up in Harlem and her mother was from Ohio. They met in California in the late 60s through the civil rights movement. Downes says her parents had “utopian” ideas about education, which were challenged by the less than utopian San Francisco public education system.
A child prodigy, Downes started to read at what she says was “a crazy young age.” Her mother explored alternative schools for gifted children, but found the options inadequate. So her parents decided to teach Downes and her two sisters at home and provide them a musical education.
“My sisters and I were home-schooled, little classical music weirdos,” Downes said. “When I look back, that informal education was absolutely the root of who I am in terms of how I think about things, how I learn things and how I follow things that are interesting to me.”
Downes, whose father was Black and mother was Jewish, says her biracial background has been essential to how she approaches classical music.
“I think when you grow up with traditional classical music training, and the canon is not representing you, it leaves this weird disconnect in your life,” Downes said. “You’re completely committed to this music and you love this music, but you’re not seeing yourself. I needed to understand classical music did not just stop at Brahms, or even Bartók. That’s what started my interest in American music. That is what set me off on a self-taught path.”
Downes attended the San Francisco Conservatory before moving to Europe to study at the Paris Conservatory, the Music Academy in Vienna and the Music Academy at Basel. But she would eventually return to America to be more connected to the place she was from and to help her follow her “self-taught path” into the hidden history of American music.
Along her journey of discovery, she met composers from the past who never made it into the standard (i.e. white and male) American textbooks. People like African-American composer Harry T. Burleigh.
“Burleigh was the person whose music really influenced Antonín Dvořák,” Downes said. “When Dvořák came to America to run the first American conservatory, he encountered Burleigh, a Black baritone and composer. He and Dvořák heard spirituals together, and Dvořák centered on the idea that American concert music should be based on African-American traditions because that was our native music.”
Downes also learned about remarkable female composers whose brilliant music has been too long overlooked and ignored. Some of those composers are featured on her two “Phenomenal Women” concerts. On Part 1: Quiet Streets, Downes plays music by two African-American composers, Margaret Bonds and Florence Price, as well as a work written for her by Elena Ruehr.
“Florence Price has been in my life for a long time,” Downes said. “She’s an extraordinary woman who did extraordinary things. She was born in Little Rock, Arkansas in the late 1800s. She migrated north to Chicago during the great migration and made a life and career during the Chicago Black Renaissance.”
Downes gives a heartfelt rendition of “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,’ Price’s piano transcription of the African-American spiritual. Downes said she often turned to this piece during the pandemic, and one understands why. It’s a moving work of tenderness and comfort.
Next on the program is “Troubled Water” by Margaret Bonds, a composer of the Harlem Renaissance. Bonds was a friend of Florence Price and other African-American cultural luminaries, like Langston Hughes.
“Beautiful things come out of difficulty,” Downes says about “Quiet Streets,” composed during a year of isolation and quarantine. Downes said that Elena Ruehr told her she had a dream that she had written a piano concerto for her, and Downes encouraged Ruehr to write it down.
“‘Quiet Streets’ captures the unexpected beauty that we found when our cities became deserted and silenced,” Downes said.
On Phenomenal Women Part 2: American Pioneers, Downes performs another work composed for her during the pandemic, “A Solemn Shyness” by Eve Beglarian.
“Eve is a dear friend of mine who lives in New York and Vermont,” Downes said. “She wrote ‘A Solemn Shyness’ this past winter when she was up in her place in Vermont, surrounded by snow and silence. I think there’s something very important about music that was composed this past year. Works like Eve’s piece will really stand as documents of our time and important creative turning points for all of us.”
Phenomenal Women Part 2 also features “The Bells,” another work by Margaret Bonds, “Blackbird Hills” by trail-blazing composer Amy Beach and “Peace of Mind” by Hazel Scott. Downes transcribed “Peace of Mind” from a 1940s recording.
“Hazel Scott was a classically trained pianist and singer and actress who became the first Black American to have her own network TV show, and then was blacklisted during the McCarthy era,” Downes said.
After the Oregon Bach Festival, Downes’ journey winds on, and she plans to continue sharing her discoveries along the way.
Her current recording project, “Rising Sun Music,” is an ongoing series of new recordings featuring music by Black composers spanning 200 years. “New Day Begun,” the latest recording in the series, will be released July 16.
“Rising Sun Music” is just one more example of Downes’ commitment to “shining light on underrepresented voices and uncovering really important stories about American music.”
"I was raised by parents who were activists and deeply committed to doing good in the world,” Downes said. “For me, being a musician has to be connected to doing some good in the world. There’s a danger for classical music to be tradition-bound and look backwards instead of forwards. That never made sense to me. I haven’t been one to follow rules and tick off boxes. I follow my instincts and my passions. I just feel incredibly fortunate to have the life that I have.”
“Phenomenal Women: Parts 1 and 2 from the 2021 Oregon Bach Festival will be available for viewing through July 11.
“New Day Begun” will be available on all major streaming and download platforms, including Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Primephonic, and Idagio from July 16.
To learn more about Lara Downes, visit laradownes.com.
