Penobscot key to composer’s Bangor work

BANGOR – To most people, 30 minutes is not a long time. To Thomas Oboe Lee, the composer of a new symphonic work about Bangor culture, 30 minutes is big. Big, you might say, like the Penobscot River.

“I really envision the first movement to be about the river,” said Lee. “What is river music? Definitely motoric. It moves.”

Lee was chosen by a coalition of local arts and cultural organizations from a pool of 30 applicants to write music for the Continental Harmony program, a national initiative run by the American Composers Forum in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts to engage American composers, to generate social bonds through the arts and culture, and to inspire local spirit.

With the Bangor Symphony Orchestra spearheading the project, Bangor was chosen to represent Maine in the national commissioning program of original musical works reflecting the unique history and culture of communities. Over the next two years, communities in all 50 states will join the program, which began as a millennial celebration and has grown in scope in the last three years.

This is a second Continental Harmony commission for Lee, a professor of music theory at Boston University. He also wrote Symphony #3: “Portraits in Jazz,” a five-movement piece for symphony and big band that pays tribute to jazz greats such as Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. It premiered with the American Jazz Philharmonic in Culver City, Calif. But it has also been performed by college and high school music students at a summer music camp in California.

Symphony #6, tentatively called “The Penobscot River,” is scheduled to be performed on the waterfront in October 2004.

Members of the judging committee – the BSO, Maine Folklife Center, University of Maine Oratorio Society, Bangor Area Children’s Choir, Bangor Public Library, Bangor Region Arts and Culture Council, Robinson Ballet Company, Thomas School of Dance, UM Museum of Art, Hudson Museum and Maine Discovery Museum – were drawn both to Lee’s compositions and to personal qualities that are particularly suited to their goals of portraying Bangor in music.

“We were looking for candidates’ experiences, the things that they were involved in, the things they liked to do, and we wanted someone who could work well with us,” said Susan Jonason, executive director of the BSO. “Then the music really moved us. For me, his music was colorful, accessible, melodic. It had different moods and he used the full forces of the orchestra. Everything we learned about him fit this particular project. When we met him, it totally confirmed all of that.”

Lee was born in China in 1945 and grew up in Brazil where his flute studies were influenced by Latin rhythms. He came to America in 1966 and studied music at the University of Pittsburgh, the New England Conservatory and Harvard University, where he received a doctoral degree in composing. Among his prizes and awards are NEA and Guggenheim fellowships, the Rome Prize and the 1984 Esquire magazine designation as “The Best of the New Generation: Men and Women Under 40 Who Are Changing America.”

Familiar with Bangor through visits to his wife’s family in Steuben, Lee feels well suited to the task of writing about a landscape, seascape and, most importantly, riverscape he has admired. Since the committee requested that the final piece have choral and dance elements, Lee intends to spend time in the Bangor Public Library and the Maine Folklife Center researching local literature, official documents and other writings. From those texts, he said, he plans to craft a piece about local culture, history and life. Lee, whose wife teaches at the Boston Ballet, takes dance classes five days a week. So he feels additionally suited to meet the goals of the Robinson Ballet Company, which, along with the BSO and the Oratorio Society will participate in the final presentation of the work.

Lee plans to visit Bangor again this spring and then to return next year for a residency that will include visiting schools to share his early versions of the score with school children. Part of his commission involves spending time in the community to learn more about the way people see themselves in Bangor. He hopes that his encounters with community members, his research of texts and his own sense of the area will contribute to the five- or six-movement piece of music.

“I can tell the people there are very proud of their community,” said Lee. “They want a piece of music to represent them and highlight their culture. The text will speak about their pride, their history their culture.”

It is Jonason’s hope that the piece will speak across generations, too.

“From the beginning, I wanted a piece of music that would reach all the people of Maine and be a source of pride,” she said. “Having a piece of music played by this wonderful orchestra is a legacy we’re leaving. I want it played by high school bands and choruses, and by universities and choral groups. It should have a life of its own forever.”