By Shaun Brady, For The Inquirer
A composer tries to capture the lives of ordinary folk during the Civil War.
Reliving history can be a revelation.
While doing research last year for "Portraits of Civil War Heroes," the first of five annual compositions planned for the Rosenbach Museum & Library's commemoration of the war, jazz pianist and composer Dave Burrell, the museum's musician-in-residence, discovered that despite his later prominence, Robert E. Lee failed to win any significant battles during the struggle's first year.
"I thought, 'This isn't good for the war, it's not good for the South, and it's not good for me,' " Burrell recalls with a burst of laughter.
One year after the premiere of that piece, Burrell has moved on from the great men of the war to those who suffered and died off the battlefield.
"Civilians During War Time" comprises six pieces Burrell has composed after months of research in the Rosenbach's archives. Burrell and his longtime collaborator, violinist Odessa Balan, will premiere the suite this weekend in a salon-style performance at the museum.
"We decided we weren't going to take sides in this second year," Burrell says of his approach to composing the piece. "We felt that everybody who's American had something to say about their side, so we just wanted to lay it out."
Each piece will picture a different aspect of civilian life, from the families of soldiers to starving children, from female spies to the charitable commissions that held fairs to raise funds and support for the war effort. "The pieces are very emotional this year," says Balan. "They're reflective of real people trying just to survive the war."
While there were no disappointments on the scale of Gen. Lee's lackluster early performance this time out, there were still surprises in store for the composer. The opening piece will feature Burrell alone at the piano, recounting a story about his own family background. Inspired to revisit genealogical research that his stepmother had conducted decades before, Burrell discovered a famous branch on his family tree.
"I am in fact the great-great-great-grandson of Thomas Overton Moore, who was the governor of Louisiana at the time of the war," explains Burrell, who is African American. "It was kind of mind-blowing, and became the fire for this year's composition."
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