Red Cedar Chamber Music will bring to life two novels by Iowa City Pulitzer Prize-winner Marilynne Robinson in "Perhaps Gilead," a three-movement commissioned work by Harvey Sollberger of Strawberry Point. The group includes (front row, from left) Lisa Ponton of Cedar Rapids, viola; Miera Kim of Iowa City, violin; Jan Boland of Marion, flute; (back row, from left) John Dowdall of Marion, guitar; Harvey Sollberger of Strawberry Point, composer; and Carey Bostian of Iowa City, cello. Nancy McFarland Gaub of Fairfield will join them on violin for a series of concerts in April and May 2011. (Len Struttmann photo)

By Diana Nollen/ SourceMedia Group

An award-winning Strawberry Point composer has turned to an Iowa City author’s award-winning words to create a new work for an award-winning Marion ensemble.

This blending of Iowa talents will play out across Eastern Iowa this spring, as Red Cedar Chamber Music concerts showcase the ensemble’s latest commissioned piece, “Perhaps Gilead.”

Harvey Sollberger has created a 32-minute work in three movements for flute, guitar and string quartet. It was inspired by Marilynne Robinson’s 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Gilead” and its companion piece, “Home,” which won the coveted Orange Prize for Fiction in 2009.

Both take readers to the fictional small town of Gilead, Iowa, in the 1950s, exploring the lives of two elderly ministers, their family histories, their children, their faith and the changing society in which they live.

“There’s a lot of layers here,” says John Dowdall, 61, of Marion, Red Cedar’s co-founder, artistic director and guitarist. “We hope to get a lot of people inspired about their interest in literature.”

Sollberger, 72, calls Robinson “an astonishing writer” and is especially drawn to the way she portrays slices of life in his home state.

Author Marilynne Robinson (Brian Ray/The Gazette)

“I’ve been aware of her since seeing the movie ‘Housekeeping,’ based on her first novel,” he says. “I was born in Cedar Rapids, grew up in Marion, attended the University of Iowa, then went away for 50 years. I’m back now, and am looking for ways to reconnect, and especially to reconnect with my music a lot of the memories and experiences I had as a young person.

“These novels are set in Iowa,” he says. “In reading them, I found an incredible wealth of poetic response to this area of the Midwest. I made three pages of quotations from the books that resonate strongly with me.

“One of my favorites is from ‘Gilead’: ‘I have lived my life on the prairie and a line of oak trees can still astonish me.’

"Gilead," by Iowa City author Marilynne Robinson, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005.

“She makes wonderful references to nature, seasons, animals, insects and the passage of time that relate very directly and immediately to whatever anyone living in Iowa knows firsthand.”

Sollberger hasn’t spoken directly with Robinson, but was pleased when she gave the project her support in a letter to Red Cedar. “She wrote back a very generous and encouraging letter expressing her interest in the project,” Sollberger says.

Because of prior commitments, Robinson won’t be able to attend the mainstage concerts of “Perhaps Gilead” in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City on May 21 and 22, 2011, but she will participate in Red Cedar events April 21, 2011, at Lowe Park in Marion and April 22, 2011, at Grinnell College.

Dowdall says that while reading Robinson’s novels before hearing the music will enhance the experience, listeners who haven’t done so will still enjoy vivid imagery created through the work.

“The music stands well on its own,” he says, “because much of the soul of the music and the psychic energy Harvey put into it is drawn from the novels, to get the deepest impact from the listener.

"Home," by Iowa City author Marilynne Robinson

“If you’re privy to all of the philosophical tensions and innuendoes in the novels, it will enhance the experience tremendously,” he says. “If you have a sense of who the characters are, your idea of what the house looks like — a museum stuck in time — if you’ve got an image in your mind already of what that is, to experience it in music will be tremendous.”

The music will challenge listeners, says Sollberger, who spent 11 months working on the composition, devoting his attention full-time for about seven or eight of those months.

“I work in a contemporary style — my music does not sound very much like Bach or Beethoven,” he says. “… My music is not chaotic, but it flirts with chaos. I push the envelope.”

He calls it “musical multi-tasking,” a dense style in which the performers have to juggle several musical ideas unfolding simultaneously.

“It’s not easy-listening music,” Sollberger says.

Each movement has its own distinct character, Dowdall says, reflected in their titles: “Constructing a Horizon: Prairie Sunset and Moonrise,” “The Armed Man” and “Fantasy-Potpourri: Sunday Afternoon Music at Reverend Boughton’s.”

“The first movement creates a scene that all can appreciate,” Dowdall says, “a horizon with a setting sun and rising moon, being outside with an expanse of prairie. It’s set in Kansas, because (father and son) are looking for the grave of a grandfather who left Iowa and died in Kansas. …

    “It has a very impressionistic sense and is beautiful.”

The second movement takes on a militaristic feel, hearkening back to the violent times of the grandfather who, as an abolitionist minister, advocated for the freedom of slaves with John Brown in the Civil War era.

“The middle movement is the hardest and most disturbing,” Dowdall says. “It’s broken up in the middle by a beautiful tune, then comes back and is all strident and military again.”

He says the final chapter “is a lot of fun” and the most literal translation of Robinson’s writing.

“The third movement is a very sonic,” Dowdall says. “It’s a recreation of a one-page segment of ‘Home,’ taking her setting and using music to bring that to life. It’s an afternoon of music at one of the homes. It talks about the hymns and a pop tune being played, so Harvey integrated that into the music.”

It ends with the instruments creating the sounds of crickets, flies and cicadas ushering in an Iowa evening.

Sollberger hopes the work offers the players the same thing it offers their audiences: “ a stimulating, rewarding experience. Something that sets them thinking, dreaming, imagining, remembering — that triggers a connection between the work and what lies deepest and most forgotten within them.”

The entire work reflects the scope of Red Cedar’s musical depth and breadth.

“We have two specialties: 19th century music on antique instruments and new commissions on modern instruments,” says Dowdall, who founded the ensemble with flutist Jan Boland in 1997.  

Dowdall says that while “Perhaps Gilead” has “no connection to the 19th century,” the third movement does have “an earlier parlor concert, similar to what would have gone on in that time. But it’s set in the 1950s, when a couple of older gentlemen have the idea of getting together, having lunch, then going into the parlor to hear someone play the piano. It’s before the advent of TV, but all of the instruments are modern.”

Funding for a commissioned work can vary greatly, Dowdall says.

“We as an organization try to generate $2,500 per year for commissioning,” he says. “Typically, with an extended work, we can offer $5,000 and it takes us two years to get those funds generated.”

With Sollberger, Red Cedar asked for a 15-minute work. “He got so involved, he came back with a 30-minute work.

“When you commission a work, the hard part is that you don’t know what you’re gonna get,” Dowdall says. “You can’t legislate how involved a composer is going to get. Sometimes you get more than you hoped for.

“This is a dream come true, to work with a major composer who got so inspired on a personal level.”

ARTS EXTRA

• What: Red Cedar Chamber Music performs “Setting Sun to Rising Moon,” commissioned work for flute, guitar and string quartet
• Program: Hymn singalong; introduction to Marilynne Robinson’s novels “Home” and “Gilead” and the music they inspired; “Perhaps Gilead” by Harvey Sollberger
• Cedar Rapids: 8 p.m. May 21, 2011, First Presbyterian Church, 310 Fifth St. SE; $18 at the door, $15 in advance; $10 ages 30 and under; (319) 377-8028
• Iowa City: 2 p.m. May 22, 2011, St. Raphael Orthodox Church, 722 E. College St.; followed by gala reception at the Musser-Dixon Victorian home, 715 E. College St.; $35, advance purchase required at (319) 377-8028
• Information: www.redcedar.org or (319) 377-8028

Outreach concerts

• Iowa City: 7:30 p.m. April 19, 2011 Oaknoll Retirement Residence, 1 Oaknoll Ct.; free; (shorter, informal program)
• Marion: 7 p.m. April 21, 2011, Lowe Park Arts and Environment Center, 4500 10th St.; free; features reading by Marilynne Robinson
• Grinnell: 7:30 p.m. April 22, 2011, Sebring-Lewis Recital Hall, Bucksbaum Center for the Arts, Grinnell College, 1108 Park St.; free; features round-table discussion before concert with “Perhaps Gilead” composer Harvey Sollberger, author Marilynne Robinson and composer/guitarist Christopher Gainey
• Iowa City: 1 p.m. May 11, 2011, Iowa City Music Study Club, Parkview Church, 15 Foster Rd.; free (shorter, informal program)
• Marengo: 7 p.m. May 18, 2011, First Presbyterian Church, 902 Marengo Ave.; free
• Marion: 1:30 p.m. May 19, 2011, Village Place Retirement Community, 345 Marion Blvd.; free (shorter, informal program)
• Ainsworth: 7 p.m. May 19, 2011, Ainsworth Opera House; meal served before concert; $20 at (319) 653-6250
• Cedar Rapids: 2 p.m. May 20, 2011, Meth-Wick Senior Community Manor Building, 1224 13th St. NW; free (shorter, informal program)
• Vinton: 7 p.m. May 20, 2011, Wesley United Methodist Church, 516 Second Ave.; $10 at (319) 472-5109