Heartland Festival Goes to the Heart for 10th Anniversary
For their 10th anniversary season the Heartland Festival Orchestra honored the beauty and life of the region they call home: the prairies, waterways, and cityscapes of Central Illinois.
Early on, HFO Music Director David Commanday reached out to us about this exciting project. A collaboration quickly got underway—one that also directly involved Central Illinois residents and organizations. The HFO asked community members (many of whom had never been to a classical concert) to share their story of life in the Heartland in their own images. And the HFO’s community delivered: in the end, the image submissions totaled 1200! All of the images were then curated by Westwater Arts multimedia artist Nicholas Bardonnay, and he ultimately chose a collection of images representing 40 finalist photographers for the new choreography. Nicholas performed the finished piece, titled Heartland Portraits, live with the HFO on April 13, 2019. The music selected for the choreography was the 3rd and 4th movements from Steve Heitzeg’s Symphony to the Prairie Farm.
The idea of crowd-sourcing imagery for new symphonic productions is rooted in Westwater Arts’ Community, Cameras & Classics™ program, which has led to the creation of these collaborative, localized multimedia pieces for 65 orchestras and their diverse communities. The most recent collaborations have been in Anchorage, AK, Pensacola, FL, Toledo, OH, Fort Collins, CO, and Newport, OR.
In the Peoria, IL area, the community spirit of the Heartland Portraits project gave the HFO an opportunity to connect with organizations and media outlets that helped to get the word out. To collect all of the photo submissions, the HFO developed a special landing page on their website, which was active until the December 2, 2018 deadline. The project also received a nice bump when the League of American Orchestras featured it on their HUB e-newsletter.
Finally, in the month leading up to the premiere performance, the HFO organized a photo exhibition in the lobby of their concert venue, Five Points Washington. All of the finalist photographers were invited to submit up to two prints of their choosing to build upon the Heartland theme and create more exposure for their beautiful work.
The program for the April 2019 All-American concert also included Daugherty’s Reflections on the Mississippi for Tuba & Orchestra and the 1st and 3rd movements from Copland’s A Tender Land suite. For the latter, Nicholas presented his National Park Suite visual concerto, which he created to honor the recent centennial of the National Park Service. The piece contains imagery from 30+ national parks & monuments and premiered with the National Symphony at Wolf Trap in 2016. The contrasting local and national themes during the concert made for a dynamic audience experience, while further highlighting why the Heartland is such a special place to live and grow.
(Barn and puffy clouds image submitted by Don Forrest. Cornfield image submitted by Melinda Farrington. Honest Abe image submitted by Darrin Ralph. American barn image submitted by Paula Guttilla. Winter cardinal image submitted by Todd Ryburn.)
