Frank, who is of Peruvian, Jewish and Chinese heritage, was awarded a two-year residency as the ISO's composer-in-residence through the project, which is called Nueva Vida (New Life). She has used that time to make repeat visits to the city, bonding particularly with the Latino Youth Collective, a group of young Hispanic adults dedicated to mentoring other Hispanics and encouraging their advancement. "Bringing in Gabriela to write a symphony is amazing!" said Kathy Souchet-Moura, an IUPUI graduate student and member of the Latino Youth Collective board. "Art and music allow us to look at things a little bit differently from the way we do on a daily basis. I'm hoping the orchestra will start bu Gabriela Lena Frank's musical influences come from her own polyglot background. Her mother is Peruvian, her father is descended from Lithuanian Jews, and she grew up in Berkeley, California. Her parents met when her father was a Peace Corps worker in Peru in the 1960s.
Gabriela Lena Frank premiers her new composition "Peregrinos" (Pilgrims) with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra
Symphonic storyteller
Tales of local immigrants haunt ISO composer's work
By Jay Harvey
Posted: February 22, 2009
The stories of local Hispanic residents remain vivid for composer Gabriela Lena Frank as she talks about "Peregrinos" (Pilgrims), her new composition premiering this week with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.
In one such tale, a young woman recalls being crammed into the back seat of a car speeding undocumented workers across the U.S.-Mexico border, then forced to get out late at night near an Indianapolis cemetery seemingly haunted by fireflies.
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The anxiety brought on by this scene has never left the immigrant, said Frank, who used it to create "Fireflies" -- one of the five movements of "Peregrinos."
The new work -- conducted by Indianapolis native Kazem Abdullah -- is one of several that the ISO has commissioned throughout the years about life in Indianapolis and about its residents.
But it's the first one to focus on the local Hispanic community.
"Because we have so many staff members dedicated to working with the community -- in schools, libraries, at the International Center, we were noticing the incredibly growing population of Latinos here," said Beth Perdue Outland, vice president of the ISO's Learning Community. "We want to add new contemporary works to the orchestra literature, and we thought we'd like to reflect the changing mosaic of our city's population."
The collaboration between the ISO and Frank, a 36-year-old composer from Berkeley, Calif., got major support from the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation, which gives $50,000 prizes to Midwestern arts organizations that commission works by artists of color.
Frank, who is of Peruvian, Jewish and Chinese heritage, was awarded a two-year residency as the ISO's composer-in-residence through the project, which is called Nueva Vida (New Life).
She has used that time to make repeat visits to the city, bonding particularly with the Latino Youth Collective, a group of young Hispanic adults dedicated to mentoring other Hispanics and encouraging their advancement.
"Bringing in Gabriela to write a symphony is amazing!" said Kathy Souchet-Moura, an IUPUI graduate student and member of the Latino Youth Collective board. "Art and music allow us to look at things a little bit differently from the way we do on a daily basis. I'm hoping the orchestra will start building bridges to others to show people what the immigrant experience is like."
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Frank said the legacy of forged links between the orchestra and the local Latino community is a major aspect of the project.
"This residency is not just about producing a piece of music," she said. "It's about showing ways that the orchestra can be of service to its community. . . . It's been a nice example of an arts organization responding as a civic organization."
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Nueva Vida has also opened links between organizations serving Hispanics here, said Souchet-Moura.
"Organizations that serve immigrants don't normally come together, and it's been helpful for us to build those connections," she said. "Hispanics here are from all over, from very different cultures, and we're often lumped together. But we're a very diverse community."
However, it was the universality of the experiences of Latin American newcomers to Indianapolis that most inspired Frank's creative process.
"They are missing the family they left behind -- and their language," said Frank. "They miss not having the kind of future they wanted. Instead, people who come here are looking forward for their children. And through it all, I found there was a sense of humor and optimism."
The 20-minute work takes the stories Frank gathered here -- and her impressions of the people she met -- and submits them to orchestral form, using conventional instrumentation.
She calls the work's divisions "testimonials." For example, the first and fifth movements, titled "Dream Tree," were inspired by the Theater of Inclusion, founded here in 2000 to use new creative techniques to build teamwork -- often among marginalized populations.
Frank developed sympathy for relating music to personal stories from her first piano teacher, who played recordings for her and told anecdotes about famous composers.
Music's personal links remain, for Frank, a sign of Nueva Vida's success.
"I would like to keep working with people here," said Frank, "but whatever the ISO wants to do independent of me, they can pursue it. The relationships they've made with the community won't fall apart."
