[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It, live from the WNYC Studios. I'm Alison Stewart. Thank you for spending your day with us. I'm really grateful you're here. On today's show, we'll talk with Eater editor, Melissa McCart, about the best sports bar in the city to watch the Olympics, and we want to know your favorites as well. We'll also learn about a Gilded Age divorce that captured the attention of moneyed New Yorkers. Author Barbara Weisberg writes about it in her book Strong Passions. Brooklyn-based artist Jive Poetic will be here to talk about his new memoir, Skip Tracer, and All Of It producer, Jordan Lauf, joins us for a check in about our summer reading challenge. That is the plan, so let's get this started with a couple of monumental centennials. [music]

This Saturday, you'll get to see celebrate two birthdays for the price of nothing at all at a free concert at Brooklyn Bridge Park. WNYC and St. Ann's Warehouse are teaming up for Rhapsody for This Land: The American Odyssey in Music. It's this Saturday, July 27, at 6:00 PM. 2024 is the 100th anniversary of both WNYC and George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, and this concert will celebrate both these centennials, along with a bunch of other music performed by Rosanne Cash, Christian McBride, Arturo O'Farrill, and Time for Three. The show was conceived by pianist, composer, and Public Song Project judge Lara Downes, who created a new version of Rhapsody in Blue, with composer Edmar Colón, titled Rhapsody in Blue Reimagined, which will be performed by an orchestra on Saturday. Here's a clip of it.

[MUSIC - Lara Downes and Edmar Colón: Rhapsody in Blue Reimagined]

Alison Stewart: Joining me now in studio with a preview of this weekend's concert is Lara Downes. It is so nice to see you in person.

Lara Downes: It's great to be here. I love it that Public Song Project judge is now part of my title.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: When you joined us on the actual anniversary of Rhapsody in Blue back in February, you called it a musical kaleidoscope of America. Why do you think that phrase, musical kaleidoscope of America, describes the piece so well?

Lara Downes: Well, that was Gershwin's phrase. Yes, that was what he called his vision for the piece, and he goes on to talk about the melting pot. That's why I have loved this centenary contact with this piece because it's really thrown me back into 1924, and Gershwin's America, which was an America in transformation. He, as a first generation American, is celebrating that, and really intentionally bringing together all of these new sounds that are floating through the city and trying to make something that will crystallize them, and I think capture his time.

Alison Stewart: When did you first hear Rhapsody in Blue?

Lara Downes: Everybody always asked me that. I don't know. It's always been there, right? Hasn't it? It's always been there.

Alison Stewart: That's true.

Lara Downes: Yes. I think I first played it when I was probably, like 12. It's been with me a long time.

Alison Stewart: Why do you think it has significance 100 years later?

Lara Downes: I think it's a great tune or collection of tunes, and it holds up well. The more I think about it, I think that we are actually, whether we know it or not, we're kind of processing or experiencing that enthusiasm and energy that was behind the writing of it. This piece was written in a huge hurry. There's this whole story about how Gershwin didn't know he was writing the piece, and then there was a piece, an article in the newspaper, saying that he was writing the piece, so he had to write the piece. He had a matter of weeks, and it was composed for a concert called "An Experiment in Modern Music." There really is this feeling of freshness and newness in the music.

Alison Stewart: The idea for you and WNYC to collaborate on this concert came through your involvement with the Public Song Project. You're a judge for the project, and a section of your version of Rhapsody is on the album that we've put together. Why do you think you're drawn to the idea of reimagining and reinterpreting, both for our project and for Rhapsody Reimagined?

Lara Downes: It's really for everything. I'm a classically trained pianist. That means I have spent my entire life immersed in the world of 100, 200, and 300 years ago, which can be a weird existence unless you think about history as something to learn from, reinterpret, and connect with. I think that the problem in my part of the music world is that we can tend to look at history as a dusty thing that goes in museums. I've always been committed to understanding the people behind the music, the life behind the music, and how does that translate into our own time and stay, new and changing, and turning with the world.

Alison Stewart: As you and Edmar were reimagining Rhapsody in Blue, what elements didn't exist in the original that you really wanted to add or to experiment with?

Lara Downes: That is the best question, because what I've always felt about the piece is that he's trying out new languages, and when a language is new, you're not perfect with it, right? There are all these rhythms, for example, in the piece, and I know that what he's hearing is, well, he's hearing jazz. He's hearing Latin rhythms, and he's trying to translate them into notation that belongs to a European symphonic tradition. I've always wondered, but what was he really hearing? What were the things that were-- When I started working with Edmar, who's Puerto Rican, and who comes from an Afro-Cuban jazz background, and he would play-- I remember the first time we started working on this, we were in Boston, in a classroom, and there just happened to be some drums lying around, and he went and started playing these rhythms, and I'm like, oh, that's what that is, so that's what we really brought out.

Alison Stewart: The concert's also going to feature Rosanne Cash, Arturo O'Farrill, Chris McBride, jazz trio Time for Three. What are we going to hear? What are the themes going to be?

Lara Downes: It's the power of the people. It's all the beauty that we can find in American history, if we translate that through music, and that's what I love about music is it kind of gives us the best of what we've always been. Rosanne is doing old traditional songs from way back that originated with Negro spirituals. Christian and I are doing two songs that were kind of anthems of the Civil Rights Movement. You're going to hear everything, from folk to jazz, and as you said, going back 100 years, and then Arturo is writing a brand new piece for the occasion. It's a very broad American landscape.

Alison Stewart: 1924 is when Rhapsody premiered, and WNYC first went on the air. It was a tough year in history. The Immigration Act of 1924 banned many immigrants, including all Asian immigrants, from entering the country. When you're celebrating American music, how do you account for the darker aspects of American history?

Lara Downes: Well, I mean, they're just there, and I think that what I've learned, and before, when you asked me about this question of how do you bring the past into the present, it's because I think that American music is always responsive to American reality. When we can understand that, then we also understand things about the cycles of history, and then we understand that we are not living in the worst of times, right? For me, it's been hugely enlarging to understand that exactly 100 years ago, 1924, we were struggling with so many of the same issues that are challenging today, and so what did Gershwin do? He made the best piece of American music out of that mess.

Alison Stewart: Speaking of the issues of taking issues into our own hands, you have a voter registration that's going to be going on at the concert, part of Headcount. You're an ambassador for them. How did you become part of Headcount, and what's going to happen at the concert?

Lara Downes: Yes, I'm so excited about this, especially given what's happened over the last few days and just this energy that seems to be taking over, and this effort that we all need to make to come together and to participate in this process. I've been an Artist Ambassador for Headcount for years just because it feels so connected to my mission with American music. Headcount is going to have volunteers on site to register voters, or check your registration and make sure you're all set to go. I just think that the theme of this concert and the music that is going to be played, it's really all about what can happen when we do raise our voices, and we do express our belonging and our rights and our responsibilities as Americans in this democracy that we're so fortunate to have.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Lara Downes, curator of the Rhapsody for This Land, a free concert at the Brooklyn Bridge Park this Saturday evening at 6:00 PM. It'll be broadcast live right here on WNYC. It's going to be at the Brooklyn Bridge Park, right under the Brooklyn Bridge. What's exciting about the location to you?

Lara Downes: Oh, I mean, it's spectacular. It's so spectacular. It's so open, and to be in that iconic space, I think the Brooklyn Bridge, like says New York City to America and to the world, I do need to say this has been a big production. It wouldn't be possible, except that we've been very generously supported by the Robert W. Wilson Charitable Trust, and these visionary minds at St. Ann's Warehouse. I went down there for a meeting many months ago with the idea that we would use their beautiful theater to do this concert, and now we are moving outside, and we're building this giant stage, and welcoming all of New York City to experience, as you said, a free concert and a real celebration of our democracy.

Alison Stewart: We're going to go out on a recording you did for Soundcheck earlier this year with Edmar Colón. It's a section of the piece called Study In Blue. Can you add some context for us?

Lara Downes: Yes. When Edmar and I were going through the original score and trying to figure out how we wanted to reshape it, we came to what I just called the pretty part. Everybody's going to recognize it. I remember Edmar joking because we'd been talking about this lineage in music and how all things are connected, and Edmar said, "Wait a minute. He stole this theme from Chopin," and I started laughing, and then I listened. I was like, oh, you know, no. Well, he borrowed something. This piece makes this very affectionate connection between Chopin and Gershwin, and I think Gershwin would love it.

Alison Stewart: Is there anything else about the concert you want to tell us?

Lara Downes: Well, I can't believe we've pulled this off, and I just can't wait to welcome everybody. I feel like this is how music should always be. It's this wide open welcome and really a chance to celebrate the diversity, the history, the past, the present, the future. I'm really excited about Saturday, and I hope everybody will come on out, and I hope that the weather is really great.

Alison Stewart: Knock on wood, knock on wood. Lara Downes is the curator of Rhapsody for This Land, a free concert at the Brooklyn Bridge Park, Saturday evening, 6:00 PM. We hope you can join us at Brooklyn Bridge Park. If you can't, you can listen right here on WNYC. So nice to see you. Good luck.

Lara Downes: It's great to be here. Thanks, Alison.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to Study In Blue from Lara Downes and Edmar Colón.

[MUSIC - Lara Downes and Edmar Colón: Study In Blue]

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