Unknown: Welcome to the studio here at Illinois public media.

I'm Sarah Edwards.

You know before the COVID 19 pandemic, this studio was a centerpiece of our local TV production.

We produced weekly episodes of Mid American gardener here, filmed interviews and panels and made special programming like Illinois country live.

And let's not forget about our wi ll fundraising drives.

They're also produced right here in the studio.

But as you can imagine, it got a little lonely here starting in March of 2020 when the pandemic began, but we're happy to say we're back and we thought we'd celebrate the holiday season and jumpstart wi ll 100th year coming in 2022 by inviting some of the artists and artisans you may have seen in our classical BTS and American portrait series into the studio to talk to us about how they fared during the pandemic, and to perform for you because even though a global pandemic might shut down studios and concert halls, artists always find a way to make their own kind of music (This Little Light of Mine ) (Arranged by Hale Smith) (Perfomed by Ollie Watts Davis) That was Dr. Ollie Watts Davis singing This little light of mine.

We met Dr. Davis as she's known to our students in September of 2020, as she was navigating the realities of teaching during a global pandemic.

Good evening, everyone.

Are you guys as wonderful as you look?

Yes.

Okay, that makes me feel good.

I am Dr. Ollie Watts Davis, I am the Suzanne and William Allen Distinguished Professor of Music I serve on as a professor of voice and the music director and conductor of the black chorus at the University of Illinois.

The students come to Illinois from a variety of places and with a variety of interests.

But when they come to black chorus, they come for that experience with the students.

But they also come for an experience with me, she always says this, that she's teaching us transferable skills, the storm is passing over the storm is passing, come on.

Everything that she wants to teach us, she wants us to be able to apply it in our other classes in work in future or just to you know, have it in our pockets in college, encourage your neighbor, come on over.

Take time to learn all that you can and prepare during this time.

Because we come out on the other side, and we will come out on the other side.

I want for you to be ready for the needs that you're presenting.

There will be those who will need what you have mastered.

During this time of solitary in solitude.

There will be those who have questions that you can answer if you prepare yourself now that you feel better.

Dr. Ollie Watts Davis joins me now in the studio.

Thank you so much for being here, Dr. Davis.

Thank you, Sarah, for having me.

So in the clip we just saw which we shot about a year ago, you were talking about how you were encouraging your students to really use the restrictions of the pandemic, to grow as people.

So cut to a year later, we're now a year later.

What are the major lessons you've learned since the pandemic began?

And how how have they helped you to grow and change as a an artist and an educator?

Well, thank you for that question.

And I want to start by saying I give good advice.

So you said I've encouraged the students to use the restrictions to grow.

And so during this time, I've encouraged myself to use the restrictions or the margins have been placed in my life to actually grow and flourish.

And so I've matured quite a bit.

And I'm really I'm pleased with it, actually, I've been able to close some doors.

And with the closing of certain doors, other doors have opened.

And so I know oftentimes I have a tendency to over program myself.

So during this pandemic, as I had encouraged the students to do, to kind of reframe the restrictions in some sort of ways and not see them as hindering you, but actually giving you an opportunity to focus, prioritize, and choose wisely.

And that's what I've tried to do.

What you know, one of the things that really impressed us when we were shooting American portrait was, you know, you one of the biggest things that you chose to do, obviously, other than I mean, you chose to hold rehearsals in person during the height of the pandemic.

And what went along with that was wearing masks, and it's so tough to sing and rehearse in masks.

So how did you adjust to that?

I mean, because I assume you're still kind of doing that to some extent.

And how did you encourage the kids to stay musical while you were having to sing in masks?

Sure.

Well, the mask actually became just another teaching tool.

And so we were able to get a proper mask for singing that had a little more space, you know, and students were able to really work on their enunciation and articulation and placement and projection.

So it really assisted in actually the donation and actually the singing process, which was good.

And as I said earlier, sometimes you have to refrain, refrain, I'm sorry, things that appear to be challenges, and you have to see the inherent good in it.

And so in order to not have a diminished experience, as part of black chorus, or even with my students in my studio, we just had to use the tools that were available to us.

And so the maths became a tool for us to use.

And the students were so happy to gather in person.

And yes, I wanted to have an in person, as well as online experience for the students.

And I think that they wouldn't have worn hood.

So what was necessary just to kind of come together, because that really added to their human experience, and they were able to give value to one another, as they were receiving value from that experience.

So, you know, we've kind of seen in the artistic community that the pandemic can really kind of divided artists into two camps, and maybe not, but generally, we see that artists could be either creatively crippled by the restrictions of a pandemic, or it was just a chance for them to be more creative than they had in a long time.

So tell me about some of the creative, creative projects that you brought to life during the pandemic, and what you have going on now with black chorus and your career.

Sure, thank you for the question.

Yes, we are sensitive people, we're artists.

And so, you know, things impact us in many different ways.

And I think our first response can be like, what are we going to do, but then I think shortly after just basically owning that reality, many of us engaged, and we decided that the art that's with a mouse has to come forth.

And so as you mentioned, my work with black cores continued, we were very, very productive.

And really pleased about that, personally, I was able to curate a recital program, that means so very much to be it's called toward justice and share humanity, the art songs of black Americans as lens language, voice and hope.

And so I've had the great privilege to sing that recital across the country, actually, and hold a question and response after the recital.

And it basically addresses the things that are on my heart, as are, are very important right now and how I can best serve my generation with, you know, justice and equity and things like that.

So in the future, I continue to, I will continue to present this recital and curate other recitals like that black Chorus will continue to have now in person performances.

And I want to say this, yes, I conduct the choir and it's my passion.

It's really dear to my heart.

But I have some really outstanding voice students in my studio.

And I just have to give a shout out to to three of my graduate students from last year, because during this pandemic, one master student was finishing her degree, which included a scholarly paper as well as preparing a degree recital.

And it was amazing during a pandemic during voice lessons online, and with few rehearsals in another large space.

My doctoral student finished her doctorate degree during the pandemic.

And so I'm so proud of them and another doctoral student, did her first degree recital and went off and competed and earned a professional performance during the pandemic.

So I think I said earlier, if the art is in you, you will find a way to bring it out.

(Organ Music) The holiday season is primetime for pipe organs, which is an instrument you may not think about much normally.

John Paul Buzard has established a reputation as one of the finest builders of pipe organs in the world.

And he builds every one of them right here in Champaign Urbana with his staff.

Fred Bahr is a key member of his team.

Fred's responsible for crafting the tone each pipe producers.

Here's a clip from season two of classical BTS about the Buzard Pipe Organ Company.

There are so many different aspects of the craft of organ building, you have to be an electrician, a plumber, a musician of woodworker and a metal worker and so on and so, so I have brought together the best people that I can find that are experts in all of these different In order to be able to build the kind of instruments, the quality that we do, for everybody that's in this field, they've come to it because they've gotten bitten by the bug.

And sometimes they get bitten later in life.

And sometimes they get bitten.

Like, as I was like, as a child what a pipe organ is, is a box of whistles.

And the the speech of those whistles are controlled by keys that an organist plays, we order all of our metal pipes from a pipe maker in Germany.

They're absolutely the most beautiful organ pipes in the world.

John Paul Buzard.

And Fred Bahr, join me here in the studio now, great to have you both here.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, John, Paul, you know, you kind of supervises the day to day operations of the Buzard Pipe Organ Company.

But Fred, you know, you have a really fascinating job, tell us more about what you do.

I'm sort of in charge of making the sounds that the organ makes, I take the pipes that don't speak at all, when we get them.

And we cut and adjust and do various things to make them sing their song, as it were, it's kind of a mixture of physics, of getting the pipe actually to produce sound.

But there's also the emotional side of it, of trying to imagine what that effect is going to be on the people who listen to it.

So I get to combine those two things in the job that I do.

And, you know, I think a lot of people say, well, there's, you know, there's one tone to a, to a particular pipe.

And I think what was fascinating about when we did this piece is that, you know, tones are a range of sound, tell me a little bit more about, well, they're very, very complex, actually, there's, there's the beginning and the end, but then the, the sustained sound in the middle of that has lots of overtones, and give it the the color and the character that it has.

And that's all of those things that can be adjusted, with minute little adjustments that we make cutting metal or sticking a knife in here, they're adjusting things.

Excellent.

How tell me, both of you how your jobs and how business in general has been affected by the pandemic.

Well, I can certainly speak to the organ building industry and our company.

When the lockdown here in Illinois began, we had already brought our crew chief, back home from installation in Omaha.

And so they all came back because there was an outbreak in Omaha, they all came back quarantine for two weeks, everyone was fine.

And then the state shut us down for three months.

So we basically got no work done for three months, and we're supposed to deliver an organ in two years time.

Fortunately, the church is more than understanding and doesn't matter if the organ comes late, but you have a very, very real risk of running out of money before you're done.

So fortunately, in the long term, the pandemic has been a giant pain in the behind, but we're catching up sorry, I could have said worse.

But But, but we were catching up.

And we'll catch up by the end of the Oregon that we're building now for the church in Nashville.

Tell me about a little bit about how you balance the science and the emotion of building an organ.

Because Fred, you know, you're knee deep and tones all day.

But I imagined John that, you know, clients approached you saying we want the most majestic, beautiful organ we can possibly create for the space.

So do those goals always match?

Go ahead.

No, they don't always match.

But we have been very fortunate to have clients that that have said they don't want the biggest that kind of quantitative sort of thing.

They want the best in their space for the worship that they do.

We've been very, very fortunate about that.

There are however, a lot of Organists out there, and I don't think that you'll need to correct me because but who will say oh, I've just got to have an organ with four keyboards or three keyboards, whereas the church that he or she is playing in might only really need a to manual order.

And that's that's kind of where you have to educate about science and art coming together.

And yes, we can certainly build you something huge, but we don't want it to be so big that it's cumbersome in that it might be too loud or, or, frankly so big that it swallows itself up with the sound.

That Tell me a little bit about the major project you have underway in Nashville.

It's for St. George's Episcopal Church, and they have probably one of the most enviable music programs in the Episcopal Church in the United States.

Their instrument is is currently going to be 55 stops 65 independent sets of pipes with the provision to be able to add more in the future.

As it is, it's a good sized organ, and it will do them it will take care of their musical needs for a good long time.

But it has it has challenged us, it's a long build.

Usually an organ will take a year in the shot, maybe, maybe a year and a quarter.

This is two and a quarter years in shop alone.

And our shop it's we've been in it for 32 years and it used to be a hotel for unmarried women and we've had to modify it as much as we can.

And the what we call the erecting room where you're supposed to be able to set the whole thing up, we can only set a quarter of it up at a time.

So we're doing it in quadrants and our production director Shane Rhoades and his his assistant Mike Meyer have been incredibly clever as to how we can set each of those up individually but then they will join perfectly when you put them into the church.

We're on the second quadrant now we expect to have the third one up by Christmas.

(excerpt from Processional Trumpet on Adeste Fideles) (Hymn Tune by John Wade) (Setting by John G. Barr) We've produced both seasons of classical BTS with an ongoing gift from a very generous donor.

And really your donations big and small allow us to continue producing high quality documentaries and series here are wi ll.

Here's a bit of information about how you can give and where you can watch our classical BTS and American portrait series.

Hi, I'm Erin Lippitz major gifts director at Illinois public media.

wi ll is the source for classical music in our community every single day on WILL FM and WILL TV.

Classical BTS was produced right here at WILL and guests from viewers like you make original series like this possible.

You can help support locally produced high quality documentaries and series by making a gift today call to 217-244-9455 or go online to willgive.org and support this station.

Find all the episodes of classical BTS and the American portrait Central Illinois series on our website at will.illinois.edu Click on watch select the show and enjoy (classical music) pursuing a career as a professional harpist is well let's just face it more of a rare thing in classical music.

But Julia Kay Jamieson is making her own major mark as a harpist by combining her roots in classical harp literature with her own contemporary style.

She's a harp teacher and an innovative composer and arranger of heart music.

Here's a quick look at Julia's career from season one of classical BTS.

I was introduced to the harp at a wedding I heard it played at a wedding and there it was.

was so big and weird to me that I thought, Oh, this is cool, I have to do that.

And so I marched up to the bride who was the harpist, and asked her for a harp lessons.

There wasn't really a point when I knew like this was what I wanted to do, I always knew it was sort of expected, everybody was oh, Julia is going to be hard pressed.

You know, in grad school, I sort of found my own voice became more confident, and I could really play a lot of notes at once inside.

Yeah, started experimenting with playing the kind of music that I wanted to play.

Like one of the first pieces that I arranged was Michael Jackson's Thriller, I decided to do it for four harps.

From there.

I arranged a ton of popular pieces for herb quartet.

But then after a while, I decided to start writing my own original stuff, and I use an experimental sounds and you can put an alligator clip onto a harp string and flick it and vibrates and Tremeloes.

Or you can pluck the string with an alligator clip on it.

And it sounds like an old clock.

Go to a hardware store and pick up anything that looks neat.

And try it on a heart.

Julia Jamieson joins us here in the studio.

Nice to have you here.

Thank you.

So tell me a little bit about how you adjusted personally and professionally to the onset of the pandemic?

How did it affect your ability to improvise and your creativity?

Well, the biggest change was having to do so much online.

Because of live performances of disappearing almost overnight, I had to figure out ways to connect with audiences and connect with my students entirely online.

And so I had to get a little creative with that.

And but the other thing is, you know, harp is such a, you know, it's a very detailed instrument, I imagine it's, it's very hard to teach a student, the intricacies of harp playing on on Zoom.

I mean, how did you put your camera real close to the strings?

And I mean, how did you How do you handle that?

Yes, we have the cameras really close.

So a good view of the strings and the hands.

It's hard to catch every little thing.

But in some ways, it's interesting, because I can ask students things like, how do you feel about that?

How is your posture?

Like, what are your feet doing right now.

And so it helps them to be a little more self aware, too, when I have to rely on them, did anything that that you experienced or learned over the pandemic really stick with you like, you know, this is something I'm going to take forward into my own life.

And once this is all kind of passed.

I love teaching so much.

And I think even over the Zoom format, I really loved teaching and I loved connecting with my students.

And so I think, looking forward, I just that that's a focus for me, and something that's really important to me, and I'm gonna keep it that way.

I'm curious also about the state of opportunities for people who want to pursue a career as a harvest today, is it with the advent, you know, not the Advent, but you know, social media?

Is it expanding opportunities for harvest?

Things you can do as a harvest?

I'm curious, probably.

We'll see how it all plays out.

I do think it's, it's wonderful.

I picture some young harpist in a small town posting some creative, amazing thing that they've done on social media and finding an audience that can really appreciate and support them.

And I think that probably goes a long way in encouraging and harpist and getting them out into the world.

So I think that's a great part of social media, you're gonna play two pieces for us one, one, which we may know, and the other one is completely improvised.

So one of the things I'm really curious about is, even though it's an improvised piece, there must be some kind of structure behind how you approach improvisation.

Tell me, can you take me into your mind a bit about how you approach an improvised piece in the classical piece that I'm going to play?

It's interlude from the ceremony of carols.

And the interlude itself is based on a Gregorian chant that is also used in the ceremony of carols.

And so I'm going to improvise loosely based on that same Gregorian chant.

And so I I'll have that in mind as I play and then I also have in mind that I want to use a couple of extended techniques.

And so I have that planned in advance but how, how it unfolds.

I have no idea.

Yes, okay, all right.

I know we said it was a holiday edition of classical BTS but we thought you might enjoy a bit of school spirit thrown in for good measure.

That was John Paul Buzard playing the Illinois fight song at the chapel of St. John the Divine in Urbana.

Now here again for final performance is Dr. Ollie Watts Davis.

Dr. Davis, please introduce us to your pianist and tell us about your final song.

Thank you.

It is my pleasure to introduce to you my friend and my colleague, Dr. Casey Robards at the piano.

For our final selection, we will sing He's got the whole world in His hand special performance from one of our own, so to speak.

Julia Escobar grew up in Texas and fell in love with the flute when she was in fourth grade.

After college in Texas, she came to the University of Illinois for her master's degree and is now finishing her PhD in flute performance.

Julia is Illinois Public Media's very first John Frayne classical music fellow.

It's a new position here made possible with a gift to the University of Illinois, and to Illinois public media.

She has been hard at work curating a special edition of Prairie performances for our radio listeners that showcases music for the flute.

Enjoy this final performance.

I'm Sarah Edwards, and from all of us here at Illinois public media, happy holidays.