The Inside Story: Liz Player and ADOLPHUS HAILSTORK: CHAMBER WORKS

Adolphus Hailstork’s music blends African, American, and European traditions; there are parts that positively sound like something Shostakovich or Prokofiev might have written, perhaps echoes of Hailstork’s studies with Nadia Boulanger in the 1960s. There are moments of contemplation, but if this album from The Harlem Chamber Players is anything, it’s invigorating and profound.

Today, Liz Player, Artistic Director of The Harlem Chamber Players, is our featured guest in the Inside Story, a blog series exploring the inner workings and personalities of our composers and performers. Read on to learn about her early musical experiences while living on an Army base in Japan, and her passions for cooking, reading, and more…

If you weren’t a musician, what would you be doing?

If I weren’t a musician, I would be a visual artist of some kind. As the founder and artistic director of The Harlem Chamber Players, I spent most of its early years doing a lot of the graphic design work myself as we built up the nonprofit. Today I still design the brochures we mail and distribute each year. I love bright vivid colors and working with layouts. 

Take us on a walk through your musical library. What record gets the most plays? Are there any “deep cuts” that you particularly enjoy?

I used to play the entire album A Feather on the Breath of God over and over again in the evening before going to bed. This music by Abbess Hildegard of Bingen always soothes my soul no matter how deep of a funk I’m in. It reminds me that while this journey through life is a solitary one, we are all connected somehow to a Higher Power, God, through this vast magnificent Universe. That is definitely one of my all-time favorite recordings.

I also like listening to different types of music depending on the day or what mood I’m in. I have my favorite music for cooking, cleaning, writing, exercising, or winding down after a long day. After my mother died last year, I was obsessed with the various versions of the Korean folk song Arirang sung by Kim Young Im. I also love Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love album. I grew up listening to Earth, Wind and Fire, Stevie Wonder, Funkadelic, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, etc.

As a clarinetist I listened to a lot of Mozart and Brahms, but I also love Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, Prokofiev, Debussy, anything by Arvo Pärt, Bach, and of course lately, Hailstork.

What emotions do you hope listeners will experience after hearing your work?

Joy and hope are the emotions that I feel when listening to the music on this album that I hope others will feel. I love any kind of music that reaches into my gut, and Adolphus Hailstork is exactly that kind of composer who really goes there. There is a moment in the first movement of the “Detroit” Piano Quintet when the the five instruments split off into such different rhythms and melodic lines that it sounds like the ensemble is falling apart, it’s chaotic; then, suddenly they all come back together. I love the slow movements; this music is soulful.

When I reached out to Dr. Hailstork in 2017 and asked him to compose a new piece for us, he wanted to wait one more year to write something to commemorate 1619, the year the first enslaved Black people were brought to America. The librettist Dr. Herbert Woodward Martin wrote the poem upon which this concert aria is based from the point of view of the second thief (the one on the left) on the cross next to Jesus. The aria Nobody Know takes me through a multitude of emotions every time I hear it.

What were your first musical experiences?

My dad loved music. We lived in Japan on an Army base during my first and second grade years. My dad used to sing in a band called The People’s Power. It was a multi-ethnic R&B band, and the members wore red, black, and green jumpsuits. I was awestruck by this Black-Asian woman in the band who had a big Afro. It was fun going to nightclubs to hear my dad sing and play keyboard with his band. Those were happy days. Eventually my mom made him quit to spend more time with family.

Years later, I watched my brother die in the ocean, and I was the one who had to tell my mom that “Kenny went under the water and didn’t come back up.” Throughout the rest of my middle school, high school, college, and for years after, I spent a lot of time alone. We went to the county library a lot, and that’s how I discovered a treasure of classical music — Handel Trio Sonatas, music by Debussy, Mozart, Brahms. I was troubled for many years, but somehow this music kept me from going too far over the edge.

Where and when are you at your most creative?

I’ve spent most of my life alone, and I feel the freest and most creative when I get to spend time alone. I love early mornings. That’s when I write my morning pages and meditate. I also love the quiet time after dinner before reading or watching a show on television. I also love walking or jogging through the park.

What are your other passions besides music?

I like cooking and learning new recipes when I have the time. I also love writing in my journals, and I especially love reading and getting lost in a beautifully written fiction novel by great writers like Arundhati Roy, James Baldwin, Kazuo Ishiguro, Toni Morrison, Han Kang, Colson Whitehead, Salman Rushdie, Octavia Butler, Gabriel García Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, Jesmyn Ward… The list goes on and on. I consult The New York Times or my best friend Sally for new recommendations. If you ask me again in a month or two, I will probably have new favorites. I am always looking for a great book to read, and while I absolutely love fiction, I also love great writers who help open my mind to new worlds and to truths I longed to know my entire life. Some of my favorite heroines include Nikole Hannah-Jones and Isabel Wilkerson.