Sphinx Chamber Orchestra Tour

October 6, 2008
BY WYNNE DELACOMA
Local arts lovers had their pick of heavy hitters in downtown Chicago over the weekend. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed Sibelius and Shostakovich at Symphony Center, and the legendary Kirov Ballet danced "Giselle' at the Auditorium.
But there is something equally exhilarating in encountering young performers who might become tomorrow's heavy hitters. On Saturday night, the two dozen or so gifted young members of the Sphinx Chamber Orchestra made their Chicago debut in the Harris Theater with a lively program stretching from Vivaldi to Wynton Marsalis.
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Violinist Clayton Penrose-Whitmore (right), of Evanston, performs with the Sphinx Chamber Orchestra.
(Courtesy)

Established in 2004, the string orchestra includes winners of competitions sponsored every year since 1996 by the Detroit-based Sphinx Organization. Sphinx is devoted to finding and helping promising Latino and black string players enter the professional classical music world, and some of its competition winners have done just that. Thanks in large part to Sphinx's efforts, the widely held perception that young people of color simply aren't interested in a life in classical music is slowly being laid to rest.
Judged simply on musical terms, the Sphinx Chamber Orchestra emerged as a top-notch ensemble Saturday night, playing with a tightly woven sound and palpable zest under conductor Chelsea Tipton II, resident conductor of the Toledo Symphony Orchestra.
The program of short works showed off the young players' versatility. Mozart's D Major Divertimento, K. 136, had a nice bounce and bright sheen, while Vivaldi's Concerto for Four Violins and Orchestra in B Minor dug a little deeper. Soloists, including 15-year-old Clayton Penrose-Whitmore of Evanston, confidently tossed Vivaldi's melodic threads back and forth, listening intently to each other as they tore through the concerto's quick tempos.
There was a seductively dreamy quality to the fugue movement from Heitor Villa-Lobos' "Bachianas Brasileiras" No. 9. Sections of the orchestra came and went as if surrounded by a smoky haze, momentarily seizing the spotlight before melting away into unsettled harmonies or unpredictable melodic turns. George Walker's elegiac Lyric for Strings was both lush and delicately shaded.
The Harlem Quartet, made up of orchestra members Ilmar Gavilan, Melissa White, Miguel Hernandez and Desmond Neysmith, had great fun with "Hellbound Highball," the final, scherzo movement from Wynton Marsalis' String Quartet No. 1 ("At the Octoroon Balls"), a work from 1995.
Marsalis' music evokes the powerful trains of the early 20th century, and the four players hurled themselves into high-speed chases and grinding slowdowns, all punctuated with sharp, twanging whistles and queasy, swaying rhythms.
The concert closed with "Delights and Dances" for String Quartet and Orchestra by American composer Michael Abels. Aptly titled, it was a happy mix of mellow lyricism and outbursts of jaunty country fiddling.
Wynne Delacoma is a Chicago free-lance writer.