ROCCO PRIOLETTI
Staff Writer
Tonight, the delicate voice of a guitar has the immediacy of an entire orchestra. At 8 p.m. in the Amphitheater, the four-time Grammy Award nominated classical guitarist Mak Grgić takes center stage beside the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra. Together, they will perform Michael Abels’ guitar concerto, “Borders.”
The inspiration behind “Borders” first arose in 2020 during the Black Lives Matter movement, while Grgić was living in downtown Los Angeles, California. Together, Grgić and Abels began discussing the historical sources prompting the societal tension that permeated throughout the world, making parallels between the prevalence of European nationalism.
These conversations came to life when the two visited “Sahara: Acts of Memory,” an exhibit in Pomona detailing a refugee family’s journey from Bosnia to Denmark and Chicago.
“We went together to visit that, and it was quite picturesque, you know?” Grgić said. “The whole premise was like how art and creativity, through community, really uplifts the spirit.”
The exhibition inspired Abels to compose the guitar concerto around refugees. Abels is a 2023 Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, known for his work scoring the Jordan Peele films “Get Out,” “Us” and “Nope.” The composer’s penchant for personifying moving narratives through song is on full display within “Borders.”
This evening’s program, conducted by Music Director Rossen Milanov, offers a night brimming with orchestral storytelling. Igor Stravinsky’s “Song of the Nightingale” invites concertgoers to step foot into the storybook landscape of Hans Christian Andersen’s beloved fairy tale. The performance closes with Francis Poulenc’s Suite from “Les Biches,” a ballet.
Now onstage, Grgić and the CSO will embody the refugee’s plight through song.
“In a very nutshell kind of a sense, the guitar represents the single refugee child innocently traversing around while things are happening around him. And, in a way, the orchestra interacts sort of like a prison or a framework around this child who is displaced out of his country, his place of origin,” Grgić said. “But yet, [it’s] presenting this playful innocence that is always present in children.”
While the piece reaches a musical culmination by its conclusion, “Borders” is ultimately built upon juxtaposition. From the concerto’s opening remarks, the orchestration’s “very static, very heavy chords” ensnares the lone guitar around “(prison) bars,” to which Grgić’s “fun and dandy” unaccompanied playing joyfully eschews. This conflict can be best seen in the instrumentation itself — one guitar and an orchestra.
Grgić described the guitar as “an innately intimate instrument” and said by this very virtue of intimacy, it can be difficult to imagine it positioned within an orchestral environment.
“I mean, the two ideas don’t really go together,” Grgić said. “But, if you do put them together, and you are still able to juxtapose [the] power of sound with intimacy, you get this magical combination that I think makes people appreciate the instrument even more.”
Grgić noted the disparity among popular guitar concerti, naming Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez” as the genre’s most recognizable work. However, Grgić views “Borders” as an opportunity for further advocacy in the genre because it gives both viewers and performers the “opportunity to be intimate in a new way.”
“We can still explore the possibilities of the instrument against the orchestra — different colors, different timbres and seeing what actually is possible,” Grgić said. “So, for me, having the ability to do that gives me the chance to become a better artist ultimately.”
Grgić vowed to himself that commissioned pieces like “Borders” should be performed with the same transformative attentiveness as staples from Bach, Beethoven and Mozart — saying, “As we grow up, the pieces do as well.”
Since the piece’s debut in 2023 with Houston, Texas’ ROCO orchestra, Grgić has grown alongside it.
“The idea of presenting the piece from a humanistic point of view obviously has made me appreciate the art in a renewed sense,” Grgić said. “The fact that something effectively not great, or horrible, can be turned in[to] something rather beautiful makes me be positive about humanity in the future.”
Grgić stressed the rarity of the guitar within an orchestral setting.
“I would urge people to take the chance and give this performance a go, because it would be quite rare to hear the guitar again anytime soon. So, this is kind of a special opportunity,” Grgić said.
