James Conlon reflects on tradition, legacy and the music of Julia Adolphe

by Ken Smith

James Conlon leads the May Festival Chamber Choir in the premiere of Julia Adolphe’s *Sea Dream Elegies* at Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption, May 2016. *Credit: AJ Waltz*

“It was always important for me to respect the legacy,” says James Conlon, reflecting on his record 37 seasons as May Festival Music Director. “There’s always a polemic between looking forward and looking back, but for me the May Festival’s tradition of defending the choral repertory outweighed almost everything else.”

On the other hand, “tradition” and “repertory” can be expansive concepts, and Conlon has never been shy about pushing at the edges. Bolstered by the Festival’s history of presenting new and less familiar works, he championed not only living composers like Adolphus Hailstork and Stephen Paulus but also undiscovered pieces by more famous figures like Berlioz, Dvořák and Liszt.

James Conlon leads the May Festival Chorus and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra for his final concert as May Festival Music Director, May 2016. *Credit: Philip Groshong*

So, it remains fully in character for Conlon, the May Festival’s Music Director Laureate since stepping down in 2016, to bring to the Festival’s 150th anniversary his own personal definitions. Together with the Mozart Requiem (“a piece I could conduct every month,” he says), Conlon continues a rather more recent Cincinnati tradition with another world premiere by the composer Julia Adolphe.

The two first met when Adolphe, then a graduate student at the University of Southern California, became Conlon’s assistant for “Recovered Voices,” a research initiative involving music and composers suppressed by the Nazis. By coincidence, he discovered that she was the niece of the composer (and Conlon’s Juilliard classmate) Bruce Adolphe and was also a composer herself.

“Her gifts were immediately apparent,” says Conlon, who commissioned Adolphe’s Sea Dream Elegies for the May Festival in his final year as Music Director. “Her music is always coherent, always striking and always demands to be heard again.” The next season, in fact, Adolphe returned to Cincinnati with Equinox, a May Festival Chorus commission led by Director of Choruses Robert Porco and performed on a CSO subscription concert. Her Paper Leaves on Fields of Clay, commissioned by the CSO in 2020, received its (Covid-delayed) premiere under Music Director Louis Langrée in 2022.

Composer Julia Adolphe speaking to the audience before the premiere of Paper Leaves on Fields of Clay with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, April 2022. *Credit: JP Leong*

“Only Julia knows where her muse can be found, so I gave her carte blanche,” Conlon says of Crown of Hummingbirds, which has its world premiere at Music Hall on May 25. “She knows the Orchestra—you can give the Cincinnati Symphony anything and they’ll be able to play it—but she also knows the Chorus, and that they need a nourishing vocality. She takes these challenges seriously.

“My definition of tradition is whatever stands the test of time and place,” he continues. “Mozart’s Requiem remains part of our common past, which we need to balance with creation of the present. It’s important to gauge how any composer develops, and I see every sign that Julia will continue to grow throughout her lifetime.”