Performances
JFK: The Last Speech Premiere
July 16 2023 by Colorado Music Festival, Boulder
Peter Oundjian, conductor Janice Chandler-Eteme, soprano Kevin Deas, narrator
Colorado Music Festival Performing with Soprano and Narrator
Neil Bicknell, Librettist with Peter Oundjian, Conductor and Bestor Cram, Director of the Documentary Film JFK: The Last Speech
The Colorado Music Festival presents an annual six-week summer concert season at Chautauqua Auditorium in Boulder, Colorado. The Festival Orchestra is comprised of 42 principal players, exceptional national and international musicians. Under the baton of Music Director Peter Oundjian, this well-loved orchestra performs at the base of the iconic Flatiron Mountains every summer, creating a truly world-class experience. The musicians represent 44 orchestras from 23 states, 4 provinces, and 3 countries.1
Dallas Symphony Orchestra Performance
October 6, 7, 8 2023
Peter Oundjian, conductor Janice Chandler-Eteme, soprano Quincy Roberts, narrator
Dallas Symphony’s Soprano Janice Chandler-Eteme
Dallas Symphony’s Quincy Roberts Narrating JFK Words
Dallas symphony Conductor Peter Oundjian Hails Libbretist
The National Symphony Orchestra Performance
October 26 & 28, 2023
Kevin John Edusei, conductor Katerina Burton, soprano Phylicia Rashad, narrator
National Symphony Narrator Phylicia Rashad
National Symphony Soprano Katerina Burton
National Symphony Orchestra with Soprano, Conductor John Edusei, and Narrator
The National Symphony Orchestra Accepting the Audience’s Applause
The National Symphony Orchestra Performing JFK: The Last Speech
The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra Performance
October 27 & 28, 2023
Alexander Shelley, conductor Janice Chandler-Eteme, soprano Joshua A. Thomas, narrator
Indianapolis Symphony Soprano Janice Chandler-Eteme
Indianapolis Symphony’s Narrator Joshua A.Thompson
Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra Performing JFK: The Last Speech
Amherst Symphony Orchestra Performance
November 11, 2023
Mark Swanson conductor Katerina Burton, soprano Seven Students, narrators
The Yale Philharmonia Performance
November 16, 2023
Peter Oundjian, conductor Jillian Tate, soprano Finn Sagal, narrator
The Background Story
JFK invited Robert Frost to be the first poet ever to speak at a Presidential Inauguration and Frost was a frequent guest at the Kennedy White House. A break in the relationship between Kennedy and Frost occurred when Frost misspoke upon returning from the USSR, where he met with Premier Khrushchev in September 1962.
Kennedy’s speech at Amherst represented a posthumous reconciliation with Frost, nine months after Frost died, and was called the “most majestic” of JFK’s career. Twenty-seven days later, Kennedy was assassinated.
Setting for the Symphony
Inspired by President Kennedy’s speech honoring the poet Robert Frost, delivered at Amherst College October 26, 1963, the work includes lines from JFK’s Amherst speech interspersed with lines from poems by Robert Frost.
Peter Oundjian, Conductor and Music Director
The Festival’s Music Director Peter Oundjian has a multi-faceted portfolio as a conductor, violinist, professor, and artistic advisor. He has been celebrated for his musicality, eye toward collaboration, innovative programming, and engaging personality. Oundjian joined the Colorado Music Festival in 2018. 2
An outstanding violinist, Oundjian spent 14 years as the first violinist for the renowned Tokyo String Quartet before he turned his energy toward conducting.
Now carrying the title Conductor Emeritus for the Toronto Symphony, Oundjian’s fourteen-year tenure as Music Director served as a major creative force for the city of Toronto and was marked by a reimagining of the TSO’s programming, international stature, audience development, touring and a number of outstanding recordings, garnering a Grammy nomination in 2018 and a Juno award for Vaughan Williams’ Orchestral Works in 2019.
From 2012-2018, Oundjian served as Music Director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra during which time he implemented the kind of collaborative programming that has become a staple of his directorship.
In 2019, Oundjian joined the Colorado Music Festival. He continues to make guest appearances conducting other symphonies, including Atlanta, Indianapolis, Dallas, Seattle and Toronto.
Oundjian has been a visiting professor at Yale University’s School of Music since 1981, and in 2013 was awarded the school’s Sanford Medal for Distinguished Service to Music. He regularly conducts the Yale, Juilliard, Curtis and New World symphony orchestras.
Libretto
O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go,
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Privilege is here, and with privilege goes responsibility…
There is inherited wealth in this country and also inherited poverty. And unless graduates…who are given a running start in life — unless they are willing to put back into our society those talents, the broad sympathy, the understanding, the compassion — unless they’re willing to put those qualities back into the service of the Great Republic, then obviously the presuppositions upon which our democracy are based are bound to be fallible…the need is endless, and I’m confident that you will respond.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Today this College and country honors a man whose contribution was not to our size but to our spirit, not to our political beliefs but to our insight, not to our self-esteem, but to our self-comprehension. …Our national strength matters, but the spirit which informs and controls our strength matters just as much. This was the special significance of Robert Frost…He held a deep faith in the spirit of man.
And God has taken a flower of gold
And broken it, and used therefrom
The mystic link to bind and hold
Spirit to matter till death come.
The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us…
It’s hardly an accident that Robert Frost coupled poetry and power, for he saw poetry as the means of saving power from itself. When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.
There is a call to life a little sterner…
It makes the prophet in us all presage
The glory of a next Augustan age…
A golden age of poetry and power
Of which this noonday’s the beginning hour.*
[Robert Frost] brought an unsparing instinct for reality to bear on the platitudes and pieties of society. His sense of the human tragedy fortified him against self-deception and easy consolation. “I have been,” he wrote, “one acquainted with the night.” And because he knew the midnight as well as the high noon, because he understood the ordeal as well as the triumph of the human spirit, he gave his age strength with which to overcome despair.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
The great artist is a solitary figure. He has, as Frost said, a lover’s quarrel with the world. … If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice which must motivate any true artist. … The nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost’s hired man, the fate of having nothing to look backward to with pride and nothing to look forward to with hope.
Poor Silas, so concerned for other folk,
And nothing to look backward to with pride,
And nothing to look forward to with hope,
So now and never any different.
If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth… [In] democratic society…the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation.
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows…
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.
I look forward to a great future for America – a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose. … I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft. … And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilization as well.
The woods are lovely dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Libretto Copyright © 2021 by Neil Bicknell, All Rights Reserved
* Excerpt from “Dedication” by Robert Frost from THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST edited by Edward Connery Lathem.
Copyright © 1961 by Robert Frost, Copyright © 1989 by Alfred Edwards. Used by permission of Henry Holt and Company. All Rights Reserved.
About the Libretto
On an idyllic New England fall day in 1963, President Kennedy spoke at Amherst College in Massachusetts to honor his friend, the poet Robert Frost, who for many years had taught at Amherst. It would be the President’s last major speech.
The libretto for “JFK: The Last Speech” celebrates these two men and the values they shared – a faith in the human spirit, a commitment to learning and reason, and an awareness of the fragility of our democracy. Conceived as a musical conversation between the President and the Poet, the libretto alternates narrated lines from the President’s Amherst speech with lines from Frost’s poems. But the Poet’s words are sung, as if from an oracle on high, as Frost had died nine months prior to Kennedy’s commemoration.
The libretto opens with lines from Frost’s “October,” evocative of the autumn day, and includes an entreaty to make the day seem less brief, an innocent reminder of the President’s impending fate.
With his characteristic courage to speak the truth that inspired the nation, President Kennedy opens his speech reminding the students that they are privileged by virtue of the education they are receiving. Such privilege carries with it responsibility – a responsibility to serve the public interest, and to contribute not only their talents to the “Great Republic,” but as well, their sympathy, their understanding, and their compassion. Pledging his confidence in the students, Kennedy quotes from “A Road Not Taken,” and counsels them that a decision to serve the nation will make “all the difference.”
The President’s tribute to Frost is also an ode to the indispensable role the arts and artists play in ensuring the strength of our democracy.
Weaving the Poet’s words throughout his speech, Kennedy speaks of how Frost coupled poetry and power and of Frost’s belief that when power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. Then he offers his own belief that “when power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.”
Acknowledging the solitude that can come with the artist’s search for truth and concern for justice, Kennedy uses Frost’s words to argue that a nation that disdains the mission of art has “nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope.”
The President ends his tribute with his aspirations for America to match its military strength with its moral restraint and its wealth with its wisdom – for an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilization as well. To achieve this vision, Kennedy realizes he has “miles to go” before he sleeps, a phrase from Frost that he often used on the campaign trail.
At Kennedy’s inauguration, Robert Frost honored the President with a poem written for the occasion. He predicted the new administration would usher in a golden age of poetry and power, “of which this noonday’s the beginning hour.” At Amherst, Kennedy honors Frost as one whose contribution was not to our size but to our spirit, not to our self-esteem but to our self-comprehension. “Our national strength matters,” he says, “but the spirit which informs and controls our strength matters just as much. This was the special significance of Robert Frost.”
The President’s speech at Amherst has been called the “most majestic” of his career. Kennedy exhibited both his sensitivity to the human spirit and his civic values as he spoke that day — when he spoke about the importance of the arts and artists in our democracy; and about the importance of those who question power, “especially when that questioning is disinterested.” He said we need the service of every man and woman, “to make it possible for Americans of all different races and creeds to live together in harmony, to make it possible for a world to exist in diversity and freedom. All this requires the best of all of us.”
– Neil Bicknell, 2023
The Symphony As Celebration
“JFK: The Last Speech” celebrates the civic values and inspiring leadership of President John F. Kennedy, and the spirit of the great American poet, Robert Frost. The Symphony is a project of members of the Amherst Class of 1964 through their non-profit Reunion ’64, Inc. They had the privilege of witnessing President Kennedy deliver his last major speech, October 26, 1963. The Symphony joins two earlier projects, a book and documentary that are both titled, “JFK: The Last Speech.” (See The Book and The Film pages of this website.)
Please contact: JFKTheLastSpeech@gmail.com for additional information.
Notes:
1 Information in this paragraph and the remainder of this section is from the website: coloradomusicfestival.org
2 Information in this paragraph and the remainder of this section is from the websites: peteroundjian.com and coloradomusicfestival.org
Photo Credits:
The lead photo of the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra is used courtesy of the photographer, Geremy Kornreich. The orchestra is pictured in the Chautauqua Auditorium.
Pictures of the performers at the Colorado Music Festival Premiere Performance are used courtesy of CMF and Geremy Kornreich.
The photo of Neil Bicknell, Peter Oundjian and Bestor Cram following the performance is used courtesy of Judy Bicknell.
The photos of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra Performance are used courtesy of the Orchestra and Sylvia Elzafon.
The photos of the National Symphony Orchestra Performance that directly face the stage are used courtesy of Scott Suchman. The photos of the NSO taken from the left side of the audience (that include views of the audience) are used courtesy of Judy Bicknell.
The photos of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra Performance are used courtesy of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.
The picture of Robert Frost is from the Library of Congress.
The photo of President Kennedy, by the White House Press Office, is used courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Public Domain.
The photo of Peter Oundjian is from his website, PeterOundjian.com.
The photo of Neil Bicknell is used courtesy of the photographer, Charlie Erdrich.