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player ready...The Underground Railway Theater is in Arlington, Mass., but its name was inspired by the history of Oberlin, Ohio, where the company was founded in 1976. “Oberlin had been an abolitionist community, so cooperation between the races was an early priority in the town,” explains the theater’s artistic director, Wes Sanders. “When we founded the theater the name seemed like a good way to signal that we were going to be a company that was about the collaboration between the races and a positive approach to solving social problems.”
It was only natural, then, that when Sanders first heard “The Creation of the World,” which had been composed by Frenchman Darius Milhaud in 1923, he immediately thought about creating a performance piece for it. “It is really interesting from an historical point of view because it is the first piece of music in the orchestral repertoire that mixes the jazz idiom from African-American America and European music two years before `Rhapsody in Blue,’ ” Sanders says.
“The Creation of the World” was originally performed as music for a ballet written by French poet Blaise Cendrars. But, when the Underground Railway Theatre was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony and the Little Orchestra Society of New York to create their version of the piece to honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Milhaud (in 1892), Sanders realized that the style of the ballet seemed dated and the story not quite appropriate for family audiences.
In keeping with the title of the ballet and the Underground Railway’s mission, the new scenario is inspired by the creation mythology of the Yoruban people of west Africa. “I think that this is very appropriate because a lot of black people who came to this country as slaves came from that part of Africa. . . . Yoruban traditions are common not just in African-American culture but in American culture,” explains Sanders.
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“The Creation of the World,” performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Underground Railway Theater, Orchestra Hall, 220 S. Michigan Ave., 2 p.m. Saturday; $5.50-$22. 312-435-6666.