
Independence Day Salute
Program
Irving Berlin/Orchd. Sid Ramin Berlin Patriotic Overture
Arr. Charles Sayre Broadway Showstoppers
George Gershwin/Arr. Bill Holcombe Someone to Watch Over Me
Claude-Michel Schönberg/Arr. Bob Krogstad I Dreamed a Dream from Les Misérables
Duke Ellington/Arr. Calvin Custer Duke Ellington!
Traditional/Arr. Robert Hanson Yankee Doodle Fantasy
Peter Boyer Rolling River
Arr. Robert Wendel From Sea to Shining Sea
Arr. Robert Lowden Armed Forces Salute
John Philip Sousa The Liberty Bell March
Irving Berlin/Arr. Bill Holcombe God Bless America
Ward, Samuel/Arr. John Morris Russel and Tim Berens America the Beautiful
John Philip Sousa Stars and Stripes Forever
Featuring
Program Notes
America’s musical heritage is as vibrant and diverse as its people. Whether explicitly patriotic or simply reflective of the American spirit, a wide variety of music has served as an expression of our national identity and values. The Great American Songbook stands as a cornerstone of this heritage. While not an actual book or collection of specific songs, The Great American Songbook encompasses the canon of show tunes, jazz standards, and popular songs that have endured through reinterpretation by artists across generations. Tonight’s concert celebrates this musical tradition alongside other folk songs, pop tunes, and military marches that make up the fabric of American music.
Irving Berlin was one of the most significant contributors to The Great American Songbook. Throughout his career, he churned out hit song after hit song, reinventing himself and popular music in the American image. Sid Ramin’s Berlin Patriotic Overture contains some of those songs, including “Oh! How I Hate to Get up in the Morning!” and “God Bless America,” which Berlin composed while stationed at Camp Upton during World War I. He revised “God Bless America” in 1938 after a trip to London, which coincided with Chamberlain’s meeting with Hitler and the beginning of the Munich Pact. Under the looming threat of fascism and war, Berlin wished to rewrite what was originally a war song into “a song of peace.” We hear more of Berlin’s melodic genius in Charles Sayre’s Broadway Showstoppers, which includes “There’s No Business Like Show Business” from Berlin’s 1946 musical Annie Get Your Gun, as well as “Cabaret,” “Mame,” and “That’s Entertainment.”
Another towering figure of The Great American Song Book is George Gershwin. Gershwin dominated Broadway with a series of musical comedy romps that captured the energy of the Roaring Twenties with their dance rhythms and jazzy harmonies. Many of the songs from his shows have become standards in their own right, including “Someone to Watch Over Me” from Oh, Kay (1926). Similarly, Claude-Michel Schönberg’s “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Misérables (1980) has gained a life outside its original musical setting to become a modern pop standard.
In 1957, Ella Fitzgerald solidified Duke Ellington’s place within The Great American Songbook with her landmark album Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Song Book. Calvin Custer sets four of Ellington’s iconic jazz standards in Duke Ellington!, including “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” “Do Nothin’ Till You Hear from Me,” “Sophisticated Lady,” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got that Swing).”
Alongside The Great American Songbook, folk songs are also a vital part of America’s musical identity, with “Yankee Doodle” as one of the oldest and most iconic. Although the song may date back to 16th-century Holland, traditional lore states the text was penned in 1755 by a British army doctor named Richard Schuckburg. Originally intended to mock the “uncouth” American colonists who fought alongside British troops during the French and Indian War, the song was embraced by the very people it set out to ridicule. Americans adopted “Yankee Doodle” with pride, and it soon gained popularity on both sides during the Revolutionary War.
“Yankee Doodle” continues to inspire new musical arrangements to this day. The Grant Park Music Festival commissioned Robert Hanson to write Yankee Doodle Fantasy as a showcase for marimbist Josh Jones. Hanson will be familiar to audiences as the Elgin Symphony Orchestra’s music director from 1985 to 2011. During his tenure, he led the ESO to become Illinois’ first professional suburban orchestra and formed it into one of the country’s premier regional orchestras.
“My Yankee Doodle arrangement will begin softly with the marimba playing with four mallets,” Hanson explains. “It immediately transitions to the tune ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy,’ the folk song, and then George M. Cohen’s ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy.’ You will also hear a bit of ‘You’re a Grand Old Flag’ in the arrangement. There are four or five virtuosic variations of ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy,’ using both two and four mallets. The arrangement ends with a passage of impossibly fast scales on the marimba.”
Peter Boyer’s Rolling River draws its source material from another familiar American folk song, “Shenandoah.” Also of murky origins, the song likely stems from early 19th-century fur traders traveling down the Missouri River. Robert Wendel’s From Sea to Shining Sea continues our musical journey across the United States in a medley of popular songs, including “America the Beautiful,” “San Francisco,” “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” “Meet Me in Saint Louis,” “The Tennessee Waltz,” “Chicago (That Toddlin’ Town),” “My Old Kentucky Home,” “Georgia On My Mind,” “Carolina in the Morning,” and “New York, New York.”
No concert of patriotic music would be complete without a tribute to those who have served in the military. Robert Lowden’s Armed Forces Salute pays homage to five branches of the United States Armed Forces with “The Caisson Song,” “Semper Paratus,” “The Marines’ Hymn,” “The U.S. Air Force,” and “Anchors Aweigh.”
A military man himself, John Philip Sousa began his career as an apprentice in the United States Marine Band, eventually becoming its music director. On Christmas Day, 1896, memories of his time leading the band in official ceremonies moved him to write his most famous march, Stars and Stripes Forever: “I could see the Stars and Stripes flying from the flagstaff in the grounds of the White House just as plainly as if I were back there again. I began to think of all the countries I had visited . . . and that flag of ours became glorified.” Three years earlier, in 1893, Sousa was inspired to write The Liberty Bell March after watching his son march in a special parade celebrating the return of the Liberty Bell to Philadelphia. The bell had toured the country en route to the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
That same year, Katharine Lee Bates penned the lyrics to America the Beautiful. One day, while giving a series of lectures at Colorado College, she scaled Pikes Peak with some colleagues. “It was then and there, as I was looking out over the sea-like expanse of fertile country spreading away so far under those ample skies, that the opening lines of the hymn floated into my mind,” she recalled. On her way to Colorado, Bates had stopped at the Chicago World’s Fair, which likely inspired the lines, “Thine alabaster cities gleam / Undimmed by human tears.” Although her poem has been sung to various tunes, it is now most associated with Samuel Ward’s hymn “Materna,” written in 1882.
—Katherine Buzard
Event Sponsors
This concert is generously supported by American Accents Series Sponsor AbelsonTaylor Group and NASCAR’s Chicago Street Race.
The appearance of Imara Miles is graciously made possible with support from the David H. Whitney and Juliana Y. Chyu Next Generation Vocalist Fund.
Artistic Leadership
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Grant Park Orchestra
* denotes leave-of-absence † one-year position
Jeremy Black, concertmaster
Trista Wong, acting assistant concertmaster
Zulfiya Bashirova
Jennifer Cappelli
Laura Park Chen†
Injoo Choi
Dima Dimitrova
Erica Hudson
Hyewon Kim*
Matthew Lehmann
Jayna Park
Rika Seko
Karen Sinclair
Bonnie Terry
Krzysztof Zimowski
Liba Shacht, principal
Laura Miller, assistant principal*
Ying Chai
Ran Cheng
Karl Davies
Likai He
Ann Lehmann
Cristina Muresan*
Kjersti Nostbakken
Irene Radetzky
Jeanine Wynton
Thomas Yang
Bing Jing Yu†
Terri Van Valkinburgh, principal
Yoshihiko Nakano, assistant principal
Elizabeth Breslin*
Beatrice Chen
Amy Hess
Christopher McKay†
Edwardo Rios†
Rebecca Swan
Chloé Thominet
Walter Haman, principal
Peter Szczepanek, assistant principal
Calum Cook
Larry Glazier
Steven Houser
Eric Kutz
Eran Meir
Colin Corner, principal
Peter Hatch, assistant principal
Andrew Anderson
Christian Luevano
Samuel Rocklin
Chunyang Wang
Chris White
Jennifer Lawson, acting principal
Jennifer Clippert†
Alyce Johnson, acting assistant principal
Alyce Johnson
Mitchell Kuhn, principal
Alex Liedtke
Anne Bach, assistant principal
Anne Bach
Dario Brignoli, principal
Trevor O’Riordan
Eric Hall, principal
Nicole Haywood Vera Tenorio, assistant principal
Juan De Gomar†
Patrick Walle, acting principal†
Stephanie Blaha, assistant principal*
Neil Kimel
Brett Hodge
Paul Clifton
David Gordon, principal
Mike Brozick, acting assistant principal
William Denton*
Rebecca Oliverio†
Daniel Cloutier, principal*
Jeremy Moeller, acting principal
Lee Rogers, acting assistant principal†
Alexander Mullins
Andrew Smith, principal
Daniel Karas, principal
Josh Jones, principal
Joel Cohen, assistant principal
Doug Waddell
Kayo Ishimaru-Fleisher, principal*
Christopher Guzman
Eliza Bangert, principal
Javier F. Torres-Delgado, violin
Maria Gabriela Mendez Martinez, violin
Joshua Thaver, viola
Manuel Papale, cello
Grant Park Chorus
* denotes leave-of-absence † 2025 Vocal Fellow
Laura Lynch Anderson
Kristina Bachrach
Madalynn Baez
Megan E. Bell
Alyssa Bennett
Tamara Bodnar
Kylie Buckham
Anna Joy Buegel
Laura Bumgardner
Katherine Buzard
Bethany Clearfield
Nathalie Colas
Carolyne DalMonte
Megan Fletcher
Kaitlin Foley
Saira Frank
Julia Frodyma
Katherine Gray-Noon
Kimberly Gunderson
Alexandra Ioan
Alexandra Kassouf
Darlene Kelsey
Olivia Knutsen
Marybeth Kurnat
Katelyn Lee
Kyuyim Lee+
Rosalind Lee
Veronica Mak
Hannah Dixon McConnell
Marie McManama
Kathleen Monson
Susan Nelson
Evangeline Ng
Máire O'Brien
Alexandra Olsavsky
Laura Perkett
Angela Presutti Korbitz
Alexia Rivera
Veronica Samiec
Emily Sinclair
Molly Snodgrass
Tiana Sorenson
Christine Steyer
Sarah van der Ploeg*
Lydia Walsh-Rock
Sherry Watkins
Kyuyim Lee
Isabel Yang
Opal Clyburn-Miller
Matthew Dexter
Emily Amesquita
Melissa Arning
Christina Bernardoni
Angela Born
Bethany Brewer
Julie DeBoer
Leah Dexter
Katrina Dubbs
Stacy Eckert
Margaret Fox
Catarine Hancock
Ruth Ginelle Heald
Sophia Heinz
Miya Higashiyama
Carla Janzen
Amy Allyssa Johnson
Kathryn Kinjo Duncan
Amanda Koopman
Anna Laurenzo
Jeannette Lee
Thereza Lituma
Chelsea Lyons
Victoria Marshall
Jessica McCarthy
Quinn Middleman
Ella Peters
Sarah Ponder
Emily Price
Stephanie Schoenhofer
Suzanne A. Shields
Marissa Simmons
Cassidy Smith
Aidan Spencer
Alannah Spencer
Margaret Stoltz
Carolyn Sundlof Boudreau
Gabrielle Timofeeva López
Elizabeth Vaughan
Corinne Wallace-Crane
A.J. Wester
Debra Wilder
Isabel Yang+
Charles Anderson
Enrico Giuseppe Bellomo
Justin Berkowitz
Madison Bolt
Hoss Brock
Steven Caldicott Wilson
Opal Clyburn-Miller+
John J. Concepción
Micah Dingler
Jared V. Esguerra
Alec Fore
Ace Gangoso
Klaus Georg
Tejas Gururaja
Paul Hunter
Garrett Johannsen
William Johnson
James Judd
Tim Lambert
Tyler Lee
Stephen D. Noon
Marcos Ochoa
Brett Potts
Nicholas Pulikowski
Peder Reiff
Samuel Rosner
Matthew W. Schlesinger
Joe Shadday
Aaron Short
Brian Skoog
Michael St. Peter
Ryan Townsend Strand
Alan Taylor*
Sean J. Watland
Nate Widelitz
Walter Aldrich
Evan Bravos
Matthew Brennan
Michael Cavalieri
Ryan J. Cox
Ed Frazier Davis
Lifan Deng
Matthew Dexter+
Chris DiMarco
Christopher Filipowicz
Dimitri German
Dominic German
David Govertsen
Spencer Greene
Brian Hupp
Jan Jarvis
Jess Koehn
Eric Miranda
Ian Morris
Ian Murrell
John E. Orduña
Wilbur Pauley
Douglas Peters
Jackson Pierzina
Martin Lowen Poock
Ian Prichard
Dan Richardson
Stephen Richardson
Benjamin D. Rivera
Scott Uddenberg
Schyler Vargas
Vince Wallace
Aaron Wardell
Ronald Watkins
Jonathon Weller
Peter Wesoloski
Jonathan Wilson