Now in its 25th season, Seattle arts nonprofit Music of Remembrance began by discovering and sharing stories of musicians silenced in the Holocaust. Over the years, its expanded its programming to shed light on the experience of others, such as Josephine Baker, who also suffered persecution, prejudice, and exile.
Expanding its lens has shaped the major works commissioned by the organization, according to Mina Miller, who founded Music of Remembrance.
“We have a commission on gay people, on Roma, on the very tragic situation of Japanese-Americans during the war. And we recently had a commission on the worldwide refugee crisis. We were recently approached about the plight of families separated by the US-Mexico border. So our work has really expanded to address this and really to confront history today," she said in an interview with KNKX.
Miller said Baker's story — how a brave Black woman fought back against prejudice and discrimination and stood up for her art and ideals — exemplifies the stories they want to spotlight.
"It's a story that resonates strongly with us today. We want the Seattle community to know about our expanded work and how diversified we are and that we're so interested and focused on addressing the challenges of today," said Miller.
Baker is the subject of New York-based composer Tom Cipullo's drama "Josephine" which is performed in one act by one performer, known as a monodrama.
There’s no denying Baker’s massive talent as Jazz Age entertainer. She gave generously to charities, and was active in the French Resistance in World War II. But she was also known to have a volatile personality and an explosive temper.
“What attracts me to a lot of the subjects I write about, is that no one is all good and no one is all bad, because people aren't like that,” said Cipullo.
“That's really what attracted me to Josephine, because she was just a fascinating person who you respect, admire in a way, love and in a way, hate, all at the same time.”
There are many stories about Baker’s temper. One story Cipullo recalled is that at her château in France, she had slapped every worker there and even some visitors.
Cipullo wanted to understand her anger, why she felt the need to slap others and what in her past prompted these feelings and reactions. He also examined her role as an adoptive mother.
“I'd heard about her ‘rainbow tribe,’ the 12 children from all over the world that she adopted,” Cipullo said.
“It's so complicated because, in one sense, it's such a great idea to show these children living together and growing up together. But at what point does it become exploitation of 12 children? When you have them in this almost, like, an amusement park atmosphere where people come and look at them through the windows," he said.
Cipullo is fascinated by Baker's choices and how she dealt with them. He said his role as a composer is to try and capture her choices, to try and understand them and convey them to an audience — then see what the audience takes away.
A musical quote from jazz cornetist Bix Beiderbecke's famous composition, "In A Mist" weaves through Cipullo's score for "Josephine."
Soprano Laquita Mitchell has interpreted the role of Josephine Baker with two other opera companies, in New Orleans and in Colorado. She returns to the stage as Baker in Music of Remembrance's upcoming production.
Mitchell remembers watching the TV movie “The Josephine Baker Story” as a child. Although Baker died before Mitchell was born, she heard about her growing up and saw photos at home.
“I remember my godmother telling me about this woman who was sort of a phenom and left the United States and went over to Paris to become this big time star."
But Mitchell said she didn't really understand Baker's life and impact until later.
"Years later, my mentor, Jessye Norman, took me to Chez Josephine, where Josephine’s son Jean Claude owned the restaurant at 42nd Street in New York City," Mitchell said.
"I had the opportunity to meet him, and to see letters that Dr. Martin Luther King had written to her about participating in the March on Washington and about her importance in American history.”
Much later, in preparation for this intense, emotionally taxing role, Mitchell picked up Jean Claude’s book, “Josephine Baker: The Hungry Heart.” She said she's never really put it down, continuing to go back and see if she missed something.
“I was reading it actually the other day, and I'm amazed by her still. This thing about her being this huge, larger than life sort of a personality. And yet there is something still within her that not even her son or her children had a piece of. She gave them just a little of who she was. But she never really gave all of who she was," said Mitchell.
"I think that, that type of thing happens or did happen to a lot of people that were born around that time, who suffered great indignities, who suffered greatly in their own countries.”
Mitchell said she sees Baker as someone scarred badly in her youth and that she showed those scars in painful ways.
Music of Remembrance presents “Josephine” on Oct. 30 at the Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya Hallin Seattle.
The program also includes the world premiere of the Music of Remembrance commission “Wertheim Park” by Lori Laitman, and chamber works by Holocaust-era composers Max Vredenburg and Erwin Schulhoff. Schullhoff was one of the first composers to incorporate jazz elements into art music, in 1925.
