Prairie festive

Hundreds gather for debut of "Carl Sandburg's Prairie."

"The shapes that are gone are here ..." - Carl Sandburg

"Flinging follies of O-be-joyful" to a prairie evening of blue sky, warm, dry air, golden sun and a receptive audience, the Winfield Regional Symphony, PrairieFest Chorus and members of the Paul Winter Consort performed the world premiere of "Carl Sandburg's Prairie," by Eugene Friesen. The premiere, a celebration of the land and its people, was held Saturday on the Dick and Dolly Bonfy ranch.

On the mesa-like swell of land behind the stage, Stan Herd's Prairie Man installation stood out like a symbol of our collective past. Flowers were everywhere: milkweed and larkspur, sunflowers and coreopsis, bluestem and oatgrass, to name but a few.

Several hundred people sprawled on blankets or sat on chairs or rocks, eating and drinking and shading their eyes to get a good look at the musicians, Prairie Wind Dancers and Native American dancers. The performers were on a new stage with an apron of enormous slabs of red-gold stone.

More than one person was moved to tears when Robert Hyatt led the dancers around Stan Herd's new installation, Labyrinth, in a Native American blessing ceremony before the start of the music.

Narrator Clayton Crawford's sonorous voice declaimed Sandburg's songs of the prairie, "You came in wagons, making streets and schools, / Kin of the ax and rifle, kin of the plow and horse," and the chorus swelled in response, "I am here when the cities are gone. / I am here before the cities come ... I am dust of your dust. ..."

The dialogue went on among narrator and chorus, orchestra and single instruments - Friesen on cello, Paul Winter on soprano saxophone, Glen Velez on drum and percussion, Tim Durham and symphony director Gary Gackstatter on guitar, Howard Levy on piano and harmonica. And at every break, the wind sounded its counterpoint in the loudspeakers.

The Prairie Wind Dancers, wearing costumes based on designs by regional artist John Steuart Curry, wove through all as prairie spirit; swooped as storm; glided as breeze; toiled as cornhuskers; bent and bobbed and reached for the heavens as wheat, grass, rose and sunflower. Giant puppets, Mother Prairie and Father Prairie, watched over the dance. Off to the side or above the other performers, the Native American dancers moved in time with the rhythms of the earth.

As the chorus sang to farmerman to "Keep your hogs on changing corn ... Cram their insides till they waddle on short legs ... Kill your hogs with a knife slit under the ear," a costumed horse and a cow cavorted in joyous freedom.

Through 20 movements, the music wove from Native American rhythms to romantic lushness, from jazz to jugband. Gackstatter sang a ballad of love and loss, "My dearest dear." Crawford went from declamation to gospel with "Shout All Over God's Heaven," "Might Lak a Rose" and "The Old Sheep Done Know the Road."

After a standing ovation ended the new work, there were several encores, including a version of "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" that Winter said was "one of our favorites from Johann Sebastian Bach's Brazilian period," and "Air on a G String," played in counterpoint to the song of prairie birds.

For the finale, he asked the audience to sing along, "In a circle of friends, in a circle of sound, all our voices will blend when we touch common ground." Audience members joined dancers romping in front of the stage.

When the concert was over, the audience wandered onto the prairie to get a closer look at Labyrinth and Prairie Man and to see the view beyond the rise. A number of people stayed until dark to enjoy the last of a beautiful evening and watch the luminarias outline Prairie Man as darkness descended.