Max Raimi (here on a CSO tour) says that working with Stephen Ackerman's poetry "took him out of his comfort zone."
Todd Rosenberg Photography
In a CSO Chamber Music concert March 23, composer and CSO violist Max Raimi and the Wabash Avenue Music Collective will perform the world premiere of Raimi’s Two Stephen Ackerman Settings for Mezzo-Soprano, Flute, Viola and Harp. Set to Ackerman’s sweet and whimsical poems, the works offer a discerning glimpse into the composer’s creative vision.
Born in Detroit in 1956, Max Raimi studied viola with Ara Zerounian before earning degrees in viola performance at the University of Michigan and later at the Juilliard School, where he was a student of Lillian Fuchs. In 1984, Sir Georg Solti hired Raimi to join the viola section of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In addition to his work in the CSO, he is frequently heard in chamber performances in Chicago, on the radio and at music festivals throughout the United States.
A prolific composer, Raimi has received commissions from many ensembles and institutions, including the CSO, Library of Congress and American Chamber Players. Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed the world premiere of his Three Lisel Mueller Settings, a CSO commission, in March 2018. A recording of that work was released in 2023 on the CSO Resound label.
In February 1998, Raimi’s Elegy for 12 Violas, Harp, Celesta and Percussion was performed at three CSO subscription concerts conducted by Daniel Barenboim. His compositions have been recorded for CD on the Capstone Records, Egan Records, Gasparo and Center for Holocaust, Genocide and Peace Studies labels.
Raimi’s arrangements have enjoyed wide circulation as well, having been performed by Daniel Barenboim on piano, among others. In August 1985, a sellout crowd at Comiskey Park heard the CSO viola section play his arrangement of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before a Chicago White Sox game; a three-viola version was twice performed at the Chicago Stadium for Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. On two occasions, Riccardo Muti has conducted Raimi’s orchestration of the University of Michigan fight song “Hail to the Victors” at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor.
Of his Two Stephen Ackerman Settings (2024), Raimi has written, “Needing something to read on a flight a few years ago, I picked up a Harper’s magazine at the airport, where I stumbled upon Stephen Ackerman’s poem ’If I Had as Many Hands as Vishnu.’ I was immediately bewitched by its unique combination of the erotic, the whimsical and the vulnerable, as well as its outwardly eccentric yet flawlessly apt sequence of images and scenarios.
"I set it to music, but thought that the song was somehow not complete in itself. I had in the meantime obtained Late Life, a collection of Ackerman’s poetry and was very pleased to discover ’Effortless Affection,’ which I set as a companion piece.
“I must confess that living with this poetry took me a bit out of my comfort zone as a composer. My music tends to be acerbic and hyperactive, far removed from the world these poems inhabit. So I learned once again how to write consonant harmonies and to refrain from piling on too many notes. As I have never formally studied musical composition, I consider working out these settings to be among the most valuable composition lessons I can recall.”
Stephen Ackerman worked as an attorney in the Legal Counsel Division of the New York City Law Department for more than 30 years and retired in 2019. He earned a bachelor of arts degree from Columbia University, where he studied with Kenneth Koch and David Shapiro; a master of arts from Johns Hopkins University, where he studied with David St. John in “The Writing Seminars”; and a juris doctor from Boston University. While at B.U,. he took a course with Linda Gregerson in the creative writing program. His poems have appeared in many publications, including Best New Poets 2010, Boulevard, Columbia Review, Jewish Quarterly, Mudfish, Partisan Review, Ploughshares, Plume, Red Wheelbarrow, Salamander, Seneca Review, upstreet and Western Humanities Review, as well as on Poetry Daily.
Born in Janesville, Wisconsin, Ackerman grew up in Sudbury, Massachusetts, lived in Brooklyn for many years, and now lives in Poughquag, New York.
Ackerman’s debut poetry collection, Late Life, won the 2020 Gerald Cable Book Award and was published by Silverfish Review Press in 2022. More information about Late Life can be found at stephenackermanpoetry.com.
Texts by Stephen Ackerman
From his debut poetry collection, Late Life, published in 2022 by Silverfish Review Press.
“If I Had As Many Hands As Vishnu”
I would touch you tenderly
And then touch myself tenderly
As I wished to be touched by you.
I would open four books
And read four passages
With my four tongues
And these choristers would be
Scheherazade for the Four Queens
Of you. If I had as many hands as Vishnu
I would draw silk with one hand from my sleeves,
Blindfold you with silk with another, lash you
With silk with another, remove the blindfold
With another. I would text you with a free hand and
Telephone you with an idle hand
To report that I had applied WD-40 to the valves
With one hand, removed the soufflé
From the oven with another, scattered
The seed for the songbirds across the surface
Of the earth with another,
Leashed the dogs with another
And was now in the field playing long toss
As I washed your hair with another.
There would always be one hand
Soothing you with the vowels
Of a sign language that I perfected
By listening to the sounds the signs
Made in you and I would release
The fingers of my left-most hand
To do as they please while my right-most hand
Conducted the string section and the brass and
The wind, the west wind, which traveled down
The life line of one of my many hands.
I could not foretell how long I would live,
For all my hands told a different story,
And I could not foretell how long we would love,
Though all my hands sought to please you.
“Effortless Affection”
All last requests are granted
and this is mine: grasp my affection
in your hand and hold it there,
gather my affection into your heart
and store it there, draw my affection
in simple lines in your mind
and foster it, further it,
funnel it into all the coastal
plains and lowlands where daily life
and memory flow together.
Let the river rise
And overflow, let the grasses
In the meadow near the river
Bend in the current where my love
Has flooded your land.