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Of serving as the narrator in Copland's "A Lincoln Portrait," Chicago theater luminary Harry Lennix says, "The music does a lot of the work for me. I think of myself as an instrument — in my case, maybe the tuba.”
Harry Lennix has had a long career as an actor on stage, screen and TV. But when he narrates Copland’s A Lincoln Portrait with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, he will also be drawing on his musical training.
The Chicago native has done the piece elsewhere, and he says, “The music does a lot of the work for me. I think of myself as an instrument — in my case, maybe the tuba.” But each performance is different, and he said he will work with conductor Joshua Weilerstein in rehearsal to find the right tone and timbre for his voice.
Copland’s piece is a staple of the repertoire, setting speeches and writings of Lincoln for a narrator over the famed American composer’s characteristic orchestral style.
“I’ll have to modulate my voice within a range of about two semitones,” said Lennix, a Tony Award nominee and Joseph Jefferson Award winner (the latter is Chicago’s top theater honor). “It’ll depend on the sound of the room and the amplification. I don’t want to sound shrill, or overly laconic or disinterested.”
Many actors and many political figures have narrated the work, and Lennix said that public speaking bears some resemblance to acting. “You’re always playing a role, something other than yourself,” he said. “I’m not going to sound like Lincoln, but I’m adopting a persona. I know a lot about Lincoln, and I’m performing Copland’s impression of him set to music.”
As well as purely vocal matters, he hopes that the rehearsal process allows him to find “something new that isn’t usually done that way.”
In spotlighting a great American via music, “Aaron Copland could have picked anyone, and he chose Lincoln. If any president could ever be a saint, it was Lincoln." — Harry Lennix
Most of the spoken material for A Lincoln Portrait is from Lincoln, of course, but Copland also wrote brief introductory material for each passage that leans heavily on phrases like, “This is what Abe Lincoln said.” Lennix chuckled before saying, “It’s much ado, but not about nothing. It’s meant to be an embellishment or an ornamentation. The best way to do it is minimally, to set up the important thing,” meaning Lincoln’s words.
The orchestra plays a long introduction before the narrator’s first speech, and during that time, Lennix said, “I’m absorbing the music. I can take the energy and reflect it back.”
In high school, Lennix played trombone and still plays piano, but he has never sung in public. “I tried out for every musical at Northwestern,” he said with a laugh, “but they told me to stick to Shakespeare.”
But he had enough musical training to teach elementary school music in the Chicago public school system for six years. “Like the Marine Corps slogan, it was the toughest job I’ll ever love,” he said. “I loved the teachers, the students, the community.” Moving to New York to become a professional actor “took great innocence and naivete, and a little bit of guts and faith.”
Since then, he has had a busy and varied career, dividing his time between New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. But he hopes to leave a legacy in his hometown with the proposed Lillian Marcie Center in the South Side’s Bronzeville neighborhood. He and others are raising funds to create a new theater space and company.
As a child and young adult, Lennix said he could not afford the Chicago Symphony, but he heard Miles Davis and other jazz greats play at Orchestra Hall. Returning as a performer “is going to be a homecoming, which is great.”
To spotlight a great American via music, “Copland could have picked anyone, and he chose Lincoln,” Lennix said. “If any president could ever be a saint, it was Lincoln, for any right-thinking person — black, white, young, old, North, South. We’re in the Land of Lincoln — to say nothing of what he meant to black people. I’m grateful to take part in something that honors him.”
