In this Sonatas & Soundscapes interview that aired Wednesday, May 13th, host Bradley Fuller speaks with Greenville Symphony Orchestra Music Director Lee Mills about recent GSO performances inspired by South Carolina history. Mills also previews the pair of concerts closing out the orchestra's "American Season" on May 16th and 17th, featuring excerpts from George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess and selections by Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber.
TRANSCRIPT:
BRADLEY FULLER: Lee, it's great as always to be speaking with you.
LEE MILLS: Nice to be on the show with you again.
FULLER: Coinciding with the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the 2025-2026 season for the Greenville Symphony was dubbed the “American Season,” featuring some of those classics inspired by the American experience by well-known composers like Antonín Dvorak, George Gershwin, and Ferde Grofé. But it was also important for you to feature some contemporary American composers.
MILLS: Yeah, that's correct. You know, classical music around the world and especially in the United States is a contemporary art form. We didn't have anybody in 1750 writing masses in the United States like you had in Europe. All of the American music, really—especially the pieces that people are most familiar with—were all written within the last 100, maybe 150 years at the most. And I think that contemporary music is definitely one of the strong suits of American classical music. It was really important for us to showcase that.
FULLER: One of those contemporary compositions was premiered just back in April—a concert featuring a super-local connection with a work by SC composer Peter Kay and lyricist Mark Waldrop paying tribute to a Revolutionary War heroine born in Laurens County, South Carolina. That was Dicey Langston: The South Carolina Girl Who Defied an Army. What was this work all about?
MILLS: As the name suggests this work is about Dicey Langston. She was a teenage girl at the time that the American Revolution happened, and South Carolina was very divided between the Loyalists and the Patriots—Loyalists of course being loyal to the British Kingdom and the Patriots being the revolutionaries. And Dicey’s family was on the Patriot side. Perhaps she had an advantage as a teenage girl in that nobody would suspect her of being a spy, basically. She conducted quite a lot of espionage for the Patriot forces while she was just a teenager.
There are seven or so different accounts of stories of things she did, and we kind of picked our favorite one and wrote a piece about it. She essentially overheard some Loyalist troops talking about raiding a Patriot encampment where her brother was, and she ran through the night. She rode a horse part of the way, she ran, she had to ford a river—and made it to the encampment before the Loyalist forces arrived to warn her brother and his colleagues—his compatriots—that this invasion was coming. And they were able to escape and save their lives. So the story is about that specific event.
FULLER: An amazing story for sure. And I'm just imagining Dicey Langston not knowing that, you know, 200 plus years after her death that this music would be honoring her (or at least 200 years after her heroic deed there)—that the symphony in her home region would be paying this tribute.
MILLS: Yeah, you know, it's really special. Dicey Langston had 22 children, so there are a lot of descendants around the Upstate still. And in both of our concerts we actually had several of them present! I actually polled the audience in the middle of the concert. I asked “Who here is a descendant of Dicey Langston?” A lot of people raised their hands. So it's really fun to be able to preserve this aspect of Upstate South Carolina history in such a creative way, and the story is so inspiring.
We worked with several teenage girls from Travelers Rest, which is where Dicey ended up with her family. And these girls worked together with Peter Kay to come up with the themes and melodies, you know, what is Dicey's theme? What is the horse Dandy’s theme? What is the theme when she gets into the river?
And Peter took these things that he workshopped with these teenage girls and musicians from the GSO. There was a string quartet of the GSO that went out to play through these ideas in real time as they developed them. And he took these and made them into this cohesive piece based on the script that we also commissioned from Mark Waldrop, a Broadway writer in New York City.
FULLER: I just love all the local connections and the local collaboration too.
For the pair of concerts closing the season, there’s another all-American work, and indeed another work very closely linked to South Carolina and its people: excerpts from the most famous of American operas, George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Was this just the one you knew you wanted for this season closer?
MILLS: Absolutely. There's no better way, I think, to close out the season. There's so much in this piece. Our audience here really loves opera. The few times we've dabbled in it, we've had a great response. Last year we did Marriage of Figaro and this year I was thinking, you know, “What American opera should we highlight in our season?” And really, there is no other option.
When you want to talk about the most famous American operas, you really have one that rises to the top, and that's Porgy and Bess. And it also happens to be a South Carolina story, taking place in Charleston. So it's very local, again. Really American. Deals with a lot of issues that we as a country have been dealing with now for a long time, and I think it's just one of the most incredible pieces of American music.
Some people will know many of the songs in this piece, especially “Summertime,” which went on to have a life of its own after this opera was written. You know many, many great artists have performed it and it's even made its way into pop music in samples and all of that. So, it's a very, very prominent piece of American music.
FULLER: I think the Gershwin will certainly be recognizable, kind of the “headliner” of the concert, so to speak, but there are also some songs by Aaron Copland and a selection by Samuel Barber?
MILLS: Yes, of course. The concert opens with Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings which really is in everybody's mind. Everybody has heard this piece. Everybody knows it. It's actually pretty rare, I think, to hear it programmed on a concert. It's been used in soundtracks and film and, you know, it became very famous when it first came out conducted, I think, by Arturo Toscanini with the NBC Radio Symphony.
It immediately captivated the attention of Americans, and it tugs straight at your heartstrings. It's such a beautiful melody and it creates a lot of nostalgia. It's a piece that helps people process and mourn and all of these sorts of wonderful ways of processing emotions. It speaks straight to them.
And then, of course, Aaron Copland's Old American Songs are fantastic. Some of them are whimsical, some of them are lyrical and beautiful. You have campaign songs from the late 1800s, a traditional Shaker Melody, of course—everybody knows “Simple Gifts”—even some lullabies that are in there. And these are all from the turn of the century (from the 1800s into the 1900s). Aaron Copland found these in a collection in a university and decided to give them a real symphonic treatment. They're quite beautiful.
FULLER: Sounds like a real variety even among these American composers all active in the mid-20th century at some point. But just a range of emotions and American experiences represented here.
Before we wrap up, do you have a sense of how the members of the orchestra are feeling going into this season finale?
MILLS: I think they're all feeling really great. Morale has been super high in the orchestra. We've had a fantastic season. We really got to play some incredible music that's rarely performed. I think spending a year focused entirely on American music has really given us an opportunity to encounter some pieces that are, you know, normally not programmed or that are sometimes programmed just as a sort of side thing and not the main focus of the program.
And the audiences also have been responding incredibly well to this. The GSO is playing better than ever, they're really fantastic, and I think they're really excited about this concert coming up.
FULLER: Lee, thanks so much for sharing and all best this weekend as the Greenville Symphony wraps up its “American Season”! Thanks for speaking.
MILLS: Thank you so much for having me.
The Greenville Symphony will offer two performances of its final concert for the 2025-2026 season: Saturday, May 16th at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, May 17th at 3 p.m., both at Peace Concert Hall. Soprano Laquita Mitchell, mezzo-soprano Kate Jackman, and bass DeAndre Simmons are featured guest artists.
More information about the Greenville Symphony Orchestra can be found on its website.
The Greenville symphony is a supporter of South Carolina Public Radio.
