Houston Grand Opera's Patrick Summers Explores The Joy And Meaning Of Art In New Book by BWW News Desk Dec. 10, 2018 Tweet Share

The Spirit of This Place, authored by Houston Grand Opera Artistic and Music Director Patrick Summers, is now available for sale on Amazon and through the Chicago University Press, the publisher of the work. The Spirit of This Place is described as "a moving credo elucidating Summers's belief that the arts, especially music, help us to understand our own humanity as intellectual, aesthetic, and ultimately spiritual."

With arts funding and curricula in school districts under attack, the book is a soul searching series of essays that examine the role of art in society and in individual lives, arguing that art nurtures freedom of thought and is more necessary now than ever before. Summers notes that the place of the arts in our civic future is uncertain. Faced with the problems of the modern world-from water shortages and grave health concerns to global climate change and the now constant threat of terrorism-one might question the urgency of supporting the arts. But Summers asks the question of whether the arts are worth fighting for and answers with an emphatic "Yes."

Now in his 20th season with Houston Grand Opera, Summers is well-positioned to take stock of the limitations of the professional arts world, where the conversation often revolves around financial questions and which is often criticized as elitist. Summers reminds us of art's fundamental relationship to joy and meaning in our lives. Offering a vehement defense of long-form arts in a world with a short attention span, Summers argues that art is spiritual, and that music in particular has the ability to ask spiritual questions, to inspire cathartic pathos, and to express spiritual truths.

"The book is a transcript of part of my Campbell Lectures for the Humanities at Rice University a few years ago," says Summers. "The inspiration for both the lectures, and therefore the book, is an attempt to discover just one of the many facets of being an artist in the 21st century: why do we create art or, more urgently for me, why do we re-create art? There are many reasons, but I continually returned to my own thoughts and summations about the 'why' of art. The 'how' is relatively easy; 'why' is the more profound question."

Summers guides readers through his personal encounters with art and music in disparate places, from Houston's Rothko Chapel to a music classroom in rural China, and reflects on musical works he has conducted all over the world. Assessing the growing canon of new operas performed in American opera houses today, he calls for musical artists to be innovative and brave as opera continues to reinvent itself.

"One of the greatest things about opera is its combination of all of the arts, and I wanted to explore its spiritual roots," Summers continues. "The book is directly connected to HGO's artistic initiative Seeking the Human Spirit, and it shares many of its aspirations, observations, and obvious human limitations. I'm tremendously excited to share my book with the HGO public, hopefully the first of many, as writing is an absorbing passion of mine, one that has profoundly changed me as a musician. I hope people will enjoy the work and perhaps find some connection to opera and music they hadn't thought about before."

Leonard Slatkin, music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, offered this assessment of Summers's book: "As one of America's most distinguished conductors, Patrick Summers also brings an innate literary skill into his broad repertoire. This collection of essays is touching, funny, informative, and a pleasure to read."

Jake Heggie, composer of the opera Dead Man Walking, says, "Through this remarkable and varied series of essays and reflections, the brilliant conductor Patrick Summers invites us to explore, discuss, and question the role of spirit and art in the modern world. With a poet's soul, probing intellect, and sense of humor, he takes us on a quest for meaning and connection that winds from Houston's Rothko Chapel to the world's great concert halls and opera houses, to the American classroom, and into the creative psyche itself."

The Spirit of this Place retails for $16.25 on Amazon and is also available on Kindle. You can also find it on the University of Chicago Press website. The Press has embraced as its mission the obligation to disseminate scholarship of the highest standard and to publish serious works that promote education, foster public understanding, and enrich cultural life.