The Musician Dawes: Celebrating Charles Dawes’ Musical Life and Legacy

The Musician Dawes: Celebrating Charles Dawes’ Musical Life and Legacy

with Sara Su Jones, violin and Tatyana Stepanova, piano

Sunday, October 5, 4pm

In-person event
At the Evanston History Center
225 Greenwood St, Evanston, IL

Although Charles Gates Dawes was and is primarily known for his outstanding achievements as a lawyer, businessman, banker, politician, public servant, and diplomat, MUSIC was his first and greatest love. As one journalist wrote, “In the banker Dawes there is bottled up an artist.” Indeed, the varied threads of Dawes’s musical life were inextricably interwoven with those of his personal life and professional careers, and he brought to his music-related activities many of the same qualities that defined his professional work.

Through specially curated musical selections and insightful commentary, award-winning violinist Sara Su Jones and pianist Tatyana Stepanova will share previously untold stories of the remarkable musical life and legacy of Charles Gates Dawes, yielding fresh insights into this intriguingly multifaceted and multi-talented public figure. During this concert, audience members will experience music as Dawes himself did in his daily life: in the intimacy of a salon setting, with the sounds of the violin and of the gorgeous Dawes House Steinway at the heart of his home reminding us of the central role that classical music played throughout Dawes’s life.

The program will include pieces typical of the classical music Dawes would have heard in his youth and early adulthood, as well as both of Dawes’s published compositions: “Improvisation” (1907) and “Melody” (1911).  Sara Su and Tatyana will also perform a variety of short pieces evoking key figures in Dawes’s musical life—Fritz Kreisler’s “Praeludium and Allegro,” Lili Boulanger’s “Nocturne,” and Arthur Hartmann’s arrangement for violin and piano of Claude Debussy’s “The Girl with the Flaxen Hair.” Amy Beach’s gorgeous Romance, premiered at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago (for which the current Dawes House Steinway was likely built), and Robert Russell Bennett’s fantastically fun “Hexapoda: Five Studies in Jitteroptera,” inspired by the jitterbug craze of the 1920s and 1930s, will round out the program, paying tribute to Dawes’s strong advocacy for American composers and performers and to his eclectic musical tastes.

Note: Musical selections for this program are subject to change slightly.

60 minute concert program plus post-concert reception and the opportunity to explore the Dawes House and the reFashioning History exhibit. Refreshments included.

About the Artists

As duo partners for more than 16 years, Chicago-based violinist Sara Su Jones and pianist Tatyana Stepanova have given recitals in recent seasons at the Harvard Club of New York as well as in Reykjavik, Iceland and Washington, DC; and Andover, Massachusetts. The acclaimed duo has appeared multiple times on “Live from WFMT,” the flagship recital-and-conversation series of Chicago’s classical-music radio station, and their Chicago-area performances also include the Driehaus Museum’s Third Wednesday concert series, the Noonday Concert Series at Fourth Presbyterian Church, and sold-out recitals at Glessner House, the Cliff Dwellers Club, and Newberry Library. Their eclectic, creative programs often highlight striking but little-known works, and Sara Su’s insightful commentary and storytelling enliven the duo’s performances.

Hailed as a “violinist of enviable gifts” by a Chicago Sun-Times music critic, Sara Su Jones was the 2022 winner of The American Prize (instrumental soloist) and has been a featured soloist on WFMT, WBEZ, and BBC Radio. She performs on a violin made for her in 2017 by the Icelandic luthier Hans Johannsson.

Tatyana Stepanova is a noted performer and teacher, praised by the Chicago Tribune as a “fine” and “persuasive” pianist. A Kyiv native and graduate of the Tchaikovsky (Kyiv) and Rimsky-Korsakov (St. Petersburg) State Conservatories, she has performed with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the orchestra of the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

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