Unlikely duo make music their tribute to freedom

Theartis Scott and Michael Pronsky were born in different countries and in different decades, but they perform together like old partners.

By JON WILSON

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 20, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- Theartis Scott's voice filled his accompanist's living room. Sometimes it swelled like thunder coming, bursting from Michael Pronsky's house and rolling like something alive along a quiet Uptown street.

A motorist slowed, craning, as if to spy the source.

"They don't even have to stop," Pronsky said. When these two rehearse, you can hear while walking past, or in a car with the windows up or, one imagines, somewhere in a corner of high heaven where angels sing Deep River.

In some ways Scott and Pronsky seem an unlikely duo.

Scott, 43, grew up in Savannah, Ga. His mother, Mary Scott, sang spirituals while breakfast cooked. "I was always waking up hearing her sing some gospel tune," he said.

Pronsky was born in Moscow, 1941. The son of musicians, he spent 20 years as the resident composer, arranger and conductor for the Radio Moscow Orchestra. His family got out of the Soviet Union in 1987.

The men's paths crossed in St. Petersburg in 1993. Pronsky became the music director at First Congregational Church on Fourth Street N, where Scott was the soloist.

Both love classical music and opera.

And each has a perspective on the meaning of freedom.

That theme will be reflected 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Palladium. The Great Arts Society is presenting the pair's performance in honor of Black History Month. The program includes nearly a dozen spirituals, from older traditional tunes such as Swing Low, Sweet Chariot to relatively newer ones like We Shall Overcome.

Scott and Pronsky continued rehearsals late last week, the 6 feet 3 basso profundo sitting next to Pronsky at the piano. "Be seated. Save your voice," Pronsky said.

Scott sat, but spared no energy. The two rolled through Freedom, Tryin' to Make Heaven My Home and Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho. Scott's right heel stamped a beat, his right arm chopping in rhythm. Pronsky's riffs on the high keys contrasted with the singer's booming notes.

Sometimes Scott's phrasing turned so soft, like velvet whisking grass, but always so low, perhaps two octaves below the musical scale's middle C.

He has always had the deep voice, Scott said, even as a child.

"I scared to death a lot of my friends. And a lot of my mother's friends. They were always expecting a baby voice," Scott said. Sometimes, if his brothers Scylandce or Alfred got in trouble at school, he would call and pretend to be dad, making things right.

A Disston Heights resident, Scott manages a Racetrac gas-and-food convenience store on Park Boulevard in Pinellas Park. He also has worked in social services, counseling runaways and job-coaching older people, for example.

"I've done a number of things, but music is my love," he said. "Music is the love, but you have to have an income."

Sound is Scott's life, but he could hear only in a muffled way until he was 9 or 10. Bones near his ears had fused together, he said, making him partly deaf. An operation fixed the condition. His singing never suffered.

At first singing with his brothers, Scott went on to a performing arts high school in Savannah, then to Savannah State College, where he majored in voice. He traveled and sang, sometimes jazz -- including sessions at the Hurricane Restaurant in St. Pete Beach. But he always enjoyed opera and spirituals the most.

Pronsky, who also is a bass singer, has traveled the world performing and conducting. He came to St. Petersburg from Toronto in 1992, he said, to relieve his son Andrew, whose own ear condition suffered in the cold and wind of Canada.

His music directorship at First Congregational provided interesting symmetry. Nearly a century earlier, Pronsky's great-grandfather also had been musical director in a church -- in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Scott met Pronsky's daughter Vera while working as an outreach counselor at another church, though he was singing at First Congregational at the time.

"You sound just like my father,' " Scott said Vera had told him one day.

"I said, "Okay, who is your father?' " Scott recalled. Chat led to more conversation and the two men wound up together at First Congregational.

"We've been performing together ever since," Scott said.

They rehearse like old partners, discussing whether to include this song or that one, maybe whether to take a certain song's key down a half-step. Pronsky coaches, prods, encourages.

"Yes! Yeah! It goes!" Pronsky called after a particularly rousing song.

Scott's Swing Low resonates so strongly, a listener's chest and belly vibrates. At the end, the pair swings without pause into Down by the Riverside. It is thumping, sternum-shaking music.

It ends suddenly, leaving a stunning silence in the room.

Outside, a dove pipes a mild "whooo," a final grace note. And everyone breathes again.

WHAT: Theartis Scott and Michael Pronsky in concert, in honor of Black History Month.

WHERE: Palladium Theater, 253 Fifth Ave. N

HOW MUCH: General admission $10; students $5.

INFORMATION: 327-7272

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