By Valarie Schwartz
If you’re Betsy Green Moyer (a daughter of Paul Green) and your friend is Maxine Swalin, you throw a tribute concert. And with a son who is a concert pianist, Frederick Moyer, and a niece who is a concert cellist, Nancy Green — who have a CD that Swalin has ordered time and again, not only to listen to tirelessly but to give away — you engage them to play.
But play where?
“I like to start at the top,†an indefatigable Moyer said from her home outside of Boston. “I called Emil Kang,†executive director for the arts at UNC.
She asked if they could use Memorial Hall.
“He said, ‘Yes — anything for Maxine Swalin.’ We chose an open date as close as we could come to her birthday,†Moyer said.
Swalin (pronounced swah-LEEN) was born May 7, 1903 (weighing 10 pounds), in rural Iowa, delivered by her physician father. She was 5 years old when the Ford Model T rolled off the first automobile assembly line.
Swalin has appreciated and studied music and art her entire life, and for 33 years she and her husband, Benjamin, the second conductor of the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra, took the messages they learned from the masters of classical music and introduced them to the hardscrabble, the elite and everybody in between of their adopted state, exposing children and adults alike to sounds that had never been heard in many regions.
Paul Green, the Pulitzer-prize-winning playwright and human rights activist who taught philosophy and the dramatic arts at UNC, befriended the Swalins shortly upon their arrival in Chapel Hill as newlyweds in 1935. Green was among those who encouraged them to resuscitate the orchestra, and he and his wife, Elizabeth Lay Green, enjoyed a close friendship, along with their four children.
For Benjamin and Maxine, the state’s children were to be their progeny. Beginning in 1946 until Ben retired in 1972, they packed up the orchestra for annual road trips into every Tar Heel county. In rickety buses on dirt roads, they arrived at schools, churches, civic club meetinghouses or hovels across the state to play their instruments and hold workshops for children who learned how to make their own music. North Carolina was a poor state that they served with love and left with an orchestra that has continued to soar — the first state orchestra in the nation — with one of the most extensive education programs.
Visits by the orchestra were memorable for Moyer, growing up in Chapel Hill. “It was wonderful what they did,†she said of the Swalins.
Throughout her long life, Maxine has found ways to continue playing the piano and to paint and draw. An exhibition of her paintings opens with a reception from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on April 22 at the Chapel Hill Museum. At 2 p.m. the following Sunday, two of Paul Green’s grandchildren will serenade her. It is hoped that the venerable hall where Maxine and her beloved Benjamin performed on many occasions will be filled with the now-grown children — and generations of their offspring — that the Swalins introduced to music. No admission will be charged, but donations will be accepted to the Arts Common at UNC, which Maxine has championed since first learning about it — where scholars, practitioners and learners of all the arts will share space, ideas and Carolina blue skies.
After all, as Maxine recently said, “Art is just around the corner from music, you know.â€
Learn more at carolinaperformingarts.com or 843-3333.
Contact Valarie Schwartz at 923-3746 or valariekays@mac.com