To guide those songs
I sing to join
Your songs,
Our songs.
Marching
To liberate
And free
All songs
That join our beacon
To the stars.
鈥撵谤辞尘&苍产蝉辫;Gathering Song, Tazewell Thompson
The New York Philharmonic has joined with Interlochen Center for the Arts to present two musically diverse but thematically linked programs, part of LIBERATION, marking a commitment to social justice and reimagined audiences. One of four themes for the NY Phil鈥檚 inaugural season in the recently renovated David Geffen Hall鈥攁long with HOME, SPIRIT, and EARTH鈥攊t marks the Orchestra鈥檚 exploration of today鈥檚 most vital issues. 鈥淭he themes for our season reflect critical considerations that face not only the Philharmonic but, indeed, society,鈥� says NY Phil Linda and Mitch Hart President & CEO Deborah Borda. 鈥淚t is time to begin anew.鈥�
LIBERATION exclusively features works by African American composers in concerts programmed and conducted by Leslie B. Dunner, maestro of the Interlochen Arts Academy Orchestra, comprising high school鈥揳ged musicians. 鈥淔or me, LIBERATION is not a concert,鈥� says Dunner, a native New Yorker. 鈥淚t is a cultural-immersion event.鈥� The collaboration also launches the Interlochen鈥揘ew York Philharmonic Creative Youth Development Initiative and the NY Phil Scholarship Program.
In one program, performed March 2 and 4, Dunner conducts the NY Phil in works by three Black composers representing distinct generations: William Grant Still, a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance; Adolphus Hailstork, who came of age during the postwar civil rights movement; and Courtney Bryan, a versatile and accomplished millennial musician. 叠谤测补苍鈥檚 Gathering Song, commissioned by the Philharmonic and performed in its World Premiere, sets an original libretto by the eminent director and playwright Tazewell Thompson sung by bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green. If Still鈥檚 1937 Second Symphony, Song of a New Race, commemorates what the composer described as 鈥渢he American colored man of today ... a totally new individual,鈥� Gathering Song taps sources of inspiration ranging from Scott Joplin to Wayne Shorter to Stevie Wonder, while offering what Bryan calls a 鈥渨elcome piece鈥� summoning mirthful unity. The program culminates with Hailstork鈥檚 magisterial cantata "Done Made My Vow," performed in a staging by Thompson with projections by renowned video artist Rasean Davont茅 Johnson.
Even as it, too, pays unwavering homage to Black heroes and Black perseverance, the work鈥檚 call to 鈥渁cquire wisdom鈥� bears a broader and timely message of hope, pride, and thanksgiving. Highlighted by Still鈥檚 vision of transformation through confluent histories, Hailstork鈥檚 call for a collective walk with the wise, and 叠谤测补苍鈥檚 and Thompson鈥檚 affirmation of the power of common cause, the concert sounds a keynote of renewal through reassembly that, in Thompson鈥檚 words, steers us toward 鈥渁 place called together.鈥�
The March 3 Interlochen performance combines the Academy鈥檚 core artistic disciplines鈥攃reative writing, dance, theater, visual arts, film, and music鈥攖o introduce the perspective of the next generation. As Dunner says, 鈥淚 wanted to have music that represented different kinds of African American composers, and I wanted all of the compositions to be pieces by people who are currently alive because classical music is seen so often as a dead white man鈥檚 art.鈥�
Dunner conducts the concert, which opens with 啶�啶ぎ啶ぎ啶�: MUKTI (the concept of spiritual liberation from a number of Indian religions), an original multidisciplinary work created and performed by Interlochen Arts Academy students. It is followed by four orchestral works in which the students will be joined by NY Phil musicians, many of whom are Interlochen alumni, to perform repertoire that, like the 笔丑颈濒丑补谤尘辞苍颈肠鈥檚 LIBERATION program, weave together questions of history and memory. John Wineglass鈥檚 Unburied, Unmourned, Unmarked: A Requiem for Rice memorializes the enslaved African Americans who lived and died on Southern rice plantations. Underlying Equality, by Interlochen Arts Academy graduate Jonathan Bailey Holland, is the recitation of a Maya Angelou poem with the insistent refrain: 鈥淓quality, and I will be free.鈥� In Mary Watkins鈥檚 elegiac yet uplifting Soul of Remembrance, memory both throbs with pain and offers comfort. Umoja鈥攊ts title from the Kiswahili word for 鈥渦nity鈥� and a signature work by Valerie Coleman鈥攊s heard in a 2019 arrangement for orchestra that, according to the composer, explores 鈥渢he meaning of freedom and unity. Now more than ever, Umoja has to ring as a strong and beautiful anthem for the world we live in today.鈥�
For Dunner, liberation and artistic expression are unified: 鈥淟iberation, for me, means not just being freed from the shackles of bondage or mind limitation, but also the freedom to dream, the freedom to be unorthodox, the freedom to fail, yet create beyond what was originally conceived. That鈥檚 truly liberating and liberated, as far as I鈥檓 concerned. And that鈥檚 what I want the programs to do.鈥�
