Video:

Program Note:

Two Black Churches is a song set in two movements composed for baritone Will Liverman and pianist Paul Sanchez. This work is a musical reflection of two significant and tragic events perpetrated at the hands of white supremacists in two black churches, decades apart:  • The 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, which took the lives of four girls.  • The 2015 Mother Emanuel AME Church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, resulting in the deaths of nine parishioners.  The text of the first movement is a poem by Dudley Randall, Ballad of Birmingham, a narrative account of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing from the perspectives of the mother of one victim and her child. Stylistically, this movement includes 1960s black gospel juxtaposed with contemporary art song. At moments, the civil rights anthem, We Shall Overcome, and the hymn, Amazing Grace, are referenced subtly. While there are strophic elements consistent with the poem's structure, the work is also rhapsodic, though serious and weighty in nature.  The text of the second movement is a poem written specifically for this composition by Marcus Amaker, poet laureate of Charleston, South Carolina, called The Rain. This poem poignantly reflects the shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church. Set in the coastal city of Charleston, which often floods, The Rain is a beautifully haunting metaphor on racism and the inability of Blacks in America to stay above water—a consequence of the flood of injustice and the weight of oppression. In this composition, the number nine is significant, symbolizing the nine people who perished that day. Musically, this is most evident through meter and a reoccurring nine-chord harmonic progression. The hymn, 'Tis so Sweet to Trust in Jesus,’ is quoted in this movement. This hymn was sung at the first service in the church after the shooting, testifying to a community that chose faith and hope over hate and fear.

Movement 1: Ballad of Birmingham  - 0:00
Movement 2: The Rain - 10:18

Video:

Program Note:

Commissioned by tenor Lawrence Brownlee, this work, a love song, is my setting of Harlem Renaissance poet Claude McKay’s poem Romance, about an intimate night between two lovers. Amid this endearingly sweet moment in time—filled with deep passion and a naïve hope for two’s eternal future as one—the lovers realize that their love for each other is transient. How long can they hold onto this moment?

Video:

Program Note:

Ahmaud is the 10th movement of composer Shawn E. Okpebholo song cycle, Songs in Flight, text by poet Tsitsi Jaji. This evocative work was performed at the 2003 Ojai Music Festival by renowned artists, Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award winner Rhiannon Giddens, along with celebrated musician Francesco Turrisi. Below are some notes about the entire song set:

Songs in Flight is an artistic response to "Freedom on the Move," an extensive database spearheaded by Cornell University, consisting of over 30,000 historical newspaper advertisements specifically aimed at locating runaway slaves. These classifieds were varied, with some placed by the enslavers and others by jailers seeking help to recapture the self-emancipated. The ads presented these individuals as mere property, at times providing detailed descriptions of their physical features, clothing, mannerisms, stories, and their last known whereabouts.

This twelve-movement song cycle, scored for soprano, countertenor, baritone, and piano, is a setting of a collection of poems by three poets carefully curated by Tsitsi Ella Jaji. This includes Jaji's own poetry, a poem by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tyehimba Jess, and a series of haiku sequences by poet Crystal Simone Smith. The varying musical styles, though harmonically, motivically, and architecturally cohesive, evoke the diverse poetic approaches and perspectives in response to the historical ads. This includes period accounts, contemporary reactions, and Jaji's personal journey in exploring this database. More aptly, this set of songs, according to The York Times, "takes these murky, dehumanizing documents and illuminates them, shifting their perspective to reveal the person hidden in plain sight."

Songs in Flight was commissioned by Sparks & Wiry Cries and The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, with support, in part, from the National Endowment for the Arts. The world premiere of this work took place on January 12th, 2023, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of their Live Arts Series in partnership with Sparks & Wiry Cries, featuring internationally acclaimed artists Rhiannon Giddens (another Pulitzer Prize- winning artist), Will Liverman, Reginald Mobley, Karen Slack, and Howard Watkins.

Audio:

Program Note:

This is a live performance of my setting of Deep River for women's choir and piano. The Wheaton College Women's Chorale (for whom the piece was written) is performing the work under the direction of Dr. Mary Hopper.