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Meeting ID: 821 2063 1785
Passcode: 724892
Join by Phone: +1 646 876 9923 US (New York)
Meeting ID: 821 2063 1785
Passcode: 724892
A Message from The Juneteenth Legacy Project about this Performance:
On the 19th of June, 1865, Texas became the final state to officially recognize the freedom of enslaved Africans on American soil, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Juneteenth is thus the oldest known celebration commemorating the end of slavery in America. As a musical collective, we at The Juneteenth Legacy Project have chosen to celebrate this day of freedom by performing the works of black composers and illuminating the dazzling musical gems created by members of the African Diaspora.
This Juneteenth program celebrates the African-American experience in its brilliant fullness; from the grim history of public lynching (past and present) to the rage of the protest song that helped shape and define the Civil Rights movement of the 60’s, to the voices of the Deep South raised in spiritual song. It’s hard to hear the beauty of the lullaby in William Grant Still’s Mother and Child (arranged for cello and piano by Timothy Holley) and not experience that as a violent contrast to Strange Fruit. Each black man or woman that is felled today is someone’s child, someone’s beloved, a fact made painfully clear when we perform the two works side by side.
Hale Smith, in his work for voice and piano, Beyond the Rim of Day, set three Langston Hughes poems that bring a haunting lyricism to the everyday lives of African-Americans. These three poems speak of black women, so often disparaged and neglected, but here treated tenderly and lovingly regardless of their social station. When we place these songs next to Smith’s jauntily irreverent and delightful jazz piano pieces, we get to experience the stunning range of his compositional language.
Please join us for an evening of song: songs of strife, pain, loss, death, but also, songs that invite us to joy, that invite us to dance, to move our feet and to move our hearts.