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‘A King Celebration’ for 2006
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW
“A King Celebration” — the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, with the glee clubs of Morehouse and Spelman colleges. Thursday at the King International Chapel on the Morehouse campus. (The concert will be heard Monday at 9am on Georgia Public Broadcasting and at 11am on WABE.)
TWO VISIONS of America dominated the 14th annual “A King Celebration,” the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. The one-night-only concert, performed Thursday at King’s alma mater, Morehouse College, was recorded by National Public Radio for broadcast Monday.
The first vision, which opened the evening, belonged to Aaron Copland and his “Fanfare for the Common Man” (1942) — bold, steely and blond-haired music that conjures, by pop-culture convention, hardworking Midwestern farmers in a sort of Social Realist utopia. Nevermind Copland’s own complex personal identity: Hear this music and imagine how Norman Rockwell would have painted the scene.
The other, desperate vision came via T.J. Anderson’s “Runaway, Runaways,” an excerpt from his 2003 cantata “Slavery Documents 2.” An ASO composer-in-residence during the Robert Shaw years, Anderson here assembled historical writings from slaves and slaveholders. In program notes, the composer tells of “a recognition that racism in America has its foundation in slavery and we as Americans must address the remaining issues.”
The glee clubs of Morehouse and Spelman colleges handled the texts, which must have been painful to sing because they were traumatic to hear: “I hired me a black boy named Nathan, ten or eleven years old… In about two weeks he ran away. I had an iron collar made and put a large padlock on it. On the same night he eloped again.”
The music grows increasingly bitter, then angry, then fills with rage to underscore a legal petition: “authority shall be given by law to kill any slave runaway while lying out in the wood…” At times Anderson’s sound-world seems a sour-note version of the Americana of Copland and Ives, with snatches of Yankee-doodle hymns and patriotic songs turned inside-out — a vision of American dystopia.
The ASO deserves special credit for performing “Runaway, Runaways.” Orchestras around the country complain they’ve lost their way, that they’ve become museums of dusty, outdated repertoire — afraid that social commentary of any stripe will offend or, worse, drive away donors. In its annual “King Celebration,” the Atlantans, led by music director Robert Spano, addressed hot-button social concerns in a provocative, graphic setting, without flinching. And the ASO musicians played Anderson with as much commitment as they played the finale from Copland’s oft-performed Third Symphony.
Jennifer Higdon’s “Dooryard Bloom,” a 24-minute work for solo baritone (Nmon Ford) and orchestra is among the composer’s most intimate and searching works to date. Premiered in April in Brooklyn, Higdon’s setting of Walt Whitman’s elegy for Abraham Lincoln, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” evokes Copland at the start but soon settles into a darker, sometimes chilling examination of death, life and the hereafter.
“A King Celebration” also included three selections for Anderson’s “Spirituals” and, to end the evening in full glory, Uzee Brown Jr.’s arrangement of the King anthem, “We Shall Overcome.”
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