The 2011 “Lift Every Voice” concert by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and its IN UNISON Chorus promises to be one to remember. This Black History Month concert will in itself be historic, since it will be the first without founding director and conductor Robert Ray, who retired last year, passing the baton to Kevin McBeth.
McBeth – who has been a fan of the chorus since he moved to St. Louis 15 years ago – will glance at the illustrious past of this chorus and this concert in the program. Both halves of the program end with a signature piece. Roland M. Carter’s arrangement of the Johnson brothers’ namesake classic Lift Every Voice and Sing will send the audience to intermission, and Freedom’s Plow – composed by Rollo Dilworth for the chorus two years ago – will send the audience home.
Both pieces are definitive of the St. Louis Symphony’s IN UNISON Chorus: a mighty orchestra, arranged by an African-American, playing behind an African-American choir performing a piece by an African-American composer and conducted by a black man.
The orchestra and chorus also will perform together a miniature memorial to Brazeal W. Dennard, the African-American composer from Detroit and great friend of the chorus who passed away last year. Dennard’s arrangements of the spirituals Hush! Somebody’s Callin’ My Name and Lord, I Want to Be a Christian provide one of the many movements in this ambitious concert.
McBeth also has worked in creative tributes to the African-American musical genius of his adopted home city. The second half of the program opens on a light note, with Richard Hayman’s orchestral arrangement of the Scott Joplin classic The Entertainer, which Joplin composed during his years in St. Louis. The song is situated to showcase Joplin’s influence. “You will hear his ragtime style in Andre Thomas’ arrangement of Goin’ Up to Glory, the next piece on the program,” McBeth said.
The featured soloist for the February 18 concert also is a nod to St. Louis: cellist Patrice Jackson, all of 23, whom McBeth describes as “a hometown artist gone global.” An African American from St. Louis, Jackson began piano lessons with her mother at the age of three and cello lessons with her father at the age of eight before launching off to the Juilliard School, the Yale School of Music and the world concert stage.
Interestingly, the local “sister girl” on the program is responsible for much of its remarkable diversity.
“When you are able to secure a person like Patrice, it’s typical that you then go to their repertoire and find out what they have that would be appropriate,” McBeth said.
Jackson will be featured on a movement from a modern mass composed by a Welshman, Karl Jenkins, and a cello concerto composed by a Frenchman, Camille Saint-Saens (albeit a highly unique Frenchman who lived out his last years in North Africa).
The Karl Jenkins piece – “Benedictus,” from The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace – fits a basic theme of the concert. It was premiered in 2000, and though drawn from a polyphonic range of texts, it is primarily a meditation on the violence in Kosovo.
“That piece was chosen to highlight Patrice and the chorus, but in a strange way it fits as a great tribute to all those lost in battle, working toward justice and freedom on our behalf – working totally focused on a peaceful world without the violence that we know,” McBeth said.
“It is poignant in connection with us, the orchestra, the chorus.”
McBeth makes another metaphorical connection to the concert’s traditional themes. The opening orchestral overture is by John Williams, a white American composer best known for his many film scores. The concert opens with Liberty Fanfare, which Williams composed for the July 4, 1986 centennial of the Statue of Liberty and premiered on Liberty Island in New York Harbor.
“It’s sort of an overture for the evening,” McBeth said. “I really wanted to point to liberty and the whole aspect of freedom.”
If a Welshman mourning the victims in Kosovo and the composer of the theme to Jaws isn’t diverse enough for your Black History Month program, then McBeth also has – who would have thought? – the conductor of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Mack Wilberg.
“Mack Wilberg is not an African-American composer, but we have an exciting set of these incredible arrangements he did of African-American spirituals,” McBeth said.
“You would identify him as a ‘white American composer,’ but he expanded his horizons, as we are expanding ours.”
McBeth is drawn to Wilberg’s arrangements because they play to his own strengths as a conductor and choral director who loves to push the dynamic interplay between chorus and orchestra. “I want the audience to hear all of our forces together,” McBeth said.
But he also knows that, musically, you have to go back home. One of the starkest moments in the concert will be Andre Thomas’ arrangement of Keep Your Lamps! for a capella chorus, accompanied only by percussion. “That is reminiscent of the original spirituals,” McBeth said.
McBeth is evidently thrilled at the opportunity to take the chorus that Robert Ray built and SLSO musical director David Robertson’s orchestra and light up a packed house at Powell Hall.
“I am just four weeks into this and, knowing the chorus more intimately now, I have an even greater respect for their ability and talents as an ensemble,” McBeth said.
“I want to help the audience understand the scope and ability of this chorus with this orchestra. We have really savvy listeners, a really educated audience. They know their history, they know the music, they know the repertoire. When they sit there in Powell Hall, I want them to appreciate that scope.”
The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and its IN UNISON Chorus will present “Lift Every Voice: Black History Month Celebration” 7:30 p.m. Friday, February 18 at Powell Hall. For tickets, call 314-534-1700, visit www.slso.org or visit the box office at 718 N. Grand.
