Works by a living, local black composer will be performed in “Sheldon Classics: Africa,” a program of “music inspired by the rhythms and sounds of Africa” that will be presented at The Sheldon at 8 p.m. Wednesday, January 28.
Fred Onovwersuoke will have his compositions performed by pianist Peter Henderson and members of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, with SLSO principal percussionist Will James also performing two works for solo marimba.
Onovwersuoke – best known as FredO – has illustrious company in Henderson’s set list: ragtime legend (and composer for opera and ballet) Scott Joplin (ca. 1867-1917) and William Grant Still (1895-1978), who remains “the most recognized African-American composer of classical chamber music,” FredO said.
Henderson will play selections from Onovwersuoke’s “Five Kaleidoscopes for Piano,” which was commissioned by Rebeca Omordia (a Roman-Nigerian pianist living in London), and “Six Sketches for Oboes and Piano” featuring Laura Ross on oboe.
FredO was born in Ghana to Nigerian parents but has been based in St. Louis since the early 1990s, except for seven years commuting up and down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. He has been able to make a living as a composer since Hurricane Katrina, which attracted volunteers from Oxford University in England, who insisted on publishing his music after they helped to salvage his manuscripts from the floodwaters.
That Oxford University Press publication “Songs of Africa: 22 Pieces for Mixed Voices” (2008) shows his years of experience writing and arranging for the St. Louis African Chorus, which he formed in 1994 (and which now survives as African Musical Arts Inc.). That book led to many other publications as a composer, and music publishing royalties have become a revenue stream for FredO’s family – thanks in large part to Robert De Niro using some of Onovwersuoke’s compositions in his 2007 film about the birth of the CIA, “The Good Shepherd.”
Commissions like “Five Kaleidoscopes for Piano,” which Henderson will play at The Sheldon on January 28, are also part of the working composer’s bread and butter. FredO is currently composing a piano concerto for Henderson that will incorporate hip-hop beatmakers like Terace Robinson, rather than traditional orchestral elements. Many connections for commissions have come to him from a surprising source: the Rev. Jeremiah Wright – a trained ethnomusicologist, as well as Barack Obama’s fiery and influential former pastor – whom the composer met through the pastor’s goddaughter.
Onovwersuoke also is enjoying the cushion of a $20,000 Artist Fellowship Award from the Regional Arts Commission. That honor was announced on November 17 – and the St. Louis County grand jury announced its decision in the Darren Wilson case on November 23. So FredO’s good news, like so many other things, was lost in the smoke of burned-down businesses on West Florissant Avenue. This African composer living and working in America has managed to survive both Hurricane Katrina and the Ferguson crisis.
FredO, who lives in central St. Louis County, was hardly a frontline protestor, but he paid close attention to Ferguson and plans to incorporate the crisis in his forthcoming hip-hop piano concerto. “I am an activist,” FredO said. “I am an activist with my music.”
For more information on FredO, visit http://fredomusic.com/.
Tickets for “Sheldon Classics: Africa” at The Sheldon, 3648 Washington Blvd., on January 28 are $30 orchestra, $25 balcony, $15 student. Visit http://www.sheldonconcerthall.org/.
