Music | Arts & Culture | New Haven Symphony Orchestra | Black Lives Matter | COVID-19
| Zoom. |
Joseph Schwantner's New Morning for the World: Daybreak of Freedom begins with thunderous drums, less heartbeat and more of a call to arms. Strings ebb and flow, unsettled. Horns break through. Then suddenly, without warning, they back down. The words of Martin Luther King, Jr. float over the music.
“There comes a time when people get tired,” a voice cries out, clear as a bell. “Tired of being segregated and humiliated. Tired of being kicked about by the brutal feet of oppression.”
The New Haven Symphony Orchestra streamed the work Friday afternoon, in the midst of national mourning, outrage, and protest over the state-sanctioned murders of Black Americans by law enforcement. The organization initially performed the piece in April 2019, to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Marian Anderson’s performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. At that time, it featured vocals from Soprano Harolyn Blackwell and visuals from WQXR’s Elliott Forrest.
The stream was followed by a Zoom discussion with Blackwell, Maestro Alasdair Neale, NHSO Board President Keith Churchwell and Board Director Jonathan Berryman, and NHSO Harmony Fellow Zanaiya Léon, who also serves as coordinator for leadership, diversity, and inclusion at the University of New Haven. It was moderated by Babz Rawls-Ivy, editor of the Inner-City Newspaper and a host on WNHH Community Radio.
“We want to talk about the symphony’s commitment, dedication, concern, support of what is happening in the world right now,” Rawls-Ivy said. “We all know what is going on. The outrage of what has happened to Mr. George Floyd in Minneapolis has set off a firestorm across the world. Everyone is showing up and lending their support.”
“In your own unique way, adding music—the soundtrack to all our lives—is a gift,” she added.
New Morning for the World was first written in the 1980s, as a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In just under 30 minutes, Schwantner moves listeners through time and space, folding in words from speeches King gave during his lifetime. It is a sweeping, at times gutting work: instruments that are initially sure of themselves fall into discord, then grow slow and elegiac. King, speaking from beyond the grave, traces a history of stolen bodies, forced labor, and enslavement that has lasted well beyond the concepts of slavery and Reconstruction.
It’s also mired in the politics of who gets to tell this story of dismantling white supremacy—and how it is made palatable to audiences. New Morning is a work ostensibly about Black liberation by a white composer working within white, European musical conventions. The work pays homage to Martin Luther King, but strays away from freedom fighters like Medgar Evers and Malcolm X. It is a call to peaceful protest, rather than a “by any means necessary" undoing of anti-Black racism in the U.S.
It’s also a mesmerizing piece of music. Three decades after it was written, the work’s power and sting remains: 2019 marked the 400th anniversary of the first documented arrival of enslaved Africans in what is now recognized as the United States. Four hundred years ago, the Dutch had not yet colonized the Quinnipiac territory on which parts of New Haven are now built (that treaty came in 1638). To perform and discuss the work in New Haven is to use the arts to talk about stolen people on stolen land.
As Rawls-Ivy spoke, she pivoted from past to present. As protesters picked up their megaphones and marched downtown, she focused on the symphony’s work toward racial equity. The discussion seemed, if not overdue, right on time: Léon noted that Friday would have marked Breonna Taylor’s 27th birthday.
Blackwell kicked off the conversation. With a sort of wry smile, she recalled the number of requests she receives each year to perform in February, during Black History Month. When the symphony called a year ago, she was elated that the organization had done enough reflection and research to plan the concert in April. She suggested that other organizations could take note.
“My response has been, well, there are 11 [other] months of the year,” she said of the requests to perform in February. “So let’s pick another month. Because I have made a contribution, and all of my people have made a contribution 365 days of the year. So let’s celebrate that.”
She also loved the music, into which the power of King’s voice is woven over and over again, like a perfect cross-stitch. Blackwell added that the representation she has seen on stage and in artistic leadership is part of the reason she’s stayed with the craft. The soprano started her career as a kid, singing in church. She fell in love with opera at 18, after walking into a performance of Lucia di Lammermoor at the Connecticut Opera. Just years after that in Mexico City, she was entranced watching soprano Jessye Norman.
“I said, ‘Here’s this beautiful Black woman on this poster who I have got to see,’” she recalled. “I walked into the theater, sat down, and Jessye literally glided across stage. Glided. Bent her head. The accompanist started. She opened her mouth, and I went ‘oh my God.’ That’s what I want to do.”
Churchwell, who is the executive vice president and chief operating officer at Yale New Haven Hospital, said he wants more young people to have that experience when they see the symphony. He noted that the New Morning discussion hadn’t originally been part of the plan (the symphony had scheduled a watch party of Judy Garland music, which has since been postponed). But the more the organization thought about its role in the city, the more New Morning for the World felt right.
The work “in a great sense spoke to the moment,” he said. “It would actually engage the audience, actually would continue to push the conversation forward, and would help us think of the solutions that we need to bring to the table. That’s where we are and that’s why we are here today.”
The decision came as Churchwell also watched responses pour in from fellow nonprofits, businesses, and major corporations. He described recognizing in them a gulf between words—sometimes paragraphs and paragraphs of them—and action items. Last Monday, the organization issued a statement on social media, accompanied by a video of Joel Thompson’s Seven Last Words of the Unarmed.
The long-term work, Churchwell suggested, goes much deeper. For the last several years, he and other members of both NHSO staff and board have been thinking about what representation looks like on the symphony’s stages and in its audience. For the past months, the symphony has been working on a five-year plan meant to engage both larger and more diverse audiences, but also larger swaths of music history. It has also expanded its number of fellowships, including the position that Léon holds.
“It’s true diversity, true opportunity to bring music that actually fulfills and enriches the lives of the individuals that we have the proud honor to serve,” he said. “And to think about the cultural and musical heritage of this country and also of the world, so that we can have music play an enriching role in telling the story of how we can actually be together.”
“There is a lot that we need to be able to brush away from the past,” he later added. “But we really want to embrace and engage the future.”
Berryman, a music educator who leads The Heritage Chorale of New Haven, honed in on the importance of keeping music flowing through the movement, even at a point when the symphony is unable to safely gather, rehearse, and perform due to COVID-19.
Before the pandemic, the symphony used Woolsey Hall, which is on the campus of Yale University. He noted that young people, and especially people of color, may not feel welcome there. He took listeners back to his own childhood in Richmond, Virginia, where the symphony sometimes came to play at his church. It became his entryway into classical music.
“It really is about the symphony being in the space where the children are,” he said. “Coming to the community. There is power in that.”
At the same moment he spoke, a group of 5,000 protesters led by high school students had taken to the streets of downtown New Haven, using music and dance to carry their demands for police divestment and stronger funding for public education.
“I think even this whole event that we’re hosting right here and now is evidence of a shifting mindset that is being deliberate about being community-oriented, about recognizing that music does play a role in social justice,” he said. “And I believe that this is the New Haven Symphony Orchestra that has always seen itself as a musical organization, but also as an artistic one, that has always used the arts to talk about human success and human pain.”
Neale added that he sees it as an ongoing process. Just a week before a wave of coronavirus-enforced closures in March, the symphony performed the work of composer Florence Price for the first time in its history. The concert, which also featured the work of Antonín Dvořák, gave Price—a Black female composer, who got through music school by passing as Mexican—due she had not received during her lifetime.
It also gave New Haven audiences a chance to hear that work, Neale said. Earlier this week, while “going through these various thoughts and emotions,” he went back to the composer’s work as a way to center himself. On Thursday, he put in his earbuds and turned on the second movement of her Symphony No. 1 in E minor.
“Her voice spoke to me as strongly as ever, if not more strongly,” he said. “I just need to keep those sounds in my head—as if I could ever get them out of my head—as inspiration. Not just for this week, but for the weeks and months and years ahead of us.”
He suggested that he is trying to see the current moment as an opportunity, as the symphony thinks of how to keep making music in an age of physical distancing. He suggested that future programming may include small groups of musicians playing, always at a safe distance, in the community, rather than asking the community to come to them.
“For me, it’s key that not only is the fire lit, but it has to be tended,” he said. “It has to be maintained. Otherwise the spark … it may not necessarily take. This is part of a sustained, ongoing effort to engage our communities.”
To find out more about the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, visit the organization's website.