Hello everybody! Martin Luther King Day seems like the perfect moment to tell you about the next concert Kyle and I will be performing together: a wonderful start to Black History Month honoring another important figure, W.E.B. DuBois. Dubois and I share a childhood home, Great Barrington, MA, and I remember reading Souls Of Blackfolk in high school and feeling proud to claim even such a small, trivial connection to such a great mind.
On Sunday, February 2nd, St. Ann and The Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Brooklyn (which is a beautiful, glorious space!) is hosting an event called W.E.B. DuBois in Perspective: The Nation, The City, The Church. We will be playing Afro-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Sonata for Violin and Piano followed by his arrangement of the spiritual Deep River. Coleridge-Taylor met DuBois at the 1900 Pan-African Conference and the two began a relationship of deep mutual admiration and inspiration. At a time when the oppression of African Americans was particularly heinous, the brilliance and success of this Black composer across the pond was lifted up in America as a beacon of hope, an example of what was possible for Black people when they were free from the crushing weight of systemic racial injustice. After meeting DuBois and reading Souls of Blackfolk, Coleridge-Taylor began to incorporate African-American spirituals (like Deep River) and other elements of music from the African diaspora into his own lush, Romantic style of music, asserting the value of Black culture in what was at that time an almost exclusively white artform.
Three historians will be talking about DuBois, his national importance, and his connection to Brooklyn and specifically St. Ann’s, and the event will end with a performance by a gospel choir, The East Coast Inspirational Singers. It is sure to be an illuminating and uplifting event! This event is free and open to the public, and can also be watched via livestream. We’ll also be providing music for the 11:15 church service, again all by Black composers (Florence Price, Coleridge-Taylor, and David Baker.) If you’re a church-going person, come for the service, stay for the concert/discussion!
Saturday February 22nd I’ll be joining the HVSO for a pops concert in Beacon, NY. If you're musical-theater fan, we would love to see you there! This orchestra is back as an independent organization after being nearly destroyed by former management, and we need your support. I love the wide range of this first “season of renewal,” with works from Mozart to Montgomery, Stravinsky and Shostakovich to Broadway hits.
On Tuesday, February 25th I’ll be joining Kyle again at Lyric Chamber Music Society on the Upper East Side, playing more Coleridge-Taylor Sonata and the super fun and jazzy "Boogie-Woogie" from David Baker’s piano trio.
And finally, as promised, POETRY! As I’ve mentioned, at the last few recitals, we’ve offered people a pen and an index card to write on. A few times, people have told us afterwards, “I was inspired to write so much, it’s too much to fit on an index card! I’ll email it to you later.” And some of those people have not (yet!) gotten around to sending us their writing. But Barry Eisenberg did send his earlier this month, and it is quite astonishing! To be clear, there is no expectation that every audience member will be inspired to create masterpieces in response to our music. Absolutely any thoughts are more than welcome, and we are not judging your responses! At the same time, I found Barry’s words exceptionally moving and beautiful, so I think his poetry is worth celebrating and sharing, since he gave us permission to do so. It’s exciting to think that our music was the catalyst for this outpouring of creativity. We offer our music to friends, family and strangers, and we never know what meaning might be made in that moment of giving and receiving, what connections might be drawn. I hope you find these poems as interesting and powerful as I did.
Concert Notes
“For the Beauty of the Earth” Emily Kalish,
Violin and Kyle Walker, Piano,
Concerts at the Church Series, Hillsdale, NY,
Sunday, November 10, 2024, 1 PM
1 “Deep River,” Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, arr.
Maud Powell
I, too, know rivers.
I’ve seen and been in them.
I’ve swum, run into, walked and lived by,
dove into and traveled down rivers,
their wild stretches, slow, sea slogging meanders,
gloom shaded eddies, rapids with death spitting out of their maws,
shallow shoals, long glittering straights upon a late afternoon
chevrons of snowy egrets cutting a ribbon of upper blue,
a slow wingslap and swoop of great blue herons
from one high branch to another, from shore to shore,
beaches, no footprints, mock orange in perfumed bloom.
Is there any peace more dreamy than a picnic
by a river’s shore or lying in river beach sand
as twilight turns to night and the stars one by one come out
and cluster the rivers of eternity, sweet
rush of music morning and midday, evening
and night drifting by.
2.”Sonata para Violin y Piano,” Roberto
Sierra
Ah, autumn,
that brilliant, darkening, nostalgic,
heartbreaking season,
busy, reflective—
may I be able
to go out in it
one more time,
one more time,
and one more time again, please God,
to watch the cold wind I love so much
lift and toss the red fallen leaves
scattered across my memories.
3.“Pastorella (‘a tone poem of California’),”
William Grant Still
It makes me weep remembering
my California north of the Golden Gate,
the sounds of breezes and a quiet surf
where the Pacific spills into Tomales Bay,
alone under a gibbous moon,
the open and wooded,
rolling hills I used to ramble,
striding in the pride of my youth
from ridgetop to ridgetop, then fly,
soaring across long valleys
toward even more distant wooded ridges,
trudging up step by step those sweet steep
rolls,
bearing homely burdens, my girls on each hip
in the rain, my halcyon days, the months and
seasons of weather,
decades and years, my good friends,
some of them long passed on by now, some
still hanging on, once the flowers of May,
artists and poets, homespun and common
friends of my soul, walking or sitting at a
confabulation,
embracing, embracing—it makes me weep to
remember.
4.”Troubled Water,” Margaret Bonds
Fearless,
let’s splash
ankles deep in it, thighs
high, freshet stepping, fly
fishing, a sunlit strand,
green streams,
sparkling trouble,
let’s bottle.
5.”undercrrent,” Laura Kaminsky
waking, still dark out,
what’s to become of us,
my daughters, granddaughter—
wondering...what have we done
AMERICA
what have we done?
6.”Deep River,” Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
(reprise)
Time, tao, dharma—
God’s dreaming river,
before birth, beyond death,
flows on
7.“Pampeana No. 1,” Alberto Ginastera
So wholesome to hear
music of distant places,
earthen airs, folktale graces,
play y amor, a whistle of pampas weather,
inevitable tethers, their headlong braces,
and breezes embracing.
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