Dearest Readers,

Something remarkable is happening as I type this opening monologue from my flu bed: snowflakes and thunder outside my window. Am I the only person with spring fever right about now? No, I can't possibly be the only person who wants to feel the sun on my face and grass underfoot. What about you?

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Rashida N. Black
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Lauded for his moving interpretations of African American spirituals, Gold Medal winner of the American Traditions Competition, Robert L. Sims has been hailed by critics for his rich tone, energetic performances, and convincing stage presence. Sims premiered the spiritual suite, I'm a Soldier, for baritone and orchestra composed for him by Lena McLin and orchestrated with Jan Bach. The work debuted with the Savannah Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Chelsea Tipton.

An alumnus of Oberlin Conservatory, SUNY Binghamton, Northwestern University, and Music Academy of the West, he has toured nationally in the ensemble Three Generations, a celebration of American spirituals and folk songs with renowned artists George Shirley, the late William Warfield and Benjamin Matthews. Recently, he debuted with Simon Estes and Jubilant Sykes in the trio Simon, Sykes & Sims, singing spirituals and American songs.

Sims recently made his recital debut at Carnegie Hall, and has performed in concert at Lincoln Center in New York, the Smithsonian Institution, the Los Angeles African American Museum, Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, the Chicago Historical Society, the Latour de France International Music Festival in France, and the celebrated American Church in Paris. 

This month, Robert Sims performs a Four Seasons Concert with soprano Alison Buchanan on April 5 at 7:30PM at the Regents Theatre at Holy Names University - Oakland, California.

Derrick Parker is the recipient of a Richard F. Gold Career Grant from the Shoshanna Foundation as well as a Sullivan Foundation Award. Among his other awards are prizes from the Fritz and Lavinia Jensen Foundation and Liederkrantz Foundation. He is a former member of the prestigious Houston Grand Opera Studio Program as well as Glimmerglass Opera's Young American Artist program, Wolf Trap Opera' Filene Young Artist Program, and the programs of the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and Chautauqua Opera. He holds a Master of Music from Eastman School of Music where he sang Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem, his first performances of Collatinus, and Voltaire and Pangloss in Candide and earned his Bachelor of Music from Florida State University.

Derrick Parker performs La bohème with the Cleveland Opera on Friday, April 18 at 8:00PM, Sunday, April 20 at 2:00PM and Saturday, April 26 at 8:00PM at the State Theatre, Playhouse Square.

A native of Charleston, South Carolina, Samuel Thompson first performed as soloist in 1989 with the Carolina Amadeus Players Chamber Orchestra, and made his national debut with the National Repertory Orchestra in 1998. He was a semifinalist in the 2000 New World Symphony Concerto Competition and has been presented in concert with the Marian Anderson String Quartet.

2005 was a year of significance for Samuel, as he became the subject of international media attention during Hurricane Katrina. Maintaining a sense of loyalty to the New Orleans arts community, Samuel was recognized by National Public Radio in 2006 as one of ten artists whose work shows "their spirit, their spunk, and their commitment to Crescent City". Information is available at CortlandtMusic.org/

Violinist Samuel Thompson will perform both Mozart's Concerto in D Major, KV 218 and Camille Saint-Saëns' Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso with the Cortlandt Chamber Orchestra on Saturday, April 5, 2008 at 7:30pm. This concert takes place at Holy Name of Mary Catholic Church, 110 Grand Street, Croton-on-Hudson, New York. The performance, Thompson's second appearance with the Cortlandt Chamber Orchestra, comes after his highly successful performance of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto during a 2007 concert to benefit the Greater New Orleans Youth Orchestra that became the subject of an article in the September 2007 International Musician.

William Zick
AfriClassical.blogspot.com

California native Nokuthula Ngwenyama was born of Zimbabwean-Japanese parentage. Ngwenyama, according to the Encyclopdia Britannica, is "the title of the male ruler or king of Swaziland, counterpart of the Ndlovukati. Ngwenyama means "lion" in Swati, but in an honorific sense distinguished from -bhubhesi, the usual way of referring to lions as animals. It is a close analogue to the Zulu title Ngonyama for the Zulu king, which has the same meaning in the same honorific sense, though no similar female counterpart."

Ms. Ngwenyama received her early training with Bonnie Bell, Sybil Maxwell and Manuel Compinsky in Los Angeles.  She studied with Alan deVeritch at the Colburn School, and later worked with Karen Tuttle and Felix Galimir at the Curtis Institute of Music.  She attended the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique de Paris as a Fulbright scholar in the Cycle de Perfectionnement with Bruno Pasquier, and in 2002 received a Master of Theological Studies degree from Harvard University. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Notre Dame University. 

Nokuthula will perform on April 12 at 7:30 pm at the Recital Hall of Robertson and Sons, Inc. Violin Shop, 3201 Carlisle Blvd. NE, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87110.

Randye Jones received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Music Education from Bennett College, Greensboro, North Carolina, where she was named to Who's Who Among Students in American Colleges and Universities. She completed her Master of Music degree in Vocal Performance from Florida State University, Tallahassee. Jones has gained international recognition for her research of African American vocalists and composers through her Web site, Afrocentric Voices in "Classical" Music.  She conducts research and regularly presents lectures and recitals on the Negro spiritual.  Her research project, The Art of the Negro Spiritual, has been profiled in publications such as Billboard. She has been a consultant for The Kennedy Center Honors and The Washington Chorus.  She currently works for the Grinnell College Libraries.

This month, she performs a follow-up recital to her November 2007 program of spirituals by 19th century composers. This recital of Negro spirituals will take place on Sunday, April 6 at 2:00PM in Grinnell, Iowa. The program includes all 20th century composers from Undine Smith Moore to Uzee Brown.

Verdi's masterpiece Aida will be performed by the Pittsburgh Opera featuring Morris Robinson and Mark Doss and by the San Diego Opera featuring Indra Thomas, Mark Rucker and Jose Gallisa. See respective web sites for performance schedule.

The following has been excerpted from the upcoming book 'The Black Singer and Opera' by Dominique-René de Lerma, Lawrence University (http://www.casamusicaledelerma.com).

There remains yet the Black image as seen in operas by non-Black composers, even though productions have often depended more on makeup than casting for representation (if, in fact, the racial matter is addressed at all).  Worthy would be a study of the sociological implications of these operas' librettos, a project stimulated in a paper read by Kevin Short at the 1984 symposium on Black musical theater held at the Peabody Conservatory of Music.

The interests of the earlier operas in historical plots would have included African subjects and evidence of influences.  This would explain the presence of the moresca as the finale of Monteverdi's Orfeo (1607).  Instances of Africa in the plots, often calling for Black casts would include those operas based on the Cleopatra story, exemplified by Il Cesare amante (Antonio Cesti, produced in Innsbruck, 1654), Cleopatra (Pasquale Anfossi, 1779 in Torino), Giulio Cesare (Handel, 1724, London), and Samuel Barber's Antony and Cleopatra (1966) with which Leontyne Price opened the new Metropolitan Opera House in New York.  Such casting should also be considered for those operas regarding the Carthaginian queen, Dido, such as Dido and Aeneas (Purcell, 1689, London), the settings of Didone abbandonata by Tomaso Albinoni (1725, Venice) and by Pasquali Anfossi (1775).

In the 19^th century there also many instances, such as Les troyens (Berlioz, 1858), La fille d'Egypte (Jules Beer, 1862, Théâtre Lyrique), and Une nuit de Cléopatre (Victor Massé, 1885).  Other composers offering operatic considerations of Cleopatra include Giuseppe Bensa, F. Bonamici, Castrovillari, Cimarosa, Danzi, Auguste Enna, Freudenberg, C. H. Graun, Mattheson, Mme. la baronne de Mestre, Melesio Morales, Nasolini, Paër, Lauro Rossi, V. Sacchi, and Weigl.

In the 20^th century , the bandleader in Jonny spielt auf is designated by composer Ernst Krenek to be Black but, when it was performed in Vienna, Alfred Jerger was of necessity in blackface.  Nazis in the audience responded negatively, not realizing the transformation was accomplished by makeup and the performance had to be stopped.

Many operas dealing with America history are almost destined to have Black characters.  One cannot help but be reminded of a conversation between two high school teachers in the faculty lounge.  This happened when Alec Haley's Roots had been first shown on television.  A White teacher complained that what television needed was as dramatic a series to be presented with a focus on White people.  Her friend, a Black teacher, said "Oh honey, your folks was in Roots!"

African settings and casts also appear in Les fêtes de l'Hymen et de l'Amour (Rameau, 1747), La caravane du Caire (Grétry, 1783, Fontainebleua), Scipione africanoVasco da Gama (Felice Alessandri, 1792, Berlin), Mouth of the Nile (Thomas Attwood, 1798, London),  La négresse (Gauthier, 1801, Théâtre des Jeunes Artistes), L'africano generoso (Fioravantiu, 1804), L'italiana in Algeri (Rossini, 1813), Bon nègre (Musard, 1858, Folies-Nouvelles), L'africaineAida (Verdi, 1871), L'africain (André Simiot, 1872, Tivoli), La bola negra (Rafael Aceves, 1872, Madrid), L'amour africain (Paladilhe, 1875), La belle tunisienne (Gaston Lemaire, 1875), Isis (Léon Honnoré, 1893, Conservatoire), Thaïs (Massenet, 1894, Paris), Les africainistes  (Fernandez Caballero, 1894, Madrid), and Die ägyptische Helena (Richard Strauß, 1927). (Agostino Accorimboni, 1789, Rome), (Meyerbeer, 1865, Paris).

While the exotic element is sometimes competitive with the naturalistic in some works cited above, it is the factor of exoticism which is predominant in other operas, more than a few growing out of Rousseau's admonition for a return to nature: Samples would include Les indes galantes (Rameau, 1735, Académie Royale de Musique), La négresse (François Lescot, from 1787), La belle esclave[1] (François-André Philidor, 1787, Paris), Lo schiavo fortunato (Anfossi, 1783, Rome), Le médecin turc (Nicolo, 1803), Die NegerLe nègre par amour (Villeblanche, 1809, Paris), The slaveLos esclavos felices (1820, by the 14-year-old Juan Arriaga), Il furioso all' isola di San Domingo (Donizetti, 1821, Rome), Les créoles (Lacour, 1826), Le nègre, ou Robert et Marie (A. F. Haeser, 1829, Weimar), Die Neger aus St. Domingo (August Haeser, 1836, Weimar), Le code noir (Clapisson, 1842), Le nègre de madame (Téodor Ritter, 1858, Paris), Le bon nègre (Alfred Musard), La créole (Offenbach, 1875, Bouffes-Parisiennes), La creola (Torelli-Viollier, 1878, Bologna), Le nègre d'Alcantara (Stichini, 1889, Lisbon), Le corsaire noi (Offenbach, 1890, London), Francesca da Rimini (Zandonai, 1914), Lulu (Berg, 1935), Amahl and the night visitors (Menotti, 1951), The visitation (Gunther Schuller, 1966, Hamburg), The knot garden (Sir Michael Tippett, 1969), and Harriett, a woman called Moses (Thea Musgrave, 1985). (Salieri, 1804, Vienna), (Henry Bishop, 1816, London).

Other composers whose operas call for Black cast members include Clément Brentin, Félicien David, Lindpainter, Anton Rubinstein, and Tuczek.  Margaret Garner (Richard Danielpour, 2005).[2]  York (Bruce Trinkley, 2002).  The passion of Jonathan Wade (Carlisle Floyd, 1962).

There are others where Black casting might appear for exotic reasons, but which ultimately addressed the humanitarian liberalism of the Age of Reason.  From that same sentiment which stimulated Beethoven to reject Europe's earlier anti-Islam attitude,[3] Mozart's librettists gave the non-Europeans benevolent roles in Die Entführung (1782) and Die Zauberflöte (1791), if not by the disguised heroes of Così fan tutte (1790).[4]

One looks at earlier Black librettists and writers for special treatments in vain.  However valuable the stimulus of Alexandre Dumas' La dame aux camélias was for Verdi's La traviata (1853), or Tschaikovsky's use of Eugene Onegin and Pique dame, both after Pushkin, the Black element is not present.  But from Verdi we do have Aida (1871), Un ballo in maschera (1859, with the role of Ulrica) and Otello (1887).  The latter drama was also adopted earlier by Rossini in Otello, ossia Il moro di Venezia (1816, Naples) and Boris Blacher's Der Mohr von Venedig (1955, Vienna), as well as the satire on Verdi's work, Le nègre d'Alcantra (Stichini, 1889, Lisbon).

Sociological justification for Black members of the cast explains the last moments of Der Rosenkavalier (by Richard Strauss, 1911) when the Marschallin's Mohammed runs on stage to retrieve her handkerchief, while Addie and Cal are servants in Regina (by Blitzstein, 1949).  Revisionist productions might exist with Mozart's Susanna and Figaro as Black servants,[5] just as Fidelio of Beethoven (which is, after all, concerned with political injustice) might be populated by a Black Florestan and prisoners.

[1]  On LP, Christiane Eda-Pierre has recorded "Quel espoir est pour moi" from this work (Philips 9500.609).

[2] Commenting prior to the première in 2005, David DiChiera, General Manager of the Michigan Opera Theatre, commented that Detroit was 80% African American, but that the city's opera audience in 1999 was 8% Black, that it had grown in six years to 12%, while the national average in 2002 was 4%.

[3]  See the percussion instrumentation for the "alla marcia" in the final movement of the ninth symphony.

[4]  Europe was not then concerned with ethnic exactitude when considering matters outside of its  immediate environment, and Moslem Albania was not mainstream Europe.

[5] Such was the case in the 1999 production of the Virginia Opera, with Indira Mahajan and Timothy Robert Blevins, but it is not assumed this was a social commentary.

Ninety years of Burleigh Tributes

Perhaps Marian Anderson's first musical contact with Harry T. Burleigh took place when she was barely seventeen.  The occasion was a concert designed by the People's Chorus on 26 March 1914 to demonstrate the musical talents of Philadelphia's African American concert artists.  Ms Anderson was a member of the chorus, yet her talent was evident enough to attract a journalist of the Philadelphia tribune.

Within three years, Burleigh had published his settings of Deep river and Go down, Moses.  That same year, 1917, Marian Anderson included two of his works in a Savannah program and thereafter included at least one of his works on every recital.  Her first recording session took place in Camden for the Victor Talking Machine Company on 10 December 1923 when she recorded Deep river and My way's cloudy, both arranged with orchestral accompaniment.  Neither recording was ever issued, nor in fact were the six Burleigh works that followed.  The first of her recordings to come out was of an orchestral version of Burleigh's Heav'n, heav'n which she recorded 20 May 1924 in Camden (now available on Eklipse EKR CD 26). All told, she retained 27 of Burleigh's works in her recital repertoire.

Burleigh's music nourished the programs of most Harlem Renaissance composers, including Roland Hayes and Paul Robeson, and his music is rarely absent from any program given since, certainly including undergraduate recitals by African American voice students.  In their original version (if one exists), the spirituals were for the untrained voice.  Supporting previous statements that the melodies, being used by composers, are not arrangements, look for example at the middle section of Burleigh's Deep river.  The range required is well more than an octave, going up to climax on a high F (in the D-flat version), while the first and final phrases dip down to a B-flat.  Some of this melody and all of the accompaniment is original with the composer.

We are certainly not experiencing a Burleigh revival.  He has never been forgotten.  But there is an intensity of attention given to his work.  Chicago's Center for Black Music Research included a whole issue of its Black music research journal to Burleigh (vol. 24, no. 2, Fall 2004).  Jean E. Snyder, who was editor for this issue, is writing a book on our composer.  She reports on a conference, held in 2003 on her home campus of Edinboro University.  The papers from this gathering provide the basis for this BMRJ issue.

In 1995 was issued an all-Burleigh CD, with soprano Regina McConnell  joined by Michael Cordovana (Centaur CRC 2251).  And now comes Karen Parks with Nobody knows; songs of Harry T. Burleigh (available from Thirty Tigers [ This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ]).  Very discrete support is provided by Wayne Sanders and in a few instances by a string quartet (The Alias Chamber Ensemble).  This young soprano has a substantial career, both in the recording studio and on the operatic stage, in the U.S. (especially with Opera Ebony) and abroad (notably in Finland).  She has appeared in both Carmen and Carmen Jones, and sung the role of Harriett Tubman in Dorothy Rudd Moore's Frederick Douglass and Leo Edwards' Hariett.  Her other repertoire include Verdi, Dvořák, and Mahler.  Web site: www.karenparks.com.

I've been in de storm so long.
Little David, play on your harp.
Lovely dark and lonely one.
My Lord, what a mornin'.
Nobody knows de trouble I've seen.
Oh, didn't it rain?
Oh! Rock me, Julie.
Sleep, li'l chile, go sleep!
Southern lullaby.
Stan' still Jordan.
Swing low, sweet chariot.
The dove and the lily.
The prayer.
Weepin' Mary.

Dominique-René de Lerma
Lawrence University
http://www.casamusicaledelerma.com

Vigor and enthusiasm! These are the words that sum up a concert that includes the "folk-inflected" Clarinet Quintet of Afro-British Composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who was unquestionably a hero to American audiences. Coleridge-Taylor made several visits to America to encourage African-American musicians and was the invited guest of President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House after a performance in 1904. This not-to-be-missed program opens with the original version of Lyric for Strings, by 1996 Pulitzer Prize winning African-American composer George Walker.
 
Program: WALKER Lyric for Strings, COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Quintet for Clarinet, ARENSKY Quartet No. 2 for Violin, Viola and Two Cellos in A minor, Op. 35, BRAHMS Sextet No. 1.

Bass-baritone Eric Owens will perform in Vincenzo Bellini's Norma with Opera Company of Philadelphia (Opera Philly) on Friday, April 4 at 8:00PM, Sunday, April 6 at 2:30PM, Wednesday, April 9 at 7:30PM, Sunday, April 13 at 2:30PM, Wednesday, April 16 at 7:30PM and Friday, April 18 at 8:00PM.

The music of Chicago Music Association Composer-In-Residence and pianist Howard Savage will be performed by soprano Ragina Bunton, pianist Peggy Smith-Skarry and violinist Elaine Skorodin with selected poetry readings by Wendell Weaver and Harriett Tubman on April 13 at 3:00PM by the New Festival Ensemble. Concert and Reception, 888 Oak Drive, Glencoe, Illinois 6002-1458. Tickets are $25/person, $15 for seniors and students. RSVP to Ragina Bunton at 773-752-5242.

A reception featuring cocktails and a silent auction will take place at the Fairmont Chicago prior to a gourmet, four-course dinner created by Executive Chef Brad Parsons.  Dinner will be followed by a presentation to the 2008 Honoree, Chicago's Joyce Foundation and a performance by the Chicago Sinfonietta orchestra.  The evening will conclude with waltzes and dancing accompanied by the orchestra.

Title:  The Chicago Sinfonietta's Annual Ball, "Sounds of Music"

Date, location and time: Saturday, April 12, 2008 at the Fairmont Chicago, 200 North Columbus Drive, Chicago.  Cocktails and silent auction to begin at 6:30 p.m.; dinner to be served at 7:30 p.m.

Tickets: Reservations range in price from $400 (person) to $25,000 (table). Tables seat ten people, with the option of expanding to 12 people if guests sponsor musicians at their table.  Musician sponsorships are $50/musician. Tickets are available by calling 312.284.1559 or by visiting www.chicagosinfonietta.org.