Dear Friends,
This winter featured the works of African American artists interwoven with European classics. Here are a few of the daring pairings.
She wore Bantu knots; a white ruff (the accordion-like Elizabethan collar) on a billowy, black blouse; white, knee-length pants with an eyelet trim; black tights; and five-toed sneakers with stark white soles. Eccentric? Yes, even a bit comical, while still evoking the Baroque period she explored through the evening’s musical program.
Instruments as varied as synthesizers and electronics, flute, harpsichord, lutes and percussion played the resurrected songs of folkloric Europe and wedded them with jazz, madrigal and a soupçon of opera that was at times rooted by the undeniable gut rhythms of African percussion.
This feast was served through a sieve of French, English, Occitan and Haitian Kreyòl and carried by a voice equal parts crystalline, subterranean, lyrical and impassioned.
Salvant took 17th-century words and illuminated their romance, power dynamics, humor and narrative throughlines with tremendous artistry and profound respect. All against a backdrop of slides of her original drawings. She is a captivating, multi-disciplined and multi-cultural storyteller of the highest order.
A more straightforward mashup was the Bach-and-rhymes duet of poet Amanda Gorman and cellist Jan Vogler.
She stood regally onstage, her gowned figure crowned by braids swept up in an orbed top knot. He, dressed in a jazzy, black and gray color-block suit, sat cradling his cello beside her.
Head to head, the sweeping cello suites of one of the world’s premier composers (they’re called classics for a reason), sublimely performed by a master of his instrument, at times nearly subsumed the words of the nation’s first Youth Poet Laureate.
Gorman performed several of her well-known poems, including The Hill We Climb, originally read at President Biden’s inauguration. Her delivery was deliberately paced, melodically enunciated and accompanied with graceful hand articulations for which she is known.
Her lines rhyme in interesting and expected places, which still spark our attention and lance us with meaning and unapologetic hope. It’s creatively styled, though at times veering on simplistic. But her gifts hold the promise of depth that will only ripen in time as she matures in her craft and life experience.
I only ask that you care before it’s too late,
That you live aware and awake,
That you lead with love in hours of hate.
I challenge you to heed this call,
I dare you to shape our fate.
Above all, I dare you to do good S
o that the world might be great.
— Amanda Gorman
They called it Igor DAMN Stravinsky, this daring melding of Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer Prize–winning album DAMN and the music of Russian classical composer Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Petrouchka, performed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
It was violins and cellos, bass and drums; rapper and vocalist, dreads and tuxes.
Petrouchka tells the story of the loves and jealousies of three puppets brought to life by the Charlatan during the 1830 Shrovetide Fair in Saint Petersburg. Petrouchka loves the Ballerina, but she rejects him. She prefers the Moor.
The puppets’ increasing human emotions are imaginatively matched with corresponding songs from Lamar’s album, including LOVE, FEAR, FEEL, HUMILITY.
The young, multihyphenate and bun-coiffed conductor Steve Hackman’s intention is to redefine art music for the 21st century. Labeled a BSO Fusion of two powerful and poignant masterpieces, the program was hip, chilled and paid righteous justice to both.
I said I’m geeked and I’m fired up (fired, fire)
All I want tonight is just get higher (yeah)
(All I want is, all I want is)
Loyalty, loyalty, loyalty
Loyalty, loyalty, loyalty
— Kendrick Lamar
Be sure to support an arts institution near you so these and other creative collabs may continue to light us up and move the culture forward.
March On!
Isisara Bey
Artistic Director
The March On Washington Film Festival
