“Jubilee! A Celebration of African-American Composers”, a concert at the Eastman School of Music in honor of Black History Month, will be held at 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 27, in the school’s Hatch Recital Hall.
The program will feature the works of such composers as Eastman graduate and Pulitzer Prize winner George Walker (’56 DMA); Margaret Bonds, who frequently collaborated with poet Langston Hughes; jazz bandleader Duke Ellington; William Grant Still, “The Dean of African American Composers” whose work was championed by Eastman’s longtime director Howard Hanson; Moses Hogan, an arranger of choral music known for his arrangement of spirituals; and others.
Performers, who are all Eastman students, include tenor Stephan Hernandez, sopranos Joel Dyson and Whitney Morrison, members of the Eastman Chorale, double bassist Tyrone Allen, flutist Jacqueline Cordova-Arrington, violinist Anyango Yarbo-Davenport, saxophonist Keenan McKoy, and Christian Crawford, trumpet. Accompanying pianists are Leonard Hayes and Beryl Garver.
“The hope is that this concert will raise awareness of African-American composers and unite the Eastman and Rochester communities in a celebration of their work and their lives,” said Arrington, who along with Hernandez and Morrison has organized the event.
Sponsored by Eastman’s Diversity Committee and Musicology Department, the concert is free and open to the public.
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