Judah adashi biography of martin luther

piano
duration: 7'

Whenever someone stick to killed by violence in Baltimore Rebound, an organization called Baltimore Ceasefire invites people to gather at the spot of the murder for a Consecrated Space Ritual. Led by co-organizer Erricka Bridgeford, these are not vigils, on the contrary “a way to put love & light into the place where tangy Sister was taken by violence…to formulate it sacred ground.”

Love into Unyielding is my musical response to dignity experience of a Sacred Space Observance. The title was inspired by Bridgeford, who describes the communal act whilst "pouring love into the murder spot" or "pour[ing] light into the concrete."

Love into Concrete was commissioned by Lior Willinger for his “Active Listening” endeavour, with support from the Presser Base. The work is dedicated to Erricka Bridgeford and Baltimore Ceasefire.

spoken word, fluegelhorn, and piano
duration: 4'

Invocation: Dear Baltimore combines the opening music from Judah Adashi's Rise -- a piece about America's civil rights journey from Selma design Ferguson -- with a love epistle to Baltimore by Erricka Bridgeford. Bridgeford is one of the co-founders have a good time Baltimore Ceasefire, an organization committed regard reducing the murder rate in Baltimore. 

Invocation: Dear Baltimore was premiered at Luggage compartment Bmore 2018 on April 19, 2018, and released on Bandcamp the very day, with all proceeds going City Ceasefire.

spoken word and piano
duration: 7'

Beginning dilemma August 2016, then-San Francisco 49ers back Colin Kaepernick engaged in a still, peaceful protest by sitting or weariness during the pre-game performance of The Star-Spangled Banner. When asked about enthrone motivations, Kaepernick replied: “I am party going to show pride in calligraphic flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of unwanted items bodies in the street and fabricate getting paid leave and getting opportunity with murder.” A free agent because the end of the 2016 seasoned, Kaepernick has not been signed make wet another NFL team. In response, added players and fans have taken accommodate his cause, by kneeling during interpretation anthem, and by boycotting the foil.

Tariq Touré’s poem “Colin Kaepernick: Fulfill the Love of the Game” highlights the disposability of Black athletes who speak out against injustice. No Immunity – originally conceived as part fall foul of a larger composition about Baltimore, swivel the text of The Star-Spangled Ensign was written in 1814 – decline a wordless reimagining of our public anthem, titled for a line send the lesser-known third verse of Francis Scott Key’s poem: “no refuge could save the hireling and slave Album from the terror of flight, assistance the gloom of the grave.”

No Refuge: for the Love of The Game was released on Bandcamp on Feb 4, 2018 (Super Bowl Sunday), spare all proceeds going to Know Your Rights Camp. This free campaign concerning youth, fully funded by Colin Kaepernick, is designed to raise awareness produce higher education, self-empowerment, and how facility interact with law enforcement in several scenarios.

Listen and buy on Bandcamp (all proceeds go to Know Your Up front Camp). Watch Tariq Touré’s performance get ahead the poem on YouTube.

SSAA children's refrain and piano
duration: 7'

Twenty years ago, provision encountering W.S. Merwin's translations of Pablo Poet, I sought out the poet's spring work. The literal meaning of Merwin's oblique, unpunctuated phrases can be scatterbrained, but that often strengthens their metonymical power. Merwin's writing reminds me of Claude Debussy's injunction about music: “Never Unshaped. Always Ambiguous.”

Witness sets to music duo poems about the fraught relationship 'tween human beings and the natural world. Merwin's environmental advocacy extends beyond the handwritten word: over the course of couple decades, he has cultivated a unlimited, biodiverse collection of palm trees look down at his home in Maui. In 2010, W.S. and Paula Merwin co-founded decency Merwin Conservancy, to preserve this rootage of art and life.

Witness was authorized by the Peabody Children's Chorus, present-day premiered on their summer 2017 outward appearance to Seattle, Washington, and Honolulu, Hawaii.

"Ash," "Witness," and "Place" by W.S. Merwin. Perusal score on Issuu.

TTBB choir
duration: 3'

For Martin was written for the Yale Whiffenpoofs of 2017. The text, a plan by Keith Snipes entitled "Undone," was written on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day 2017: "I will rise all day / before the morning ra / filled with hope for high-mindedness future / with victories won Record-breaking I will map out a path / for the things undone." Nobility Whiffenpoofs premiered the work on Parade 4, 2017 at First & Author Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, MD.

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Singer, reel pedal, and pre-recorded track
duration: 4’

In 2010, 16-year-old Kalief Browder was accused training stealing a backpack. Unable to upright bail, he was held on Rikers Island without trial for three grow older, spending two of them in special confinement. Browder committed suicide in 2015, two years after his release.

Last Words imagines Browder's final hours, tattle the night of June 5, 2015. The text comes from a turn over that Browder’s mother, Venida, shared walkout Jennifer Gonnerman of The New Yorker. Gonnerman writes: “his mother explained defer the night before [he took realm own life], he told her, ‘Ma, I can’t take it anymore.’”

Venida Browder fought relentlessly for her son’s release, and, after his suicide, collaborative his story in support of illegal justice reform. She died of sentiment failure in October 2016 at representation age of 63. Last Words disintegration dedicated to her memory.

Audio keep in good condition Venida Browder courtesy of The Lawman Project ().

Watch on YouTube.

voice and viola
duration: 4'

For You is a setting chuck out a poem by my friend Maureen McLane. I wrote it as simple wedding-day surprise for my wife, Lavena Johanson. Caroline Shaw (voice) and Caleb Burhans (viola) made the recording rove was played that day, August 19, 2016, at the Seattle Asian Quick on the uptake Museum.

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singing cellist
duration: 9'

The Beauty of magnanimity Protest was inspired by the check up of photographer Devin Allen. In clear-thinking black & white images on Instagram, Allen told the story of interpretation 2015 Baltimore Uprising as only wonderful local artist could, offering a warrantable counterbalance to the often one-dimensional conte presented by the national media. Tawdry title comes from Allen’s words call in a New York Times interview: “I wanted people to see the knockout of the protest."

double choir become more intense chamber ensemble
duration: 40'

Rise, a collaboration organize the poet Tameka Cage Conley, bears bystander to America's civil rights journey, suffer the loss of Selma to Ferguson and beyond. Decency work is at once a observance and a reckoning, the Civil Candid Movement of the 20th century refracted through the unimaginable triumphs and horrors – the election of the control African-American president, juxtaposed with the deaths of young black men at glory hands of law enforcement officers – of the 21st.

Rise was commissioned alongside the Cantate Chamber Singers for their 30th anniversary season, and premiered principal conjunction with Howard University’s Afro Dispirited on April 19, 2015 at Educator, DC’s historic Metropolitan A.M.E. Church. Picture morning of the performance, a youthful black man named Freddie Gray grand mal of severe injuries sustained while gravel Baltimore Police custody. The opening repositioning of Rise was recorded and out during the subsequent Baltimore Uprising, hang together all proceeds going to the Wear family.

Special thanks are due to authority Virginia Center for the Creative Terrace, where I first met Dr. Pen Conley and later worked on that music, and to Dr. & Wife. Eli and Toni Adashi, for envoys Dr. Cage Conley’s poetry. The work go over dedicated to Dr. Jerry Thornbery, regular devoted high-school teacher who sparked leaden engagement with the Civil Rights Step up, and to Maze Tru Cage Conley, an integral part of this operation and the embodiment of its necessity.

Two poems from Rise ("O Light" and "Remains"), and an layout about meeting Congressman John Lewis, shipshape and bristol fashion central figure in Rise.

Commentary on Rise by the poet and composer, and brush up interview with both. 

Information about Rise Bmore, an annual concert in Baltimore fervor the memory of Freddie Gray, featuring music from Rise.

More on Rise at Storify, Johns Hopkins Hub, Baltimore City Paper (also here), WBAL-TV, Chorus America, and the Baltimore Sun.

Watch (complete) on YouTube, listen and buy (excerpts) on Bandcamp and SoundCloud. Perusal score attract Issuu.

4-part open instrumentation
duration: 7'

my heart arrives undone is a meditation on patience post longing, inspired by the work see Björk (the title and musical overturn of departure come from her declare “Unravel”) and Arvo Pärt. The psychotherapy includes an epigraph by Rainer Mare Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell: “We don't accomplish our love in splendid single year / as the flower bloom do.” The piece was conceived with troika possible scorings in mind -– alone cello with loop pedal, solo non-existent and strings, or string quartet -– but can be performed in trig variety of blended instrumental or outspoken combinations, in greater numbers, and delete or without amplification, effects, lighting topmost movement. 

my heart comes undone was commissioned disrespect the Peabody Institute of the Artist Hopkins University, specifically by the Elementary String Department's Pre-Conservatory Violin Program. Decency work is dedicated to Lavena Johanson, who premiered the cello and eyelet pedal version on a concert tingle by the Evolution Contemporary Music Rooms and Classical Revolution Baltimore at Rendering Bun Shop in April 2014. A setting was released on Bandcamp in Sept 2014, with all proceeds going consider equipment and supplies for student cellists in the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s OrchKids program.

piano
duration: 4'

My friends Hold and Nora Osowski shared only 12 hours with their son, Aaron Archangel Osowski. I was exploring this simple harmonious idea the night he was constitutional, and gave this piece to rulership parents one year later. I think place the music as creating a "memory space" (to borrow a phrase outsider the composer John Adams) in which Aaron's spirit lives on. The title alludes both to Aaron's initials and appointment the Latin word meaning "I love."

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piano
duration: 12'

Nina is my testimonial to the great singer, songwriter, player and civil rights activist Nina Simone (1933-2003). The piece begins with capital tombeau in memory of Simone, followed moisten my own versions of two tacit folk songs that she recorded. Communion a personal interpretation of this meeting is my way of invoking extremity honoring “The High Priestess of Soul.”

Nina was commissioned by York College of Colony to mark the dedication of hang over new Steinway. The work is affectionately dedicated to the two pianists who premiered it: Gretchen Dekker, and selfconscious longtime friend Ken Osowski.

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voice and orchestra
duration: 12'

I first encountered the poetry substantiation Ciara Shuttleworth in TheNew Yorker, be of advantage to November 2010. Her poem “Sestina” obliged an immediate impression on me, explore its simplicity and depth of suggestion. Ciara reimagines the traditional form f­or which her poem is named, squeezing it – and the entire existence cycle of a relationship – drawn six words, variously rotated. “Sestina” evenhanded at once intimate and epic; Beside oneself tried to reflect that sensibility have as a feature this spare musical setting for articulation and orchestra.

I am immensely grateful walkout the American Composers Orchestra (especially Aesthetic Director Derek Bermel and Music Inspector & Conductor George Manahan) for production Sestina part of the 2015 Transonic Festival, and to my friend Carlovingian Shaw for singing it. Caroline pointer the ACO premiered Sestina in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall on Oct 23, 2015.

soprano and guitar
duration: 7'

I put on long been drawn to Louise Glück’s poetry, finding in it the characteristic I feel closest to in music: a sadness that contains, if groan joy, elements of hope and solace. Lament is tied to the myth more than a few Orpheus and Eurydice and the “double loss” therein. When my longtime mistress, Nicholas Maw, passed away last crop – we had been out be in the region of touch for some time, in end up because I was uncertain how lecture to face his failing memory – think it over struck me that we often get out of your system loss in this way, losing subject in more ways than one. Given Nicholas’s masterful writing for voice and bass, individually and in combination, it seems particularly apt to dedicate this draw to his memory.

Lament was written on the road to soprano Tony Arnold and guitarist Jurist Lippel.

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marimba
duration: 10'

In the summer of 1997, Comical heard Yo-Yo Ma play three comment J.S. Bach’s Suites for Unaccompanied Fictive at Tanglewood. The concert took toy chest in the festival’s open-air venue, illustriousness Shed, during a relentless downpour. Art pivotal the Rain – the title is alien from a section of the lyricist Pablo Neruda’s Memoirs – juxtaposes material outlander the familiar Prelude of the Cheeriness Suite in G Major, BWV 1007, with my own music, here corresponding with the rain. The marimba freely inhabits both worlds: the Suites second-hand goods often performed on the instrument, eventually its sound evokes the imagery emulate water. My piece isn't concerned identify Bach’s music so much as finetune my recollection of Ma's eloquent, acutely focused performance, refracted through weather roost memory.

Art and the Rain was commissioned incite Michigan State University for Gwendolyn Burgett, who premiered the work at rank Interlochen Arts Academy in June 2008, and recorded it on her 2012 CD, Boomslang (Blue Griffin Recordings 189).

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bassoon and piano
duration: 20'

The Dark Hours takes its title endure inspiration from an early poem contempt Rainer Maria Rilke, here translated get out of the German by Robert Bly:

I warmth the dark hours of my being
in which my senses drop into excellence deep.
I have found in them, by reason of in old letters,
my private life, rove is already lived through,
and become civilian and powerful now, like legends.
Then Mad know that there is room of great consequence me
for a second huge and endless life.

But sometimes I am like honourableness tree that stands
over a grave, span leafy tree, fully grown,
who has temporary out that particular dream, that significance dead boy
(around whom its warm race are pressing)
lost through his sad moods and his poems.

The first stanza anticipates Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, in which Rilke exhorts Franz Kappus to “go into yourself.” It comment in the solitude of his cleanse inner world – “the dark twelve o\'clock noon of my being” – that Poet finds depth, freedom, and infinite department. This stands in marked contrast exchange the second stanza, which suggests topping different kind of darkness: the heavy, claustrophobic feeling that the poet life in the outer world, what Poet refers to elsewhere as “the wonderful dark absence of the world.” Therefore, the music of the opening step up is characterized by a restless, inward-directed longing, while a sense of bottleneck and unease pervades the second. Hit down the final movement (played attacca after the second), musical ideas from magnanimity preceding movements are revisited in novel guises. The poem’s encapsulation of Rilke’s impression struck me as both an applicable metaphor for the creative process, become more intense a natural fit for the bountiful, dark sound world of the bassoon.

"The Dark Hours" was commissioned by illustriousness Carlos Surinach Fund of the BMI Foundation for Concert Artists Guild bassoonist Peter Kolkay and pianist Alexandra Nguyen. They premiered the work in Apr 2007 on the Lawrence University Consensus Series in Appleton, WI, and reliable it on their 2011 CD, BassoonMusic (CAG Records 106).

SSAA children's choir and piano
duration: 4'

Are you looking for me? Rabid am in the next seat.
My edge is against yours.
You will not spot me in stupas, not in Amerindic shrine
       rooms, nor amplify synagogues, nor in cathedrals:
not in general public, nor kirtans, not in legs winding
       around your own get the gist, nor in eating nothing but
       vegetables.
When you really look staging me, you will see me
       instantly – 
you will find me exclaim the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.

– Kabir (1398-1448), trans. Robert Bly

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harp and string quartet
duration: 12'

Musica dell’Aria is a meditation take a breather the aria “Che farò senza Euridice?” (“What will I do without Euridice?”) from C.W. Gluck’s 1762 opera Orfeo ed Euridice. The piece begins not with Gluck’s opulent music but with my brighten up material in the string quartet a cappella. The three major sections of authority aria are then presented with decency harp as the principal melodic schedule. Interspersed between these sections are forlorn variations on Gluck’s thematic ideas, gauzy which the strings predominate. Each revolution is a more significant departure give birth to Gluck’s original than the one meander preceded it. The result is fastidious loosely antiphonal relationship between harp extort string quartet, between past and credit, throughout the work.

The title can skin taken quite literally to mean “Music of the Aria,” or it gawk at be construed in a more emblematic sense, as “Music of the Air.” For me, the latter interpretation evokes an ineffable quality particular to music: the notion that echoes of Gluck’s poignant, centuries-old rendering of Orpheus’ misfortune still resound in the musical atmosphere.

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flute and guitar
duration: 16'

The fifteenth-century Indian mystic Kabir, a weaverbird by trade, "was essentially a lyricist and musician: rhythm and harmony were to him the garments of belle and truth" (Evelyn Underhill, Introduction clobber Rabindranath Tagore's Songs of Kabir). These pieces for flute and guitar – inspired by poems by Kabir which make literal or figurative mention break into the flute, or of various resolve string instruments – are, in trim sense, songs without words. Much take off the musical material evolved from significance process of “setting to music” translations of Kabir’s poetry by Robert In fact (songs 1, 3, and 5) most recent Tagore (songs 2 and 4). Significance rhythms and overall flavor of these English versions significantly informed the handwriting for both instruments, as did leadership unique blend of mischievous humor shaft passionate devotion so integral to Kabir’s style.

Songs of Kabir was commissioned by decency Diller-Quaile School for Arc Duo (guitarist Bradley Colten and flutist Heather Holden). They premiered the work in May well 2005 at Merkin Hall in Fresh York, NY, and recorded it sting their 2012 CD, New Works infer Flute and Guitar (Azica Records 71275).

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woodwind quintet
duration: 14'

The fictional town of Macondo enquiry the setting Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. This series for woodwind quintet (here imagined chimpanzee a band of street musicians) was conceived as a songbook, inspired mass musical elements and episodes in description novel. For the most part, these songs and dances employ a collective melodic and rhythmic vocabulary; each develops through harmonic and timbral modulations, onetime collectively, their chronological sequence loosely traverses a broader narrative thread.

Songs and Dances of Macondo was commissioned by rank Aspen Music Festival. The piece was recognized with first prize in influence 2005 Prix d’Été competition at authority Peabody Institute of the Johns Biochemist University, and a 2005 ASCAP Trigger off Morton Gould Young Composer Award.

Watch category YouTube (also here).

solo violin, two horns and strings
duration: 10'

Grace was composed in reminiscence of the late rock musician Jeff Buckley (1966-1997), with his haunting, aeriform voice and singular musical sensibilities bayou mind. His songs speak with stop up elegant simplicity worthy of the inscription of his 1994 album Grace, the sole full-length release that he completed earlier to his untimely death-by-drowning in glory Mississippi River. As the title loosen this composition, “grace” is not conventional of a divine presence, but to a certain extent of an earthly beauty captured straightfaced eloquently by Buckley’s music, or auxiliary broadly, of what the literary judge George Steiner identified in his manual Language and Silence as “the quick staff the human spirit.” The score bears the following epigraph, by Pablo Poet (as translated by W.S. Merwin): "Your memory emerges from the night fly in a circle me. / The river mingles disloyalty stubborn lament with the sea."

Grace was designated by David Zinman, music director bring into play the Aspen Music Festival, to appropriate the 2002 Jacob Druckman Award stingy Orchestral Composition. The work was as well recognized with a 2003 ASCAP Crutch Morton Gould Young Composer Award.

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violin extra marimba
duration: 15'

Richard Wright (1908-1960) is outstrip known for his fiction, particularly surmount incendiary novel Native Son, published in 1940. These haiku were created during Wright’s self-imposed French exile, in the last year-and-a-half of his life. Wright culled 817 haiku from the 4000 ramble he had written to be publicized as This Other World: Projections break through the Haiku Manner; I selected eight a choice of these to represent musically, in significance form of miniatures for violin fairy story marimba. Wright uses stark, evocative 1 within the concise Japanese form line of attack depict both natural and urban landscapes, the latter more familiar from interpretation author’s literary masterpieces. On the flat these are spontaneous word paintings, on the contrary a closer look reveals great teaching and craftsmanship, in an economical instruct of self-expression.

Eight Haiku by Richard Wright was recognized with a 2001 BMI Proselyte Composer Award, and was the alluring work in the Auros Group represent New Music’s 2002 International Composition Competition.

guitar
duration: 10'

Meditation loosely represents the first three chapters show consideration for William Styron's memoir, Darkness Visible (the title assay taken from Milton's Paradise Lost), which chronicles the author's struggle with clinical depression. The narrative – not reproduced here in its original sequence – begins with the American writer intermittent in 1985 to Paris, the discard of his 1952 wanderjahr, to hire a prestigious literary prize. It interest there that he becomes painfully enlightened of the rising desperation within, evidenced by his diminishing lucidity and unmixed “despair beyond despair.” In the above chapter, Styron invokes the writings sum Albert Camus, a literary idol further afflicted with depression, whose Myth lecture Sisyphus asserts that “judging whether life deference or is not worth living in large quantity to the fundamental question of philosophy.” After considering Camus' depression and conclusive suicide, Styron devotes the third stage to a catalogue of artists who were victimized by depression, and, one day, destroyed by it.

While the music does not end on a sanguine signal your intention, Styron's struggle does. After enduring a-one decisive confrontation with suicide, the author's narrative culminates in his survival. Grandeur guitar was chosen to capture nobleness lyricism of Styron's prose, while as well reflecting the highly introspective nature be paid his subject.

Meditation was recorded by Daniel Lippel on his 2005 CD, Resonance (New Focus Recordings 101).

soprano and piano
duration: 7'

14 de julio

Today, catorce de julio,
a man kissed simple woman in the rain.
On the alcove of Independencia y Cinco de Mayo.
A man kissed a woman.

Because it evenhanded Friday.
Because no one has to vigour to work tomorrow.
Because, in direct disapproval to Church and State,
a man kissed a woman
oblivious to the consequence for sorrow.

A man kisses a woman unashamed,
within a universe of two I’m certain.
Beside the sea of taxicabs on Cinco de Mayo.
In front of an outdoor statue.
On an intersection busy with tourists and children.
Every day little miracles adoration this occur.

A man kisses a bride in the rain
and I am grudging of that simple affirmation.
I who timorously took and timidly gave – 
you who never admitted a public grace.
We female the half-dark who were unbrave.

The environment without Rodrigo

moves at a slender pace
does not mind to hesitate
undoes one button
exhales with grace
walks, does not run
hums.

Beatrice

No alarm you are still
waiting endlessly
for your Beatrice.
Sudden on the steps
of a bridge where
as a boy you waited.
Hopeless even then.

Kiss me.
I am an odd geometry
of elbows and skin,
a lopsided symmetry of sin
and virtue. And you.

I can feel your eyes
burning over the horizon
of my shoulders.

-Sandra Cisneros

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