Tonight’s Guests
Welcome to tonight’s concert. We are honored to present a range of interesting music and talented musicians for your enjoyment.
The Carroll Symphony Orchestra (Terry Lowry, Artistic Director) presents two beloved pieces by Aaron Copland and accompanies GCA for Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast and Mr. Lowry’s arrangement of “Lift Every Voice and Sing”.
Organized in 2002 with a grant from the State of Georgia, the Carroll County Board of Commissioners appointed Terry Lowry to form a Board of Directors, recruit musicians, and establish performance schedules. In addition to community concerts, CSO has created music education programs in the Carroll County schools, sponsored a Young Composer Competition and promoted the creation and performance of new music.
Born in Albany, Georgia in 1974, Terry Lowry comes from a musical family and earned a degree in piano performance from Shorter College and a Master’s degree from the University of Alabama. He was a Steinway Artist as an undergraduate, touring in North America and Europe.
He has composed across a range of music forms: symphonies, concertos, choral and solo works. In 2019, he was selected as the Commissioned Composer of the Year by the Georgia Music Teachers Associations.
Timothy Miller is a nationally and internationally recognized tenor. He is a native of Augusta, Georgia, and is an assistant professor of voice and music at Morehouse College. Aside from a wide range of operatic roles ranging from roles in Mozart, Puccini, and Verdi, Miller has also garnered wide acclaim as Crab Man in “Porgy and Bess” in Paris and on tour. His concert repertoire includes Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s Magnificat and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. He is also well-known for singing a rousing rendition of “God Bless America” during the seventh inning stretch at Atlanta Braves’ home games.
Dr. Monika Ponton-Arrington is an advocate for Indigenous Peoples and the director of Georgia Indigenous Diversity Consulting, LLC. She is also a volunteer and vice president for Friends of New Echota Historical State Site. For the last five years, Ms. Ponton-Arrington has attended the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. She identifies as Taino and her husband, Fulton Arrington, identifies as Cherokee; she works defending the rights of indigenous people throughout the United States and around the world. She especially works regarding the rights and conditions of Indigenous women and children. Her presentation this evening promotes a program on Indigenous people at the Griffin-Spalding Historical Society on March 24, 2024.
Program Notes
“Fanfare for the Common Man” and “Hoedown” from Rodeo by Aaron Copland (1900 – 1990)
Aaron Copland was an American composer, teacher, pianist and conductor. He produced chamber music, operas, film scores and ballets in an open and accessible style he called “vernacular”. Many of his more than 100 compositions remain part of the standard American repertoire and they have “…the most distinctive and identifiable voice produced in this country so far…” (Howard Pollack).
Copland’s Fanfare was written is 1942 as a tribute honoring those engaged in World War II at the request of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. This composition was one of ten used at the opening of each concert during WWII and is the only one of those compositions still regularly performed. Copland later used Fanfare as the main theme of the fourth movement of his Third Symphony.
Hoedown is one of five sections Copland wrote for his ballet “Rodeo” which was written in 1942 and choreographed by Agnes de Mille. Hoedown is based on an American folk song: “Bonaparte’s Retreat”.
Fanfare for Someday arrangement by Terry Lowry (b. 1974) from the hymn “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” lyrics by James Weldon Johnson(1871 – 1938), music by J. Rosamond Johnson (1873 – 1954)
Johnson premiered his poem in 1900 regarding the struggles of the African American community during and following Reconstruction into the Jim Crow era. His brother later set the words to music.
The NAACP promoted the hymn as the “Negro National Anthem” in 1919 (the name has been modernized to the “Black National Anthem” in the present day). The hymn, initially taught by the Johnsons to schoolchildren in Jacksonville, FL, spread across the South and other places in the US as those students became teachers and taught it to their students. With its evocative power voicing a cry for liberation and freedom for African American people. Criticism of “Lift Ev’ry Voice” as representing a desire for separatism or diminishing the “Star-Spangled Banner” does not consider that the hymn’s lyrics do not mention any specific race. It has been performed across a wide range of communities as an anthem of hope and inclusion; Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) sponsored HB301 in January 2021 for “Lift Ev’ry Voice” to be designated as the “national hymn” of the country.
Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875 – 1912) lyrics based on The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 – 1882)
During his lifetime, Henry Longfellow was the most popular poet in America and his poem “The Song of Hiawatha” was his most famous work. Antonin Dvorak based two movements of his “New World Symphony” on episodes from “Hiawatha”. An Anglo-African composer, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (not to be confused with the Romantic poet, Samual Taylor Coleridge) greatly admired Longfellow’s poem. He was the son of an Englishwoman and a doctor from Sierra Leone born in 1875. Coleridge-Taylor suffered from racial discrimination during his lifetime both in America and from English critics.
His ethnic background caused him to be sensitive to the plight of Indigenous people identifying to such an extent that Coleridge-Taylor named his only son Hiawatha.
This cantata for tenor, mixed chorus and orchestra dramatizes the wedding scenes from the epic poem. It premiered on November 11, 1898, in London. Coleridge-Taylor was so shy and reticent that he listened to the performance from behind a screen and hid in doorways after the standing ovation to avoid excited audience members.
The cantata was described as “…luscious, rich and full of color”. Though a choral work, the construction of the cantata is symphonic and revolves around a few musical ideas in complex transformations. Its originality caused the cantata to be performed as far away as New Zealand and its success motivated Coleridge-Taylor to compose two additional cantatas from Longfellow’s poem.
Until his death, Coleridge-Taylor’s “Hiawatha” was performed more often than any other work of a contemporary composer. Only Handel’s “Messiah” rivaled its popularity. One GCA member tells us that her mother learned “Hiawatha” in school decades ago attesting to its widespread popularity. Despite that popularity, modern copyright laws did not exist and Coleridge-Taylor received no royalties for this or anything else he wrote. He spent the last decade of his life constantly traveling to conduct performances of “Hiawatha”, and teaching students; he wrote magazines articles and gave interviews; he died of pneumonia at the age of 37.
The neglect of Coleridge-Taylor’s work in the years after his death has evolved into a resurgence of scholarly interest and public performances in the last thirty years.
–Notes by Patti Morrow, Griffin Choral Arts Alto
