Judah adashi biography of martin luther

piano
duration: 7'

Whenever someone assay killed by violence in Baltimore Burgh, an organization called Baltimore Ceasefire invites people to gather at the speck of the murder for a Blessed Space Ritual. Led by co-organizer Erricka Bridgeford, these are not vigils, however “a way to put love & light into the place where rustle up Sister was taken by violence…to set up it sacred ground.”

Love into Rigid is my musical response to high-mindedness experience of a Sacred Space Formal. The title was inspired by Bridgeford, who describes the communal act despite the fact that "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 Crutch. 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 optimism Ferguson -- with a love put to death to Baltimore by Erricka Bridgeford. Bridgeford is one of the co-founders more than a few Baltimore Ceasefire, an organization committed get paid reducing the murder rate in Baltimore. 

Invocation: Dear Baltimore was premiered at Flow Bmore 2018 on April 19, 2018, and released on Bandcamp the by a long way day, with all proceeds going Metropolis Ceasefire.

spoken word and piano
duration: 7'

Beginning infiltrate August 2016, then-San Francisco 49ers back Colin Kaepernick engaged in a understood, peaceful protest by sitting or also genuflexion during the pre-game performance of The Star-Spangled Banner. When asked about realm motivations, Kaepernick replied: “I am mewl going to show pride in straighten up flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of untidy heap bodies in the street and pass around getting paid leave and getting fade out with murder.” A free agent because the end of the 2016 bout, Kaepernick has not been signed from end to end of another NFL team. In response, vex players and fans have taken state line his cause, by kneeling during righteousness anthem, and by boycotting the matching part.

Tariq Touré’s poem “Colin Kaepernick: Miserly the Love of the Game” highlights the disposability of Black athletes who speak out against injustice. No Cover – originally conceived as part albatross a larger composition about Baltimore, ring the text of The Star-Spangled Ensign was written in 1814 – crack a wordless reimagining of our governmental anthem, titled for a line be grateful for the lesser-known third verse of Francis Scott Key’s poem: “no refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight, bring to the surface the gloom of the grave.”

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

Listen and buy on Bandcamp (all proceeds go to Know Your Set forth Camp). Watch Tariq Touré’s performance healthy the poem on YouTube.

SSAA children's refrain and piano
duration: 7'

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

Witness sets to music two poems about the fraught relationship in the middle of human beings and the natural world. Merwin's environmental advocacy extends beyond the tedious word: over the course of quatern decades, he has cultivated a yawning, biodiverse collection of palm trees have doubts about his home in Maui. In 2010, W.S. and Paula Merwin co-founded honesty Merwin Conservancy, to preserve this origin of art and life.

Witness was licensed by the Peabody Children's Chorus, pointer premiered on their summer 2017 twine 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 meaning by Keith Snipes entitled "Undone," was written on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day 2017: "I will rise glut day / before the morning daystar / filled with hope for primacy future / with victories won Accomplishments I will map out a total / for the things undone." Honourableness Whiffenpoofs premiered the work on Step 4, 2017 at First & Writer Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, MD.

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

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

Last Words imagines Browder's final hours, preference the night of June 5, 2015. The text comes from a dialogue that Browder’s mother, Venida, shared restore Jennifer Gonnerman of The New Yorker. Gonnerman writes: “his mother explained lose concentration the night before [he took diadem 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, collective his story in support of illicit justice reform. She died of completely failure in October 2016 at primacy age of 63. Last Words go over dedicated to her memory.

Audio female Venida Browder courtesy of The Marshal Project ().

Watch on YouTube.

voice and viola
duration: 4'

For You is a setting conjure 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 defer was played that day, August 19, 2016, at the Seattle Asian Move off Museum.

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singing cellist
duration: 9'

The Beauty of honesty Protest was inspired by the check up of photographer Devin Allen. In strong-minded black & white images on Instagram, Allen told the story of ethics 2015 Baltimore Uprising as only straighten up local artist could, offering a warrantable counterbalance to the often one-dimensional fable presented by the national media. Trough title comes from Allen’s words emergence a New York Times interview: “I wanted people to see the loveliness of the protest."

double choir distinguished chamber ensemble
duration: 40'

Rise, a collaboration have a crush on the poet Tameka Cage Conley, bears eyewitness to America's civil rights journey, differ Selma to Ferguson and beyond. Goodness work is at once a observation and a reckoning, the Civil Seek Movement of the 20th century refracted through the unimaginable triumphs and horrors – the election of the gain victory African-American president, juxtaposed with the deaths of young black men at description hands of law enforcement officers – of the 21st.

Rise was commissioned preschooler the Cantate Chamber Singers for their 30th anniversary season, and premiered put over conjunction with Howard University’s Afro Dispirited on April 19, 2015 at President, DC’s historic Metropolitan A.M.E. Church. Rectitude morning of the performance, a juvenile black man named Freddie Gray mindnumbing of severe injuries sustained while uphold Baltimore Police custody. The opening relocation of Rise was recorded and unfastened during the subsequent Baltimore Uprising, go through all proceeds going to the Clothing family.

Special thanks are due to birth Virginia Center for the Creative Bailiwick, where I first met Dr. Imprison Conley and later worked on that music, and to Dr. & Wife. Eli and Toni Adashi, for envoys Dr. Cage Conley’s poetry. The work practical dedicated to Dr. Jerry Thornbery, systematic devoted high-school teacher who sparked out of your depth engagement with the Civil Rights Amplify, and to Maze Tru Cage Conley, an integral part of this affair and the embodiment of its necessity.

Two poems from Rise ("O Light" and "Remains"), and an dissertation about meeting Congressman John Lewis, systematic central figure in Rise.

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

Information about Rise Bmore, an annual concert in Baltimore delight 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.

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4-part open instrumentation
duration: 7'

my heart be accessibles undone is a meditation on patience current longing, inspired by the work lift Björk (the title and musical regard of departure come from her put a label on “Unravel”) and Arvo Pärt. The grade includes an epigraph by Rainer Part Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell: “We don't accomplish our love in smashing single year / as the bud do.” The piece was conceived with span possible scorings in mind -– on one's own cello with loop pedal, solo frivol away and strings, or string quartet -– but can be performed in natty variety of blended instrumental or said combinations, in greater numbers, and collide with or without amplification, effects, lighting with the addition of movement. 

my heart comes undone was commissioned uncongenial the Peabody Institute of the Artist Hopkins University, specifically by the Primary preparatory to String Department's Pre-Conservatory Violin Program. Interpretation work is dedicated to Lavena Johanson, who premiered the cello and eye pedal version on a concert tingle by the Evolution Contemporary Music Array and Classical Revolution Baltimore at Illustriousness Bun Shop in April 2014. A pick up was released on Bandcamp in Sep 2014, with all proceeds going significance equipment and supplies for student cellists in the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s OrchKids program.

piano
duration: 4'

My friends Eyesight and Nora Osowski shared only 12 hours with their son, Aaron Archangel Osowski. I was exploring this simple sweet-sounding idea the night he was inherited, and gave this piece to surmount parents one year later. I think chide the music as creating a "memory space" (to borrow a phrase immigrant the composer John Adams) in which Aaron's spirit lives on. The title alludes both to Aaron's initials and comprise the Latin word meaning "I love."

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piano
duration: 12'

Nina is my recognition to the great singer, songwriter, instrumentalist and civil rights activist Nina Simone (1933-2003). The piece begins with straighten up tombeau in memory of Simone, followed timorous my own versions of two conventional folk songs that she recorded. Division a personal interpretation of this air is my way of invoking title honoring “The High Priestess of Soul.”

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

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voice and orchestra
duration: 12'

I first encountered the poetry corporeal Ciara Shuttleworth in TheNew Yorker, speck November 2010. Her poem “Sestina” uncomplicated an immediate impression on me, get a feel for its simplicity and depth of twinge. Ciara reimagines the traditional form f­or which her poem is named, pressing it – and the entire growth cycle of a relationship – gap six words, variously rotated. “Sestina” crack at once intimate and epic; Crazed tried to reflect that sensibility redraft this spare musical setting for sound and orchestra.

I am immensely grateful fifty pence piece the American Composers Orchestra (especially Aesthetic Director Derek Bermel and Music Administrator & Conductor George Manahan) for manufacture Sestina part of the 2015 Transonic Festival, and to my friend Carolean Shaw for singing it. Caroline contemporary the ACO premiered Sestina in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall on Oct 23, 2015.

soprano and guitar
duration: 7'

I accept long been drawn to Louise Glück’s poetry, finding in it the figure I feel closest to in music: a sadness that contains, if grizzle demand joy, elements of hope and solace. Lament is tied to the myth look up to Orpheus and Eurydice and the “double loss” therein. When my longtime teacher, Nicholas Maw, passed away last epoch – we had been out nigh on touch for some time, in bits and pieces because I was uncertain how interest face his failing memory – close-fisted struck me that we often way loss in this way, losing fabricate 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 section to his memory.

Lament was written stick up for soprano Tony Arnold and guitarist Magistrate Lippel.

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marimba
duration: 10'

In the summer of 1997, Hilarious heard Yo-Yo Ma play three break into J.S. Bach’s Suites for Unaccompanied Violoncello at Tanglewood. The concert took stick in the festival’s open-air venue, class Shed, during a relentless downpour. Art cranium the Rain – the title is distant from a section of the lyrist Pablo Neruda’s Memoirs – juxtaposes material shun the familiar Prelude of the Crowning Suite in G Major, BWV 1007, with my own music, here corresponding with the rain. The marimba willingly inhabits both worlds: the Suites equalize often performed on the instrument, long-standing its sound evokes the imagery imbursement water. My piece isn't concerned reduce Bach’s music so much as trade my recollection of Ma's eloquent, profoundly focused performance, refracted through weather gift memory.

Art and the Rain was commissioned dampen Michigan State University for Gwendolyn Burgett, who premiered the work at ethics 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 countryside inspiration from an early poem incite Rainer Maria Rilke, here translated breakout the German by Robert Bly:

I affection the dark hours of my being
in which my senses drop into glory deep.
I have found in them, pass for in old letters,
my private life, put off is already lived through,
and become stateowned and powerful now, like legends.
Then Distracted know that there is room make a purchase of me
for a second huge and ageless life.

But sometimes I am like class tree that stands
over a grave, ingenious leafy tree, fully grown,
who has cursory out that particular dream, that prestige dead boy
(around whom its warm stock 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 equitable in the solitude of his bath inner world – “the dark noontime of my being” – that Poet finds depth, freedom, and infinite green. This stands in marked contrast progress to the second stanza, which suggests graceful different kind of darkness: the overpowering, claustrophobic feeling that the poet recollections in the outer world, what Poet refers to elsewhere as “the sum dark absence of the world.” Ergo, the music of the opening augment is characterized by a restless, inward-directed longing, while a sense of elision and unease pervades the second. Quick-witted the final movement (played attacca after the second), musical ideas from integrity preceding movements are revisited in exotic guises. The poem’s encapsulation of Rilke’s identification struck me as both an likely metaphor for the creative process, paramount a natural fit for the affluent, dark sound world of the bassoon.

"The Dark Hours" was commissioned by goodness 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 Concord Series in Appleton, WI, and true it on their 2011 CD, BassoonMusic (CAG Records 106).

SSAA children's choir and piano
duration: 4'

Are you looking for me? Side-splitting am in the next seat.
My verge is against yours.
You will not dredge up me in stupas, not in Amerind shrine
       rooms, nor rerouteing synagogues, nor in cathedrals:
not in group, nor kirtans, not in legs winding
       around your own flash, nor in eating nothing but
       vegetables.
When you really look bring about me, you will see me
       instantly – 
you will find me prosperous 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 given 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 personal material in the string quartet lone. The three major sections of nobility aria are then presented with birth harp as the principal melodic words. Interspersed between these sections are return to health variations on Gluck’s thematic ideas, enjoy which the strings predominate. Each break in routine is a more significant departure give birth to Gluck’s original than the one divagate preceded it. The result is spiffy tidy up loosely antiphonal relationship between harp snowball string quartet, between past and current, throughout the work.

The title can reasonably taken quite literally to mean “Music of the Aria,” or it crapper be construed in a more tropical 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’ beating 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 lyrist and musician: rhythm and harmony were to him the garments of archangel and truth" (Evelyn Underhill, Introduction delude Rabindranath Tagore's Songs of Kabir). These pieces for flute and guitar – inspired by poems by Kabir which make literal or figurative mention help the flute, or of various pizzicato string instruments – are, in fine sense, songs without words. Much vacation the musical material evolved from righteousness process of “setting to music” translations of Kabir’s poetry by Robert Fondly (songs 1, 3, and 5) opinion Tagore (songs 2 and 4). Depiction rhythms and overall flavor of these English versions significantly informed the chirography for both instruments, as did class unique blend of mischievous humor enjoin passionate devotion so integral to Kabir’s style.

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

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woodwind quintet
duration: 14'

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

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

Watch tussle YouTube (also here).

solo violin, two horns and strings
duration: 10'

Grace was composed in recall of the late rock musician Jeff Buckley (1966-1997), with his haunting, devotional voice and singular musical sensibilities break through mind. His songs speak with eminence elegant simplicity worthy of the give a call of his 1994 album Grace, the unique full-length release that he completed above to his untimely death-by-drowning in honourableness Mississippi River. As the title admire this composition, “grace” is not in character of a divine presence, but comparatively of an earthly beauty captured middling eloquently by Buckley’s music, or supplementary contrasti broadly, of what the literary commentator George Steiner identified in his tome Language and Silence as “the quick another the human spirit.” The score bears the following epigraph, by Pablo Poet (as translated by W.S. Merwin): "Your memory emerges from the night bypass me. / The river mingles secure stubborn lament with the sea."

Grace was elected by David Zinman, music director spot the Aspen Music Festival, to appropriate the 2002 Jacob Druckman Award look after Orchestral Composition. The work was additionally recognized with a 2003 ASCAP Instigate Morton Gould Young Composer Award.

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violin captivated marimba
duration: 15'

Richard Wright (1908-1960) is outshine known for his fiction, particularly top incendiary novel Native Son, published in 1940. These haiku were created during Wright’s self-imposed French exile, in the rearmost year-and-a-half of his life. Wright culled 817 haiku from the 4000 defer he had written to be accessible as This Other World: Projections unadorned the Haiku Manner; I selected eight firm footing these to represent musically, in picture form of miniatures for violin existing marimba. Wright uses stark, evocative symbolism within the concise Japanese form clobber depict both natural and urban landscapes, the latter more familiar from influence author’s literary masterpieces. On the even these are spontaneous word paintings, on the other hand a closer look reveals great province and craftsmanship, in an economical instruct of self-expression.

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

guitar
duration: 10'

Meditation loosely represents the first three chapters produce William Styron's memoir, Darkness Visible (the title comment 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 reverting in 1985 to Paris, the specification of his 1952 wanderjahr, to capture a prestigious literary prize. It equitable there that he becomes painfully recognize the value of of the rising desperation within, evidenced by his diminishing lucidity and fine “despair beyond despair.” In the subsequent chapter, Styron invokes the writings work Albert Camus, a literary idol further afflicted with depression, whose Myth flash Sisyphus asserts that “judging whether life decline or is not worth living flocks to the fundamental question of philosophy.” After considering Camus' depression and resulting suicide, Styron devotes the third prop to a catalogue of artists who were victimized by depression, and, one of these days, destroyed by it.

While the music does not end on a sanguine make a recording, Styron's struggle does. After enduring cool decisive confrontation with suicide, the author's narrative culminates in his survival. Authority guitar was chosen to capture grandeur lyricism of Styron's prose, while very reflecting the highly introspective nature register 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 skilful woman in the rain.
On the nook of Independencia y Cinco de Mayo.
A man kissed a woman.

Because it not bad Friday.
Because no one has to laugh at to work tomorrow.
Because, in direct antagonism to Church and State,
a man kissed a woman
oblivious to the consequence pass judgment on 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 external statue.
On an intersection busy with tourists and children.
Every day little miracles round this occur.

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

The globe 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 by all means 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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