 All right, I want to welcome you here tonight. You are in for a very special evening. And I can say that because we had one last night, so I know for sure you're going to enjoy being here. A few housekeeping details. First, in case of an emergency, heaven forefell, you can go out the way you came in, there's another exit out that way. Restrooms are that way. Please silence all noise-making devices, including cell phones. There is no flash photography or recording allowed. You're already being recorded, so those will become available in a few weeks. There is no intermission. We're going straight through. But after the program, Rajni will be selling books of his wonderful poetry in the back, and I also, or maybe the front, if you think of it in terms of the building. And I will also have a CD that's for sale. I also need to say that we are on the unceded land of the people of the dawn, the Wabanaki Confederacy, known here in Vermont as the Ibeniki, who have been loyal, faithful stewards of the land for thousands of years. I honor that stewardship and my hope is that we can all use that as a model in how we treat the earth that we live on. The original impetus for this program was quite simple. I wanted to give some of my recent solo works a chance to be heard in public. But the project soon took on a deeper meaning because of the thread that ran through all the pieces, and that thread was the influence of African American culture, specifically blues and jazz on my music. Now this influence had showed up in pieces going back close to 25 years, but none more so than in the works you're going to hear tonight. I've done my best to honor that cultural heritage as I do with every tradition that has somehow found its way into my music. The first three works on the program were written during the spring of 2020, during the worst of the pandemic, when the only way that musicians could perform was to put on miniature solo recitals on YouTube or Facebook. So I wrote these pieces to give some of my friends an opportunity to have something to play immediately. But this period was also a time of intense racial reckoning, and the dedication of these works reflect that. One of the wonderful things about being a composer is that once the music leaves my hand, so to speak, I have no control over how it is perceived, either by musicians or by listeners. So whatever you hear tonight is yours, but please know that my aim has always been to use my art, my voice, to try to make the world a better place through music. I hope you enjoy the concert. I would like to give a big thank you to old to Frieda Josephine MacDonald. Frieda Josephine MacDonald, did you know as a child your star would rise to carry far beyond St. Louis, Missouri skies? Sweet Tumpty, oh Black Venus, sister from another planet, too big for one country to hold, so she let her brown feet travel the globe, littering its land with gold. Creole Goddess, they called you, never TDF today, but truly you are a deity. Ablani and outshining the confines of your times. Mother of the rainbow tribe, coloring outside the lines. Josephine, Josephine, Josephine, may your name be an incantation, a call to patron saints whose truth too tall to fall. Let us honor you, they homage to you, their courage you have brought. Black pearl, living jewels set to adorn the world. Your heart burned brighter than flames you saw that night. Eleven years old, right? Washing the flickering light, eat the homes of black folks now in flight. Oh, what a sight. What a terrible fright. But this was not to be your ending flight. Oh, the universe had other things in mind for this evil divine. Reclaiming her body far cry from the cruelty of white mistresses. Crossing distances with a mythic grace and fearlessness. She said, the white imagination assures something when it comes to blacks. Facts. Her dine survives more civilized than those with wayward eyes could grant her ass. She toyed with the white imaginary, lived her own fantasy beyond the reach of adversaries. Now ain't that something for a color girl who started out shuffling on cardboard on the street to make the leap to world renown with dancing feet? Not to mention crossing trenches. What a feat. Delivered intel on sheet music with invisible ink. She said, sure did the day will come when color means nothing more than a skin tone. When religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one's soul. When birthplaces have the weight of a throw the dice and all men are born free. When understanding breeds love and brotherhood. Josephine. Josephine. What a brave champion for love. You would not sing unless we all could come. I see you standing. Voice lifting victories. The world is yet to sing in unison. Bright and clear of light in your smile. Dance carrying the dust of all lands to one earth. Soul richly ours. Trailing horizons. A new day break. You know, freedom knows no bounds. I saw. I saw that chainless child singing itself out the throats of a people. All but had song beat out them. This is not a mournful song. This is not where the dirt is played or where graves are laid bare. While people clutch their handkerchiefs solemnly and stare. This is about beautiful things. Too big to be tarnished by paltry onlookers whose calcified consciences make love and service to justice and peace. Seeing a performance. This is a serenade lifting. Veals. Lifting. All who take to the tune to the wind. This is a well of guest lords. A flood of that's rights set to men broken bones. A pot of uninterrupted lullabies. For those who barely have had time to catch their own breath. This bee. Opened doorways for those for whom it's open season. Bright burgeoning blue black halo bees. Born in the spirit of defiant love to charter carnage and survive. Self love and self respect. Reference for life. Bright glorious smile. Audacity to keep curiosity and innocence with hope for the future still intact. You know beautiful things. This is about beautiful things. Your heart unmasked. Deliberation from the grotesque nature of your silence. Valence without an audience. Honesty when it costs something. Relief from the ceaseless lifetimes of walking on the blade of someone else's morbid imagination. This is the incantations on your infant's tongue. Singing to the universe. On honey breath that knows no fear. Hands clasped in prayer. The space between. Our hands grasped there. No space between. This is. Brothers gonna work it out. Brothers gonna work it out. Ascending on the wings of. To be young gifted and black. Oh what a lovely precious dream. To be young gifted and black. Open your hearts to what I mean. It's unapologetic belief that in the deepest inner reaches of oneself the more is possible. It's black and it's everything. Sam Cook musing on his origin story by that river. It's the river in you. You never knew was flowing. It's the head nod and the fist bump and the absence of being named. It's that one meeting of the eyes that says everything's words came. It's what is when what is ain't. It's a picture hate can't paint. In elixir that is a mixture sets the line between hates and saints. This is an old to Nina introducing sunrise. This is the moment the unborn become worthy of sacrifice. The realization we always were. Homage to ancestors who remembered futures so we could leave stories from the past and to our present seamlessly. Soldiers we stand on bodies as shields arms as comforters no weapons can defeat. A quote of ever giving generosity soaring itself into the seed of us. Music The times that we've been here while someone else is licking their lips in ravenous anticipation of our grief. Why does this old sound like a siren? A rusty nail across the chalkboard. A shattered moral compass. It reeks of discord and broken glass and broken records. What will become of the listeners? If they see her ravaged beauty as their own and dare not look away. Do you feel the gaping chasm in her family's hearts? Will they replace the laughter of her unborn children? Can you blind in legacy she will never bear? One of the milestones she will never see. The home she'll never own. For being home and black and as they said a victim of the officers extreme indifference to human life. What of her smile? The care of her hands. The dreams she was stolen from. Sitting sharply, painfully unfulfilled. How many times must we pay? Must we be re-traumatized? Wounded and subject to watch wrapped by our own syndicated violence. All while the world looks on in pity. Content rehearses its practiced responses to arrive close enough to the appearance of a conscience. Periodic and strained. Routine. One brief moment. All of it wasn't. And what if Breonna is listening? And she is. Watching you and me as I recite this poem. And she is. She can tell the difference between empty words, pained expressionists, sense what's underneath it all. And she stays with you now. Walking you home for a lifetime. When you rise tomorrow, she will be there. At the foot of your bed. At the breakfast table. When you look into the rear of your mirror. You will see her beautiful face. Eyes piercing your silence. Daring to speak her name. Allowed. As you walk, you will find her shadow has lengthened your own. What do you think these collages of death have done to the children? Bodies falling. Bullets falling. Countless as leaves. For us, every season is our own. Mask or no mask. We are feared. For us, every day is Halloween. Our deaths are the world's candy. But no one will admit it. But they can't hide their sweet tooth from the children. You can only see so many hashtags, coded symbolism from murder, before it starts to take. You can only live on a land where they burned people and sent each other pieces, but so long before pretending becomes second nature. But Briana, she is watching. She can see what is fate. The same. This little lie. This little lie brought so many spirits to the riverside. A prayer to the Almighty God who's been with us since he separated the wars, found our features, swimming amongst the faces of the deep, blew life into the nostrils, made an earthen clay our terrestrial forms. I don't want these feet of clay with wings to spring new freedoms for me. Can you hear it? That, that soul for her, welling up from below the feet, soiled deep. Dim notes from, from lung and sound, to still the way to Jesus. Cruning tones on the brakes of God. Carrying secret codes to divine meanings that save your soul. Join me in the upper realm. Meet me in the secret place, past the sinner's crossroads. I'll be singing up there on the battlefield where we'll understand it by and by. You must be born again before you die. Got to find me a hiding place to hold on to God's unchanged hand, because there is trouble all over this land. Something that I hold on to. I need somewhere to lay my head. If you see my Savior, tell him my heart says yes. I'm just a soul whose intentions are good. Please don't let me be misunderstood. Jesus gave me water. And I'm going to go and tell it on the mountain. Ain't it fine how the spirit poured, spilled over like wine, sustaining children for lifetimes? How else do you think we got over? There is a heart-wrenching chord carrying Africa, breathing to new lands, all the wild calling on the Lord. You can see the oral tradition ascending, heavy hearts to light-filled glories, opening portals to boundless stories, where the sound is quarreling. And he's my rock. These are songs strung together from the looms of the illumined ones, dim that was bringing light to dark. These are pools of rainbows we drunk from when the storms would stop. We brought jubilee out our voices. No whip-crack could reach. Our tongues undulating into the heavens gave wings to run in feet. No chains could reach such that the earth would know the heavens in our speech. A sang of a brief that only those can know who children been sold. And how you make a diamond under pressure, dancing on hot coals. See, this ain't for the fainted heart. This is for those who run, run, run for freedom in faint night. Carve in ingressions and deep ravines, so you remember what the route is to this water. Let this drinking gourd make you an open vessel. We need unity in your progression. You see, an only love of substance will even let you breathe through the flame. I need your good hands, your open heart, this music. Nurse your wounds and don't pretend to dance in front. There are babies barefoot in the streets. Folks who watchin' they loved ones bleed out have no use for high-volume activities. And why I dismay to meet a quota? This is to those who've been doin' it, seen and unsingin' it. The work before it was called the work. Harriet Tubman takin' spiritual breaks, cause she had to. Downloadin' cosmic schematics on that underground railroad to not be railroaded. James Vaughn been typin' symphonies, speakin' multi-layered quilts, generations unloaned were where as warm, to persevere through every storm. For them that know, the norm will not suffice, especially acquiesces to cease this war and stolen rights. Even my daughter talks about those many hands, seen and unseen, behind the scenes, makin' clips and writein' scripts to change what's on that screen. These footprints been planted seeds, so increased with traction, so that all may reap in deeds indeed. Let's give them us, our flowers, here and now and ever onward. There are champions standing in the fray still, and they deserve their flowers, cause life and breath ain't promised. So while there is spirit in this flesh, go on and make yourself useful. Stay tuned to the ones who do so, who pour their liquid hope on blisterin' crappy lips, breathe life into possibilities. Long left abandoned. Yes, this too was for my mother, and my great-grandmother, and my auntie. Nurturing moments when no one is looking. Sayin' the hard things with love and courage and belief in right for right sake. As backbone. Yes, place your bushels of roses here. Line up your lilies and lilacs and spread down this corridor out the door. Don't be afraid to block traffic with them African violence, and stretch your tulips, daffodils, dandelions and orchids of every shade, from here down to the Everglades. Now is not the time to rest on our laurels. We need to make room for this world-sized garden. It's too well-deserved to go unplanted. And you, yes you, I need you to add your voice to this phone, to put your back into this mountain-moving operation. Like you believe it's possible to find water in a desert and to be that water. Either we flood together or merge these drops until the world does. Whatever comes first, just don't stop callin' on, pourin' praise upon these black prophetic fire-bringers. We make freedom a real word and a genuine aim. Who else put all their blood into that name? With character too high and deep, for fear or shame, shining suns and two-four moons of ever-living truth been given sway to light your day. With beams and rays, they shall never be eclipsed, nor ever waned. That's to say a few words here at the end, because it's my fault that I have to get up again. And the reason is, I've known Dan Liptak since he was in high school, and he has played pieces of mine on tenor saxophone, on bass clarinet, and on B-flat clarinet. And I had the brilliant idea of thinking, well, here he is in this piece that they're all going to be playing. Why shouldn't I ask him to play all three? And I thought, well, that's a wonderful idea. And in theory it is. But people don't play instruments in theory, they play them in reality. And so one of the things that has been difficult for everybody playing tonight has been they have to sit for a long time, and then they have to get up, and they have to play. They used to have to do that as a singer in church, often having a solo after the sermon, and I had to get up and sing cold, as we say, and these musicians have had to do the same thing. So they've been magnificent. But I'm up here filling time, so that Dan can get his instruments completely warmed up, because he has not one, not two, but three of them to deal with. So in any case, he's still had it. So I will remind, I will mention one other thing that I forgot to say, that there is, in fact, a mistake in your program that in the write-up for Elegy, I listed Breonna Taylor's residence as Memphis, Tennessee. Now you can hear Dan playing on the first instrument that he will be using, which is today's clarinet. And then partway through the piece, he will be switching over to tenor saxophone, and then finally to B-flat clarinet. And it's an interesting combination, and I just decided it would be fun to try them all. So they're all also ready. So you only have to put all the ways here. So we're good. Aren't you lucky I'm stopping now.