THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
College of Music presents
Lincoln High School
Adopt-a-Conductor Concert featuring
Encore and Continental Singers
Scott Leaman, Conductor and Levana
Kari Adams, Conductor
Annika Stucky and Danté Webb, Assistant Conductors
Elizabeth Lajeunesse, Piano
Tuesday, April 18, 2023
7:30 p.m. | Opperman Music Hall
To Ensure An Enjoyable Concert Experience For All…
Please refrain from talking, entering, or exiting during performances. Food and drink are prohibited in all concert halls. Recording or broadcasting of the concert by any means, including the use of digital cameras, cell phones, or other devices is expressly forbidden. Please deactivate all portable electronic devices including watches, cell phones, pagers, hand-held gaming devices or other electronic equipment that may distract the audience or performers.
Recording Notice: This performance may be recorded. Please note that members of the audience may at times be included in this process. By attending this performance you consent to have your image or likeness appear in any live or recorded video or other transmission or reproduction made in conjunction to the performance.
Florida State University provides accommodations for persons with disabilities. Please notify the College of Music at (850) 644-3424 at least five working days prior to a musical event to request accommodation for disability or alternative program format.
Lincoln High School Choirs
Scott Leaman, conductor
Encore
Like a River in My Soul arr. Tim Osiek (b. 1978)
Connected Brian Tate (b. 1954)
Ni Wangu (He is Mine) arr. Hal Hopson
Lila Knowlton and Riley Bradford, soloists
Hope is the Thing with Feathers Kenney Potter (b. 1970)
Sweater Weather
Continental Singers
Laudate Pueri Giacomo Puccini
I’m Building Me a Home
The Cloud Victor Johnson (b. 1978)
There Always Something Sings
Paper Cranes
“Adopted” Conductors
Myles Baron, Sarah Burns, Jackson Englund, Justus Evans, Sophia Gannaoui, Gabriela Gaya
Bridg Gorder, Keyaira Henderson, Aydyn O’Brien, Jonahtan Rodriguez, Jeremy Roldan
Magan Sheehy, Shayna Singer, Thomas Thai, Ana Torres, John Valencia-Londono, and Lindsay VanAllen
Ramon Cardenas, Katie Kenkel, and Duncan Matthew, MUE 3492 Teaching Assistants
Encore Personnel
Bryan Alex, Riley Bradford, Maya Brangaccio, Tyler Brown, Eli Carson, Addison Green, Harrison Green
Kenzie James, Lila Knowlton, Eleanor Leaman, Alyssa Maleszewski, Ryan Ruby, Ty Stone, Daelynn Trotman
Continental Singers Personnel
Riley Bradford, Tyler Brown, Eli Carson, Amina Davis, Brooke Edewaard, Devanrae Gentzel
Addison Green, Kenzie James, Gwendolyn Kersey, Eleanor Leaman, Britney Martinez, Adriana McMillian
Hope Mortham, Aanya Pande, Anthony Raya, Ryan Ruby, Courtney Schack, Ty Stone, Daelynn Trotman
We
“How could he explain to Marjorie that what he wanted to capture with his project was the feeling of time, of having been a part something that stretched so far back, was so impossibly large, that it was easy to forget that she, and he, and everyone else, existed in it—not apart from it, but inside it.”
from Homegoing, by
Yaa GyasiIn 2016, Yaa Gyasi released her debut novel, Homegoing. This gripping intergenerational story spans three centuries and powerfully illustrates how the trans-Atlantic slave trade made an indelible impression on individuals, families, and society at large. Through her storytelling, Gyasi urges each of us to recognize how the past is woven into the fabric of the present and reminds us that we stand not as islands, but as integrated parts of time—past, present, and future. Embedded in the story is a vital reminder: When we try to escape or ignore the past, we perpetuate pain and suffering for ourselves, our fellow humans, and all those who come after us. Tonight, it is our great honor to bring Gyasi’s story to life through music.
My aim with this evening’s program is to highlight the work of a Black author who tells a story of the Black experience. The question of “who can tell a story” loomed large in my mind as I curated this program. I was inspired by Gyasi’s work and wanted to bring attention to it, and it is my hope that you receive this program tonight in the spirit it was intended—to amplify these stories and experiences and to remind us of our connection to all of humanity throughout time. I have worked to further highlight Black voices throughout our narrative by programming Black composers (Boykin, White-Clayton, and Dilworth) and Black poets (Crowell, Hughes, and Walker). All the quotes below are Gyasi’s words from Homegoing.
“My grandmother used to say we were born of a great fire.”
Gyasi opens her story with fire, a source of both life and death, healing and destruction.
Caritas Abundat is a modern arrangement of a Hildegard von Bingen chant that depicts fire as a powerful and life-giving force. Next, we use McGlynn’s Jerusalem and Hensel’s Wandl ‘ich in dem Wald des Abends to paint the picture of wandering and displacement Gyasi’s characters experienced in the first generations of her story. As Gyasi moved through the Civil War and Reconstruction into 20th century America, we move into B. E. Boykin’s Stardust. The powerful text of this piece combines Brittny Ray Crowell’s own words with those of Virginia Hamilton’s short story The People Could Fly, in which enslaved individuals regain their ability to fly that had been lost when they were torn from their homes. The text also acknowledges the memories of Ahmaud Arbery (“a home where we can run”), those lost in the Mother Emanuel shooting (“a home where we can pray”), George Floyd (“a home where we can breathe”), and Breonna Taylor (“to sleep and dream without fear”).
“But the girl shook her head, clucked her tongue in distaste. ‘If I marry him, my children will be ugly,’ she declared.
That night, lying next to Edward in his room, Yaw listened as his best friend told him that he had explained to the girl that you could not inherit a scar.
Now, nearing his fiftieth birthday, Yaw no longer knew if he believed this was true.”
Gwyneth Walker’s setting of Langston Hughes’s famous poem Mother to Son begins our next set. We move without pause into Lineage, Andrea Ramsey’s setting of a poem by Margaret Walker. These texts combine to show the ways in which the experiences of the past weave into the present. As Gyasi wrote: “They had been products of their time, and walking in Birmingham now, Marcus was an accumulation of these times. That was the point.”
In the final generations of her story, Gyasi moves toward a theme of healing rooted in a recognition of the past and the ways in which it shapes the present. Gyasi argues that we must recognize the past and then work to rectify it:
“‘We are all weak most of the time,’ she said finally. ‘Look at the baby. Born to his mother, he learns how to eat from her, how to walk, talk, hunt, run. He does not invent new ways. He just continues with the old. This is how we all come to the world, James. Weak and needy, desperate to learn how to be a person.’ She smiled at him. ‘But if we do not like the person we have learned to be, should we just sit in front of our fufu, doing nothing? I think, James, that maybe it is possible to make a new way.”
We begin the healing section of our program with Love, the Greatest Gift, by Diane White-Clayton. Dr. WhiteClayton sets the first seven verses of I Corinthians 13 in a highly rhythmic, powerful composition that she describes as weaving both classical and gospel traditions together with body percussion derived from her African roots. In the context of Homegoing, we see this piece as representative of extending love and compassion to the self—an act of disruption and defiance for marginalized communities.
“Whose story do we believe, then? We believe the one that has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must always ask yourself, whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth?”
Healing requires acknowledgement of the fullness of history. Gyasi reminds us that history is made of stories told “by the victors” as the adage states. Susan LaBarr’s We Remember Them serves as a reminder to seek out and know the lives of those who have gone before us and to allow them to live on through our remembrance of their stories.
“She walked to where he stood, where the fire met the water. He took her hand and they both looked out into the abyss of it. The fear that Marcus had felt inside the Castle was still there, but he knew it was like the fire, a wild thing that could still be controlled, contained.”
Like the fire that opened Gyasi’s story, water can be both life-giving and life-taking. It can create and destroy. It can be a source of fear or joy, death or healing. Gyasi’s story ends where it began—on the coast of Ghana. As her characters move into the water, they experience a sense of healing and connection with the past and with home. We close our program this evening with Rollo Dilworth’s Take Me to the Water, a gospel-style setting that combines Down by the Riverside and Wade in the Water. This piece uses water as a symbol of healing, power, and arrival.
“When he finally lifted his head up from the sea to cough, then breathe, he looked out at all the water before him, at the vast expanse of time and space. He could hear Marjorie laughing, and soon, he laughed too. When he finally reached her, she was moving just enough to keep her head above water. The black stone necklace rested just below her collarbone and Marcus watched the glints of gold come off it, shining in the sun. ‘Here,’ Marjorie said. ‘Have it.’ She lifted the stone from her neck and placed it around Marcus’s. ‘Welcome home.’”