ARTIST RECITAL SERIES
Imani Winds
Brandon Patrick George ’08, flute
Mekhi Gladden, guest oboe
Mark Dover, clarinet
Kevin Newton, horn
Monica Ellis ’95, bassoon
With special guests
Seth Parker Woods, cello Cory Smythe, piano
Michael Braugher ’14, narrator PROGRAM
THURSDAY,MARCH7,2024|7:30PM WARNERCONCERTHALL
CONCERT NO. 191
I Said What I Said Damien Geter
Giants
i. Bessie Smith
ii. Cornel West
iii. Herbie Hancock
Carlos Simon
BeLoud, BeLoved, BeLonging Andy Akiho
I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free Billy Taylor arr. Mark Dover
INTERMISSION
Fallen Petals of Nameless Flowers
i. 30 Seconds
ii. Children in the Prison Garden
iii. Guilty, Enough
iv. To Bloom Again
Jeff Scott, score
Robert Laidler, poetry
No unauthorized photographic or recording equipment is permitted during this program. Please silence all devices prior to the performance.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Imani Winds is the 2024 GRAMMY® winner in the Classical Compendium category for Jeff Scott’s Passion for Bach and Coltrane released on their recently formed record label, Imani Winds Media.
Celebrating over a quarter century of music making, the three-time GRAMMY nominated Imani Winds has led both a revolution and evolution of the wind quintet through their dynamic playing, adventurous programming, imaginative collaborations and outreach endeavors that have inspired audiences of all ages and backgrounds.
The ensemble’s playlist embraces traditional chamber music repertoire, and newly commissioned works from voices that reflect historical events and the times in which we currently live.
Recent projects include a Jessie Montgomery composition inspired by her great-grandfather’s migration from the American south to the north, socially conscious music by Andy Akiho, reflecting on mass incarceration, and a work by Carlos Simon celebrating iconic figures of the African American community. These works and more have been commissioned as a part of the Legacy Commissioning Project.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
The ensemble’s 26 seasons of full-time touring has brought them to virtually every major chamber music series, performing arts center, and summer festival in the U.S. They regularly perform in prominent venues including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Kennedy Center and have a presence at festivals such as Chamber Music Northwest, Chautauqua Institution and Banff Centre.
Imani Winds thoughtfully curates unique residencies that include performances, workshops, and masterclasses to thousands of students each year at institutions such as the University of Chicago, Eastman School of Music and Duke University.
Their international presence includes concerts throughout Asia, Brazil, Australia, England, New Zealand and Europe.
Appointed in 2021 as Curtis Institute of Music’s first ever Faculty Wind Quintet, Imani Winds commitment to education runs deep. The highly successful Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival launched in 2010, is an annual summer program devoted to musical excellence and career development for pre-professional instrumentalists and composers. The curriculum includes mentorship, masterclasses, entrepreneurial workshops, community engagement activities and performances, with the goal of fostering the complete musician and global citizen.
In 2019, the group extended their mission even further by creating the non-profit organization, Imani Winds Foundation, which exists to support, connect and uplift their initiatives and more.
Imani Winds’ travels through the jazz world are highlighted by their multi-faceted association with luminary musicians and composers Wayne Shorter, Paquito D’Rivera and Jason Moran. Their ambitious project, Josephine Baker: A Life of Le Jazz Hot! featured jazz songstress René Marie in performances that brought the house down in New York, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Los Angeles and St. Louis.
In 2021, Imani Winds released their ninth studio album, Bruits, on Bright Shiny Things Records, which received a 2022 GRAMMY nomination for “Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance.” Gramophone states, “the ensemble’s hot rapport churns with conviction throughout.”
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Imani Winds has recordings on Koch International Classics and E1 Music, including their 2006 GRAMMY nominated recording, The Classical Underground. They have also recorded for Naxos and Blue Note and released an acclaimed arrangement of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring on Warner Classics. They are regularly heard on all media platforms including NPR, American Public Media, the BBC, SiriusXM, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
To date, one of Imani Winds’ most humbling recognitions is a permanent presence in the classical music section of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC.
Mekhi Gladden, guest oboe
Mekhi Gladden is an oboist and English hornist from Atlanta, Georgia currently based in Philadelphia. A recent graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, Gladden has since been playing with numerous ensembles throughout the United States including the Atlanta and Princeton symphony orchestras, Symphony in C, and the Memphis and Baltimore symphony orchestras as guest principal.
They have recently worked at the Composers Conference at Avaloch Farm Music Institute as performance and chamber music faculty. Their upcoming season includes a return to concerts in retirement and youth communities through Astral Artists. Gladden explores experimental improvised music spearheaded by the People's Music Supply in Philadelphia.
Gladden earned First Prize in the Eric Varner Young Artist Competition, the Audience Choice Prize in the Virtual Oboe Competition, and was a winner of the Jan and Beattie Wood Concerto Competition where he performed as soloist with the Brevard Music Center Orchestra.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Seth Parker Woods, cello
Hailed by The Guardian for his “mature artistry and willingness to go to the brink,” Grammy Award-nominated cellist Seth Parker Woods is a versatile artist and innovator across multiple genres. His projects delve deep into our cultural fabric, reimagining traditional works and commissioning new ones to propel classical music into the future. He is an honoree of the 2023 Seattle Symphony’s 25th Anniversary Silver Gala and recipient of the 2022 Chamber Music America Michael Jaffee Visionary Award.
During the 2023-2024 season, Woods brings his autobiographical tourde-force Difficult Grace to San Diego and Philadelphia. He later performs with GRAMMY Award-winning violinist Hilary Hahn at Germany’s Konzerthaus Dortmund. Other engagements bring him to the Chicago Humanities Festival, Illumina Festival in Brazil, and Spoleto Festival in Charleston.
Woods has appeared with the Atlanta and Seattle symphonies, in chamber music with Hilary Hahn and pianist Andreas Haefliger, and with ensembles across Europe. A fierce advocate for contemporary arts, he has collaborated with a wide range of artists representing the classical, popular music, and visual art worlds. He was nominated for a 2023 Grammy Award as a member of celebrated new music ensemble Wild Up.
Woods released his acclaimed debut solo album, asinglewordisnotenough (Confront Recordings-London) in November 2016. Difficult Grace was released as an album on Cedille Records in 2023.
Woods serves on the faculty of the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California. He holds degrees from Brooklyn College, Musik Akademie der Stadt Basel, and a PhD from the University of Huddersfield.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Cory Smythe, piano
Pianist Cory Smythe has worked closely with pioneering artists in new, improvisatory, and classical music, including multi-instrumentalistcomposer Tyshawn Sorey, violinist Hilary Hahn, and composers from Anthony Braxton to Zosha Di Castri. His own “perplexingly perfect” (The Wire) music “dissolves the lines between composition and improvisation with rigor” (Chicago Reader). Smythe has been featured at the Newport Jazz, Tectonics, and Darmstadt festivals, as well as at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart festival, where he premiered new work created in collaboration with Peter Evans and Craig Taborn. He has received commissions from Present Music, Banff Centre for the Arts, Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, Wiener Festwochen, and the International Contemporary Ensemble, of which he is a longtime member. Smythe’s recent trilogy of critically acclaimed albums on the Pyroclastic label has been made with the support of a grant from The Shifting Foundation. He received a Grammy award for his work with Ms. Hahn and a 2022 Herb Alpert Award in music.
Michael Braugher, narrator
Michael Braugher ’14 is a recent graduate of The Juilliard School, where he received the John Houseman Award for Excellence in Classical Theater. His acting credits include The Gilded Age on HBO, To Kill a Mockingbird on Broadway, Romeo y Julieta through The Public Theater Off-Broadway, Hamlet at the Guthrie Theater, and Artney Jackson, Son Come Home at the Williamstown Theatre Festival.
PROGRAM NOTES
I Said What I Said, by Damien Geter
Written for Imani Winds. Commissioned by Anima Mundi Productions, Chamber Music Northwest and the Oregon Bach Festival. Premiered April 28, 2022 in Portland, Oregon.
I Said What I Said is a phrase that was coined by TV personality NeNe Leakes, but also is a colloquialism in the Black community to emphasize a point–usually one that was mentioned (often repeatedly) a time before. I Said What I Said for wind quintet uses musical phrases in repetition to symbolize the continuous conversations Black people have about their (our) experiences living in the world, and how we must constantly defend ourselves against those whose equity lens is tainted.
Giants, by Carlos Simon
Commissioned by Imani Winds and Shriver Concert Hall Series. Premiered May 14, 2023 in Baltimore, Maryland.
This piece is inspired by Black Americans who have influenced me and my identity as a composer— Bessie Smith, Maya Angelou, Ronald E. McNair, Cornel West, and Herbie Hancock. Each movement is meant to embody the work and personality (as best as I can gather) through music. I want to not only pay homage to these giants, but offer a character study through music of their work. Three of the movements are included in this performance.
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PROGRAM NOTES
BeLoud, BeLoved, BeLonging, by Andy Akiho
Commissioned by Imani Winds with support from the Concert Artists Guild Richard Weinert Award, the Imani Winds Foundation and the Kaufman Music Center. Premiered October 26, 2022 in New York City.
BeLoud, BeLoved, BeLonging by composer and steel pan musician Andy Akiho, is a share musical experience created to make the listener and performer join together to commune with each other over an important idea —the idea of HOW we all belong where we are.
The piece was conceived and inspired from the sound of 2019 protests by immigrant detainees at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, NY. It supplies an unflinching, even relentless exploration of incarceration and the humanity of all involved in the system.
Workshopped and performed over the pandemic with a group of incarcerated young men at Rikers Island, the piece follows the theme of Imani Winds’ Grammy-nominated album Bruits, which speaks to the blockage of justice across the United States and the world, offering commentary on the intersection of race and the prison system.
PROGRAM NOTES
I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free, by Billy Taylor (arr. Mark Dover)
Arranged for Imani Winds. Premiered April 25, 2023 at Carnegie Hall.
Jazz pianist, composer, and broadcaster Dr. Billy Taylor originally penned I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free as a gospel-influenced instrumental tune, dedicated to his daughter Kim, and first released it on his 1963 album Right Here, Right Now. Taylor would eventually write the lyrics, with the latter verses assisted by lyricist Dick Lamb.
It was in the mid 1960s that the song was adapted by Nina Simone, during which time she both released her own adaptation on her 1967 album Silk and Soul, and toured the song over the following decade, when it quickly became an anthem of the Civil Rights Movement. The powerful juxtaposition of the simple yet poignant hymn-like melody and the steadfast call for equality and justice, resonated in the collective consciousness of the Movement, and along with other anthems like “A Change Gonna Come,” and Simone’s own “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black,” contributed greatly not just to the fight for Civil Rights, but to the sonic fabric of the 1960s and ’70s.
Through theme and variation, the Dover arrangement pays homage to both Taylor’s trio recordings of the song and is indelibly inspired by Simone’s studio recording, as well as her legendary live performance at the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival. The arrangement opens in a five part chorale, and quickly moves into a soul- and gospel-based groove, featuring the bassoon in both the role of an upright bass and soloist. An improvised clarinet solo follows, interrupted by a sudden modulation into a quintet-wide solo and then immediately into a full fledged gospel shout chorus, during which the quintet melds into the sound and spirit of a Hammond organ and rhythm section, and finally concluding with the theme one last time, this time with the voices of Mr. Newton singing the first verse:
I wish I knew how It would feel to be free
I wish I could break All the chains holding me
I wish I could say All the things that I should say
Say 'em loud say 'em clear
For the whole round world to hear.
PROGRAM NOTES
Fallen Petals of Nameless Flowers for chamber ensemble and narrator,
by Jeff Scott, score and Robert Laidler, poetry
Written for Imani Winds. Commissioned by Detroit Chamber Music Society. Premiered April 9, 2022 in Detroit, Michigan.
“In a shadowed corner of the American judicial system, the application of mandatory sentences of life without the possibility of parole has fallen upon very young offenders, disproportionately so upon young men of color. Against a backdrop of legal systems in Michigan and elsewhere still taking halting steps toward righting this wrong, Fallen Petals of Nameless Flowers combines personal accounts of formerly incarcerated individuals, original poetry by Robert Laidler, and an original music score by Jeff Scott to shine a brighter light on the human side of this issue.
The metaphors of flowers as men and petals as arms are used dramatically in the poetry, as well as the personal stories. This and the colorful instrumentation of the ensemble made for rich source material and composition tools for the score. It is the composer’s hope that this work will help to create a safe space for further discussion, action, and empathy.”
The work was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and Chamber Music Detroit’s Lee and Paul Blizman Endowment for Contemporary Music.
-—Jeff Scott, composer
