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Countertenor John Holiday in Save the Boys
Save the Boys DRESS REHEARSAL PROGRAM
Like Dives in the deeps of Hell I cannot break this fearful spell, Nor quench the fires I’ve madly nursed, Nor cool this dreadful raging thirst. Take back your pledge--ye come too late! Ye cannot save me from my fate, Nor bring me back departed joys; But ye can try to save the boys.
These bloodshot eyes were once so bright; This sin-crushed heart was glad and light; But by the wine-cup’s ruddy glow I traced a path to shame and woe. A captive to my galling chain, I’ve tried to rise, but tried in vain The cup allures and then destroys. Oh! from its thraldom save the boys.
Ye bid me break my fiery chain, Arise and be a man again, When every street with snares is spread, And nets of sin where’er I tread. No; I must reap as I did sow. The seeds of sin bring crops of woe; But with my latest breath I’ll crave That ye will try the boys to save.
Take from your streets those traps of hell Into whose gilded snares I fell. Oh! freemen, from these foul decoys Arise, and vote to save the boys. Oh ye who license men to trade In draughts that charm and then degrade, Before ye hear the cry, Too late, Oh, save the boys from my sad fate. – Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1887)
T Y S H AW N S O R E Y COMPOSER Newark-born multi-instrumentalist and composer Tyshawn Sorey is celebrated for his incomparable virtuosity, effortless mastery and memorization of highly complex scores, and an extraordinary ability to blend composition and improvisation in his work. He has performed nationally and internationally with his own ensembles, as well as with notable artists. He has composed works for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the International Contemporary Ensemble, soprano Julia Bullock, PRISM Quartet, and more. His music has been performed in such notable venues as the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the Village Vanguard, and has has released twelve critically acclaimed recordings. Sorey has received support for his creative projects from The Jerome Foundation, The Shifting Foundation, Van Lier Fellowship, and was named a 2017 MacArthur fellow and a 2018 United States Artists Fellow. Sorey received a B.Music in Jazz Studies and Performance from William Paterson University, an M.A. in Music Composition from Wesleyan University, and a D.M.A. in Music Composition from Columbia University. He is currently Presidential Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania.
G R A N T LO E H N I G P I A N I ST Grant Loehnig collaborates with many of today’s most renowned musical artists as a pianist, vocal coach, and administrator. He serves as head of music staff at Opera Philadelphia and Wolf Trap Opera, where he is also the music director of the Studio Artist program. He works regularly as music staff for Lyric Opera of Chicago. In recital, Mr. Loehnig has collaborated with some of the world’s leading vocalists. Recent recordings include art songs of Karim Al-Zand and a premiere recording of songs of Carlisle Floyd with Susanne Mentzer. As a chorus master with Wolf Trap Opera, Opera News praised his “finely honed, spirited chorus.” He has prepared the chorus and small roles for the Houston Symphony’s performances of Wozzeck, which was awarded the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording. Mr. Loehnig holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and a Master of Music degree in vocal accompanying from the Manhattan School of Music. Before joining the faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music in 2015, Mr. Loehnig served on the faculty of the opera studies program at Rice University in Houston.
M Y F I R ST O P E R A : J O H N H O L I D AY I grew up with music in my house. My grandmother was a singer and a pianist, and my mother played clarinet in her high school band. We listened to a whole mix of music — not classical or opera, but a lot of gospel, jazz, and pop. On Saturdays, my mother would blast out the Clark Sisters to let us know we had to get up and do our chores. My family was always totally supportive of my musical endeavors. The only time I got in trouble was when I was in high school, and I competed to join the Texas Music Educators Association All-State Choir. I’m a night owl, and I would sing my music really late at night. It drove my mother crazy! When I was in second grade, I joined the Fort Bend Boys Choir. We sang in La damnation de Faust with the Houston Symphony and I got one of the two boys’ solos. Denyce Graves was Marguerite. She was so beautiful and elegant, and then she opened her mouth and this amazing sound came out. I thought, “Whatever it is she’s doing, I want to do that.” I went up to her and said, “Miss Graves, I love you so much and I love your dresses.” She took me into her dressing room and showed me all of her costumes and her shoes and her jewelry. I was mesmerized. She single-handedly gave me the idea that my biggest dreams were possible. I had some great music teachers along the way, like Brenda Brothers, who taught choir when I
was in the fourth grade and was the first African American teacher I ever had. My music teacher in high school, Pam Scarborough, was always pushing me to do my very best. She was the person who drove me to my college audition at Southern Methodist University. I saw my first opera when I was a college freshman. SMU had a partnership with Fort Worth Opera and The Dallas Opera: You could show your ID and get a free ticket. I saw Rigoletto at Fort Worth and I loved it all, but especially Indira Mahajan, who sang Gilda. When I came back to school, I couldn’t stop singing “Caro nome.” I had been studying as a tenor, but I told my teacher, Barbara Hill Moore, that I could sing really high. She said, “Show me!” so I sang “Caro nome” — with all the wrong text. Ms. Moore said, “This voice type is called a countertenor. If you’re going to do this, you can’t switch back and forth. You’re going to stay as a countertenor because that will strengthen your muscle memory.” My teachers have been two mezzos and a soprano. I have never studied with a countertenor or with any male teacher, and I don’t think that a man would have taught me any differently. Good singing is good singing. The mechanism is the same, no matter what your voice type. You have to have good posture and good breath to produce a good sound. My
voice teachers are like my mothers. They don’t necessarily like me to describe them that way, but I come from a family of teachers, and I have a very deep love for teachers. This year on March 31, my birthday, Fort Bend County declared John Holiday Day. Everybody wanted to shake my hand and have their picture taken with me. I’m proud to be from Rosenberg, Texas, and most importantly I’m proud to show other little Black boys and girls what is possible for them. I know it sounds like a cliché, but there are so many wonderful things out there, and if you dream about it, you can achieve it. Countertenor John Holiday’s repertoire stretches from Baroque opera to contemporary works. He showed a different side of his talent last year, becoming a finalist on NBC’s The Voice and singing soul, gospel, and jazz.
Reprinted by permission of OPERA America
F R A N C E S E L L E N WAT K I N S H A R P E R ( 1825 - 1911 ) P O E T, A B O L I T I O N I ST, W R I T E R
Excerpt from “A Heritage of Scorn” by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper National Council of Women of the United States February 1891 “I deem it a privilege to present the negro, not as a mere dependent asking for Northern sympathy or Southern compassion, but as a member of the body politic who has a claim upon the nation for justice, simple justice, which is the right of every race, upon the government for protection, which is the rightful claim of every citizen, and upon our common Christianity for the best influences which can be exerted for peace on earth and good-will to man. Our first claim upon the nation and government is the claim for protection to human life. That claim should lie at the basis of our civilization, not simply in theory but in fact. Outside of America, I know of no other civilized country, Catholic, Protestant, or even Mahometan, where men are still lynched, murdered, and even burned for real or supposed crimes…A government which has power to tax a man in peace, and draft him in war, should have power to defend his life in the hour of peril. A government which can protect and defend its citizens from wrong and outrage and does not is vicious. A government which would do it and cannot is weak; and where human life is insecure through either weakness or viciousness in the administration of law, there must be a lack of justice, and where this is wanting nothing can make up the deficiency. It is said the negro is ignorant. But why is he ignorant? It comes with ill grace from a man who has put my eyes to make a parade of my blindness, -to reproach me for my poverty when he has wronged me of my money. If the negro is ignorant, he has lived under the shadow of an institution which, at least in part of the country, made it a crime to teach him to read the name of the ever-blessed Christ. If he is poor, what has become of money he has been earning for the last two hundred and fifty years? Years ago it was said cotton fights and cotton conquers for American slavery. The negro helped build up that great cotton power in the South, and in the North his sigh was in the whir of its machinery, and his blood and tears upon the warp and woof of its manufactures. But there are some rights more precious than the rights of property or the claims of superior intelligence: they are the rights of life and liberty, and to these the poorest and humblest man has just as much right as the richest and most influential man in the country.”
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s story is one of bravery, creative excellence, political consciousness, activism, and determination during the period preceding, during, and after the Civil War. 1825 – Born Frances Ellen Watkins Harper in Baltimore, Maryland, she was orphaned at the age of three and raised by her uncle, the abolitionist Williams Watkins. 1846 – She began her amazing career as a writer by publishing her first book of poetry, Forest Leaves, at the age of 21. 1853 – Frances Ellen Watkins Harper first moved to Philadelphia after meeting William Still, in order to become active in the Underground Railroad. 1854 – She moved to Boston, published her second book of poetry, Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects, and became a noted public speaker for the Maine Anti-Slavery Society, thus becoming one of the first professional woman orators in the United States. 1858 – She refused to give up her seat or ride in the “colored” section of a segregated trolley car in Philadelphia (100 years before Rosa Parks) and wrote one of her most famous poems, “Bury Me In A Free Land,” when she got very sick while on a lecturing tour. Her short story “The Two Offers” became her first short story to be published by an African American. 1859 – A dedicated abolitionist, Harper was one of the few public figures who did not abandon John Brown after his failed effort at Harpers Ferry, instead writing to him and staying with his wife, Mary, at the home of Lucretia Mott (Philadelphia’s leading Quaker Abolitionist) for the two weeks preceding his hanging. 1860 – She married Fenton Harper, had a daughter, Mary, and was widowed in 1864. 1865 – In the immediate post-Civil War years, Harper returned to the lecture circuit, focusing her attentions on education for the formerly enslaved, on the Equal Rights Movement, and on the Temperance Movement. 1868 – She spent four years speaking and teaching in churches and Freedmen’s schools in the South, stressing the importance of education and self-empowerment. 1892 – Harper published her most famous novel, Iola Leroy, at the age of 67. This novel, which was written in Philadelphia, was a best seller and is one of the few books from this period to look at the mid-nineteenth century American landscape through African American eyes. 1896 – Frances Ellen Watkins Harper became Vice President of the newly formed National Association of Colored Women. 1911 – Frances Ellen Watkins Harper died on February 22, 1911. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper is considered the “Mother of African American Journalism” as well as the most famous 19th century African American poet and novelist. In her role as a political activist, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was a brave, principled, and talented advocate for freedom and equality for everyone, speaking for the Anti-Slavery societies before the Civil War and for Women’s Suffrage and Temperance movements after. The study of her life not only gives us a picture of the lived experiences of an intelligent, educated African American woman in the 19th century, but also provides us with a snapshot of Philadelphia as the nation from a perspective that is not usually presented. Despite all her remarkable accomplishments, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s name cannot be found in most history books. Reprinted by permission of Moonstone Arts Center
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Historic Eden Cemetery does not appear on this map. Photo Credit: Robert Lee Smith
A. FRANCES ELLEN WATKINS HARPER HOUSE An author, lecturer, and social activist, Harper lived here and devoted her life to championing the right of slaves and free Blacks.
B. WILLIAM STILL HOUSE While living here, he was an Underground Railroad agent who helped slaves escape and kept records so relatives could find them later. A wealthy coal merchant, Still also helped found the first Black YMCA.
C. INSTITUTE FOR COLORED YOUTH Begun as a farm school. It became one of the first schools to train Blacks for skilled jobs in 1852. It gained recognition under Fanny J. Coppin, principal, and later relocated to become Cheyney University. D. LIBRARY COMPANY OF PHILADELPHIA (librarycompany.org) This indepedent research library specializing in American history and culture from the 17th through the 19th centuries houses an extensive non-circulating collection of rare books, manuscripts, and more. E. HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA (hsp.org) Founded by prominent citizens in 1824 and located here since 1884, this special collections library holds many of the nation’s important founding documents.
F. FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH OF PHILADELPHIA (philauu.org) On June 12, 1796, twenty of Philadelphia’s intellectual leaders formed the First Unitarian Society of Philadelphia. Harper worshipped here from 1870 until her death in 1911. G. HISTORIC EDEN CEMETERY (edencemetery.org) This historic African American cemetery located in Collingdale, Pennsylvania was established on June 20, 1902 making it the oldest existing black owned cemetery in the United States.
KALELA WILLIAMS, Black Histor y Maven Kalela Williams is the founder of Black History Maven, a gathering community that honors all diverse pasts, affirms Black identity and pride, and engages communities in literary, artistic, and cultural conversations. She is the current Director of Writing at Philadelphia youth organization Mighty Writers, and previously worked in literary programming for the Free Library of Philadelphia and James Madison University’s Furious Flower Poetry Center. In addition, Kalela serves on the board of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and writes fiction that connects history with the present. Her essay, “The Three Century Walk” is forthcoming this fall in Making Tracks: Reflections on Walking by New Door Books, and she recently was awarded a Tin House Writing Residency for her YA novel-in-progress, The Rosebine Daughters. She has led literary and writing workshops for museums, organizations, and institutions including the Barnes Foundation, the Philadelphia Art Museum, the Library Company of Philadelphia, Mural Arts, and many others. Learn more at blackhistorymaven.com Watch Kalela’s historical tour of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper in Philadelphia.