by Stephanie Manning
HAPPENING TODAY:
If you’re free around lunchtime today, you’re in luck, with two musical offerings at 12:00 noon.
At Trinity Cathedral’s Brownbag Concert Series, hear from the Cleveland Institute of Music Guitar Studio of Jason Vieaux. Or, venture slightly west to Ohio City and another Trinity — Trinity Lutheran Church — for Music Near the Market. Organist Florence Mustric (pictured) will perform “simply perfect” music by composers ranging from Pachelbel to Mendelssohn and Grigny to Demessieux.
For more details on these concerts and more, visit our Concert Listings.
TODAY’s ALMANAC:
by Jarrett Hoffman
Composer, keyboardist, and choral director R. Nathaniel Dett, a champion of the use of African American folk songs and spirituals in composing for the concert stage, died of a heart attack in Battle Creek, Michigan on this date in 1943. He was on tour with a Women’s Army Corps chorus of the United Service Organization, having joined the USO as a choral advisor to support American troops during World War II.
Dett was also an alumnus of Oberlin Conservatory, a connection that was highlighted in January 2023 when orchestral and choral forces from Oberlin traveled to Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium for a program that was capped off by Dett’s The Ordering of Moses. The cast of soloists included a pair of alumni — Chabrelle Williams (soprano) and Limmie Pulliam (tenor) — as well as guests Ronnita Miller (mezzo-soprano) and Eric Greene (baritone). The conductor was Raphael Jiménez, and the choir was prepared by Gregory Ristow and Ben Johns. Read our review here.
Click here to listen to The Ordering of Moses in a recording from 1968 by the Talladega College Choir (under the direction of Frank Harrison), the Mobile Symphony Orchestra (led by William Levi Dawson), and soloists Jeanette Walters, soprano, Carol Brice, contralto, John Miles, tenor, and John Work, baritone. (Head to the 15:08 mark to hear Dett’s powerful setting of Go Down, Moses.)
And click here to watch a panel discussion titled Cultural Context in Dett’s “The Ordering of Moses” presented in January at Kaufman Music Center’s Merkin Hall in conjunction with Oberlin’s Carnegie concert. Moderated by Courtney-Savali Andrews, assistant professor of African American and African diasporic musics at Oberlin, the discussion brought together prominent scholars and performers from the fields of African American music, choral music, ethnomusicology, music theory, and religion to explore Dett’s music, life, and ideas.
