Two Wings: the Music of Black America in Migration

EISENHOWER THEATER April 14, 2019 The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts presents Two Wings: The Music of Black America in Migration Jason Moran and Alicia Hall Moran, producers Jason Moran, piano Alicia Hall Moran, mezzo-soprano Lawrence Brownlee, tenor Kinshasha Holman Conwill, speaker Farah Jasmine Griffin, speaker Tarus Mateen, bass Pastor Smokie Norful, vocals with Imani Winds Brandon Patrick George, flute | Toyin Spellman-Diaz, oboe Mark Dover, clarinet | Jeff Scott, French horn Monica Ellis, bassoon and the Sweet Heaven Kings Part of The Human Journey Exploration. Jason Moran is the Kennedy Center Artistic Director for Jazz. This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. Patrons are requested to turn off cell phones and other electronic devices during performances. The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not allowed in this auditorium. THE PROGRAM Two Wings: The Music of Black America in Migration FLORENCE PRICE / Sympathy PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR Alicia Hall Moran, Mezzo-Soprano Jason Moran, Piano JASON MORAN Cane I. Togo to Natchitoches II. Coincoin’s Narrative III. Gens Libre de Couleur IV. Natchitoches to New York Imani Winds Jason Moran, Piano JAMES P. JOHNSON Carolina Shout Jason Moran, Piano BILLIE HOLIDAY / God Bless the Child ARTHUR HERZOG JR. Alicia Hall Moran, Mezzo-Soprano Tarus Mateen, Bass Jason Moran, Piano SPIRITUAL There’s a Man Going ’Round Taking Names Lawrence Brownlee, Tenor Jason Moran, Piano PASTOR SMOKIE NORFUL Dear God Pastor Smokie Norful, Vocals & Piano Intermission THE PROGRAM JUAN TIZOL / MILLS IRVING / Caravan DUKE ELLINGTON Alicia Hall Moran, Mezzo-Soprano Tarus Mateen, Bass Sweet Heaven Kings Jason Moran, Piano Migration Tribute Sweet Heaven Kings ANTHONY NEWLEY / Feeling Good, from The Roar of the LESLIE BRICUSSE Greasepaint—The Smell of the Crowd Alicia Hall Moran, Mezzo-Soprano Tarus Mateen, Bass Jason Moran, Piano SPIRITUAL The Purest Kind of Guy Lawrence Brownlee, Tenor Jason Moran, Piano GEORGE GERSHWIN / Summertime, from Porgy and Bess DUBOSE HEYWARD / Alicia Hall Moran, Mezzo-Soprano IRA GERSHWIN Jason Moran, Piano WALTER DONALDSON / How Ya Gonna Keep ’em Down on the JOE YOUNG / SAM M. LEWIS Farm (After They’ve Seen Paree?) Alicia Hall Moran, Mezzo-Soprano Jason Moran, Piano ALICIA HALL MORAN Believe Me Alicia Hall Moran, Mezzo-Soprano Tarus Mateen, Bass Jason Moran, Piano SPIRITUAL He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands (arr. Margaret Bonds) Alicia Hall Moran, Mezzo-Soprano Imani Winds Jason Moran, Piano SPIRITUAL Two Wings Alicia Hall Moran, Mezzo-Soprano Tarus Mateen, Bass Jason Moran, Piano NOTES ON THE PROGRAM Tonight we are gathering to recognize the epic movement of people—American people, Black people—from the Southern United States and those lands where generations toiled in unremunerated labor to all points North and West. Together, we explore a rough chapter in American history—a long chapter, roughly 1910– 1970: the Great Migration. Six million African Americans left the South during this period. Through Two Wings, we settle into the musical worlds defined by this mass movement of people, and we give thanks for the opportunities our great- grandparents and grandparents and parents struggled to deliver to us. The Great Migration shaped my family—and continues to shape my family—just as it transformed the entire nation and continues to echo in the present. I asked my mother, Carole F. Hall—the family historian—about our Southern roots: Our family’s Southern history is rooted in Athens, Georgia. My father’s great-great- grandparents, Hannah and William Hall, were sold at auction in Augusta as children and taken to Athens in bondage to Dr. Edward Ware and his wife, Margaret. William and Hannah eventually married and had four children: Edward, Rebecca, Rachel, and Mary, my father’s great-grandmother. Mary’s daughter, Alice Virginia Sansom, was my father’s grandmother. She was eight years old when all three Hall generations in Athens—never sold or separated by the Wares—were emancipated in 1865. In Athens, site of the University of Georgia, educational opportunities for newly freed African Americans flourished. Alice attended the secondary Knox Institute and Industrial School, built on land donated by three wealthy African Americans, and Atlanta University, the first Black graduate school. In 1878, she married Rev. William D. Johnson (1842–1908), an African Methodist Episcopal Church administrator and orator. Born free in Calvert County, Maryland, he earned two degrees from Lincoln University before settling in Athens. In 1880, he completed his doctorate in divinity. Their children—Mamie, Decker, Hall, Susan, and Alice Irene (my grandmother)— also graduated from the Knox Institute and spread their wings. Mamie raised a family in Chicago. Susie became a beautician in Philadelphia. After Decker graduated from Tuskegee University, he became a Pullman porter and then a Postal Service clerk in New York City. In 1904, Rev. Johnson was appointed president of Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina—the first Black college in that state. Hall, who was a gifted violinist, entered Allen University as a freshman and graduated in 1909. He went on to attend the University of Pennsylvania and the Hahn School of Music in Philadelphia. By 1921, Hall Johnson had become a force in the Harlem Renaissance and had toured with stars such as James Reese Europe. He played in the pit in Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle’s Broadway hit Shuffle Along. After a year (1924–1925) at the Institute of Musical Art (later part of The Juilliard School), he organized the Hall Johnson Choir to honor the traditional spirituals sung by his grandmother, Mary Hall. Meanwhile my grandmother, Alice Irene Johnson (1890–1983), had married Robert Foster of Athens. On the eve of the Great Depression, widowed with their five children—William Robert, Mary Ellen, Alfred (my father), Marcus, and Celeste— she became the last of her siblings to leave the South. She migrated to Philadelphia, before eventually leaving for Pasadena, California, in the 1940s. Pasadena had a civic NOTES ON THE PROGRAM culture comparable to Athens. It was Hall Johnson who recommended the move. Just as he had been the first of his siblings to relocate to Philadelphia and then to New York, he was the first to discover Southern California. He traveled to Los Angeles and lived there periodically, scoring films, producing plays, and directing performances of the Hall Johnson Choir. Alfred Foster (1922–2009) discovered California when the Navy shipped him from Philadelphia to San Diego towards the end of WWII. He met your grandmother, Constance Barrick (1923–2009), at Cheyney State Teacher’s College near Philadelphia. His grandfather, Rev. William D. Johnson, and her grandfather, George Barrick, were both born in Maryland two years apart. But George was enslaved, and when freedom came—with neither opportunities nor education—he headed North, passed Philadelphia, and kept walking until he found steady employment as a gardener on a Main Line estate. It was there that he married Elizabeth Long. Three of their children survived: Edward, Herbert, and Clara. Edward married Vaunita Allen, your great-grandmother, and created a family business that sent all 10 of their children to college. Your Grandma Connie left Cheyney to join the war effort at Sun Shipyard. She became the first—and for decades the only—one in her family to leave the Northeast. She and Alfred bought a home in Pasadena in 1951, and he went on to become a psychologist in the Los Angeles public schools. Likewise, I grew up hearing detailed sagas from the Civil Rights Movement that my father’s parents, Ira D. Hall, Sr. and Rubye Mae Hibler Hall, worked tirelessly to uphold in the state of Oklahoma. They faced obstruction at every level and still managed to earn degrees from Langston University and the University of Oklahoma (my grandmother going on to earn a master’s degree as well as sitting as the first African American appointee to the board of the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education), raise six children, and fight all forms of discrimination. The boldness of those who were part of the Great Migration amazes me. Looking closely at every person who pursued a better life, each becomes heroic—every one. Tonight, Jason and I present a kaleidoscope that examines the output of artists from our jukebox on the subject. Gospel, folk, rock ‘n’ roll, opera, Broadway, jazz, orchestral, and chamber music are all represented here because in all of them is the Black musical imagination that continues to shape the cultural and political landscape of this country. We express our overwhelming gratitude for the lives of the many brilliant artists (hundreds of them) whose music brought our people through the storms—the music that paved the sound waves our spirits ride on, and the music that fortifies each of us on the journeys we take every day. We recognize our music in the work and fascination of other artists, just as we use our freedom to explore the ways in which we gather and build with tools we’ve found along our way in the New World. We trace a narrative written in these songs—they tell their own story about the movement of people, about great artists who sought a community and found a home in Black music. —Alicia Hall Moran NOTES ON THE PROGRAM There are moments in jazz history that burn brightly. When pianist James P. Johnson recorded his “Carolina Shout” in 1921, the father of the “Harlem Stride” piano style was here to stay. Any pianists uptown would challenge each other with “Carolina Shout,” from Duke Ellington to Johnson’s own pupil, Fats Waller. When trumpeter Louis Armstrong’s intro and cadenza to “West End Blues” were heard, the performance became a testament to Armstrong’s precision and inventiveness.

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