Jazz Series TWO WINGS: the MUSIC of BLACK AMERICA IN
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eighty-eighth season Symphony Center Presents Friday, May 24, 2019, at 8:00 Jazz Series TWO WINGS: THE MUSIC OF BLACK AMERICA IN MIGRATION Jason Moran Piano Alicia Hall Moran Mezzo-soprano Pastor Smokie Norful Vocals and Piano Margo Jefferson Host Seth Parker Woods Cello Rico McFarland Guitar Tony Llorens Guitar Jason Tyson Piano Imani Winds Allison Loggins-Hull Flute Toyin Spellman-Diaz Oboe Mark Dover Clarinet Jeff Scott French Horn Monica Ellis Bassoon Kenwood Academy Jazz Band Gerald Powell Director Bethany Pickens Assistant Director Kenwood Academy String Orchestra Ernestine Fleming-Jones Director florence price/ Sympathy paul laurence dunbar alicia hall moran jason moran jason moran Cane I. Togo to Natchitoches II. Coin Coin’s Narrative III. Gens Libre de Couleur IV. Natchitoches to New York imani winds jason moran james p. johnson Carolina Shout jason moran may 2019 27 billie holiday/ God Bless the Child arthur herzog jr. alicia hall moran rico mcfarland jason moran jerry beach I’ll Play the Blues for You jason moran tony llorens rico mcfarland pastor smokie norful Dear God pastor smokie norful jason tyson intermission roy eldridge Wabash Stomp kenwood academy jazz band coleridge-taylor perkinson Lamentations, Black Folk Song Suite I. Fuguing Tune: Resolute seth parker woods jason moran Music Boxing More News jason moran jason moran More News jason moran kenwood academy jazz band anthony newley/ “F eeling Good” from The Roar of the leslie bricusse Greasepaint—The Smell of the Crowd alicia hall moran seth parker woods jason moran 28 eighty-eighth season george gershwin/ “Summertime” from Porgy and Bess dubose heyward/ alicia hall moran ira gershwin jason moran walter donaldson/ How Ya Gonna Keep ’em Down on the Farm joe young/sam m. lewis (After They’ve Seen Paree?) alicia hall moran jason moran alicia hall moran Believe Me alicia hall moran jason moran kenwood academy string orchestra jason moran Shoulder to Shoulder jason moran kenwood academy jazz band jason moran “F inal Speech” from Selma jason moran margaret bonds He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands alicia hall moran jason moran imani winds traditional Two Wings alicia hall moran jason moran The Symphony Center Presents Jazz series is sponsored by Exelon. Symphony Center Presents is grateful to DownBeat magazine, WBEZ 91.5 FM, and WDCB 90.9 FM for their generous support as media sponsors of this performance. This performance is sponsored by generous grants from The Elizabeth Morse Charitable Trust and Patricia Hyde and the Komarek-Hyde-McQueen Foundation. This presentation is supported by the Arts Midwest Touring Fund, a program of Arts Midwest that is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional contributions by the Illinois Arts Council Agency and the Crane Group. Funding for educational programs during the 2018–19 SCP Jazz season has been generously provided by Dan J. Epstein, Judy Guitelman, and the Dan J. Epstein Family Foundation. may 2019 29 comments I want two wings to veil my face. I want two wings to fly away. And if these wings fail me, Then give me another pair. —From Two Wings, a spiritual onight, we gather to recognize the epic married Reverend William D. Johnson (1842– movement of people—American people, 1908), an African Methodist Episcopal Church T Black people—from the Southern United administrator and orator. Born free in Calvert States and those lands where generations toiled in County, Maryland, he earned two degrees from unremunerated labor to all points North and West. Lincoln University before settling in Athens. In Together, we explore a rough chapter in American 1880, he completed his doctorate in divinity. history—a long chapter, roughly 1910–70: the Great Migration. Six million African Americans Their children—Mamie, Decker, Hall, Susan, left the South during this period. Through Two and Alice Irene (my grandmother)—also Wings, we settle into the musical worlds defined by graduated from the Knox Institute and spread this mass movement of people and give thanks for their wings. Mamie raised a family in Chicago. the opportunities our great-grandparents, grand- Susie became a beautician in Philadelphia. parents, and parents struggled to deliver to us. After Decker graduated from Tuskegee The Great Migration shaped my family—and University, he became a Pullman porter and continues to shape my family—just as it trans- then a Postal Service clerk in New York City. formed the entire nation and continues to echo in In 1904, Reverend Johnson was appointed the present. I asked my mother, Carole F. Hall— president of Allen University in Columbia, the family historian—about our southern roots: South Carolina—the first Black college in that state. Hall, who was a gifted violinist, Our family’s Southern history is rooted in entered Allen University as a freshman and Athens, Georgia. My father’s great-great grand- graduated in 1909. He went on to attend the parents, Hannah and William Hall, were sold University of Pennsylvania and the Hahn at auction in Augusta as children and taken School of Music in Philadelphia. By 1921, Hall to Athens in bondage to Dr. Edward Ware and Johnson had become a force in the Harlem his wife, Margaret. William and Hannah even- Renaissance and had toured with stars such tually married and had four children: Edward, as James Reese Europe. He played in the pit in Rebecca, Rachel, and Mary, my father’s great Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle’s Broadway hit grandmother. Mary’s daughter, Alice Virginia Shuffle Along. After a year (1924–25) at the Sansom, was my father’s grandmother. She was Institute of Musical Art (which was later part eight years old when all three Hall generations of the Juilliard School), he organized the Hall in Athens—never sold or separated by the Johnson Choir to honor the traditional spiritu- Wares—were emancipated in 1865. als sung by his grandmother, Mary Hall. In Athens, site of the University of Georgia, Meanwhile, my grandmother, Alice Irene educational opportunities for newly freed Johnson (1890–1983), had married Robert African Americans flourished. Alice attended Foster of Athens, Georgia. On the eve of the the secondary Knox Institute and Industrial Great Depression, widowed with their five School—built on land donated by three wealthy children—William Robert, Mary Ellen, Alfred African Americans—and Atlanta University, (my father), Marcus, and Celeste—she became the first Black graduate school. In 1878, she the last of her siblings to leave the South. 30 eighty-eighth season comments She moved to Philadelphia before eventually leaving for Pasadena, California in the 1940s. Pasadena had established a civic culture com- parable to Athens. Hall Johnson 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, produc- ing plays, and directing performances of the Hall Johnson Choir. Alfred Foster (1922–2009) discovered California when the navy shipped him from Jason and Alicia Hall Moran. Photo by Dawoud Bey Philadelphia to San Diego toward the end of World War II. He met your grandmother, of Oklahoma, and my grandmother went on Constance Barrick (1923–2009), at Cheyney to earn a master’s degree and sit as the first State Teacher’s College near Philadelphia. His African American appointee to the board of the grandfather, Reverend William D. Johnson, Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education. and her grandfather, George Barrick, were both She also raised six children and fought all forms born in Maryland two years apart. But George of discrimination. was enslaved, and when freedom came—with The boldness of those who were part of the neither opportunities nor education—he Great Migration amazes me. Looking closely at headed North, passed Philadelphia, and kept every person who pursued a better life, each one walking until he found steady employment as becomes heroic. Tonight, Jason and I present a a gardener on a Main Line estate. It was there kaleidoscope that examines the output of artists that he married Elizabeth Long. from our jukebox on the subject. Gospel, folk, rock ’n’ roll, opera, Broadway, jazz, orchestral, and Three of their children survived: Edward, chamber music are all represented here, because Herbert, and Clara. Edward married Vaunita in all of them is the Black musical imagination Allen, your great-grandmother, and created that continues to shape the cultural and political a family business that sent all ten of their landscape of this country. children to college. Your grandma Connie left We express our overwhelming gratitude for the Cheyney to join the war effort at Sun Shipyard. lives of hundreds of brilliant artists whose music She became the first—and for decades the brought our people through the storms . the only—one in her family to leave the Northeast. music that paved the sound waves on which our She and Alfred bought a home in Pasadena in spirits ride . and the music that fortifies each of 1951, and he went on to become a psychologist us on the journeys we take every day. We rec- in the Los Angeles public schools. ognize our music in the work and fascination of other artists, just as we use our freedom to explore Likewise, I grew up hearing detailed sagas from the ways in which we gather and build with tools the civil rights movement about movements that we’ve found along our way in the New World. We my father’s parents, Ira D. Hall Sr. and Rubye trace a narrative written in these songs, and they Mae Hibler Hall, worked tirelessly to uphold in tell their own story about the movement of people the state of Oklahoma.