Program Notes - Lincoln Center`s American Songbook

01-29 Songbook_GP 1/10/14 11:21 AM Page 1
Sponsored by Prudential Investment Management
Wednesday Evening, January 29, 2014, at 8:30
Lawrence Brownlee: Spiritual Sketches
Lawrence Brownlee, Tenor
Damien Sneed, Piano
This evening’s program is approximately 75 minutes long and will be performed
without intermission.
Major support for Lincoln Center’s American Songbook is provided by Fisher Brothers, In Memory of
Richard L. Fisher; and Amy & Joseph Perella.
Wine generously donated by William Hill Estate Winery, Official Wine of Lincoln Center.
This performance is made possible in part by the Josie Robertson Fund for Lincoln Center.
Steinway Piano
The Allen Room
Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall
Please make certain your cellular phone,
pager, or watch alarm is switched off.
01-29 Songbook_GP 1/10/14 11:21 AM Page 2
Lincoln Center
Additional support for Lincoln Center’s American
Songbook is provided by The Brown Foundation, Inc.,
of Houston, The DuBose and Dorothy Heyward
Memorial Fund, The Shubert Foundation, Jill and
Irwin Cohen, The G & A Foundation, Inc., Great
Performers Circle, Chairman’s Council, and Friends
of Lincoln Center.
Upcoming American Songbook Events
in The Allen Room:
Thursday Evening, January 30, at 8:30
Jason Isbell* (limited availability)
Friday Evening, January 31, at 7:30 and 9:30
Patina Miller*
Endowment support is provided by Bank of America.
Public support is provided by the New York State
Council on the Arts.
Artist catering is provided by Zabar’s and
Zabars.com.
MetLife is the National Sponsor of Lincoln Center.
Saturday Evening, February 1, at 8:30
Heartbreak Country: Michael John LaChiusa’s
Stories of America
with Kate Baldwin, Sherry D. Boone, Marc Kudisch,
Bryce Ryness, Andrew Samonsky, Emily Skinner,
& Mary Testa
Wednesday Evening, February 12, at 8:30
Sarah Jarosz & The Milk Carton Kids
Movado is an Official Sponsor of Lincoln Center.
United Airlines is the Official Airline of Lincoln
Center.
Thursday Evening, February 13, at 8:30
The Songs of Henry Krieger
with Andy Einhorn, Erin Davie, & Emily Padgett
WABC-TV is the Official Broadcast Partner of
Lincoln Center.
Friday Evening, February 14, at 8:30
Beth Orton
William Hill Estate Winery is the Official Wine of
Lincoln Center.
Saturday Evening, February 15, at 7:30 and 9:30
Jonathan Groff
Wednesday Evening, February 19, at 8:30
Marty Stuart & Connie Smith
Thursday Evening, February 20, at 7:30 and 9:30
Portraits of Joni: Jessica Molaskey Sings
Joni Mitchell
*This program will be recorded by Live From
Lincoln Center for future broadcast. Cameras will
be present.
The Allen Room is located in Jazz at Lincoln
Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall.
For tickets, call (212) 721-6500 or visit
AmericanSongbook.org. Call the Lincoln Center
Info Request Line at (212) 875-5766 or visit
AmericanSongbook.org for complete program
information.
Join the conversation: #LCSongbook
We would like to remind you that the sound of coughing and rustling paper might distract the
performers and your fellow audience members.
In consideration of the performing artists and members of the audience, those who must leave
before the end of the performance are asked to do so between pieces. The taking of photographs
and the use of recording equipment are not allowed in the building.
01-29 Songbook_GP 1/10/14 11:21 AM Page 3
Lincoln Center
From Camp Meeting to Concert Hall
by Rosalyn Story
Oh black and unknown bards of long ago,
How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?
How, in your darkness, did you come to know
The power and beauty of the minstrel’s lyre?
Who first from midst his bonds lifted his eyes?
Who first from out the still watch, lone and long,
Feeling the ancient faith of prophets rise
Within his dark-kept soul, burst into song?
When poet James Weldon Johnson wrote these words in 1925 to preface The Books of
the American Negro Spirituals, he set to poetry the question that has loomed since the
first enslaved African sang the first spiritual: given the dark reality of American slavery,
how did this miracle of music come about? And given its humble history, how did this
offering of “black and unknown bards of long ago” arrive at the 21st-century concert hall,
achieving the distinction of America’s purest and most original art form?
Slave songs. Sorrow songs. Songs of despair and songs of hope. From plantation camp
meeting to European concert stage, the journey of the Negro spiritual has been long and
arduous, with intriguing stops along the way. Its seeds were planted in the soil of the West
African plains, where tribespeople, not yet departed for American shores, celebrated birth,
death, and the harvest with a stomp, a cry, a rhythm grounded in the African soul.
It drifted westward across the Atlantic and took root on Southern plantations, where plaintive melodies assuaged pain and offered balm for the sting of the master’s whip. At its
most ambitious, it proved the power of music could make shattered lives whole, if only
for the duration of a song.
Then came freedom, and Reconstruction. By the time the Negro spiritual reached the pews
of the Southern black country churches, and finally the Northern cities and towns of the
black diaspora, it was on its way to becoming America’s most honest and enduring music.
The Fisk Jubilee Singers first elevated the “slave song” to art song status. Fisk University
in Nashville, Tennessee, one of the first colleges for freed Negroes, was in dire straits in the
fall of 1871. George White, director of the university choir, had the idea of taking a group of
students, mostly former slaves, on tour to raise money for the university’s empty coffers.
Traveling northward to cities such as Oberlin, Ohio, the Jubilee Singers sang the melodies
passed down from generations of ancestors—songs like “Go Down, Moses,” and “Steal
Away”—to the delight of audiences who dug deep to help the struggling university. But
while the group raised enough money to save the school, another result proved even
more momentous: a simple, elegant art form stamped with the ethos of the black
American struggle was introduced to the world.
The spiritual, while simple in its construction, enjoyed complex meanings and uses. Some
were innocent proclamations of devotion to a Christian faith foisted on slaves by their
01-29 Songbook_GP 1/10/14 11:21 AM Page 4
Lincoln Center
masters, while others rang out against slavery, and even were encoded with instructions
for escape. For the African American, the spiritual provided at least two-fold comfort: for
those resigned to bondage, it offered a better day, through faith, on that “great getting up
morning” in the “sweet by and by.” And for those who could not endure enslavement,
songs narrated a plan of escape. The River Jordan in “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”
became the Ohio or the Mississippi, rivers to be crossed for freedom, and by “wading in
the water” one could dissolve human scent to evade the captors’ dogs. “Steal Away,”
with the line “I ain’t got long to stay here,” is perhaps the most obvious of all.
Still other spirituals, like “There Is a Balm in Gilead,” brimmed with political fire and stood
as statements against the institution of slavery itself. Taken from the book of Jeremiah
(22:6, 13), the words of scripture are unmistakable in meaning: “Though you are like
Gilead to me…woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, his upper rooms by
injustice, makes his countrymen work for nothing, not paying them for their labor.”
That the spiritual has survived wars, migrations, a civil rights movement, and the assimilation of African American art into American culture (leading to jazz, gospel, rhythm and
blues, and even rock and roll) is testimony to the genius of Johnson’s “black bards of long
ago.” Tenor Roland Hayes, a former Fiskite himself, first sang spirituals in concert, followed by Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson. With each passing generation, another
layer of craft is added to the form. But never has the synthesis of the spiritual with various American and even European musics been more fully realized than with the artistry
of tenor Lawrence Brownlee. Imagine the note-bending of blues, gospel, and jazz—the
soulful notation of Mahalia Jackson or Ray Charles—melded with the complex melismas
of bel canto and the precision of Rossini. Black church raised and conservatory trained,
Lawrence Brownlee, one of America’s most exciting young artists, is the embodiment of
that synthesis.
The evolution of an art form is the full proof of its endurance. Like African American culture itself, the spiritual has not only survived but thrived since its inception. With a new
generation of African American artists, led by the likes of Brownlee, the spiritual finds
itself in more than capable hands.
—Copyright © 2014 by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc.
01-29 Songbook_GP 1/10/14 11:21 AM Page 5
Lincoln Center
DEREK BLANKS
Meet the Artists
Verdi, Donizetti, Bellini, and Rossini, accompanied by Martin Katz. His most recent
album, Spiritual Sketches, which features
ten traditional spirituals arranged by Damien
Sneed, was released in June 2013.
Lawrence
Brownlee
The most in-demand American tenor in the
world in the bel canto repertoire, Lawrence
Brownlee continues to astonish audiences
with the power and agility of his instrument.
He has been featured in nearly every major
opera house and enjoys a relationship with
many premier conductors and symphony
orchestras. Among his memorable engagements are appearances in Milan, Houston,
Philadelphia, Dresden, Boston, Seattle,
Washington, Rome, Berlin, and Vienna, as
well as at the Metropolitan Opera and the
Royal Opera House–Covent Garden. In the
orchestral arena, he has been heard in
Cincinnati, Houston, San Francisco, Detroit,
Baltimore, Cleveland, Chicago, and Indianapolis. He has appeared in Carmina burana
with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at
Tanglewood and in highlights from Porgy
and Bess with the New York Philharmonic
(including a Live From Lincoln Center telecast). Mr. Brownlee has performed recitals
at the Kennedy Center and Avery Fisher
Hall, in Atlanta and Tokyo, and on London’s
Rosenblatt Series and other series across
the United States under the auspices of the
Marilyn Horne Foundation.
Throughout his career, Mr. Brownlee has
appeared on numerous CDs and DVDs
including, among others, Rossini’s Stabat
mater, featuring Anna Netrebko, Joyce
DiDonato, and Ildebrando d’Arcangelo with
Antonio Pappano leading the Accademia
Nazionale di Santa Cecilia Orchestra and
Chorus; the Metropolitan Opera’s 2010 HD
relay of Armida and 2009 production of La
Cenerentola with Elina Garanča; and a solo
disc featuring Italian songs by Schubert,
Mr. Brownlee was named the Seattle
Opera’s 2008 Artist of the Year. He received
the Opera Company of Philadelphia’s 2007
Alter Award for Artistic Excellence and was
the 2006 winner of both the Marian Anderson
Prize and the Richard Tucker Award.
Damien Sneed
A sought-after pianist, organist, vocal
coach, conductor, composer, arranger, lecturer, and producer, Damien Sneed (piano)
is a native of Augusta, Georgia. He received
a bachelor of music degree in piano performance from Howard University and a master of music degree from New York
University. His professional affiliations have
included the City University of New York as
a professor of music, The Juilliard School as
a staff accompanist, New Brunswick
Theological Seminary as an instructor, and
Yamaha as an endorsed Influential Artist.
Mr. Sneed served as the musical director for
season four of the hit gospel singing competition Sunday Best on BET. His conducting
debut took place at Jazz at Lincoln Center in
2008 with the world premiere of Wynton
Marsalis’s Abyssinian Mass with the Jazz at
Lincoln Center Orchestra and a 150-voice
choir. In 2009 Mr. Sneed accompanied
Jessye Norman for five spirituals that he
arranged at the reopening of Ford’s Theatre
in Washington, D.C., for President Barack
Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.
01-29 Songbook_GP 1/10/14 11:21 AM Page 6
Lincoln Center
He has served as music director for gospel
artists including Karen Clark Sheard, Kim
Burrell, Twinkie Clark, Dorinda Clark-Cole,
Richard Smallwood, Donnie McClurkin, and
Marvin Sapp. Mr. Sneed has also performed
with Stevie Wonder, Carlos Santana, David
Sanborn, Kenny Burrell, Hezekiah Walker,
American Idol’s Fantasia Barrino, George Huff
and Anwar Robinson, Ashford & Simpson,
the St. Louis Symphony, the Minnesota
Orchestra, and the Boys Choir of Harlem.
Mr. Sneed was nominated for a 2010
Grammy for Best Traditional Gospel Album
for his work as co-producer, vocal arranger,
background vocalist, music director, and keyboardist on Vickie Winans’s How I Got Over.
He recently recorded Spiritual Sketches with
Lawrence Brownlee, featuring Mr. Sneed’s
arrangements of African American spirituals
and released on Mr. Sneed’s independent
record label, LeChateau Earl Records. His
newest CD, LIVE in Baltimore, featuring his
group, The Levites, will be released this winter. Learn more at damiensneed.com.
American Songbook
In 1998, Lincoln Center launched American
Songbook, dedicated to the celebration of
popular American song. Designed to highlight and affirm the creative mastery of
America’s songwriters from their emergence at the turn of the 19th century up
through the present, American Songbook
spans all styles and genres, from the
form’s early roots in Tin Pan Alley and
Broadway to the eclecticism of today’s
singer-songwriters. American Songbook
also showcases the outstanding interpreters
of popular song, including established and
emerging concert, cabaret, theater, and
songwriter performers.
Lincoln Center for the
Performing Arts, Inc.
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
(LCPA) serves three primary roles: presenter of artistic programming, national leader
in arts and education and community relations, and manager of the Lincoln Center
campus. A presenter of more than 3,000
free and ticketed events, performances,
tours, and educational activities annually,
LCPA offers 15 programs, series, and festivals including American Songbook, Great
Performers, Lincoln Center Festival, Lincoln
Center Out of Doors, Midsummer Night
Swing, the Mostly Mozart Festival, and the
White Light Festival, as well as the Emmy
Award–winning Live From Lincoln Center,
which airs nationally on PBS. As manager of
the Lincoln Center campus, LCPA provides
support and services for the Lincoln Center
complex and the 11 resident organizations.
In addition, LCPA led a $1.2 billion campus
renovation, completed in October 2012.
01-29 Songbook_GP 1/10/14 11:21 AM Page 7
Lincoln Center
Lincoln Center Programming Department
Jane Moss, Ehrenkranz Artistic Director
Hanako Yamaguchi, Director, Music Programming
Jon Nakagawa, Director, Contemporary Programming
Lisa Takemoto, Production Manager
Bill Bragin, Director, Public Programming
Charles Cermele, Producer, Contemporary Programming
Kate Monaghan, Associate Director, Programming
Jill Sternheimer, Producer, Public Programming
Mauricio Lomelin, Associate Producer, Contemporary Programming
Nicole Cotton, Production Coordinator
Regina Grande, Assistant to the Artistic Director
Julia Lin, Programming Associate
Ann Crews Melton, Programming Publications Editor
Kristin Renee Young, House Seat Coordinator
For American Songbook
Matt Berman, Lighting Design
Scott Stauffer, Sound Design
Mr. Brownlee’s representation:
IMG Artists
www.imgartists.com
Mr. Sneed’s representation:
Jazz Management Group
www.jazzmanagementgroup.com
01-29 Songbook_GP 1/10/14 11:21 AM Page 8