This is a collection of stories about interesting people doing interesting things. 

COMPOSER’S CADENZA – Georgetown University Antes Up For Selling Slaves With REQUIEM FOR THE ENSLAVED.

As classes start at Georgetown University in Washington, DC this month, there is an album composed by composition Professor Carlos Simon called Requiem For The Enslaved on the Decca label. It is in honor and in reparations for the slaves sold by the university in 1838 to fund the school. Simon is a very busy composer. He’s working on a piece for the Minnesota Orchestra, with a libretto by Marc Bamuthi Joseph that pays tribute to George Floyd. That work will receive its world premiere next May. That’s just one of the many musical assignments he’s working on. One of the tour dates for Requiem for the Enslaved is at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in October.

COMPOSER’S CADENZA – Bill Banfield Beat Covid AND Found A Lost Symphony

What calamity!! Composer Bill Banfield, who’s also a retired professor, an author, mentor and all around happy guy NOW, says life has thrown him a couple of curves. Covid and a symphony score lost for 20 years. Now though, things are back on track. The Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra performed his “lost” symphony this year and there’s more. Hear all the “deets”

COMPOSER’S CADENZA – A MO-HO Releases His Trauma With The Shards Of An Honor Code Junkie

Pain and Trauma are difficult to process. One composer, Blake Allen, found a way to release it with his new album The Shards Of An Honor Code Junkie, produced by No Reverse Records. It’s a musical retelling of his difficulty coming out as a gay man while a Mormon and a student at Brigham Young University.

COMPOSER’S CADENZA – After 222 Years Of Whitewash (?) Joseph Bologne Is Starting To Get His Due

It looks like French composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges might be getting rediscovered. This 18^th century contemporary of Mozart has been lost to history almost since his lonely death in Paris in 1799. The Winston-Salem Symphony, with Music Director Timothy Redmond, is performing a play with music about this Black man, written by playwright Bill Barclay called The Chevalier – A Voice To Be Heard.

Several people encouraged Barclay to pursue this play with music and the Winston-Salem Symphony has joined with two groups to produce it.

Bill Barclay along with documentary filmmaker Gregg Jamback produced a film of the play.

JUNETEENTH 2021

Juneteenth is no longer a day celebrated by people in individual states without federal attention. Now it’s a federal holiday signed into law by President Joe Biden. There are many events honoring the day Black Americans were liberated from slavery. Hear about a few of them including my own experience celebrating Juneteenth in my hometown of Houston, Texas.

Links to events mentioned in the report:

Austin – Stay Black and Live Vol. 2

Chicago’s Musical Pathways Initiative

The Orchestra of New Spain in Dallas Celebrates Juneteenth with Chevalier de St. Georges

The National Museum of African American Music

Groupmuse

Ms. Opal Lee is being honored with a Juneteenth Jamboree

KMFA 89.5 in Austin, is airing two programs honoring Juneteenth.

COMPOSER’S CADENZA – Jimena and Melika

Those of you who create, whether it be music, art or writing, know that it can be a mental exercise in either futility or joy. Two women from very different parts of our world were winners of the 2021 String Quartet Smackdown from Golden Hornet in Austin, Texas. Melika Fitzhugh and Jimena Palma de Gyvés used unusual methods to create their award winning work.

COMPOSER’S CADENZA – Richard Danielpour

A new album released last month seeks to offer some solace to those who’ve had to endure this terrible pandemic. Composer Richard Danielpour wrestled with the pandemic effect himself. In this inaugural (and probably infrequent) edition of COMPOSER’S CADENZA, he talks about his struggles, how Pianist Simone Dinnerstein got him through with the result being their collaboration: An American Mosaic. The album honors those who have been and still are ESSENTIAL.

This is about Carlos Bandera, a Baltimore based composer who’s career made leaps and bounds in the summer of 2018.  

There are more STORIES OF INTEREST on the ARCHIVE page.