Halesworth Harmony, together with percussionist Simon Limbrick, invite you to an uplifting evening of music, including new works from the Black Lives Matter Commissioning Project.
Tickets: £10 from The Cut Box Office (boxoffice@thecut.org.uk or 0300 303 3211)
After the death of George Floyd and the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement, a number of singing leaders started looking at how they could respond to these events through music and the choirs that they lead.
Historically, black musicians haven’t been appropriately remunerated or credited for their work. The aim of the Black Lives Matter Commissioning Project is to highlight this issue. Four black American and four black British composers were commissioned to write material for choirs around the globe.
Halesworth Harmony was one of over 50 choirs that contributed financially to this commission. Our concert this summer has four of those songs at its heart.
“Music, when viewed from an Afro-centric world view, is not art for art’s sake, but a functional tool for engaging in all the activities of daily living and coping with the full range of human emotional and spiritual responses to living. . . The function of African music is to weave us together on a conscious level and also about the way in which we tell our history. The musicians are our library!”
Ysaÿe Barnwell, scholar, composer, performer and activist: “Singing in the African American Tradition”
We’ll be singing songs from both the African American and other musical traditions that cover that “range of human emotional and spiritual responses”.