Of Our New Day Begun A Celebration of Black Musicians

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Kopleff Recital Hall

Organized and led by...

Jeremiah Brown, B.Mu Music Education

Caitlin Norton, A.C. Choral Conducting

Adoration

Florence Price (1887-1953)

arr. Saunders

GSU Symphony Orchestra

Jackson Allred, conductor

DENKYEM

Joe W. Moore III (b. 1986)

Percussion Ensemble

Dr. Stuart Gerber, director

Denkyem is the West African Adinkra symbol for the crocodile. The word Denkyem refers to the crocodiles adaptability - the fact that it breathes air but lives under water. This idea of adaptability is used throughout the piece as the motivic material is passed from player to player, adapting to the instruments used and the ever-changing time signatures. Denkyem was written for the Denkyem Percussion Group from Florida State University.

A Dream

Andre Serrano (b. 2002)

Andre Serrano, rapper

Jay Cutter, drums

Owen Reese, guitar

Chris Sanchez, bass

Sweet, Sweet Spirit

Traditional Spiritual

Doris Akers (1923-1995)

arr. Fred Bock (1939-1998)

Dr. Marva Griffin Carter, piano

Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Banjo Lesson, 1893

Color of My Skin

Caleb Kenard (b. 2004)

Caleb “MoFetti“ Kenard

Adoration

Florence Price (1887-1953)

José Antonio Miranda, saxophone

Dr. Kyung-Mi Kim, piano

Florence Beatrice Price is the first noted African American female composer to gain national status.

Walk in Jerusalem

Traditional Spiritual

arr. Rollo Dillworth (b. 1970)

GSU Treble Choir & Tenor Bass Choir

Dr. Emily Hobson-Gallardo, conductor

Austen Smith, piano

BETTER DAYS

Le’Andria Johnson (b. 1983)

arr. Jeanné Brown

The Voices of Victory

Max Estis, piano

Patience

from Dreamgirls (1981)

H. Krieger and W. Reale

arr. Jeremiah Brown

The Voices of Victory

Max Estis, piano

Tyler Gamble, drums

HOLD ON!

Marques Garrett (b. 1984)

The Voices of Victory

Jeremiah Brown, conductor

Wadsworth A. Jarrell, Revolutionary (Angela Davis), 1971

BHM Rap

Dre “DreTL” Jones (b. 2001)

DreTL, Performer

DreTL is a 20 year old rapper born and raised in Atlanta. He reps his city hard and raps even harder. Friends and family call him Dre, but to his fans he is DreTL, a combination of his name and his hometown. He is inspired by other Atlanta greats like OutKast, T.I., and Future. He recently released his first independent album “Long Overdue” and is quickly gaining traction in his community. He is proud to start his journey as a student at the GSU School of Music, class of 2024.

Bisa Butler, Anaya with Oranges, 2017.

Lift Every Voice

James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938)

arr. Cherub A. Ruth/ Jeremiah Brown

The Voices of Victory

V Calvento, Retrato Azul, 2017

Personnel

JEremiah BRown

Jeremiah Brown is an Atlanta native, and junior at Georgia State University majoring in music education with a concentration in choral. He appreciates vocal coaches, Ms. Vickie Jones for preparing him for college and current vocal coach, Mrs. Alejandra Sandoval for developing his rich baritone voice. He sings in University Singers at Georgia State University directed by Deanna Joseph. The choir had the wonderful privilege to perform at Symphony Hall, Woodruff Arts Center, and the Rialto Center. The choir also received the opportunity to perform at the Athens Classic center for the Georgia Music Education Association (GMEA) conference, the American Choral Conductors Association conference, with Ireland native Emmet Cahill and local artist Amy Little for a Christmas program, and at the choral world symposium in Istanbul, Turkey.

Caitlin Norton

Caitlin Norton is the 2023-2024 Artist Certificate student in Choral Conducting. Originally from Chicago, IL, her intended career path was not in music, but she got involved in choir while completing her Bachelor of Science in Mathematics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Caitlin sang with the UIUC Chorale, Oratorio Society, the Allerton Bach Festival Choir, sat on the board of the Illini Flash Orchestra, co-founded the Erstenblick Quartet, and was bitten by the conducting bug during a stint in the orchestra of a summer theatre project. She often jokes that "I chose math, but music chose me."

After undergrad, Caitlin moved to Tulsa, where she maintained parallel careers in math and music. While in Tulsa, Caitlin was the Artistic Drector of the Hyechka Women's Chorus, part of the oldest music society west of the Mississippi River, and is the founding director of Tulsa's WISE (Women In Song Ensemble). She completed her Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance at the University of Tulsa, where she was Assistant Director for both the Cappella Chamber Choir and TU Chorale, served as the primary accompanist for the conducting studio, and was a winner of the 2020 Concerto/Aria competition. She also held a number of church and community conducting positions, and remains a sought-after guest conductor, choral clinician, and soloist. Although she works mostly out of Tulsa and Chicago, Caitlin has conducted as far afield at Hainan, China!

Here in Atlanta, Caitlin serves as Associate Director of Music at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and for the Atlanta Archdiocesan Choir, sings soprano with the Atlanta Master Chorale, and works with the Atlanta Homeward Choir. At Georgia State, where she also received her Master's degree in 2023, she teaches Music Appreciation courses, co-conducts Repertory Singers, and has served as a collaborative pianist for Tenor-Bass Choir and Choral Union. She is also a founding member, co-conductor, and accompanist for Voces Amicis, a cooperative ensemble of graduate and undergraduate music students at GSU.

MARVA GRIFFIN CARTER

MARVA GRIFFIN CARTER is an Associate Professor of Music History, Popular and World Musics in the School of Music, with joint affiliation in the Department of Africana Studies at Georgia State University. Carter is a graduate of Boston Conservatory at Berklee (B.M.) and of New England Conservatory of Music (M.M.) in piano performance. While at NEC, she heard musicologist Eileen Southern lecture from her bestselling book, Black American Music: A History, and was recruited by her to become a musicologist, concentrating on African Americans. Subsequently she took Southern’s course in African American music at Harvard. Later, Marva graduated from Boston University (M.A.) and the University of Illinois at Urbana (Ph.D.) in musicology, where she also studied ethnomusicology with Bruno Nettl and jazz history with Lawrence Gushee. She is the school’s first and only African American Ph.D. graduate in musicology.

Carter’s administrative/teaching career included: Coordinator, African American Studies Program at Simmons University (Boston); Chair, Music Department at Morris Brown College (Atlanta); Assistant Director, later Director of Graduate Studies, and currently, Co-Chair of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee in the School of Music at Georgia State.

Dr. Carter is the author of the biography, Swing Along: The Musical Life of Will Marion Cook – a pioneer composer of Broadway Black musical comedies at the turn of the twentieth century (Oxford University Press). She is completing a book for the University of Illinois Press which examines the sacred musical traditions and repertoire of Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Carter was organist for a decade. Her article on this history was included in “Colloquy: Shadow Culture Narratives: Race, Gender, and American Music Historiography” in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Fall 2020.

Marva Griffin Carter has been active for more than four decades in the American Musicological Society and the Society for American Music, presenting papers and serving on editorial boards, including the Committee on the Publication of American Music. She received the Society for American Music’s coveted Lifetime Achievement Award for 2020. In 2022, Dr. Carter was featured in Harvard Radcliffe Institute’s webinar on Black Music and the American University: Eileen Southern’s ​Story.