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Kellen Gray
Masterworks

DVORAK’S 8TH SYMPHONY

March 24, 2023
7:30 pm
March 25, 2023
7:30 pm

Oh Le’ Me Shine

PRE-CONCERT TALK AT 6:30PM

Music is certainly one way to express individuality, but it is also a great unifier, helping to relate people to one another despite their differences. It can connect people across cultures and continents with ideas and feelings. In this concert, two incredible symphonies from two seemingly disparate composers (Antonín Dvořák and William Dawson) will demonstrate how traditional music from their cultures informed their symphonic works. William Dawson incorporated African American spirituals while Antonín Dvořák integrated folks tunes from his Czech homeland.

Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony constantly beckons the listener to dance, though it is not a dance piece. Even in its more solemn moments, the symphony is spirited, graceful, and optimistic. The music soars over and traces the spirit of Bohemia so much that the listener is transported to Dvořák’s home country.

Edward Hart, a friend and frequent partner of the CSO, is a South Carolina composer and dean of the College of Charleston School of the Arts. Hart created A Hymn, from “Dunbar Songs” as a musical setting for a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar – a leading Black American writer from the late 19th-early 20th centuries. Another work – Margaret Bonds’ Songs of the Season orchestrated by Hart – will make its world premiere during this concert as part of the CSO’s Project Aurora. Bonds, who passed in 1972, wrote vocal works (among her many other compositions) called art songs which included elements of jazz and American poetry.

William Dawson’s three movements of Negro Folk Symphony (I. The Bond of Africa, II. Hope in the Night, and III. O Le’ Me Shine, Shine Like a Morning Star!) draw from familiar spirituals, but also traditional African rhythms inspired by a trip to Africa. Yet it is anything but derivative. In fact, its originality brought audiences to their feet when it premiered in 1934. The CSO’s Associate Conductor Kellen Gray will lead this program. Gray recorded the William Dawson symphony with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in January 2022, and the album was just released in October 2022. Click here! 

In collaboration with the CSO and Project Aurora, enjoy an immersive multimedia concert experience as world-renowned Charleston painter Jonathan Green will present curated artwork inspired by the program.

About Project Aurora

“When reflecting on the cities that were the most consequential to African-American culture in the 20th century, most immediately think of the Harlem, Chicago, and Pittsburgh; but most don’t know that Charleston of the 1890’s and early 1900’s was one of our country’s largest epicenters for African-American arts and culture, and that so much of the New York’s Harlem Renaissance and Pittsburgh’s Smoketown Renaissance were directly rooted from the culture incubated in our fair city before the Great Migration. Through Project Aurora, we hope to revive the work of Charleston original Aurorean Coterie in preserving African-American arts and culture, highlight the more complete history and scope of American classical music, and reshape Charleston’s legacy as a cornerstone of American music.”

– Kellen Gray, CSO Associate Conductor & Project Aurora curator

Dvorak

Hans-Hubert Schönzeler, in his 1984 biography about the composer, described Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 as “the most intimate and original within the whole canon of Dvořák’s nine.”

William Dawson

“Mr. Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony took the house by storm. The custom of no applause during a symphony gave way after the second movement to a spontaneous outburst that brought the orchestra to its feet, and at the end the enthusiasm was so great that Mr. Dawson was called to the stage repeatedly to bow his acknowledgements.”
— Pitts Sanborn, The New York World-Tribune, November 1934

Kellen Gray

About the Conductor

In 2021, the CSO’s very own Kellen Gray was named Assistant Conductor of the 125-year-old Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Maestro Gray, a South Carolina native, was a Project Inclusion Freeman Conducting Fellow, and later, Assistant Conductor, at Chicago Sinfonietta under Music Director Mei-Ann Chen. Other prior posts include serving as Assistant Conductor at the Valdosta Symphony Orchestra and one of eight Conducting Fellows at North Carolina’s Eastern Music Festival.

Listen Ahead!

Scroll down to hear the Negro Folk Symphony: III. O Let Me Shine! performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under the baton of our very own Maestro Kellen Gray.

℗ Linn Records Released

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