CD 'From the Diary of Sally Hemings' by William Bolcom & Sandra Seaton on White Pine Music

[ABOVE: Left, Alyson Cambridge & Right, Sandra Seaton BELOW: From the Diary of Sally Hemings; Music by William Bolcom; Text by Sandra Seaton; Alyson Cambridge, soprano; Lydia Brown, piano; White Pine Music (2010)]

Sandra Seaton sends us this update on her project: “In the past two weeks there have been two performances of From the Diary of Sally Hemings (the song cycle for which William Bolcom composed the music and I wrote the libretto) at Carnegie Hall and at CMU in Mt. Pleasant. The CMU School of Music invited soprano Alyson Cambridge and pianist Lydia Brown to sing the song cycle on Thursday, February 18. Alyson performed the piece earlier in February at Carnegie Hall in NYC. I have attached a few photos for the CMU performance. Alyson and Lydia's performance was wonderful. They received standing ovations both at Carnegie Hall and at CMU.”

Historically, Sally Hemings is known because of her relationship with Thomas Jefferson. The Copland Fund for Music made a 2009 award of $9,000 for a recording of From the Diary of Sally Hemings. The text is by Sandra Seaton, Professor emerita, Central Michigan University. We have also written about her play, The Will. The music was composed by William Bolcom, whose website notes: “Named 2007 Composer of the Year by Musical America, and honored with multiple Grammy Awards for his ground-breaking setting of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience...”

AfriClassical was granted two very informative interviews with Scott Burgess, Audio Production Manager of White Pine Music, the record label of Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. Our most recent post on this project appeared on Oct. 11, 2009: “White Pine Music: Sandra Seaton's CD 'From the Diary of Sally Hemings' In Editing Stage.” The CD can be purchased from White Pine Music for $15 or CDBaby.com for $14.97.

Music.CMich.edu quotes William Bolcom, Composer:

“There is, of course, no such thing as a real Sally Hemings diary, at least none that anyone has found; were there a real diary, Hemings would have had ample reason to destroy it herself to protect her children’s lives. The present 'unofficial' diary—to use Sandra Seaton’s term—exists because I asked her to write one.

“When Florence Quivar asked me for a cycle on Sally Hemings I was on the point of refusing; it is such a 'now' sort of topic, I feared, and I had not seen any attempts to portray her that I’d liked—it is too attractive a subject for the wrong reasons. Then I thought of Sandra, who’d become a friend because of our common interest in the black Broadway musical of 1921, Shuffle Along, by Eubie Blake, Noble Sissle, Aubrey Lyles, and Flournoy Miller; she is a descendant of Miller and sought me out. The dedication of the cycle, in memory of Flournoy Miller, is in gratitude for his posthumously bringing Sandra’s work to my attention.

“Sally’s world was by necessity an indoor, protected, rather quiet one, and the spareness of Sandra’s language for Sally, just what I’d hoped for, is answered by a stylistic sobriety in my own music. I opted for a harmonically plain language with a somewhat French atmosphere (evoking Hemings’s Paris sojourn), with African American melodic references well to the background. I did not want to fall into the expected cliché in so much work I’d seen on Sally; she was not a cardboard icon, standing for a group. In every way she was unique, an individual; otherwise how could she have fascinated someone like Jefferson for thirty-eight years. - William Bolcom”

CD From the Diay of Sally Hemings
Sandra Seaton, Author
William Bolcom, Composer
Alyson Cambridge, Soprano
Lydia Brown, Piano
White Pine Music