'Burleigh, Brahms and Dvořák's New Musical World,' Tracie Luck & Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra Feb. 19

[Tracie Luck]

Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra

Jeri Lynne Johnson, Music Director

February 19, 2011 | 7:30pm

Burleigh, Brahms and Dvořák's New Musical World

With mezzo-soprano soloist Tracie Luck

Independence Seaport Museum
211 S. Columbus Blvd, Philadelphia

Tickets $10-$35

Call: (215) 717-7103
Email: tickets@blackpearlco.org

Group Rates Available.

Special Prix Fixe dinner offer for BPCO ticket holders

Keating's River Grill

Hyatt Penn's Landing

(215) 521-6509

$30 Prix Fixe Menu

About the Concert

In celebration of Black History Month, and in partnership with the Marian Anderson Historical Society, this concert will feature songs by African-American composer Henry Thacker Burleigh, sung by celebrated mezzo-soprano Tracie Luck, and Dvořák's Symphony #9 in E Minor, "From the New World."

Rarely performed by classical music ensembles, African-American composer Henry Thacker Burleigh was born in Erie, Pennsylvania. Burleigh attended the prestigious National Conservatory of Music in New York and in 1893, assisted the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák, one of the most celebrated Western classical music composers in history. Burleigh's role in introducing Dvořák to African-American folk music was substantial.

It was written that "The first time a Negro song became a major theme in a great symphonic work... was in 1893, when Antonín Dvořák's New World Symphony was played."

The performance of Johannes Brahms’ Tragic Overture brings full circle the relationship between American and European music and its place in our shared musical heritage. [Henry Thacker Burleigh (1866-1949) is profiled at AfriClassical.com, which features a complete Works List by Prof. Dominique-René de Lerma]