Dr. Timothy Holley Presents Faculty Recitals, 'Shapeshifters, Bluesmen and Sacred Circles' 7 PM Sept. 29 & 4 PM Oct. 20, North Carolina Central University

[Dr. Timothy W. Holley]

Tania Justina León and Adolphus Cunningham Hailstork are featured at AfriClassical.com:

Dr. Timothy Holley will present a pair of faculty recital performances on Saturday, September 29, 7:00 pm, and October 20, 2012 in B. N. Duke Auditorium at 4:00 pm at North Carolina Central University.  The program, titled “Shapeshifters, Bluesmen and Sacred Circles” will feature the solo cello music of African-American composers. 

The composers featured on this program are John E. Price, Dorothy Rudd Moore, Tania León, Trevor Weston, Noel Da Costa and Adolphus Hailstork—four of whom are still alive and quite active!!  This majority-group of composers represents the generation that came of age in the 1960s and helped to stoke the fires of change via the Civil Rights Movement.  Their lives and works reflect that generation’s push for full social and political inclusion, full artistic appreciation and professional opportunity, and the attempt of laying full claim to American equality in the greatest possible sense while maintaining their African-American heritage.

Trevor Weston represents the younger generation who’ve come of age after the apex of the Civil Rights Movement and benefited from its forward progress.  His work, “Shapeshifter” (The Angry Bluesman) is one of the major works of the program.  Its title draws more from a “shared” vocabulary--the blues and the vast menu of technologically produced sounds.  The program’s closing work, Theme & Variations of Adolphus Hailstork uses a Shaker melody (“Draw the Sacred Circle Closer”) that resembles two other well-known American folk-song melodies: “Barbara Allen” and “Simple Gifts” (the latter which Aaron Copland used in his ballet score “Appalachian Spring").

The works of Price, Moore, Leon and Da Costa explore the varieties of melodic and expressive capacities through the medium of the blues and other folk music sources.  Each work has its own distinct sound-world, but each manages to somehow avoid inordinate duplication of formal structure and expressive gesture.  The most formidable challenge of this program to the listener…might be the absence of the piano!!

The program is free and open to the general public.