Roger Donald Dickerson
Our introduction to the music of composer Roger Dickerson was his composition Essay for Band, on the CD Out of the Depths: Music by African-American Composers; Citadel 88143 (2003). On November 7, 2011 AfriClassical posted: "The 'Hindemithian' sound of 'Essay for Band' seems to come by way of Dickerson's teacher at Indiana."
About The Composer: Roger Donald Dickerson
Roger Dickerson's musical quest
began as a boy involved in formal piano lessons while listening,
at the same time, to music in the streets of New Orleans. The two
musical traditions easily embraced within him. Dickerson's interests
and musical studies have taken him throughout America, to Europe, the
Middle East and China. Over the years, he has won high praise for
his widely performed compositions from performers, conductors and
leading music critics alike He was the recipient, in 2008, of a
Lifetime Achievement
Award presented at the
Annual
Classical Music Awards
Tribute of New
Orleans’ Gambit Magazine.
As a Hurricane Katrina
evacuee from New Orleans, Dickerson landed in Roswell, New Mexico and
became the inspiration for a world class festival. The Pecos
Valley Jazz and Arts Festival—founded
in 2006, and since renamed the ROSWELL
JAZZ FESTIVAL—commissioned
Dickerson’s A
Flower Blooms in the Desert. The
work, written in 2007 for members of three Roswell church choirs,
received three memorable premiere performances, in three different
locations--on the same day during the festival.
Pulitzer Nominations
were received by Dickerson for
both his A Musical
Service for Louis
(a Requiem for Louis Armstrong), 1972,
and his New Orleans
Concerto for
piano and orchestra in
1976. These commissioned works were premiered under the baton of
Werner Torkanowsky conducting the New Orleans Philharmonic Symphony
Orchestra. The composer became the subject of a sixty minute
documentary film, New
Orleans Concerto, which
was made a PBS Special for national television.
Dickerson, a native New
Orleanian, earned a BA degree (cum laude) in music from Dillard
University, an MM degree in music composition from Indiana University
and studied composition on two Fulbright
Fellowships at the
Akademie fuer Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna, Austria. He
has been the recipient of numerous commissions and awards. A retired
university professor, Dickerson has served as Program Associate in
Humanities with the Institute for Services to Education,
Inc. (Washington, D.C.), Adjunct Professor for composition and
orchestration at Xavier University, Lecturer of Music at Dillard
University and as University Choir Director, and Music Coordinator,
at Southern University at New Orleans. In recent years,
Dickerson--as an associate in composition--has worked with Thelonius
Monk Institute students at Loyola University of New Orleans.
Presently, the music for Dickerson's musical, PREACHER
MAN! PREACHER
MAN!,
with playwright John O’Neal, is nearing completion. The work, a
full-evening musical
comedy, is firmly set
in 1948 New Orleans. Having been in progress over the years,
composer Dickerson is pleased with the outcome of this full length
work. The book and musical score are both deeply rooted in the
culture and traditions of New Orleans.
About The Composition
In the Fall of 2001, the creation
of an art song to honor the memory of Henriette Delille was set in
motion by an inspired request from Ms. Veronica Lee, Associate of
Sisters of the Holy Family. The work, for high voice and piano,
immediately became--even before its completion--a powerful source of
inspiration vividly indicating other musical versions of itself. The
versions all seem to demand realities of their own, requiring musical
forms appropriate to their expression. For
the Love of Jesus was
premiered June, 2002 in the Chapel at the Mother House of the Sisters
of the Holy Family by soprano Shirley Adelia Stewart with composer
Dickerson at the piano.
Mother
Henriette Delille (1812-1862), who is Foundress of the Sisters of The
Holy Family, has since been declared Venerable
by Rome toward
Sainthood. Her cause is in the canonization process at the Vatican.
The
second emerging version of For
the Love of Jesus easily
took shape. The expression fully declared itself through the medium
of the symphony orchestra accompanying the solo soprano voice.
World premiere
performances of this version were programmed February 17, 18, 2007 by
the Wilmington Symphony Orchestra of North Carolina with soprano Joy
Murrell and Steven Errante, conductor of the Wilmington Symphony
Orchestra.
Newest
of the musical versions--and the third score spawn in the For
The Love of Jesus series—is
a setting of the composition for concert choir (SATB) with piano
accompaniment. Here, the musical expression has found portals of
release provided by the mixed choral voices—and by expansion of the
text within itself. The numerous voices now allow harmonic and
rhythmic treatment of the vocal line not possible—at all—in
earlier versions featuring a single solo voice. This choral version
has clearly demanded its own reality. It also quietly declares that
a simplified version, of itself, is now necessary—a version
designed for young school choirs.
Roger
Dickerson anticipates, looking forward, that the concert choir
version of his composition will be utilized in Henriette Delille's
beatification
mass--when that
time arrives.
Comment by email:
Comment by email:
Hello Mr. Zick, THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH!!!!! I truly appreciate your confidence and support!!!! God bless, Val [Valerie Anne Jones Francis]
2 comments:
Thank you Mr. Dickerson for being inspired by Sister Henriette Delille.
where may MusicUNTOLD obtain the score for voice and piano of FOR THE LOVE OF JESUS
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