MELODEON: Soprano Marti Newland in 'Music of Injustice and Revelation' Sunday, November 3, 2013, 7 PM, 122 West 69th Street, New York City

Marti Newland (YouTube.com)

http://www.martinewland.com/

Shannon LaNier 

is the sixth great-grandson of Thomas Jefferson and African-American slave, Sally Hemings (Amazon.com).

MELODEON:
Music of Injustice and Revelation

The Moan of the Forest, or the Cherokees’ Lament – Anthony Philip Heinrich 1840

From the Diary of Sally Hemings – William Bolcom/Sandra Seaton 2001

Sunday, November 3^rd, 2013 at 7 p.m.
Christ & Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church, 122 West 69th Street, NYC

Tickets:
$20 GENERAL/$15 STUDENTS, SENIORS

Marti Newland, soprano, Artis Wodehouse, piano
George Spitzer, narrator
Shannon LaNier, guest commentator, Jefferson and Sally Hemings

About Music Of Injustice and Revelation

Sally Hemings (1773-1835) was one of Thomas Jefferson’s slaves at Monticello.  After the death of Jefferson’s white wife, Martha, Hemings (who through miscegenation was also the half-sister of Martha) became Jefferson’s de facto mistress, and with Jefferson produced six children.  While speculation about their relationship emerged during his first term as president, it was verified only in the 1990s when DNA evidence traced the genetic lineage back through generations of Jefferson's African-American descendants. Hemings is not known to have actually written a diary, but Bolcom and Seaton have taken all the known historic facts about Heming’s life and reconstructed her experience through a fictional/poetic first-person voice.

The Cherokee attempted to use diplomacy and legal argument to protect their interests. During the 1820s, as they enjoyed one of the most promising periods in their history—developing a written language, adopting a constitution and building a capital city -- white settlers kept coming. Unforgivably, the newly minted US state governments did little to discourage these settlers, ignoring federal treaties and abetting the theft of Indian land through bribery, fraud and coercion. The Cherokee turned to Washington for redress, which proved futile.

The Cherokee finally succumbed in 1838, when they were marched 800 miles into an extremely bitter winter across the Mississippi to Oklahoma. This mass exodus was a communal tragedy that came to be known as “The Trail of Tears”. Composer Anthony Phillip Heinrich (1781-1861), an émigré composer from Bohemia and utterly sympathetic to the plight of the Cherokee, wrote "The Moan of the Forest or the Cherokee’s Lament" in response to this monumental injustice.