John Malveaux: Roy Harris, Long Beach, Los Angeles

Roy Ellsworth Harris (1898-1979)

John Malveaux of 

www.MusicUNTOLD.com 

writes:

Long Beach resident John Malveaux befriended American composer Roy Harris in 1977. The Long Beach Central Area Association is a 24+ year volunteer 501(c)(3) tax exempt non-profit corporation. MusicUNTOLD is the event production arm of LBCAA and John Malveaux is president of LBCAA.

Roy Harris Symphony ‘1933’ was the first commercially recorded symphony by an American record company, CBS Records in 1934. On April 14, 1965, Roy Harris Symphony no.10 ‘Abraham Lincoln Symphony’ premiered at Long Beach State College with the Long Beach Symphony on the centennial of Predident Lincoln’s murder.

Roy Harris ‘Bicentennial Symphony’, aka 14^th Symphony, commissioned by California State University Los Angeles, premiered at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. with the National Symphony Orchestra and 100 singers from Texas in 1976 to celebrate the 200th birthday of our nation. The work was written for orchestra with large chorus.  The chorus carries the larger part of the work with passages from the Preamble to the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, and the Emancipation Proclamation as well as original passages.

The Bicentennial Symphony was not performed again until June 13, 2009 as centerpiece of ‘Juneteenth: Celebrating the Bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln‘ with the MusicUNTOLD Orchestra & Chorale at Martin Luther King Jr. Park in Long Beach, Ca. Juneteenth is the oldest celebration in the nation commemorating the ending of slavery. The performance was co-sponsored by the City of Long Beach Parks Recreation & Marine Department and the Long Beach Central Area Association.

MusicUNTOLD and CSULA Department of Music will co-produce a concert to celebrate the 150^th Anniversary of the 13^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (ending slavery) on January 17, 2015 at Luckman Fine Arts Complex at CSULA. The centerpiece of the celebration will be the Los Angeles premiere of Roy Harris ‘Bicentennial Symphony’. Additional music by American composers Aaron Copland and Ulysses Kay will also be performed along with an original poem/song honoring the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by South Korean composer Joopoong Kim.

Please visit www.calstatela.edu/mtd and click on the buy tickets tab, “Roy Harris Symphony No. 14, Bicentennial Symphony”.

For additional info, please contact John Malveaux, (562)4364352, jmalveaux@gmail.com, www.musicuntold.com.

John Malveaux