University of Chicago: 200+ musicians join together in a stirring call for understanding

Photo from the 2017 performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in the annual Heifetz Concerts.

The University of Chicago Department of Music

200+ musicians join together in a stirring call for understanding and acceptance

"I would know my shadow and my light, so shall I at last be whole... Here is no final grieving, but an abiding hope."

In the late summer of 1939, and on the eve of the British declaration of war, the young composer Michael Tippett began work on a new composition, a musical response to current events. Inspired by the horrific treatment of European Jews by the Nazis, the openly gay Tippett set out to create a new, secular oratorio that would encompass the suffering of anyone who has been "rejected, cast out from the center of our society onto the fringes: into slums, into concentration camps, into ghettos." The result is a stunning piece of art that combines African-American spirituals with twentieth-century classical music. On Saturday and Sunday, June 1 and 2, the University Symphony Orchestra, Chorus, and Motet Choir join together with guest vocalists Kimberly Jones, Leah Dexter, Adrian Dunn, and Bill McMurray to perform this stirring and timely call for understanding and acceptance, and we invite you to join us. Both concerts are free and open to the public and take place in Mandel Hall at the University of Chicago.

University Symphony Orchestra and Choirs perform Michael Tippett's A Child of Our Time

Saturday, June 1 | 8:00 PM Sunday, June 2 | 3:00 PM University Symphony Orchestra, University Chorus, and Motet Choir with Kimberly Jones, soprano; Leah Dexter, mezzo-soprano; Adrian Dunn, tenor; and Bill McMurray, baritone Barbara Schubert, conductor Program: In Memoriam: The Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy..................................William Grant Still I Open My Mouth to the Lord (for Eric Garner)...........Traditional (arr. Adrian Dunn) Wade in the Water (for Philando Castile)....................Traditional (arr. Adrian Dunn) Excerpts from Spirituals for Orchestra........................ Morton Gould A Child of Our Time.....................................................Michael Tippett Mandel Hall 1131 East 57th St, Chicago, IL 60637 Free Admission. Donations requested: $10 general, $5 students Pre-concert lecture: one hour before each performance, Humanities Teaching Postdoctoral Fellow Lindsay Wright gives a lecture titled "Listening Back, Looking Forward: Michael Tippett's A Child of Our Time" in the McCormick Tribune Lounge inside the Reynolds Club.

For more information visit music.uchicago.edu or call 773.702.8484