Sunday, October 6, 2019

InsightNews.com: First performance of Aaron Dworkin’s “The American Rhapsody”

Aaron P. Dworkin


October 3, 2019

The Minnesota Orchestra will return to North Community High School.

The concert featuring North Community High School dancers and other arts students takes place Oct. 18, 7 p.m., at North High, 1500 James Ave. N., Minneapolis. Hosted by storyteller Beverly Cottman, the evening will include author and spoken word artist Aaron Dworkin and culminate in an “OrchestraJam” in which audience members can participate in a spontaneous musical creation with the Orchestra.

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The evening offers the first performance of Aaron Dworkin’s “The American Rhapsody,” a multi-media work combining orchestral music and spoken word that weaves Afro-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s “Symphonic Variations on an African Air” with the writings and speeches of George Washington, and Dworkin’s own poetic and prosaic interludes.

“As a multi-racial American … I could find no better setting in which to tell our American story. This work brings together the words of a white Founding Father, the music composed by a Black man of the nation from which Washington fought to free us, based on a song sung by the slaves who Washington ultimately freed. I humbly pay tribute to our past and offer a sentiment towards our future with ‘The American Rhapsody,’” said Dworkin.

Dworkin is a 2005 MacArthur Fellow, founder of The Sphinx Organization and currently serves as a professor of arts leadership at the University of Michigan. He will perform as the spoken word artist in these concerts. 

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