Ever since George Floyd's death, orchestras throughout America have committed to performing more music by Black composers. While admirable, audiences can scan the stage and observe a paucity of Black musicians playing that music.
There are many reasons that's true, but I'm glad that clarinetist Anthony McGill is out there doing the work. The first Black section leader in the New York Philharmonic's 180-year history, McGill is also among his instrument's rare recitalists who headline major concert series.
Like the St. Paul-based Schubert Club's International Artist Series. McGill performed the final program of its 2021-22 season on Thursday night, and it proved an emotionally powerful evening — music by contemporary Black composers, interpreted by one of America's most prominent Black soloists.
In tandem with pianist Anna Polonsky, McGill lent the emotionally evocative voice of his clarinet to 21st century works by James Lee III and Jessie Montgomery that expressed unanswerable questions about what it means to be Black in America today.
But he also tapped into the celebratory spirit of another Black composer, Adolphus Hailstork, and took the audience at St. Paul's Ordway Concert Hall to a place of rare beauty with a rhapsody by Claude Debussy, the only non-American composer on the program.
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