Join us on Sunday, October 24th at 1 PM on WRTI 90.1 and Monday, October 25th at 7 PM on WRTI HD-2 to hear a 2019 performance of Hannibal Lokumbe's self-proclaimed gift to Philadelphia: Healing Tones, and Jean Sibelius's Symphony No. 2, which has become a signature piece for the Orchestra.
Hannibal, a composer and jazz trumpeter, underwent a spiritual awakening in the 1970s that reached its zenith after he was cured of pneumonia by a tribal healer in Kenya. Healing Tones is his "hymn to Philadelphia, and its life-givers and healers." Its a world-premiere perfomance and a Philadelphia Orchestra commission. Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts.
During the composition of Healing Tones, Hannibal worked directly with diverse groups—the inmates of the Philadelphia Detention Center in Holmesburg, and the Broad Street Ministry among them—and their input shaped and informed the oratorio-like work.
Though he has been writing "spiritatorios," as he calls them, for three decades, this is Hannibal’s first composition to be driven primarily by text, in this case his own.
It takes the form of dialogues between the Everlasting (or Creator-God, voiced by a mezzo-soprano), the Eternal Mother (soprano), and the Shaman (tenor). The chorus represents the Ancestors, symbolized by the moon, and the orchestra and conductor are the Primordial Force, or the sun.
In Sunday’s broadcast, The Eternal Mother is American soprano Karen Slack, who made her Philadelphia Orchestra debut in July 2001; The Creator-God is the voice of mezzo-soprano Funmike Lagoke, a Nigerian-American born in Washington, DC, and raised in Lagos and London, and she makes her Philadelphia Orchestra debut with this performance; and tenor Rodrick Dixon, who made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 2008, is the voice of the Shaman.
The choral forces are those of the critically acclaimed Morgan State University Choir, and the Philadelphia Heritage Chorale, presenters of a broad range of choral literature, with a special commitment to music born of the African diaspora, or created by composers of African descent.
The sound of the shofar opens Healing Tones, in remembrance of those who lost their lives at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life/Or L'Simcha synagogue. It's played by Audrey Glickman, who was leading an early morning service when a gunman carried out a mass shooting inside the house of worship in October, 2018.
Following intermission, the Philadelphians perform the second of Jean Sibelius’s seven symphonies, a work long associated with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and with a finale as majestic and emotionally powerful as any in music.
During intermission, WRTI’s Debra Lew Harder speaks backstage with Hannibal, and Susan Lewis talks about the program with Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
PROGRAM:
Hannibal: Healing Tones
Veil One: The Tones of Peace
Veil Two: The Tones of War
Veil Three: The Tones of Healing
Karen Slack, soprano
Funmike Lagoke, mezzo-soprano
Rodrick Dixon, tenor
The Morgan State University Choir
The Philadelphia Heritage Chorale
INTERMISSION
Sibelius: Symphony No. 2
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor
Listen to The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert broadcasts, every Sunday at 1 PM on WRTI 90.1, streaming online at WRTI.org, and on the WRTI mobile app! Listen again on Mondays at 7 PM on WRTI HD-2.
Listen on demand for up to two weeks after broadcast on WRTI Replay! Info here.
