Victor Johnson, left and Rashaad Calaham
Sing their names
Turtle Creek Chorale ensembles give voice to victims
RICH LOPEZ | Staff writer
rich@dallasvoice.com
Michael Brown. Trayvon Martin. Oscar Grant. Eric Garner. Kenneth Chamberlain. Amadou Diallo. John Crawford.
These names will be front and center on Sunday as, for its next show, the Turtle Creek Chorale presents its small ensemble showcase Words, which looks to be a powerful show that also serves as a memorial to those seven Black men who were victims of police brutality and others in authority.
The concert is likely to be an emotional one, but it will also offer hope.
“When you hear these words sung, it will really be a profound experience,” TCC Artistic Director Sean Baugh said. “The songs will make you look at their lives differently, especially when you hear the final words spoken by these victims sung by the chorale.”
TCC small ensembles will perform Words Sunday at 6 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church.
This season, the chorale has been exploring racial inequity. That was most recently seen in last summer’s performance of Dreamland: Tulsa 1921, based on the incidents of the 1921 Tulsa massacre of about 300 Black residents in the area known as Black Wall Street.
This Sunday’s show reflects on more recent incidents that are fresher in today’s dialogue of inequity.
The ensemble Coloratura will be among the highlights of the show. Although this is not Coloratura’s first appearance, Words will showcase the ensemble of singers made up entirely of people of color and led by Victor Johnson.
“We sang back in June, but we had only been meeting for a few weeks,” Johnson said by phone. “Now we have spent six months together rehearsing, and this will be the time to show that we are really a musical presence with the chorale.”
With just more than 20 singers (all of whom also sing with the larger chorale), Coloratura will perform Johnson’s original composition “I Will Sing Your Name,” with text by Theresa Pritchard written as a response in 2020 to all the shootings of African-Americans and during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement. Although the piece has been performed before, this concert will mark a first for Johnson who will conduct Coloratura this time.
“A choir performed it, but a major piece was omitted,” Johnson said. “I pulled it for this concert because it is a perfect fit, and now the piece can be performed the way I envisioned it. That’s exciting to me as a composer, but it’s even more important to pay tribute to these men.”
The concert will also feature the multi-movement choral work “Seven Last Words of the Unarmed” by Atlanta-based composer Joel Thompson.
Premiering in 2015, Thompson’s piece was inspired by the structure of Haydn’s “Seven Last Words of Christ,” but also by the ongoing killings of Black men in this country. In his composition, Thompson incorporated victims’ last words — either said or written — through different styles of music.
“It’s hard to even talk about these issues but the singers have really dedicated themselves to singing about the lives of these victims,” Baugh said. “And this is strictly a choral performance — stripped down to just these ‘Words.’”
One of the conductors of Thompson’s piece is Rashaad Calaham. They direct the first four movements of “Seven Last Words of the Unarmed.”
“It has been a solemn and heavy experience, but we look at it through the lens of hearing this and being open-minded to the struggles that we have to go through as African-American men,” Calaham said.
For them, working on this particular show has been both hard and rewarding. “I’m excited to share this message not only with the singers but with the audience,” Calaham said. “This will be a really moving experience.”
Tickets are pay what you can at Turtle- CreekChorale.com.