Margaret Bonds

Margaret Bonds and Black Radicalism with Malcolm J. Merriweather

Wednesday, May 4, 2022
10:30 a.m.
Register via Zoom

Last week, Dr. Malcolm J. Merriweather sat down with scholars Dr. Rollo A. Dilworth (Temple University) and Dr. Tammy L. Kernodle (Miami University of Ohio) to talk about the remarkable Margaret Bonds cantatas that The Dessoff Choirs will perform on Thursday, April 28th. This powerful and engaging discussion is full of insight into Bonds’s music, her life and place in history, her collaboration with Langston Hughes, her connection to W.E.B. Du Bois’s essay Credo, and what these two works might have meant to her. The dialogue includes Dessoff rehearsal videos of two movements from Credo, which will be performed in a new orchestral edition by Dr. Dilworth together with Simon Bore the Cross, in a new orchestral edition by Dr. Merriweather, at the April 28th concert.

Grammy-nominated conductor and baritone Malcolm J. Merriweather is Music Director of The Dessoff Choirs in New York City. He is an Associate Professor at Brooklyn College and Artistic Director of “Voices of Haiti.” He has conducted ensembles at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Madison Square Garden, Westminster Abbey, and at the Vatican before Pope Francis. Dr. Merriweather has earned degrees from Eastman, Manhattan School of Music, and Syracuse University. He has been featured as a soloist throughout the United States and has premiered dozens of contemporary solo works. He also conducted the world premiere recording of The Ballad of the Brown King by Margaret Bonds (AVIE Records).

Free and open to the public; this event will be recorded.

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