Voices of the Unarmed: Justice, Love, Resilience
February 14, 2025, 8 PM
Carolina Theatre, Durham
Offering a mix of contemporary and classical composers, this concert honors Black History Month by centering three major works by African American composers. Taking its inspiration from the New Testament gospels and Haydn’s Seven Last Words, Joel Thompson’s haunting and beautiful Seven Last Words of the Unarmed (for chorus and orchestra) is the centerpiece of this program, foregrounding the difficult and painful feelings surrounding race and law enforcement. Each movement is a setting of the final words of unarmed Black men killed by police and other authority figures. Concert Singers of Cary and the North Carolina Central University Choir will collaborate with the DSO in this performance. The concert will also feature the world premiere of Herman Whitfield III’s Overture-Fanfare in G Major. Whitfield, a prodigiously gifted, award-winning young composer, died in 2022 in an encounter with police while he was unarmed and enduring a mental health crisis in his home. William Henry Curry’s renowned Eulogy for a Dream, setting the hopeful and love-infused words of Martin Luther King Jr., closes with King’s exhortation: “We will. . . transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.”