Singleton and Schwantner Celebrate Martin Luther King

The music of Alvin Singleton and Joseph Schwantner plays a major role in the Martin Luther King, Jr. concert tributes this month in Atlanta and Alabama. Schwantner’s moving MLK text-setting New Morning for the World headlined the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s concert on January 12, under Robert Spano; and the Alabama Symphony presents Singleton’s PraiseMaker on January 15, led by Fawzi Haimor.

Commissioned and premiered in 1998 by the Cincinnati Symphony for the 125th anniversary of the Cincinnati May Festival, PraiseMaker is a 22-minute work for chorus and orchestra that features texts by filmmaker, poet and frequent Singleton collaborator Susan Kouguell. Fawzi Haimor conducts the event at the Alys Robins Stephens Center in Birmingham, AL - a city historically linked to the Civil Rights movement. Singleton describes PraiseMaker as a "universal, secular and celebratory" work about honoring the past. The title was inspired by the “praise singers” of Africa, who serve as the oral historians and celebrants of the traditions in their communities. A new recording of PraiseMaker was released on the recent Telarc recording The Singing Rooms, performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra with Robert Spano. Order your copy here.

Schwantner’s text is garnered from a variety of King’s writings, addresses and speeches, drawn from a period of over a decade of his life. The composer employs brilliant energy and agile, propulsive percussion writing that translates strongly to the oratory genre. The piece aims to sustain a tone of affirmation without cloying while supporting the texts warmly and with dignity.

Learn more about the music of Alvin Singleton at www.alvinsingleton.com.

Visit www.schott-music.com to view the composer profiles of Joseph Schwantner and Alvin Singleton.

Alvin Singleton
PraiseMaker(1998)
text by Susan Kouguell
for SATB chorus and orchestra
2.3(3.ca).3(2.bcl).3(3.cbsn)-4.2.3.1-2perc-hp-str
 22’

Joseph Schwantner
New Morning for the World (2004)
“Daybreak of Freedom”
for narrator and chamber orchestra
text by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
2(2.pic).2(2.ca).2(3.bcl).2-2.2.0.0-perc-pno-str
23’