“Raw” can be more spellbinding than “pretty.”
Boston Children’s Chorus annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Concert is staged at the New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall. Photo courtesy BCC
Next Monday, Jan. 18, five young Dorchester singers will help commemorate the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday using a cappella singing techniques from the remotest parts of world to suggest that cries for justice and a longing to return to the natural order know no boundaries.
The Boston Children’s Chorus’s annual MLK concert at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, the very place where Coretta Scott met her future husband, is Boston’s most prestigious annual King musical tribute. With its “Raw Truth” theme, this year’s MLK concert, BCC’s 13th, reflects the increased polarization of race relations in the past year and the heightened feelings this widening division has evoked.
Among the selections chosen by BCC’s Artist Director Anthony Trecek-King are some ‘60s protest songs. From a 1965 Paul Simon solo album, “A Church is Burning” describes the arson committed by three Ku Klux Klan members; it carries the refrain: “ You can burn down my churches, but I shall be free.” And “The Ballad of Henry T. Moore” retells the tragic story of an early civil rights leader whose home was blown up with dynamite on Christmas night.
The choruses will also perform other conscience-searing songs written later, including Brad Wells: “Kalief Browder” (based on the story of 16-year-old Kalief Browder, an African-American boy who spent three years in jail without a conviction and ultimately committed suicide); Trevor Weston: “Bond Music” (based on the words of American civil rights leader Julian Bond); Stephen Feigenbaum: “If We Must Die” (inspired by Jamaican-American poet Claude McKay); and “Glory” from “Selma.”
The edginess is taken even further by BCC’s guest artists.
“Roomful of Teeth” is a Grammy-winning vocal project that describes itself as being “dedicated to mining the expressive potential of the human voice. Through study with masters from singing traditions the world over, the eight-voice ensemble continually expands its vocabulary of singing techniques and, through an ongoing commissioning process, forges a new repertoire without borders.”
Founded in 2009 by Brad Wells, the octet gathers annually at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in North Adams where they’ve studied Tuvan throat singing, yodeling, belting, Inuit throat singing, Korean P’ansori, Georgian singing, Sardinian cantu a tenore, Hindustani music and Persian classical singing with some of the world’s top performers and teachers. Mr. Wells has been working with the BCC singers for the last week so that they can learn the basics of some of these esoteric vocal techniques and sing along with this year’s guests.
On stage with “Roomful of Teeth” will be those five Dorchester residents, themselves multi-year veterans of BCC’s MLK tributes: Shayane Dalencourt-Simon, Abigail Robinson, Demetra Vernet, Nick Flores, and Richard Dang.
The BCC is a multi-racial, multi-ethnic arts education organization that purposefully unites area children ages 7-18 across differences of race, religion, and economic status. Its singers transcend social barriers in a celebration of shared humanity and love of music. Through intensive choral training and high-profile public performance experiences, they learn discipline, develop leadership skills, and bring to audience’s ears and hearts that “symphony of brotherhood.”
Performance time at Jordan Hall will be this Monday at 7 p.m. For ticket information on “Raw Truth,” visit bostonchildrenschorus.org.
