American Composers Orchestra & The Apollo Theater Co-Present THE GATHERING - A COLLECTIVE SONIC RING SHOUT

American Composers Orchestra continues its 2021-2022 season, under the leadership of Artistic Director Derek Bermel and President Melissa Ngan, with The Gathering: A Collective Sonic Ring Shout co-presented by ACO and the Apollo Theater and co-curated with National Black Theatre in partnership with Gateways Music Festival and Harlem Chamber Players, on Saturday, May 7, 2022 at 8pm at the Apollo.

The Gathering is a sonic quest rooted in the African and African American ritual of the Ring Shout, directed by National Black Theatre's Executive Artistic Director Jonathan McCrory and conducted by Chelsea Tipton II with choirmaster Gregory Hopkins. The concert includes music by Courtney Bryan, Abby Dobson, Nona Hendryx, Toshi Reagon, Carlos Simon, Joel Thompson, and Jason Michael Webb. Dobson, Hendryx, and Reagon will also perform.

The Gathering is inspired by the ancestral tradition of the Ring Shout, a transcendent gathering to celebrate spiritual expression, resilience, and healing, with a goal to honor the lives lost and uplift the lives we continue to lead in the ongoing plight against racism, inequality, and the pandemic over the last two years. The centerpiece of the evening is the New York premiere of Seven Last Words of the Unarmed by Joel Thompson, which sets the final words of seven Black men - Kenneth Chamberlain, Trayvon Martin, Amadou Diallo, Michael Brown, Oscar Grant III, John Crawford, and Eric Garner - killed by police or authority figures. Thompson describes the piece as, "a meditation on the lives of these Black men and an effort to focus on their humanity, which is often eradicated in the media to justify their deaths." Singer Abby Dobson will perform her own work, Say Her Name, which is inspired by the #SayHerName campaign of The African American Policy Forum and the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy, lifting up Black women and girls victimized by police. The performance will also feature the New York premiere of the orchestral version of 2021 Sphinx Medal of Excellence recipient Carlos Simon's Amen!, honoring the composer's family's four-generation affiliation with the Pentecostal church, and includes 2020 United States Artist Fellow Courtney Bryan's Sanctum, which draws from recorded sermons and includes the voice of Marlene Pinnock, who was beaten by a police officer in California, as well as the voices of activists in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. These works are in conversation with a newly commissioned piece I Am Loved (and Other Healing Affirmations) by Tony Award winner Jason Michael Webb, and world premiere orchestrations of Grace, Heaven and Benediction by Grammy-nominated musician, songwriter, and actress Nona Hendryx and My Name, A Reflection of Home by Herb Alpert Award in the Arts winner Toshi Reagon, created to honor the present need for a collective space of remembrance. In recognition of the ring shout traditions, the audience is encouraged to wear white.

ACO Artistic Director Derek Bermel says, "More than four years ago ACO began planning with the Apollo Theater to present the New York premiere of Joel Thompson's Seven Last Words of the Unarmed. This powerful multi-movement composition confronts us with the starkest truths of human nature; I hope that each work on the program helps to further illuminate the challenges that Seven Last Words lays before us, both as individuals and as a community. With this project we embark on a partnership with the Gateways Festival, the Harlem Chamber Players, and the National Black Theatre, organizations that have helped bring equity and inclusion in artmaking to the fore; we are so proud to share the stage with them."

The Gathering is anchored by a 70-member orchestra and a 60-voice choir composed of singers, professional and amateur, from multiple African American churches and choral ensembles in New York including Abyssinian Baptist Church Choir, Broadway Inspirational Voices, Convent Avenue Baptist Church Choir, and Sing Harlem Choir. The program also features interstitial video projections by Katherine Freer and Root Chakras written and spoken by Mahogany L. Browne. In addition to the Ring Shout, the narrative focuses on a calling of names - lifting up the names of those who have lost their lives, as well as of those who have fought for equitable shared space.

The Gathering collaboration has included an array of powerful community engagement activities at the Apollo leading up to this concert, with the intent of creating space for hope, healing, and the collective exhale. Two events are upcoming:

• On Sunday, April 24, the Apollo, ACO, and the National Black Theatre present Resistance and Healing: Engaging The Ring Shout. First practiced by enslaved Africans in the Caribbean and in the United States, a Shout (or Ring Shout) is an ecstatic, transcendent religious ritual in which worshipers move in a circle while stomping, shuffling, and clapping to open a space to collectively grieve, awaken joy as a source of liberation, and find love as a form of resistance. A panel of experts, thought leaders, and the creative team for The Gathering explore the historic origins and significance of the Ring Shout, and will then lead audiences through a communal ring shout.
  
• On Thursday, May 5, Live Wire: The Social Justice Playlist will discuss how Black artists have been utilizing their musical abilities to bring Black communities together for decades in a myriad of ways. The Apollo will explore the timeline of political performance and discuss Black artists and their musical contributions beginning in the 19th century to the present day. As the conversation focuses on our current moment, a panel will consider what these performances and performers reveal about the systems within which Black entertainment must exist.

Learn more about the artists and hear their music: www.americancomposers.org/events/the-gathering

About American Composers Orchestra: Founded in 1977, American Composers Orchestra (ACO) is dedicated to the creation, celebration, performance, and promotion of orchestral music by American composers. With commitment to diversity, disruption and discovery, ACO produces concerts, middle school through college composer education programs, and composer advancement programs to foster a community of creators, audience, performers, collaborators, and funders. ACO identifies and develops talent, performs established composers, champions those who are lesser-known, and increases regional, national, and international awareness of the infinite variety of American orchestral music, reflecting gender, racial, ethnic, geographic, stylistic, and age diversity. To date, ACO has performed music by 800 American composers, including over 350 world premieres and newly commissioned works.

ACO offers an array of programs for emerging composers including its own annual EarShot New Music Readings in New York City, which has served over 230 composers since its inception in 1991, and national EarShot Readings, which since 2008 expanded mentorship to 110 composers through partnerships with orchestras across the country, and in collaboration with the League of American Orchestras, New Music USA and American Composers Forum. Readings composers have gone on to win every major composition award, including the Pulitzer, Grammy, Grawemeyer, American Academy of Arts and Letters, and Rome Prizes.

ACO has received numerous awards for its work, including those from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and from BMI recognizing the orchestra's outstanding contribution to American music. ASCAP has awarded ACO its annual prize for adventurous programming 35 times, singling out ACO as "the orchestra that has done the most for new American music in the United States." ACO received the inaugural MetLife Award for Excellence in Audience Engagement, and a proclamation from the New York City Council. Read more: www.americancomposers.org

About the Apollo: The legendary Apollo Theater - the soul of American culture - plays a vital role in cultivating emerging artists and launching legends. Since its founding, the Apollo has served as a center of innovation and a creative catalyst for Harlem, the city of New York, and the world. With music at its core, the Apollo's programming extends to dance, theater, spoken word, and more. This includes the world premiere of the theatrical adaptation of Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me and the New York premiere of the opera We Shall Not Be Moved; special programs such as the blockbuster concert Bruno Mars Live at the Apollo; 100: The Apollo Celebrates Ella; and the annual Africa Now! Festival. The non-profit Apollo Theater is a performing arts presenter, commissioner, and collaborator that also produces festivals, large-scale dance and musical works organized around a set of core initiatives that celebrate and extend the Apollo's legacy through a contemporary lens, including the Women of the World (WOW) Festival as well as other multidisciplinary collaborations with partner organizations.

Since introducing the first Amateur Night contests in 1934, the Apollo has served as a testing ground for new artists working across a variety of art forms and has ushered in the emergence of many new musical genres-including jazz, swing, bebop, R&B, gospel, blues, soul, and hip-hop. Among the countless legendary performers who launched their careers at the Apollo are Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, Luther Vandross, H.E.R., D'Angelo, Lauryn Hill, Machine Gun Kelly, and Miri Ben Ari; and the Apollo's forward-looking artistic vision continues to build on this legacy. Read more: www.ApolloTheater.org

About National Black Theatre: National Black Theatre (NBT) was founded in 1968 by Dr. Barbara Ann Teer, an award-winning performer, director, visionary entrepreneur and champion of the Black Arts Movement. NBT has broken ground as the country's first revenue-generating Black art complex, as the longest-running Black theater in New York City, as acquisitor of the largest collection of Nigerian New Sacred Art in the Western Hemisphere, and as one of the oldest theaters founded and consistently operated by a woman of color in the nation. More than five decades after its founding, NBT's core mission remains the same: to be the premier producer of transformative theatre - theatre that enhances African American cultural identity by telling authentic, autonomous, multifaceted stories of the Black experience. NBT is now envisioned as a means to educate, enrich, entertain, empower and inform national consciousness around social justice issues that impact our communities.

Holding tight to the founding principles of ownership, self-determination and human transformation, NBT continues to reach brand new heights with over 350 original theatre works touring world-wide, including an associate partnership with the National Black Theatre of Sweden. The work and accomplishments of National Black Theatre have solidified its position at the leading edge of Black theatre development, production and innovation, and activating resources for arts sector advocacy. NBT is an AEA Equity house and a member of Theatre Communications Group, A.R.T./New York, Harlem Arts Alliance and the Coalition of Theatres of Color. Under the current leadership of Chief Executive Officer Sade Lythcott, daughter of the beloved Dr. Teer, and Executive Artistic Director, Jonathan McCrory, NBT remains anchored in the Liberationist spirit of the past, tapped into the beating pulse of the present and serves as a catalyzing force for our collective creative future.

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