New School Studio Orchestra is proud to present Revolutionary Big Band Music with a program featuring Cal Massey's Black Liberation Movement Suite, Fred Ho's Struggle for a New World Suite, and Sebastian Alexander Johnson's Unity & Struggle (for Fred Ho).
Sebastian Alexander Johnson (BFA, School of Jazz and Contemporary Music '22) proposed this program with the goal of continuing the legacy and spreading the inspiration of two revolutionary big band composers and leaders with amazing under-recognized history.
This first piece is Cal Massey's Black Liberation Movement Suite, commissioned in 1969 by Eldridge Cleaver on behalf of the Black Panther Party in Algeria. The piece pays homage to many key figures in the black liberation struggle in the USA. Massey was a musician whose legacy has been forgotten by many.
The next piece is Fred Ho's Struggle for a New World Suite (2006). Ho was extremely inspired by Massey's life and work, and worked to get his music, particularly the BLM Suite, performed multiple times throughout his life. Ho went on to write his own big band music near the end of his life, expressing his own revolutionary sentiments (Ho was an avowed communist). Most of Ho's work was inspired by his belief in and advocacy for third world unity, for him often manifesting in "afro-asian" music.
This evening will also include a performance of a new big band composition by Sebastian Alexander Johnson called Unity & Struggle (for Fred Ho) which is ideologically carrying on the tradition of both of these figures, but musically experimenting with much more improvisation than they did in their big band works. Unity & Struggle asks each musician performing it the question, "how can you play the music authentic to yourself, that you believe in, as every other musician is doing the same, without fear of clash & without compromise, while also playing in unity with everyone else, adapting because of what others play without losing yourself, to create something greater than any one voice?"
Program:
Cal Massey: Black Liberation Movement Suite
Fred Ho: Struggle for a New World Suite
Sebastian Alexander Johnson: Unity & Struggle (for Fred Ho)
Presented by the College of Performing Arts at The New School.
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