ALBUM NOTES

The Oklahoma City Philharmonic proudly announces the release of Veils of Justice: Trials, Tears, Transcendence: The Journey of Clara Luper, a sweeping orchestral and vocal tribute composed by the renowned Hannibal Lokumbe. This deeply moving album honors the legacy of Clara Luper: Oklahoma educator, activist, and civil rights trailblazer, whose courage transformed a nation.

Featuring GRAMMY®-Award Winning Soprano Karen Slack as the voice of Clara Luper, GRAMMY®-Award Winning drummer and percussionist Brannan Temple, Conductor Alexander Mickelthwate, The Oklahoma City Philharmonic, the Ambassador’s Choir and the Canterbury Voices, this is a story not only of civil rights but of human dignity, peaceful resistance, and the power of teaching children to lead. Lokumbe’s unique style, described as a “spiritatorio,” blends gospel, jazz, spirituals, oratorio, and classical music into a soundscape that is both historical and strikingly contemporary.

Life’s soundscapes have taken trumpeter and composer Hannibal Lokumbe from the cotton fields of Elgin, Texas, where he was first inspired by the spirituals and hymns of his grandparents, to the stages of Carnegie Hall and much of the world. Lokumbe is a leader in expressing the richness of the African-American experience through orchestral and choral music while honoring the lives and legacies of important historical figures including John Brown, Fannie Lou Hamer, Anne Frank, Kim Phuc Phan Thi and others.

This new work by Hannibal Lokumbe, Trials, Tears, Transcendence: The Journey of Clara Luper, is a profound continuation of that vision. As stated by David Holt, Mayor of Oklahoma City and President of the United States Conference of Mayors, “In 1958 in Oklahoma City, a group of children led by teacher Clara Luper engaged in one of the first civil rights sit-ins in American history. They successfully integrated a downtown lunch counter, and their example was specific inspiration for the Greensboro sit-inners two years later. Clara Luper and her young sit-inners didn’t just impact Oklahoma City, they influenced American history. That story remained largely untold through the years, but we are changing that today in OKC through construction of the Clara Luper Civil Rights Center and the creation of a new monument downtown. This unique and powerful piece by the Oklahoma City Philharmonic and Hannibal Lokumbe elevates this civil rights story of national significance. This piece broadens our understanding of the sacrifices and courage of those who fought for equal opportunity, while inspiring us to continue their work.” Over the course of a year, Hannibal visited Oklahoma City multiple times, met with Marilyn Luper Hildreth, and absorbed the living history that still pulses through this city.

The resulting composition tells Clara’s story through the voice of her daughter—a series of musical letters, intimate and soaring, personal and prophetic, and narrated by Marilyn.

This performance was shaped by the people in our community. We reached out to churches, schools, and families. We invited new audiences into the concert hall, and on the night of the premiere, the air felt electric—more like a sanctuary than a symphony. Applause erupted at the end of the second movement before the piece had even finished. People were moved. We all were.

ALBUM NOTES

On April 21, 2023, Naxos American Classics released Elegy, Violin Concerto No. 2, Of Thee I Sing [Naxos 8.559927], works for orchestra and chorus on the theme of remembrance, memorialization and hopefulness by Grammy-nominated composer Jonathan Leshnoff. Of Thee I Sing was composed to mark the 25th anniversary of the April 19 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Leshnoff’s Second Violin Concerto features soloist Noah Bendix-Balgley, North Carolina-born First Concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic, and Elegy, as the composer explains, “is written in memory of the thousands of nameless people who suffered under oppression.” The Oklahoma City Philharmonic is led by Alexander Mickelthwate on all three works, with the addition of Oklahoma City’s Canterbury Voices for Of Thee I Sing.

Leading up to the 25th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, conductor Alexander Mickelthwate asked Leshnoff to propose a memorial commission, which was to become Of Thee I Sing. Mickelthwate envisioned a piece for chorus and orchestra “that transcends the atrocity and focuses on all the good that came out of it in the last 25 years.” Leshnoff, calling it “the most serious commission I have ever received,” rose to the occasion with the help of Samuel Francis Smith’s familiar 1831 poem America (My Country, ’Tis of Thee). At first, Leshnoff’s music depicts the fear and confusion of the event itself. When the chorus finally enters in the last third of the piece, the familiar tune becomes an ironic reflection on the tragedy. Leshnoff gradually transforms the tune, to make sense of both tragedy and the human ability to persist in the face of it. By the end, with one last refrain of the tune and sedate sustained chords in the strings, some peace seems to have been achieved.

Violin Concerto No. 2 is a four-movement “symphony-concerto.” After an energetic opening movement, the second, subtitled “Chokhmah Yud,” is reflective, scored only for violin, strings and harp. Inspired by Leshnoff’s study of Jewish mysticism, the movement is part of an ongoing ten-work, multiyear project that he says “parallels the ten fundamental building blocks of Jewish spiritual thought. ‘Chokhmah,’ in mystical thought, is the unknown, mysterious genesis of any creative idea.” The scherzo is a light-hearted dance, and the involved counterpoint of the finale echoes and reconciles all that has come before. Commissioned by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and co-commissioned by the Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra, Violin Concerto No. 2 received its premiere in May 2018 under Jaap van Zweden with soloist Alexander Kerr in Dallas.

Co-commissioned by the Tennessee Holocaust Commission and the Bellingham Symphony Orchestra as part of music director Yaniv Attar’s “Harmony from Discord” initiative, Elegy is a work in the lineage of Barber’s Adagio for Strings, the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony and George Walker’s Lyric for Strings. Like in those works, a sweeping melody and lush orchestration convey great depths of sympathetic feeling, not only for the victims of the Holocaust but of oppression in all times and places. The standard string orchestra is supplemented by harp, timpani, and four horns, which the composer uses to effect in a contrasting middle theme. The final section combines thematic ideas reflecting both “harmony” and “discord” but ends on a major triad that as Leshnoff explains is “symbolic of the hope that has emerged through the dark, discordant eras of history.”