UA Choral concert ‘Unfinished’ offers community a place to reflect on lives cut short, including those close to home
The University of Akron Choral Department presents its final concert for the academic year, ‘Unfinished,’ on Sunday, April 30 at 4 p.m., with a pre-concert lecture featuring Rev. Raymond Green Jr. of Freedom BLOC (Black Led Organizing Collaborative) at 3 p.m. at Westminster Presbyterian Church (1250 W. Exchange).
The concert features the Mozart Requiem and Joel Thompson’s “The Seven Last Words of the Unarmed,” a piece that sets the last seven words spoken by seven unarmed Black men who were shot and killed by authority figures. The concert and pre-concert lecture are free and open to the community.
“This concert is about reflection,” Dr. Marie Bucoy-Calavan, director of choruses, who will conduct the performance, said. “While I invite the community to join us, this concert is intended as an outlet to allow each of us time for personal introspection through music. It’s not a place to come and speak, it’s a place to come and listen,” she said.
“The Seven Last Words of the Unarmed” had its premiere performance in 2015. In an interview about the piece, Thompson said “I used the liturgical format in Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ in an effort to humanize these men and to reckon with my identity as a Black man in this country in relation to this specific scourge of police brutality.”
The medieval tune “L’homme arme doibt on doubter,” which translates as ‘the armed man must be feared’ is woven throughout the piece. The tune appears in various forms including hummed in the style of a negro spiritual and played by strings in counterpoint.
The piece’s movements are named for unarmed Black men shot by authority figures and feature the last seven words of each. These include I. Kenneth Chamberlin, II. Trayvon Martin, III. Amadou Diallo, IV. Michael Brown, V. Oscar Grant III, VI. John Crawford, VII. Eric Garner. The University of Akron Tenors and Basses and an orchestra comprised of faculty, UA students and high school students from the area will perform movements I – V.
Bucoy-Calavan did not program the work to align with the grand jury decision, or with any specific event. She sees it, instead, as a needed opportunity for her students and for concertgoers to think about the ripple effect in how these unfinished lives impact all of us. “It’s important to me that my students do relevant work,” Bucoy-Calavan said. “I didn’t realize just how relevant it would be.”
When Bucoy-Calavan originally considered programming The Seven Last Words, she wanted to avoid the potential for politicization of the piece and instead focus on the depiction of the human spirit and loss presented in the music. She asked her student leaders for feedback, given the work’s connection to community events. The students didn’t shy away from engaging the difficult topics and expressed how important performing relevant music was to them as well.
“As a person of color at Akron, which is a predominantly white space, the opportunity for this work to be performed and heard does mean a lot to me,” Isabella Anderson, 23-year-old student from Parma, Ohio, said. When it comes to the politics, she agrees wholeheartedly. “I don’t believe it to be political,” she said. “These are human lives.”
Students Reflect as They Prepare
Preparations for the concert have sparked productive conversation among choral students as they process recent events concerning the Jayland Walker proceedings. While the concert doesn’t take a stance on the results of the trial or the social issues that accompany it, the works have given students an outlet to process what is happening in their city and how it affects them.
Anderson is pleased to see the University community engaging in the conversation and hopes other members of the community will take advantage of the opportunity to reflect that the music offers. “It’s nice to see that there are people at the university, the Conflict Management Center that recently put on a panel and the Buchtelite, that are taking steps forward to dialogue and willing to look at different points of view,” she said.
Pre-Concert Lecture at Westminster Presbyterian Church
A pre-concert lecture, also hosted at Westminster Presbyterian Church, will begin at 3:00 p.m., with comments Bucoy-Calavan and Rev. Raymond Greene Jr. of The Freedom BLOC, a collaborative that was created to equip the Black community with capacity building tools through civic education, civic engagement, campaign management and leadership development.
“I will be speaking about the unfinished nature of Mozart’s Requiem and Reverend Greene is going to be talking about the unfinished nature of a black man’s life,” Bucoy-Calavan said.
“Unfinished” is presented in partnership with UA faculty and alumni, along with area high school students as part of the David and Orlene Makinson Memorial Endowed Concert Series.