Kellen Gray & Royal Scottish National Orchestra – African American Voices II (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Kellen Gray & Royal Scottish National Orchestra – African American Voices II (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 47:36 minutes | 754 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Linn Records

Kellen Gray has reunited with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra for a second instalment of African American Voices. Though representing differing schools of thought regarding African American classical music, the composers here are united by their roots in black history, culture and its rich musical heritage. Drawing upon jazz and spirituals – ‘I Want Jesus to Walk with Me’ serving as the source material – Margaret Bonds’ Montgomery Variations engages with African American history, namely the Montgomery bus boycott and the 1963 Birmingham church bombing. In this work, re-discovered in 2017, Bonds tackles the themes of strength, resistance, determination and faith. Bonds’ contemporary, the prolific composer Ulysses Kay cultivated a neoclassical voice, as his Concerto for Orchestra exemplifies, very much in line with William Grant Still and his teacher Paul Hindemith. A versatile musician, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson comes a generation later. In his Worship: A Concert Overture, we can hear a blend of Baroque counterpoint, elements of the blues, spirituals and black folk music.

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The Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Kellen Gray – African American Voices (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

The Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Kellen Gray – African American Voices (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:00 minutes | 904 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Linn Records

The Royal Scottish National Orchestra teams up with its Assistant Conductor Kellen Gray to record works by three of the twentieth century’s greatest African American voices. Released to coincide with Black History Month, the two symphonies by William Levi Dawson and William Grant Still proved to be fundamental in the utilization of Afro-American idioms within the symphonic form. Each composer focused on one of the two original staples of African American music: folk and jazz.

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