Art Sanctuary Reading in Concert

Can You Hear God Crying?
by Grammy-nominated composer Hannibal Lokumbe
Coming to the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts
September 2012

As Community and Education partner, Art Sanctuary has created a curriculum guide and teachers' workshop, coordinated twice-weekly Music Liberation Orchestra writing classes and band practice at the Philadelphia Detention Center, and programmed three stunning Meet-the-Composer events in the winter of 2011-12: a Kimmel Center student "matinee" for 1,400 Philadelphia children, and concerts in the Philadelphia Detention Center and at New Freedom Theater.

Click here to see the magic on video: Hannibal's residency at Camden Creative Arts. Coming soon: See the magic on our upcoming Kensington CAPA video, too!

New Music! New musicians!

During the week of 5 December 2011, Hannibal Lokumbe was in residence with the jazz band, led by Jamal Dickerson
at Camden Creative Arts High School, and with the choir at Kensington Creative and Performing Arts High School, directed by Sharon Gore-Darrah.

For composer Hannibal Lokumbe, the residencies were a moving experience. "Just think," he said, "this was the first time I actually heard the music outside of my own head. And to hear it played by these young musicians!"

"What work they've done! What work their directors have done! It's unbelievable."

Behind the scenes, another faculty musician has been acting as music director for this special performance. Like the other super-hero faculty musicians Jay Fluellen makes music happen everyday. He teaches at Parkway West, directs a chpoir at the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, and, during preparation for Can You Hear God Crying? was also performing in the Philly Pops! He composes music, and has been featured as a composer Art Sanctuary collaborations with the Network for New Music ensemble and Opera Company of Philadelphia.

Art Sanctuary and the Kimmel Center congratulate all the youth artists, and we thank the amazing faculty and principals who have joined in the challenge and the excitement of premiering new music for a youth audience.

Here are some highlights from a rehearsal at Creative Arts High School. http://youtu.be/0vpiv8T8yw4

Can You Hear God Crying?

Composer and trumpeter Hannibal Lokumbe can. As a composer, he hears all kinds of music in his head, and then writes it in parts for instruments in the orchestra, his favorite NY jazz quintet, choirs, and solo singers.

This music began when Hannibal's study of genealogy led him to his great-grandfather Silas. As a boy, Silas was taken with his mother from his home in what is now Liberia in West Africa to slavery in South Carolina. When he was a teenager Silas ran from slavery to Texas where he worked, bought land, and built a church that became the county's first black school.

That's where the musical inspiration began, with Hannibal hearing God singing to Silas. God's voice is a high, clear soprano commending him for his life--and crying for all the pain that we human beings endure. The sound of God's voice sings from the desert in North Africa and right into our time.

God: "I am what you feel when you say: I forgive you."
--Can You Hear God Crying?

Reading in Concert: A Simple Idea

Art Sanctuary's Reading in Concert puts great black art in the center of our learning community. By sharing works of art, from books to music, spoken word, and dance, we explore important ideas and feelings. And we explore them together. Reading the same books and listening to the same challenging new piece of music, like composer Hannibal Lokumbe's Can You Hear God Crying?, leads us to surprising discoveries about ourselves and each other.

To help teachers and students learn more, Art Sanctuary has included a lesson right on this website about the Middle Passage of Africans who came to this country in slavery like Hannibal Lokumbe's grandfather Silas.

Teachers can access it under the Curriculum tab above or email Program Manager Biany Perez at bperez@artsanctuary.org to receive a copy sent as an attachment. In January, Art Sanctuary will add two additional lessons to the Curriculum. Check back for more.

Click here to see the Educators Workshop introducing teachers and others to the Music Liberation Orchestra and our high school curriculum.

The Door of No Return

African people captured into slavery almost never returned, so the term "Door of No Return" came to mean not just the door through which they left, but the entire forced and often deadly migration of millions of people.

Hannibal Lokumbe used the term in this work, but he went further to ask us all whether we have closed off any Doors of
No Return in our own lives. Violence closes doors; so does fear; so do many actions that can cut us off from the big, full lives we want for ourselves--and each other.

For this reason, since last year, while writing Can You Hear God Crying?, Hannibal has gathered in groups called Music Liberation Orchestras for writing and music circles in prisons, both in his hometown in Bastrop, TX, and in Philadelphia, PA. The Reading in Concert program that 1,000 students experience at the Kimmel Center in December will also be presented for inmates at the Philadelphia Detention Center over the Martin Luther King holiday weekend in January.

Click here to see video blogs about the MLO experience on Art Sanctuary's website.

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Because...
"no arts experience is complete until you share it."

Can You Hear God Crying? by Grammy-nominated composer Hannibal LokumbeComing to the Kimmel Center for the Performing ArtsSeptember 2012