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Press quotes 2001 - 2002 season: Slavery Documents Voices of 'Slavery' stir the soul "One of the great moments in the collective life of our musical community was the premiere of Donald Sur'sSlavery Documents by David Hoose and the Cantata Singers in 1990. Yesterday, the group returned to the work in a new and illuminating context provided by composer T.J. Anderson, whose Slavery Documents 2 was written as a complement and spiritual partner to Sur's work. . . . " "Sur assimilates many musical voices . . . spirituals, gospel, Bach and Handel, Wagner, and Stephen Foster. The work is vast and full of massive, surging climaxes; long and emotionally complex instrumental interludes; and intimate details . . . [it] must represent one of the most sustained ironic statements in all of music, for the music often speaks in direct contradiction to the original intent of the words. . . . Irony makes the work bearable but also intensifies the horror, the pain, and the guilt; Sur never dodges on the straight road to the heart."
"Anderson conceived of his work as a response to Sur's call. . . . But Slavery Documents 2 is very much an independent piece, all Anderson's own, a work of dignity, anger, pain and power. His music is tough and unsentimental; it doesn't flinch. It assimilates African drumming, early Western music, the blues, and modernist influences. . . . It is also ironic. . . . In a glimmer of promise at the very end ["Spirituals Sustain"], Anderson's music unites with the traditional tune to "Steal Away," which the chorus, representing a new humanity, prolongs after the orchestra is silenced."
"The performances - by Hoose, the orchestra and its solo players, the solo singers, and the Cantata Singers, augmented by many African-American singers - were soul-stirring. . . . The whole event, preceded by extensive outreach and educational programs that helped bring a large and diverse audience into Symphony Hall, was a credit to the Cantata Singers. They do not separate their artistic convictions from their social convictions; they are voices of conscience." Truths and consequences "One of the most ambitious ventures by a Boston group is Slavery Documents . . . This was a strange, powerful work - eclectic to the point of eccentricity, mixing Bach with Stephen Foster, gospel and minstrel with Beethoven, Wagner, and minimalism. The texts were also eclectic . . . some of the most devastating pre-Civil War legal documents about the brutality slaves endured. . . . The Cantata Singers chorus and stellar orchestra were overwhelming. Hoose shaped the disparate elements into a powerful uniformity of intention, underlining the relentless irony of the relentless juxtapositions. "
"The concert closed with another Cantata Singers commission, Sur's friend T.J. Anderson's Slavery Documents 2 . . . The texts . . . are mostly from historian Loren Schweninger's collection of Southern slavery documents . . . Anderson also acknowledges diverse musical influences (Baroque forms, African drumming) . . . this pairing [of compositions] attracted one of the most racially diverse audiences I've ever seen at Symphony Hall, and there's no denying the cumulative power of the truths and the still terrible consequences of racism these two composers confront us with."
New 'Slavery Documents' premiered by Cantata Singers "One of the most important cultural events of the year brought to the fore the music of two former Boston composers - one African-American, T.J. Anderson; one Korean-American, Donald Y. Sur."
"If one wonders why a composer of Korean descent would be obsessed with slavery, perhaps the answer - as Anderson pointed out in a pre-concert talk - lies in the fact that Sur's grandfather had been a slave." "Sur's 70-minute work does not skirt the horrors of slavery". "The composer [Anderson] says that the first four movements present aspects of 'the truth'...After all the truth-telling, the final movement is largely reconciliatory, and underlines the sustaining power of Negro spirituals." "For this performance conductor David Hoose, the Cantata Singers' music director for twenty years, augmented his usual chorus with a substantial infusion of invited black choristers...his chorus of 80 and orchestra of 75 performed nothing short of magnificently." "Sur and Anderson have presented us their truths. We have been warned - and the rest is up to us, black and white alike."
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