day3-27

Paul Robeson — singer, athlete, actor, activist — embodied all the promise of America at its best. He used his art as a weapon of justice and, as a global citizen, he spoke truth to power, heedless of the personal cost. “Artists are the gatekeepers of truth,” he once said. “We are civilization’s radical voice.” Fifty years after his passing, his magnificent voice still rings out, entreating us all to fight the good fight. Bass-baritone James C Martin, with Lynn Raley at the piano, celebrates a true American patriot with a program of Robeson’s best-loved songs and his bravest words, spoken in a tumultuous time when many turned against him. The program also features a world première by David Amram and other composers, including Augusta Read Thomas, Chen Shih-hui, Erik Santos, Robert Wellington Pound, and Maria Thompson Corley setting words by Robeson’s friend and fellow activist Langston Hughes.

Since their New York debut in 2011, the Horszowski Trio – Jesse Mills, violin; Ole Akahoshi, cello; Rieko Aizawa, piano – has toured extensively throughout North America, Europe, the Far East, and India, earning a reputation as one of the most vital chamber ensembles of their generation. The centerpiece of their concert is the US premiere of 25 Decades, a piano trio by William Kentner Anderson — composer, guitarist, and Director of Classical and New Music for The Village Trip — performed alongside Brahms' Piano Trio No. 2 in C major, Op 87, a pairing that sets Anderson's new work in direct conversation with the Romantic tradition it both inherits and unsettles.