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Lucius R. Weathersby was born in 1968 in Houston, Texas and raised in Many, Louisiana, USA. He is married to Diane Lorraine Mull Weathersby and his son Lucius Curtis Weathersby was born in 1999. He is an assistant professor of music and chairperson of the music department at Dillard University in New Orleans where he teaches piano and lectures in music theory. He is the founder and co-director of the Dillard University String ensemble. He holds degrees from Dillard University in New Orleans (B.A. in Music and a B.A. in German, 1990) with honors, University of Northern Iowa (M.M. in Organ Performance , 1992) and advanced studies in Hymnology and Religion at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
For more than five years, he was employed as full-time director of music in two churches where he founded and managed the First Congregational Concert Series in Waterloo Iowa and the Second Sunday Concert Series at the Church of the Beatitudes in Phoenix, Arizona. He has given recitals in the United States and worldwide and is a promoter of new music.
As a conductor, he has conducted orchestral and vocal ensembles including members of the Waterloo Cedar Falls Symphony and the Sanctuary Choir of Church of the Beatitudes, where he has performed many classical masses together with members of the Phoenix Symphony. In 1993, he was a guest conductor at the International Dvorák Festival and led the West Union Madrigal Singers in Dvorák's Mass in D.
Spiritual Fantasy was premiered by the composer on January 19, 1997 at the Meyerson Center of the Performing Arts. Other works with organ include Fanfare 1993 for organ and brass, and Iowa Suite for organ, written in 1992.
The Martyrs of Torrington, 1646 (Toccata Spiritoso) premiered on this recording was inspired by the history of the church in which this recording was made. On February 16, 1646, during the English Civil War, the town was taken over by the Parliamentary New Model Army led by Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell. The church was blown up and 200 Royalists inside perished. This work is in memoriam to those people. The traditional Helston Floral Dance shows Mr. Weathersby's exceptional improvisational skills and an interest in English folklore so displayed and justly applauded in this set of variations instantly performed from first sight of the theme during a concert.
Wendy Hymes has a B.A. in music from Principia College and a Masters in Music from Indiana University where she studied with Marie Garritson and Jacques Zoon respectively. Currently, she is the flautist of Synchronia, a chamber ensemble specializing in contemporary American music, principal flautist of the New City Chamber Orchestra and a soloist with the Flute Society of St. Louis, the St. Louis Women's Chorale and other chamber groups. She is a yearly-featured artist on the Sheldon Concert Hall's Notes from Home Series and the Friends of Music concert series. In her efforts to reach out to younger audiences, she has given many flute clinics in St. Louis schools and directs a private flute studio of 30 elementary, high school and adult students. She also teaches flute and directs the flute choir at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.
William Grant Still has long been known as the Dean of African American composers. He is now recognized as one of America's foremost composers. Born 1895, in Woodville, Mississippi, he was only a few months old when his father died and his mother took him to Little Rock, Arkansas where his musical education began. Later in Wilberforce University, he read sciences, but music was a greater interest, and he subsequently studied at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. This led him to popular music, playing in orchestras and orchestrating, working in particular with the violin, cello and oboe. His employers included W. C. Handy ("father of the blues”), Don Voorhees, Sophie Tucker, Paul Whiteman, Willard Robison and Artie Shaw. For several years he arranged and conducted the “Deep River Hour” for radio, an innovative program in the early days of radio.
While in Boston playing oboe in the “Shuffle Along” orchestra, George Chadwick awarded him a scholarship at the New England conservatory. After a period working with W.C. Handy, he studied under a scholarship with Edgar Varèse but soon rejected his ultra modern ideas and returned to more melodic forms.
In the late Twenties, he appeared as a serious composer in New York, and began a valued friendship with Howard Hanson of Rochester. There followed several fellowship awards and important commissions from the Columbia Broadcasting System, the New York World's Fair of 1939-40, Paul Whiteman, the League of Composers, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Southern Conference Educational Fund and the American Accordionists' Association. In 1944, he won the Jubilee Prize of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra for Festive Overture.
After moving to Los Angeles in the early Thirties, he received numerous citations. In 1939 he married journalist and concert pianist, Verna Arvey, who became his principal collaborator and librettist.
Still was the first Afro-American in the United States to have a symphony performed by a major symphony orchestra. He was the first to conduct a major symphony orchestra in the United States, when in 1936, he directed the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in his compositions at the Hollywood bowl. He was the first Afro-American to conduct a major symphony orchestra in the Deep South in 1955, when he directed the New Orleans Philharmonic at Southern University. He was the first of his race to conduct a white radio orchestra in New York City. He was the first to have an opera produced by a major company in the United States, when in 1949, his Troubled Island was premiered at the City Center of Music and Drama in New York City. His music was capable of interesting the greatest conductors of the day. It was truly serious music with a definite American flavor. He wrote more than 150 works including operas, ballets, and symphonies. This recording of Summerland is a new organ and flute arrangement by Lucius Weathersby of the second of three impressionistic works for piano written in 1936 and one of his most loved compositions. This arrangement was premiered to an enthusiastic audience at Torrington during the evening before this recording was made.
Fela Sowande (1905-1987) is considered the father of modern Nigerian Art Music and is perhaps the most internationally known African composer of works in the European classical idiom. He was born in Lagos, the son of a priest and pioneer of Nigerian church music. The influence of his father and Dr. T.K. Ekundayo Phillips (composer, organist and choirmaster) was an important factor in his early years. At that time, he was a chorister and was introduced to new Yoruba works being played in the churches. During that period, he studied organ under Phillips; this included works by Bach and European classical masters. At that time, he was also a bandleader, playing jazz and popular "highlife" music. All of these had considerable influence on his work.
In 1934 he went to London to study European classical and popular music. In 1936, he was solo pianist in a performance of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. He also played as duo-pianist with Fats Waller and was theatre organist for the BBC as organist and choirmaster at Kingsway Hall, London and as pianist in the 1936 production of Blackbirds. Later, he studied organ under George Oldroyd and George Cunningham and became a fellow of the Royal College of Organists (with credit) in 1943. He also won several prizes and obtained his degree at the University of London and became a fellow of Trinity College of Music. He worked as musical advisor for the Colonial Film Unit of the Ministry of Information during the Second World War, providing background music for educational films.
From 1945 to 1952, he was a renowned organist and choirmaster at the West London Mission of the Methodist Church, and a considerable amount of his organ music dates from this period. These are based on Nigerian melodies that gave a special appeal to the Black members of his congregation in the early years of migration from Africa and the Caribbean.
Western and African ideas prevail in his music, which included organ works such as Yoruba Lament, Obangiji, Kyrie, Gloria, Jesu Olugbala, and Oba Aba Ke Pe. Most of these, including the work on this recording, show quite a strong influence on Anglican Church music combined with Yoruba pentatonic melodies.
His orchestral works include Six Sketches for Full Orchestra, Folk Symphony, and African Suite for strings and show African rhythmic and harmonic characteristics. He has also written a significant number of secular and sacred choral music compositions, mainly for a cappella chorus. Some of these were composed during his period with the BBC Africa Service. He went back to Africa to do scholarly work with the Nigeria Broadcasting Corporation and later Ibadan University. From there, he moved to Howard University in Washington, DC and then to the University of Pittsburgh. There is currently a move to set up a center to research and promote Sowande's works as many remain unpublished or out-of-print.
Violet George Bowers is associate professor of music and co-chair of the music department at Dillard University. She received her B.A. degree from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee and a M.M. in music education/piano from Columbia University in New York. She has pursued additional studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan and Loyola University, New Orleans, Louisiana. Among her teachers were John W. Work, Robert Pace, and Paul Cooper.
During the time she composed Prelude and Fugato, Mrs. Bowers used J.S. Bach's fugues as a source of inspiration. Wanting to be free of the confines that are associated with writing fugues, she commenced to compose a work that would bear the title fugato. This work begins with massive minor and major chords as if building a large house. The prelude ends in F major. The fugue commences in F major going through a series of thematic changes. These changes are developed. A codetta - Vivace con forza leads the fugue back to the prelude material creating an ABA form.
Joie is part of a suite written for children that will be completed in 2001. The work's tonal language is non-traditional. This work is a musical depiction of her children at play, sometimes fighting, running dancing, chasing, and always having fun.
Wallace McClain Cheatham was born in 1945 in the United States. He is an African-American composer, conductor, teacher and researcher at the Elm Creative Arts School, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His works include Passacaglia and Fugue for organ. He premiered William Grant Still's Those Who Wait in 1992 and has written Dialogues on Opera and the African-American Experience, internationally published in 1997 by Scarecrow Press.
He has composed a number of works in tonal and atonal styles and has introduced several major choral works by African-American composers to Wisconsin and Illinois audiences. Dr. Cheatham's works have been published by Shawnee Press, Warner Brothers, Marvel, and the Master Players Library. The goal in composing Fanfare and Toccata was to compose an opus in the tradition of the great preludes and toccatas of Johann Sebastian Bach. Way Over In Beulah Land, a Negro spiritual, and Just Over In Glory Land, an American folk hymn, were used as thematic material. Commissions have come from acclaimed organist/professor Marilyn Mason, Milwaukee soprano Kathleen Matts, Wisconsin's Boychoir, and Milwaukee's Youth Leadership Academy Boys Choir. The University of Maine Concert Choir has twice recorded his work and a recital of his art songs was recently presented at Milwaukee's Broadway Theatre Center. In September, 2000, the Sullivan-Spaights Professor Leadership Award from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee was presented to Dr. Cheetah in recognition of his “many years of commitment to the arts in Milwaukee and the nation."
Kevin A.G. George is a native of New Orleans, Louisiana. He studied with Roger Dickerson and Jay Weigel while attending Xavier and Dillard University in New Orleans. In 1984 Kevin entered the U.S. Air Force where he worked as an aerospace technician and taught and played music throughout the various military programs. He completed his Bachelor of Music and his Masters of Music from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. While at LSU, he studied under the direction of Dr. Dinos Constinides. Mr. George's music has been heard on the public radio stations of Baton Rouge and New Orleans. He was guest composer for several Christian organizations on COX cable access television in Louisiana. His works have been performed several times on the Afro-American concert series at Xavier University, the Louisiana New Music Festival, the Society of Composers concert series, the SEAMUS conference held in Ithaca, New York, and the LSU Electronic Music Festival. Presently he is teaching at Delgado University in New Orleans.
Suite for Organ is a three-movement work commissioned by Lucius Weathersby. This work begins with a prelude. The prelude has melodic transformations that leave the listener wondering where the tonality will rest. The second movement, an adagio, uses as its source of inspiration a three-note ground. This ground is the basis for thematic development. Fantasia is the title of the third movement, which looks back to the great toccatas and fantasias of the Baroque masters as its model. The thematic material is stated and echoed. His musical language always contains a tonal center.
Uzee Brown, Jr. is a native of Cowpens, South Carolina and a resident of Atlanta, Georgia. He received his B.A. degree from Morehouse College, the M.M. degree in composition from Bowling Green State University and the M.M. and D.M.A. degrees in performance from the University of Michigan. At Morehouse he studied composition with noted African-American composer T.J. Anderson. He worked for almost 20 years with the late Dr. Wendell P. Whalum. Brown studied at the Berkshire Music Center, Tanglewood and at the National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan. He received an award for study at the University of Siena in Italy, where he performed throughout the north.
He has appeared in numerous recitals, oratorios, opera and musical theatre performances, which include his premier operatic performance in 1972 of the role of Parson Alltalk in the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's world premier of Scott Joplin's opera, Treemonisha. In 1988 he performed the title role of King Solomon in Emory Theater Productions' world premier of King Solomon, a music drama by Bobby Paul. He performed the role of Frère Laurent in Gounod's Romeo Et Juliette in 1992 with Opera Carolina, and in July 1994 he appeared in the premier of showcase performance with the Alliance Theater of a new musical theatre work, Jubilee, which was presented as part of the National Black Arts Festival.
He is a published composer and arranger, having written the musical prologue for Spike Lee's School Daze. In 1992 he was nominated for the Audelco Award in Black theatre as outstanding musical director and arranger of the musical play Zion. It was presented at Theater in the Square as a venue of the 1996 centennial Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. Brown is a respected researcher and lecturer on African-American vocal music. He has recorded a video of the history of the blues (Sounds of the Southeast), produced by Optical Data for Harcourt Brace Publishing Company.
Were You There? is an arrangement for organ of the African-American spiritual bearing the same title. This work utilizes the melody of the African-American spiritual over an accompaniment that depicts weeping, crying and mourning. The harmonies evoke an effective musical depiction of the events that took place on that day of crucifixion.
A brief history and specification of the 1864 "Father" Willis Organ
The organ was originally built and installed at Sherwell Chapel in Plymouth, Devon by Henry Willis in 1864. This was at a cost of 1,000 guineas paid by Mr. Charles Fox to provide "an organ of full compass and power." It originally had three manuals CC to G - 56 notes and pedals of 2 1/2 octaves. Originally with 36 stops, the organ had a pneumatic lever action. The sound of the instrument was influenced by the French organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll.
Tucker of Plymouth added the Celeste and Vox Humana to the Swell in 1881. Willis and Sons cleaned the instrument in 1923 and added an electric blower. In 1941, Sherwell Chapel was damaged by a bomb, but the organ, though spared ,was not restored until 1951, when the manual compass was extended to 61 notes.
The organ was moved to Torrington and first used Easter 1991. Since then, a number of broadcasts and recordings have been made of this critically acclaimed instrument that retains its original timbre.
Specification of the “Father” Willis organ, Great Torrington, Devon UK
+Stops added by Tucker — c. 1881; *borrowed/extended
Also many accessories including 64-channel capture system with setter panel.
This recording was made during the Out of Africa concert on 15 April 2000 with additional takes on 16 April and 20 July.
Project Director: Mike Wright • Engineering: David Lane and Peter Cox Digital Editing: Doug Ferguson
Organ Tuning: Lance Foy of Truro • Front Cover Art: Dr. Willie Hooker Program Notes: edited by Mike Wright and Judith Anne Still Photographs: Don Whittle, Bob Wright and archival material
Special thanks to: Judith Anne Still for her support and encouragement; Bode Omojola at Illorin University for his knowledge and Dillard University for support and encouragement and not forgetting Fred Onowverosuoke of the International Consortium for the Music of Africa & its Diaspora, for his devotion to the project. Also thanks to Wallace Cheatham who gave a spellbinding lecture on Fanfare and Toccata at Torrington. Personal love and thanks to Diane M. Weathersby and Lucius Curtis Weathersby.
This recording was made using a Bruel and Kjaer 4006 microphone pair, Salix pre-amplifier, Symetrix 620 analogue to digital converter and monitored on Harbeth HL5 loudspeakers.
This recording is a project of the International Society - African to American Music (www.is-aam.org); Honorary President, Judith Anne Still; chair, Mike Wright. The Society is a founder member of International Consortium for the Music of Africa & its Diaspora, a non profit-making society whose members are dedicated to promoting art music by all composers of African origin and descent throughout the world. For more information please contact Mike Wright, 49 Waltham Avenue, Guildford, Surrey GU2 9QF, UK (e-mail: spiritual-fantasy@fsmail.net).
plays the 1864 “Father” Willis organ
St. Michael & All Angels Church
Great Torrington, Devon, England
1 Fanfare &Toccata [5:21]
William Grant Still arr. Weathersby
5 Summerland from Three Visions [4:05]
featuring Wendy Hymes, flute
Prelude • Adagio •Fantasia
Traditional arr. Lucius Weathersby
7 Improvisation on the “Helston Floral Dance” [6:28]
8 Spiritual Fantasy [4:16]
Traditional arr. Uzee Brown Jr.
10 The Martyrs of Torrington, 1646 (Toccata Spiritoso) [6:31]
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