Music: Sun Jan 19

Music by composers of African descent is featured in this morning’s solo piano selections.  Born in Niagara, Canada in 1882, R. Nathaniel Dett is especially remembered for his In the Bottoms Suite for piano, which concludes with the festive “Juba Dance.” At one time, few advanced piano students neglected this finger-twisting work.

Scott Joplin, one of the pioneers of turn-of-the-century Ragtime, enjoyed a revival of popular interest after the 1973 caper “The Sting” made use of his “The Entertainer,” performed as part of the Centering Music.

British-born Samuel Coleridge-Taylor made appealingly romantic piano arrangements of music from orally-disseminated sources of African and African-descended music. His setting of the Spiritual “Deep River” sets the popular tune in a series of atmospheric variations.

The CUUC Choir is also on hand with arrangements of uplifting Spirituals to round out our musical commemoration of MLK Day. Read on for programming details.

Centering Music: Adam Kent, piano

From “In the Bottoms,”

            His Song; Honey; Juba Dance

                                                            R. Nathaniel Dett

The Entertainer

                                                            Scott Joplin

Anthem: CUUC Choir, directed by Lisa N. Meyer and accompanied by Georgianna Pappas

Nothing’s Gonna Stumble My Feet 

 Spiritual, arr. by Greg Gilpin

Offertory:
Deep River

                                                Spiritual, arr. by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Anthem:

Song of Freedom (based on the Spirituals Oh, Freedom and Freedom in the Air)   

                                                Victor C. Johnson