Voices of Connection: 06/04 Harry T. Burleigh

In this terribly sad period for our country, when a pandemic has brought into even greater focus the enormous racism and racial inequality that exists, we at Voices feel the need to continue with music from the African American community. The Spiritual today is very moving for me, and I think it will resonate with you, too. Yesterday we played an arrangement by the most revered arranger of Spirituals in our lifetime, Moses Hogan. Today we feature perhaps the best-known master of them all, Harry T. Burleigh (1866-1949). I recommend you read his biography here. It is one of the most interesting stories you can imagine. This was a very great baritone, composer, arranger, and promoter of African American music and performers. For over a century his classic arrangements have provided a vehicle for the deepest personal expressions of generations and generations of African American singers, as well as singers of every race. The Voices of Ascension has performed his choral arrangements many times. We just don’t have any recordings of them to offer here. Instead, we feature one of the great African American singers of today, Metropolitan Opera star Lawrence Brownlee. What incredibly beautiful, heart-felt music this is! If you want to listen to another great singer in a Burleigh arrangement go here and you will hear Harry Burleigh himself singing in 1919. The only recording that still exists of him.

– Dennis Keene

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Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child ARR. HARRY T. BURLEIGH

Lawrence Brownlee, Tenor
Iain Burnside, Pianist

from the recording Lawrence Brownlee: The Heart that Flutters

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