Experience the rich tapestry of American spiritual music with the Boston Camerata! Celebrating their 70th anniversary season, the Boston Camerata continues its trailblazing exploration of American musical traditions. Drawn from early Black and white songbooks, "We'll Be There!" explores the intertwined traditions that have bound our nation together through generations of joy, sorrow, and striving.
Witness the evolution of musical styles from modal folk hymns to gospel melodies as the Boston Camerata brings this uniquely American art form to life.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 7:30 PM
First Church Berkeley UCC (First Congregational)
2345 Channing Way
FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 7:30 PM
St. Mark’s Lutheran Church
1111 O’Farrell Street, San Francisco
Consider buying a subscription package to ensure the success of our pay-what-you-can model!
We suggest a ticket price between $35 and $45 per ticket.
Anything is appreciated, and if you can pay more, please do!
About Boston Camerata
The Boston Camerata occupies a unique and distinguished position among European and American early music ensembles. Founded in 1954 as an adjunct to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts’ musical instruments collection, the Camerata is now one of the longest-lived groups to be vigorously functioning up to the present day. With numerous distinctions including the American Critics’ Circle Award, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, residencies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Tennessee, and the Grand Prix du Disque, the Boston Camerata has succeeded in approaching broad historical repertoires across many centuries, from the early Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, and from many places and cultures, stretching from the Middle East to early New England, with numerous intermediate stops in Renaissance and Baroque Europe and Latin America.
The Boston Camerata preserves and reawakens human memory as expressed through the art of music. It accomplishes this mission through live, historically informed, professional performances; through study and research into musical sources of the past; through media projects; and through community outreach and musical education. The Camerata looks to the past in all its diversity to better understand the present, to inform the future, and to encourage living human connection via the shared joy of great music.
Directed from 1969 to 2008 by Joel Cohen, and from 2008 to the present day by Anne Azéma, the Boston Camerata has produced a large body of concert productions and recordings, combining (often original) scholarship with high performance standards maintained by a distinguished roster of outstanding vocal soloists and instrumentalists.
We'll Be There!
Our concert is derived in considerable measure from sources of the nineteenth century and oral traditions. Our performances trace the evolution of musical style, taste, and performance practice across several generations. Included are African-derived call-and-shout group songs, folk hymns derived from English and Celtic folklore, the deep connection of the African-American tradition to the experience of slavery, musical reminiscences, both white and black, of the Civil War, celebrations of freedom, and gospel melodies shared and shaped by both communities.
We wish to point towards a synthesis. These two singing traditions, Black and White, form a magnificent body of uniquely American musical and poetic art. They are evidence of a lasting testament to our nation's striving, despite generations of tragedy, injustice, and strife, for redemption, transcendence, and wholeness
"We'll be There!" explores the rich tapestry of American spiritual music, drawing from the intertwined African-American and white traditions that have bound our nation together through generations. A "spiritual," or spiritual song, utilizes the poetic imagery of Christian faith in conjunction with folk or folk-derived melodic materials. Spirituals exist in relation to, but often in contrast with, the more formalized hymn and anthem singing of Protestant Sunday hymn books. While the African-American tradition is most widely known, white spiritual singing was also prevalent in the nineteenth century and continues to this day. These two traditions are closely interrelated and interdependent.
The tragic, enforced social and economic space between the white and minority communities in nineteenth-century America could not and did not erase the common humanity of all who lived, breathed, and sang on this continent. Our goal is to bring into the light the elements that, via music and spiritual striving, have bound all of us together across the decades.
The Boston Camerata's program, "We'll be There!," involved extensive research into written sources, including nineteenth-century hymns and songbooks, as well as collaborations with members of the African-American community to uncover the rich oral traditions that shaped this music. Special attention was paid to seminal sources like "Slave Songs of the United States" (1867) and "Plantation Melodies" (1882), the first songbook with notation compiled by African-Americans themselves. The Camerata also worked closely with community leaders, scholars, and musicians to ensure an authentic and holistic representation of these intertwined traditions.
Explore the rest of the season!
