A Georgia Song
Theodore Wiprud
About this work:
How can a white composer offer an authentic musical response to African-American poetry rooted in a history of striving against oppression? That was my question when Darryl Taylor asked me to set poetry of Maya Angelou for him. Darryl responded with a great truth, still not universally accepted: that any composer can and should bring an individual response to any poetry they find moving. No group has a monopoly on any cultural expression. I was moved and challenged by his conviction, and soon completed A Georgia Song, a setting of Maya Angelou’s poem of the same name, for tenor with soprano saxophone and piano.
Maya Angelou’s deeply ambivalent paean to the South invokes the names of Georgia cities and towns, with warm associations of home as well as blood-chilling recollections of cruelty. With its intense bittersweetness, its recurring but varied refrain, and its innate musical rhythms and vowel sounds, A Georgia Song proved a potent text for this composer. This extended song was the first work I composed on returning from a year in England, where I marinated in all things European. It was in A Georgia Song that I declared my allegiance to the whole panoply of American musics; influences on this work range from Charles Ives to Robert Johnson.
A Georgia Song was commissioned in 1990 by Echosphere, an ensemble including Darryl Taylor, pianist Deon Nielsen-Price, and saxophonist Bill Wilson. It is dedicated to Darryl, who opened to me a whole new range of literary and musical possibilities.
Year composed: 1992
Duration: 00:13:00
Ensemble type: Voice, Solo or With Chamber or Jazz Ensemble:Voice with Chamber/Jazz Ensemble, 2-5 Players
Instrumentation: 1 Soprano Saxophone, 1 Piano, 1 Tenor
Instrumentation notes: tenor voice with soprano saxophone and piano