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For half a century, Detroit’s own Brazeal Dennard Chorale has been committed to remembering, preserving, and discovering the music of African American composers and artists. Nationally known for its expressive renditions of African American music in the choral tradition, the Chorale is one of the oldest organizations of its kind in America.

In 1972, the Brazeal Dennard Chorale was established with a mission to promote the music of African American composers and to perpetuate the heritage of the Negro Spiritual. This highly skilled group of singers not only preserves this rich musical heritage, but also performs music from all genres of Choral Music repertoire at the highest level. Established during a time when classical music opportunities were limited for African Americans, the Chorale sought to provide people in Detroit with an opportunity to perform classical choral music. Dr. Brazeal Wayne Dennard, the chorale’s founder, aimed to nurture the artistic needs of his singers, using this ensemble as a method of developing a vibrant musical culture within the city of Detroit and its talented community members.

The Chorale and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra have a longstanding history of partnership. This partnership began in 1978, after members of the Brazeal Dennard Chorale presented a plan to DSO management to address inequities within the classical music industry in Detroit and highlight works by African American composers, as well as showcase more African American musicians in DSO performances. Brazeal Dennard, working collaboratively with Paul Freeman—the DSO’s then-Resident Conductor—and several notable community leaders, organized and facilitated the first Classical Roots concert held in 1978 at Detroit’s historic Bethel AME Church. The choir was anchored by the Brazeal Dennard Chorale and included chorus members from Detroit-area Black churches. Dr. Dennard reported, “that was the beginning of the Classical Roots concert that the symphony performs today.” This concert model has now been implemented by orchestras and music organizations across the country. The Chorale has remained a major part of Classical Roots each year since, opening each concert with a performance of John Rosamond Johnson’s Lift Every Voice and Sing.

The Chorale has been a leader in championing the classical music heritage of African American composers. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Alice McAllister Tillman, they maintain a value system that fosters bridge-building, innovation, collaboration, community, inclusivity, and excellence. Through performances, commissions of new choral works, recordings, and engaging with communities across America, the Chorale is continuing the tradition of African Americans who sang unaccompanied melodies which told of the pains of slavery, the yearning to be free, and the hope of God’s salvation. Recently, the Chorale participated in a commission consortium through Chorus America. The work, Make Some Noise, Get in Trouble (Good Trouble, Necessary Trouble), composed by Roland M. Carter commemorates the memory of the Honorable John R. Lewis and was premiered by the Brazeal Dennard Chorale in April of 2022.

The Brazeal Dennard Chorale is an award-winning organization that in 2018 received the Brazeal Wayne Dennard Award (presented by Chorus America) in recognition of the Chorale’s commitment to diversity, inclusiveness, and furthering African American choral traditions and other diverse choral music traditions through performance, research, or the creation of new compositions of significance.

by HANNAH ENGWALL

Anthony Davis is an internationally renowned composer of operatic, symphonic, choral, and chamber works, and an educator committed to fostering the next generation of musical talent. With diverse artistic influences across his family, life, career, and education, Davis has developed a unique voice that blurs the lines between jazz, opera, world music, and avant-garde.

Born in Paterson, New Jersey in 1951, Davis is the product of a musical family. His father was an English professor and professional musician, and his mother was a dancer. “I was always around music,” recalls Davis. The family lived in Harlem for a time, and it was in their apartment on 138th Street where Davis first played piano—in diapers on the lap of American jazz pianist, composer, broadcaster, and educator Billy Taylor, who lived in the same building.

“Music was part of my family’s legacy, but everyone in my family did other things too,” said Davis. “When I decided to be a musician and composer, at first, they were really wary—I was supposed to go to law school. But it was something I had to do, and they realized I had to do it. It was funny for me because music was always an escape from all the tensions in the world. I’d just sit at the piano and play, and imagine I was Art Tatum. I would turn all the lights out and just play. The piano was a big, big part of how I dealt with growing up.”

When he was in tenth grade, the family moved to Italy as Davis’s father taught on a Fulbright scholarship. “That was a key point when I realized a different kind of relationship to music: as a composer,” said Davis. “In Italy, I acquired a Thelonious Monk record and fell in love with the music and the idea

BY LESLIE D. GREEN

of Thelonious Monk, a great composer who was performing his own music. I ended up learning the record by listening to it and then started to write my own pieces too. It was in Italy where I started to compose—to really compose—and take a greater interest in jazz.”

After Davis returned to the United States, he continued to expand his influences. He studied at Wesleyan and Yale universities and put together his own band and ensembles, allowing him to perform and develop as a musician.

He recalls an encounter with Duke Ellington at Yale, when the legendary musician was in town for a fellowship: “I had a huge afro at the time—giving Angela Davis a run for their money. I was across the room and Duke came into the room and pointed to me, and he said, ‘you must be a musician,’ and I thought well, if Duke says so, then I guess so.”

Davis has composed seven operas, including X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X (1986, revived in 2022 at Detroit Opera), Under the Double Moon (1989), Amistad (1997), and Wakonda’s Dream (2007). His most recent opera, The Central Park Five, which premiered at Long Beach Opera in 2019, received the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Music.

In addition to his accomplishments as a musician and composer, Davis contributes to musical heritage as an educator. He was Yale's first Lustman Fellow, teaching composition and African American studies. In 1987, Davis was appointed Senior Fellow with the Society for the Hu-

I’m of creating a body of work that hopefully helps to open doors for others after me. I’m proud to represent the idea that music can speak about the issues of our time and address them, that music is not divorced from them or some kind of anesthesia from them. Music can address our reality, and that concept has been so important to me. It can allow you to make an emotional and visceral connection—whether it’s identifying with Malcolm X, or the Central Park Five, or with a clarinet player who’s being interrogated in a concerto—the idea is to foster that kind of identification and emotional connection that the audience can make with the issues of our time and with what’s going on so it’s not just some abstract or alien thing, or something that can be pushed aside as not relating to them.”

Anthony Davis

manities at Cornell University, and in 1990, he returned to Yale University as Visiting Professor of Music. He became Professor of Music in African American Studies at Harvard University in the fall of 1992, and assumed a full-time professorship at the University of California at San Diego in January 1998.

Davis feels a great responsibility to support the next generation of artists. “I want my students to learn that there is no box—to not settle on what music was in the past or what the limitations were. They should try to follow through with their vision and imagine their own freedom. I think that’s very important because it feels revolutionary. The most revolutionary thing to do is to imagine your freedom and that you have no limitations—that there’s nothing that can get in the way of what you envision.”

Davis also feels a responsibility to support and uplift African American composers and musicians, and in 1995 took part in the DSO’s African American Composer Residency program, which exposed him to Detroit’s vibrant musical culture.

“African American music is great music. It gives you a different vision of music and shows that we can have different influences.” Davis feels that the legacy of jazz and improvision is especially vital to the continued tradition of American music. “By representing the breadth of American music, not just the more Eurocentric of it, we can continue to create a unique identity for the American orchestra.”

What does legacy mean to him?

“It means that you create a path— your own path—but a path that others can build on and follow, and veer from if they want. The idea is to put ideas and energy in motion to move things forward. People like Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Charles Mingus, and Alvin Singleton inspired me to see what I could create. I hope that I can do the same thing for the next generation and others who follow me.”

by HANNAH ENGWALL

Dr. Charles Gilchrist Adams, affectionately known as the “Harvard Hooper,” has been cited in Ebony magazine as one of the greatest preachers in the United States. He is Pastor Emeritus of Hartford Memorial Baptist Church, with close to 10,000 members, and formerly served as president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, the denomination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“As a young child, Charles would sit in the first pew during church services, looking right at the pastor,” said Edith Adams Clifton, the sister of Dr. Adams. “And then he would come home and preach the whole sermon—he knew that was what he wanted to do.”

The two siblings grew up in Detroit, surrounded by music in their church community. Dr. Adams studied in the Detroit Public Schools system and at the Detroit Conservatory of Music, receiving a well-rounded music education. The family attended DSO educational concerts at the Masonic Auditorium and jazz performances by greats like Ella Fitzgerald at the Paradise Theatre, on the site of Orchestra Hall from 1941-1951.

Throughout Dr. Adams’s education at Cass Technical High School, the University of Michigan, and the Harvard Divinity School, music remained a common thread. At Michigan, he was the first Black tenor soloist with the Men's Glee Club, and later graduated cum laude. At Harvard, he served as an organist and leader of daily chapel services. He graduated Harvard Divinity School with honors and went on to become a tenured professor at the school as the first William and Lucille Nickerson Professor of the Practice of Ethics and Ministry.

Dr. Adams also completed a fellowship at Morehouse College in Atlanta, where he served as the teaching assistant to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. A fervent civil rights advocate, Dr. Adams enjoyed relationships with many leaders of the time, and later led the prayer at the funeral for Rosa Parks, where he passionately thanked the civil rights icon in more than 15 languages.

At a time when many churches didn’t want to be involved in the Civil Rights

Movement, leaders like Dr. Adams started a new denomination where activists would be welcome: the Progressive National Baptist Convention, where he served as president.

It was during his time at Morehouse College that Dr. Adams met Dr. James Abbington (now Associate Professor of Church Music and Worship at Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta). The pair later worked together at Hartford Memorial Baptist Church, where Dr. Adams served as senior pastor for more than 50 years, now Pastor Emeritus.

“I observed on numerous occasions the students, interns, young ministers, seasoned ministers, and pastors that sought out his advice, mentorship, and counseling,” said Dr. Abbington. “There was no mistake that he was certainly one of the greatest preachers in the English-speaking world, and people came to learn from him.”

Dr. Adams and his Hartford congregation have served the entire Detroit community, seeking to care for not only their spiritual health, but also other practical needs. “Hartford Church and Charles and his trustees were very active in civil rights, but they were also very active in what they call ‘silver rights,’ meaning that they felt that the community needed to invest in the economy, in economic development,” said Clifton.

The church bought up a large swath of vacant commercial properties, seeking to create opportunities for Black business ownership and employment. Their largest project was the development of a Super Kmart (now Home Depot), built from the ground up, which employed more than 200 people and brought tax rev-

“Dr. Adams embodies the passage of scripture that talks about how