Forgiveness Digital Booklet by Louis Levitt

Albany Symphony

Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Librettist and Spoken Word

Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR), Composer

David Alan Miller, Heinrich Medicus Music Director

Forgiveness: Suite for Spoken Word and Orchestra

Produced and Mastered by Marlan Barry

Recorded January 11 & 12, 2025 at Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, Troy, NY

Engineered by Marlan Barry, Weixiong Wang

Violin I:

Christina Bouey

Jamecyn Morey

Paula Oakes

Kae Nakano

Emily Garrison

Alisa Wyrick

Eliane Menzel

Amelia Bailey

Arthur Dibble

Audrey Lo

Violin II: Elizabeth Silver

Barbara Lapidus

Aleksandra Labinska

Christine Kim

Harriet Welther

Ouisa Fohrhaltz

Brigitte Brodwin

Margret Hickey

Ariana Cappon

Viola:

Noriko Futagami

Anna Griffis

Yuri Hughes

Carla Bellosa

J.J. Johnson

Judith Insell

Sachin Shukla

Christine Orio

Cello:

Hikaru Tamaki

Anita Balázs

Marie-Thérèse Dugré

Li Pang

Kevin Bellosa

Tara Hanish Bass:

Philip Helm

Luke Baker

Stephen Sas

Daniel Merriman

Mark McCormick

Flute: Beomjae Kim

Beverly Crawford

Karen Bogardus

Oboe: Karen Hosmer

Katherine Halvorson

Shawn Hutchison

Clarinet: Daniel Ketter

Jonathan Lopez

Nikhil Bartolomeo

Bassoon: Lauren Henning

Sarah Bobrow

Kristin Flower

Horn:

William Hughes

Eva Conti

Nicole Caluori

Victor Sungarian

Olivia Martinez

Trumpet: Eric Berlin

Eric Latini

Andrew Stetson

Trombone: Gregory Spiridopoulos

Adam Hanna

Charles Morris Tuba: Marcus Rojas

Timpani: Miles Salerni

Percussion:

Mark Foster

Jackson Riffle

Robert Lenau Harp: Frances Duffy Piano: Ann Gerschefski

I. Redemption

Originally composed as an elegy for Rosa Parks, an icon of the Civil Rights movement who embodied and lived a life of grace and forgiveness. Redemption asks: can traditional religious perspectives on forgiveness still sustain us in the modern political world?

II. Reconciliation

A composed meditation on raising good boys, as they struggle to become great men. A musical dance for the orchestra, allowing us to hear the musicians express those rhythms of challenge and change. Reconciliation asks: How does someone forgive themselves for trespassing against the people that they love?

III. Discernment

A type of oratorical address, positing American facts being detangled from political fictions and myths. A single note acts as a sentinel in the night, calling attention to a singular, focused question. Discernment asks: Can our democracy survive if we forgive the wrong people?

IV. Grace

A march, a fanfare, a lullaby, a call towards a weaponization of ideas and collective imagination. A cellular structure, with each note being met with instruction, intrigue, and resolve. Grace asks: Can we each summon the conviction of our better angels, and if we did, what would our country look like if we could enact forgiveness at scale?

“As a child of immigrants, I have a deep respect for the lengths a human will go in order to be free. My American journey is rooted in the pursuit of an equitable cultural horizon, and the pathway to get there is undergirded by a road paved with the promise of democracy. Can that democracy survive, if we cannot forgive? This suite asks that question at symphonic scale in a way that honors both the progenitors and the inheritors of the American promise.”

- Marc Bamuthi Joseph

“I’ve been collaborating with Marc Bamuthi Joseph—writer, director, poet, and spoken word artist—for over 15 years, creating works centered on protest, morality, freedom, and justice. As friends, fathers, and Black artists, we’ve long considered the power and responsibility of expressing ourselves fully. This piece explores forgiveness as a shared journey, one shaped by age, race, and rage, and framed through Marc’s four-part meditation Redemption, Reconciliation, Discernment, and Grace. My music responds to his words as commentary, crowd, and chorus, engaging with the orchestra as a collective voice and a quiet listener. In one of my favorite moments, as the music fades, Marc offers, “Steps to grace…Face the hurt…Unthread the truth…Choose mercy.” As a Black male composer, carrying both privilege and precarity, I move toward forgiveness through my work, hoping this piece affirms the breadth, complexity, and boundless spirit of Black classical music.”

-Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR)

Special thanks to Daniel Bernard Roumain, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, David Alan Miller, the Carl E. Touhey Foundation, the Estate of Marcia Nickerson, Anna Kuwabara, SOZO Impact and consulting producer Annie March.

More Information About Forgiveness: sozomedia.com/forgiveness

About the Artists

Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR, composer) is a Black, Haitian-American composer who sees composing as collaboration with artists, organizations and communities within the farming and framing of ideas. He is a prolific and endlessly collaborative composer, performer, educator, and social entrepreneur. “About as omnivorous as a contemporary artist gets” (New York Times), Roumain has worked with artists from J’Nai Bridges, Lady Gaga and Philip Glass to Bill T. Jones, Marin Alsop and Anna Deavere Smith.

Known for his signature violin sounds infused with myriad electronic and African-American music influences, Roumain takes his genre-bending music beyond the proscenium. He is a composer of solo, chamber, orchestral, and operatic works, and has composed an array of film, theater, and dance scores. He has composed music for the acclaimed film Ailey (Sundance official selection); was the first Music Director and Principal Composer with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company; released and appeared on 30 album recordings; and has published over 300 works. He has appeared on CBS, ESPN, FOX, NBC, NPR, and PBS; and has been presented and collaborated with the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Kennedy Center, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Sydney Opera House. He was Artist-in-Residence and Creative Chair at the Flynn in Burlington, Vermont. Currently, he is the first Artistic Ambassador with Firstworks; the first Artist Activist-in-Residence at Longy School of Music; and the first Resident Artistic Catalyst with the New Jersey Symphony.

Roumain is an Atlantic Center Master Artist, a Creative Capital Grantee, and a Hermitage Artist Retreat Fellow. He has won the American Academy in Rome Goddard Lieberson Fellowship; a Civitella Ranieri Music Fellowship Award; two regional Emmy Awards for The New Look of Classical Music: Boston Pops Orchestra and Art is Essential: New Jersey Symphony; National Sawdust Disruptor Award; and the Sphinx Organization Arthur L. Johnson Award. He has been featured as a keynote speaker at universities, colleges, conservatories and technology conferences, and was the first ASU GAMMAGE Residency Artist. He has lectured at Yale and Princeton University and was a Roth Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College. For over 20 years, he served as a board member for the Association of Performing Arts Professionals, most recently as Vice Chair; currently is a board member for the League of American Orchestras and National Sawdust; and is a voting member for the Recording Academy GRAMMY® awards.

A student of William Albright, Leslie Bassett, and William Bolcom, Roumain graduated from Vanderbilt University and earned his doctorate in music composition from the University of Michigan. He is currently a tenured Associate and Institute Professor at Arizona State University Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.

Marc Bamuthi Joseph is a TED Global Fellow, an Emerson Collective Dial Fellow, an inaugural recipient of the Guggenheim Social Practice initiative, and an honoree of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship. He is also the winner of the 2011 Herb Alpert Award in Theatre, and an inaugural recipient of the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award. In the Spring of 2022, he was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. An internationally renowned cultural strategist, Bamuthi is the cocreator of the paradigm-shifting allyship training HEALING FORWARD™. He has lectured in 25 different countries and his TED talk “You Have The Rite” has been viewed more than five million times.

Bamuthi has most recently completed commissions for Yale University, Albany Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, and Washington National Opera. His opera "Watch Night" with music by Tamar-kali and direction by Bill T. Jones premiered at PAC NYC in 2023, and his collaboration with NYC Ballet Associate Artistic Director Wendy Whelan "Carnival of the Animals" premiered at Meany Center, Seattle in 2024. His orchestral work “Good News Mass” with music by Carlos Simon premiered with the LA Philharmonic in April 2025. Bamuthi is a long-time collaborator with composer Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR), and "Forgiveness" is one of several pieces they have co-written. Select works by Bamuthi are available for purchase and rental on SozoMart.com.

An emergent on screen talent, he is among the featured performers in HBO’s screen adaptation of “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. He served as the Vice President of Social Impact at The Kennedy Center from 2019-25. A proud alumnus of Morehouse College, Bamuthi received an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the California College of Arts in the Spring of 2022 and was the recipient of a second Honorary Doctorate from Middlebury College in the Spring of 2023.

Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR) and Marc Bamuthi Joseph are represented by SOZO Impact: sozomedia.com

The Albany Symphony celebrates our living musical heritage through its adventurous programming, commissioning, and recording of new work, and broad community engagement beyond the concert hall.

Recognized as one of America’s most innovative and creative orchestras, the two-time GRAMMY® Award-winning Albany Symphony is renowned for virtuosic performances featuring classic orchestral favorites, lesser-heard masterworks, and a diverse array of new music from leading and emerging voices of today. The Symphony, founded in 1930, has received more ASCAP Awards than any other orchestra in America, as well as several GRAMMY® nominations, including the orchestra’s most recent win in 2021.