GIVING VOICE

MUSIC ALUM AMPLIFIES SELDOM-HEARD STORIES AND PERSPECTIVES

By Risa Barisch

On November 21, pianist, composer, and Music alum Courtney Bryan returned to campus for a performance and Q&A with students in Kynan Johns’s “Music Assembly” class.

Bryan and vocalist Joel Dyson took the stage at Nicholas Music Center to perform “Song to the Dark Virgin,” composed by Florence Price, followed by Bryan’s “Yet Unheard” with HELIX!, the new music ensemble at Rutgers directed by Johns, professor of conducting.

Following the performance, Bryan, Johns, and Dyson were interviewed by Carter Mathes, associate professor in the Department of English at Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences, whose students in the “Black Music and Literature” course were in attendance as well.

“Yet Unheard” sets poetry by Sharan Strange to Bryan’s score as a musical memorial to Sandra Bland, whose death in police custody in 2013 raised questions of racial injustice and racial profiling.

“As an artist, the best way for me to deal with emotions brought on by these questions is through music,” said Bryan, who studied with the late jazz pianist and composer Stanley Cowell while at Mason Gross and is now a professor of music at Tulane University. “Through music, my aim was to mourn the tragedy of what happened to Sandra Bland and her unfinished contributions to the world, and yet celebrate the strength of her spirt and recognize her humanity.”

The previous day, Dyson had performed “Yet Unheard” with HELIX! at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City. The concert featured other compositions by Black women composers alongside world premieres by Rutgers composition students.

Bryan also stressed the importance of illuminating Black composers that have long been ignored or overlooked, including Price, the first Black American woman to have an orchestral piece played by a major American orchestra, in 1932.

“What’s interesting about the progress we see now is that it’s a recognition of contemporary living Black women composers, and the world is catching up—but history doesn’t take long to erase its past,” Bryan told the students. “Along with championing the voices of today’s composers, it’s a chance to revive voices of the past.”

Grant Supports

Community Engagement Efforts

In February, Middlesex County awarded the school’s Pop-Up Arts Across Middlesex County initiative $19,000 to widen the scope and impact of the program, which seeks to promote and sustain community engagement among MGSA students. Students have performed at local libraries and senior living residences, among other places.

The next phase of Pop-Up Arts kicked off in the spring semester with two projects involving undergrads: Cristina Marte’s “Teaching as an Artist” dance course, in partnership with Sisterwork, a New Brunswick-based organization that works to promote economic mobility among Latinas; and Julia Baumanis’s “Instrumental Methods” music course, in partnership with New Brunswick High School. Alum and Theater faculty John Keller serves as artistic director of the program.