Pasadena Chorale Celebrates American Choral Music With SING AMERICA PART ONE

Pasadena Chorale begins the second half of its 2024-2025 season with Sing America Part One: I, Too, a stirring program honoring the profound musical legacy of Black American composers while embracing new voices in choral music. Taking place on Wednesday, Feb. 26 at 7:30 p.m. at First United Methodist Church Pasadena, this powerful and evocative concert is free to the public with a ticket reservation.

The program features large-scale works by two groundbreaking composers—Florence Price and Margaret Bonds—whose music embodies resilience, beauty, and the Black American experience. Price's “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight,” a poignant setting of Vachel Lindsay's poem of the same name, and Bonds' “Credo,” set to the words of W. E. B. Du Bois, offer deeply expressive and historically significant reflections on justice, identity, and hope.

Much of Florence Price's music was unknown until 2009 when a large collection of her original scores, dating back to the early 1900s, was discovered in the attic of a house in St. Anne, Illinois. Among these pieces was “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight,” a work which imagines a ghostly apparition of the sixteenth president pacing restlessly, burdened by the persistence of war and injustice.

Completed in 1967, “Credo” by Margaret Bonds explores a great range of expression, from fury to tenderness, in its painting of W. E. B. Du Bois' iconic text. The work avers the dignity of all people and extols the virtue of Black people in particular.

Also featured in this concert is “Wayfaring Stranger,” a newly commissioned work by composer Jen Wang, arranged for the Pasadena Chorale in 2024. Wang's setting of the beloved Appalachian folk song weaves in the rich textures of fiddle music while showcasing the expressive range and dynamic power of a full chorus.

Through these works, Sing America Part One: I, Too not only honors the past but also amplifies historically underrepresented voices and looks toward the future of choral music. This concert is the first in a two-part series exploring the rich tapestry of American choral traditions.

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