World Premiere Honors Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

San Francisco International Arts Festival is delighted to present the world premiere of DOWN BY THE RIVERSIDE Requiem for a King composed by Anthony Brown with original spoken word by Angela Davis performed by the Asian American Orchestra and vocal ensemble Voices Of A Dream.

DOWN BY THE RIVERSIDE honors the life of Reverend and activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the legacy of the civil rights movement he led.

On April 4, 1967, Dr. King delivered his most controversial speech, "Beyond Vietnam-A Time to Break Silence" at the Riverside Church in New York City. This prescient speech, which in no uncertain terms denounced the morality of the Vietnam War and our nation's violent military role around the world, evoked strong negative reaction in the media and mainstream America. Even fellow civil rights leaders turned against King, questioning his patriotism and wisdom in speaking out. One year later to the day, on April 4, 1968, Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

Drs. Brown and Davis evoke King's words from his speech, "A time comes when silence is betrayal," with this multi-movement jazz, vocal and spoken word work. DOWN BY THE RIVERSIDE encourages audiences to reflect on the issues Dr. King confronted that are still so present in society today.

The evening length concert also includes a presentation of Anthony Brown's recent work GO FOR BROKE!, a salute to Nisei Veterans composed for the 75th anniversary of the February 1942 signing of Executive Order 9066, which forced over 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry into internment camps during WWII.

The performance, featuring spoken word by poet and activist Janice Mirikitani, raises the injustices of the past in the hope we will not repeat them in the present. With a commander-in-chief who confessed that he "might have supported Japanese American internment," tributes like this highlight the cause of social justice and inspire us toward a more hopeful and inclusive future.

Dr. Anthony Brown
Percussionist, composer, ethnomusicologist, educator and Smithsonian Associate Scholar Dr. Anthony Brown is a leading figure in the contemporary California creative music scene, directing the Asian American Orchestra in addition to performing with Max Roach, Cecil Taylor, Pharoah Sanders, Zakir Hussain, Wadada Leo Smith, Anthony Davis and the San Francisco Symphony.

Since 1998, his Orchestra has received international critical acclaim for blending Asian musical instruments and sensibilities with the sonorities of the jazz orchestra. Dr. Brown's re-imagining of Duke Ellington's Far East Suite earned the Orchestra a GRAMMY nomination for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Performance in 2000. His innovative recording of Thelonious Monk's works, Monk's Moods, featuring Steve Lacy, received a "5-Star Masterpiece" review in DownBeat Magazine.

Dr. Angela Davis
Through her activism and scholarship over many decades, Angela Davis has been deeply involved in movements for social justice around the world. Her work as an educator - both at the university level and in the larger public sphere - has always emphasized the importance of building communities of struggle for economic, racial, and gender justice.

Professor Davis' teaching career has taken her to San Francisco State University, Mills College, and UC Berkeley. She also has taught at UCLA, Vassar, Syracuse University the Claremont Colleges, and Stanford University. Most recently she spent fifteen years at the University of California Santa Cruz where she is now Distinguished Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness - an interdisciplinary Ph.D program - and of Feminist Studies.

Angela Davis is the author of ten books and has lectured throughout the United States as well as in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America. In recent years a persistent theme of her work has been the range of social problems associated with incarceration and the generalized criminalization of those communities that are most affected by poverty and racial discrimination. She draws upon her own experiences in the early seventies as a person who spent eighteen months in jail and on trial, after being placed on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted List."

Janice Mirikitan
Poet, dancer, and community activist Janice Mirikitani was born in Stockton, California and interned with her parents in an Arkansas camp during World War II. This experience formed the basis of her poetry and activism to address the horrors of war, to combat institutional racism, and to advocate for women and poor people. Her collections of poetry include Shedding Silence (1987), We, the Dangerous: New and Selected Poems (1995), and Love Works (2001). She served as the second poet laureate of San Francisco in 2000.

Mirikitani, with her husband, minister and activist Cecil Williams, created Glide Foundation, San Francisco's preeminent organization committed to helping and empowering its marginalized communities. They coauthored Beyond the Possible: 50 Years of Creating Radical Change in a Community Called Glide (2013) in celebration of the foundation's long-standing mission.

The Asian American Orchestra (AAO)
Founded In 1998, the Asian American Orchestra served as the touring cultural component of a federally funded national multimedia education program to address the Japanese internment experience of World War II. Under the direction of Dr. Anthony Brown, the Grammy-nominated Asian American Orchestra celebrates American cultural diversity by creating and performing music that blends Pan-Asian instruments and sensibilities with the medium of jazz nationally at festivals, universities and cultural centers. The AAO has released seven albums that have garnered international critical acclaim and serve as the soundtracks for documentaries including Witness to Hiroshima (2009) and A Divided Community (2011) about internment camp draft resisters.

Celebrating twenty years as the flagship ensemble of Asian American Jazz, the intercultural, intergenerational, and intergender Asian American Orchestra continues presenting contemporary artistic interpretations of historical events as well as providing educational residencies, lecture-demonstrations and workshops on intercultural collaborations, and addressing social justice issues through the arts.

Voices Of A Dream (VOAD)
Dr. Brown formed the vocal ensemble Voices Of A Dream in 2013 to complement the Asian American Orchestra's program, Our Eyes on the Prize: King's Dream 50 Years On, which commemorated the 1963 March on Washington and King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Under the direction of Amikaeyla Gaston, VOAD specializes in Spirituals, Gospel and Freedom Songs, performing music to stir and lift the soul.

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