World Premiere | Ubuntu: I Am Because You Are

In the 2021-22 season Kantorei welcomed composer/arranger, pianist, organist, singer & conductor, M. Roger Holland, II as Artist in Residence for a three year partnership, culminating in our final concert of this season on May 17th & 19th. 

Over the past three years, Roger Holland and Joel Rinsema have co-led a concert series each season to explore the rich African American choral tradition, encompassing spirituals to contemporary choral music, with Kantorei, audiences, and the community. 

The 2021-22 season was an exploration of spirituals and work songs. Joel and Roger co-lead  Kantorei and The Spirituals Project Choir performing together for the concert “Journey to Freedom,” a survey of spirituals and work songs featured on the CPR Classical series.

In 2022-23 we explored non-idiomatic choral music of black composers, music written for concert or for the church that was not “typical” African American composer music (not spirituals, not jazz, not gospel) but more in the classical choral idiom. The concerts featured several regional premiers.

In this final year of his residency, Roger will present the world premiere of his ambitious new multi-movement work commissioned by Kantorei, which blends styles and techniques from both Euro-American and African American choral traditions.

Roger expressed interest in composing an ambitious multi-movement work, the idea for which began more than 20 years ago. Holland was living in New York City during the 9/11 terrorist attacks and processed his thoughts and feelings through music, resulting in a work about love and community entitled “United We Stand” (2001). Ten years later, while Holland was taking a course on slave narratives, he again turned to composition to process his experience and wrote a work called “Hate” (2010). 

Taking the ideas of these pieces as a starting point, Holland’s new work will explore how people deconstruct the humanity of others and how we can reconstruct it together, blending styles and techniques drawn from both Euro-American art music and African American choral traditions. 

Each of the five movements will explore a question:

1. What does it mean to be in community or relationship with one another?

2. How do we deconstruct the humanity of others?

3. How does this dehumanization lead to hate?

4. How can we begin to move away from hate and reconstruct humanity?

5. What does it look and feel like to stand together in community?

With lyrics by Holland’s colleague Chris Shelton, a fellow Union Theological Seminary alumnus and Broadway Presbyterian Church pastor, this work aims to not only bridge multiple American choral traditions, but also to infuse art music of the highest caliber with a message of social justice rooted in community. 

Ubuntu: I Am Because You Are

1. Harmony
2. Deconstruction
3. HATE
4. The Way Back
5. United We Stand

(Selections of programs notes from M. Roger Holland, II)

My idea for the Kantorei commission stemmed from an earlier composition, “Hate,” which is included as the third movement of this work. “Hate” was written during my time as a seminary student at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. While a seminarian at Union, I had occasion to take a course on slave narratives with womanist theologian Dr. Katie Cannon (1950–2018), herself a Union alum and the first African American woman to be awarded the Ph.D. at Union Theological Seminary and the first African American woman to be ordained in the United Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The course was very intense and the reading of slave narratives in such volume had a very emotional impact on me, such that I found myself very reflective and at times depressed.

Dr. Cannon had a practice of meeting with her students regularly over lunch after class. At one such gathering in conversation with Dr. Cannon, I shared how I was wrestling with the course work and the subject matter. In the class meeting before lunch that day a student in class shared how she had attended a gathering at the Interchurch Center that included some veterans. These veterans shared how they were trained to kill their enemy, and how that consisted of viewing other people as non-human. In this way, they were more easily able to kill someone whom they now deemed not human. Along with the stories of the slave narratives we engaged with every class I found myself overcome with despair at this level of inhumanity. I shared this with Dr. Cannon over lunch that day. Dr. Cannon suggested that as a musician I should write a piece to express how I was feeling. I found this exercise very cathartic. “Hate” is the result of this exercise. 

After composing the piece, I found myself desiring to compose a larger work, one that would explore how we as human beings can designate other human beings as “other,” stripping them of their humanity, such that one is able to hate another even to the point of killing them without remorse, guilt, or conscious. In other words, how can we devolve to the point of hating someone? Then, I would need to explore the path toward redemption. How can we “de-otherize” those whom we have stripped of humanity? Joel Rinsema and Kantorei provided me the opportunity to realize this vision in what has become UBUNTU.

I call the piece "Ubuntu," an African word that is often translated as "I am because we/you are," because it speaks to our interconnectedness as human beings and as a community. I sought out someone to write the text for the work, leaving me free to engage solely as music composer, and found that person in a fellow Union alum and pastor of Broadway Presbyterian Church in New York City, Chris Shelton. We had an initial conversation about my desire to write this large-scale work and the offer of the commission from Kantorei. I shared with Chris my dream and vision of the work and together we found that we had a kinship and shared thoughts about humanity and care for others. I have found our collaboration to be fruitful and rewarding. (To learn more about this piece, join us for the performance!)

“Joel and the members of Kantorei have welcomed me into their musical family and allowed me to share my musical vision with them and to become a full collaborator in expressing some of the most exquisite musical moments. I look forward to this award-winning ensemble not only singing a program of my own compositions but having the opportunity to compose a work specifically for them with our planned commission.”

Other works from M. Roger Holland on the program: 

1. The Present (This is Now)

2. To God Be the Glory

3. Many Are the Afflictions

4. Anchored in de Lord

5. Magnificat

6. Lord, Make Me an Instrument