Two Black Churches: Ballad of Birmingham / The Rain

Shawn E. Okpebholo, composer
Dudley Randall, librettist ("Ballad of Birmingham")
Marcus Amaker, librettist ("The Rain")

Will Liverman, baritone
Craig Terry, piano

The music of Chicago-based Shawn E. Okpebholo (b. 1981) has been performed internationally in many distinguished venues, festivals, and radio broadcasts, among them Chicago's Symphony Center and 98.7 WFMT, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the National Cathedral, and Monte Music Festival (Goa, India). Okpebholo regularly receives commissions from noted soloists, ensembles, and organizations including J'Nai Bridges, Will Liverman, and Robert Sims; Cadillac Moon, Fulcrum Point, the U.S. Army Field Band, the U.S. Air Force, the International Tuba and Euphonium Association; pianists Paul Tuntland Sánchez and Mark Markham; and euphonium virtuoso Steven Mead and flutists Caen-Thomason-Redus and Jenny Oh Brown, among others.

Okpebholo wrote Two Black Churches, a song in two movements, for Will Liverman and Paul Sánchez. It reflects on tragic events perpetrated by white supremacists: the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama (1963) that killed four girls; and the Mother Emanuel AME Church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina (2015), that killed nine parishioners. Dudley Randall's poem supplies the first text, with words spoken by one of the girls' mothers and by the child herself, in music combining gospel with contemporary art song. The second text, "The Rain" by Marcus Amaker, Charleston's poet laureate, was written for this work. The city's frequent floods inspire the metaphor on racism and the inability of Blacks in America to stay "above water," due to injustice and oppression. The composition incorporates the hymn "'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus," which was sung at the first service in the church after the shooting, as the community chose faith and hope over hate and fear.

Text

"Mother dear," she asks, "may I go downtown
Instead of out to play,
And march the streets of Birmingham
In a Freedom March, Freedom March, today?"

"No, baby, no, you may not go,
For the dogs are fierce and wild,
And clubs and hoses, guns and jails
Aren't good for a little child."

"But, mother, I won't be alone.
Other children will go with me,
And march the streets of Birmingham
To make our country free."

"No, baby, no, you may not go,
For I fear those guns, I fear, will fire.
But you may go to church instead
Go to the church instead and sing in the children's choir."

She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair,
And bathed rose petal sweet,
And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands,
And white shoes on her feet.

The mother smiled to know her child
Was in the sacred place,
But that smile was the last smile
To come upon her face.

For when she heard the explosion,
Her eyes grew wet
And her eyes grew wild.
She raced through the streets of Birmingham
Calling for her child.

She clawed through bits of glass and brick,
Then lifted out a shoe.
"O, here's the shoe my baby wore,
But, baby, where are you?"
When the reality of racism returns,
All joy treads water in oceans of buried emotion.

When the reality of racism returns...

Charleston is doing
Everything it can
To only swim
In a colorless liquid of calm sea
and blind faith.

But the Lowcountry
In a terrain
Of ancient tears,
Suffocating through floods of segregation

When murderous gunshots
Made waves at
Emanuel AME Church,
We closed our eyes,
Held our breath
And went under.

And we are still trying
Not to taste the salt
Of our surrounding blues
Or face the rising tide
Of black pain,
Of black pain.

Baritone

Will Liverman

The American baritone and Ryan Opera Center alumnus earned critical acclaim as Dizzy Gillespie/Charlie Parker’s YARDBIRD (world premiere, Opera Philadelphia), a role he reprised at Lyric, London’s English National Opera, Madison Opera, and at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. He has also portrayed Malcolm Fleet/Marnie (Metropolitan Opera), Figaro/The Barber of Seville (Seattle Opera, Kentucky Opera, Virginia Opera), and Papageno/The Magic Flute (Milwaukee’s Florentine Opera and Opera Colorado). Recent performance highlights include Horehamb/Akhnaten and a reprisal of Papageno (both at the Metropolitan Opera), Silvio/Pagliacci (Opera Colorado), and Schaunard/La bohème (Opera Philadelphia, Santa Fe Opera, Dallas Opera), as well as a live-streamed recital with Valhalla Media at Chicago’s Studebaker Theater featuring works by African-American composers including Damien Sneed and Margaret Bonds. Later this season, Liverman is scheduled to appear as Leporello/Don Giovanni at LA Opera and the Huntsman/Rusalka at the Metropolitan Opera. He has sung the title role in a concert version of Porgy and Bess with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, performed with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago in Mozart’s Mass in C Minor, in Orff’s Carmina Burana and Handel’s Messiah as a guest artist at the University of Chicago, and as baritone soloist/Brahms’s A German Requiem with the Las Vegas Philharmonic. A graduate of Wheaton College, Liverman received a 2018 Sphinx Medal of Excellence, a 2017 3Arts Award and a George London Award. In 2015, he won the prestigious Stella Maris International Vocal Competition.

Pianist and Ryan Opera Center Music Director

Craig Terry

The American pianist has an international performance career and recently won a GRAMMY Award for “Best Classical Solo Vocal Album” for the recording he made with Joyce DiDonato, “Songplay.” He has served as the Jannotta Family Endowed Chair music director of Lyric’s Ryan Opera Center since 2013, after having spent 11 seasons with the company as an assistant conductor. Before coming to Lyric, he was an assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera after joining its Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. Terry has performed extensively with such esteemed artists such as Jamie Barton, Stephanie Blythe, Lawrence Brownlee, Renée Fleming, Susan Graham, Brian Jagde, Joseph Kaiser, Quinn Kelsey, Kate Lindsey, Ana María Martínez, Susanna Phillips, Luca Pisaroni, and Patricia Racette, among others. He has collaborated as a chamber musician with members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the Lyric Opera Orchestra, Leipzig’s Gewandhaus Orchester, and the Pro Arte String Quartet. Terry is artistic director of “Beyond the Aria,” a recital series presented by the Harris Theater in collaboration with Lyric Opera of Chicago. His discography includes “Diva on Detour” with Patricia Racette, “As Long As There Are Songs” with Stephanie Blythe, and “Chanson d’Avril” with Nicole Cabell.

Craig Terry is The Jannotta Family Endowed Chair

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