Orchestra embraces African-Americans

The Georgia Symphony Orchestra, music director Timothy Verville, is addressing the great unplayed minority composers in its coming season. Our mole in the orchestra says: ‘As an orchestra based in a city with a rather famous historical lynching, the decision to purse this program has not been one taken lightly.’

“America, Vol. 4” will step outside of the realm of traditional, classical artists and into the minds of some of the world’s most famous African-American composers.

The production will also include a world premiere of “Moonlight Waltz,” written by the GSO’s N.E. Wheeler, and Georgia premieres of William Grant Still’s “And They Lynched Him on a Tree” and Daniel Bernard Roumain’s “Human Songs and Stories.”

“We’ve done work in the African-American community before but I started consulting with local black arts leaders and discussing with them how important it would be for the African-American community for our organization to take up something which, unfortunately, is still an important topic today: race relations. You would hope we could be beyond these types of things, but we’re not. They were extremely encouraged,” Verville said.