Lift Every Voice

Celebrate five centuries of music by Black composers, as the Choral Society of Pensacola concludes its season with Lift Every Voice. Artistic Director Peter Steenblik and Treble Ensemble Director Isabelle Peterson will lead the 110-voice chorus, accompanied by organist and pianist Hyunjoo Kim, with soprano Allanda Small as guest soloist. 

The program features primarily sacred works, including

• a sixteenth-century setting of a Lenten prayer by the first Black composer known to have his work published,
• a nineteenth-century “Ave Maria” by a composer recognized for his blending of Black folk idioms with European concert music styles,
• a twenty-first century setting of the 23rd Psalm by a singer whose best-known song hit number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1988, and
• “Amen,” an excerpt from the opera Omar, winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Music, based on the autobiography of an enslaved Muslim man who lived in nineteenth-century Charleston, SC.*

About half of the seventeen selections on the program are drawn from Marques L.A. Garrett’s groundbreaking collection The Oxford Book of Choral Music by Black Composers, published in 2023. But through his immersion in the increasing number of available works by Black composers, Dr. Steenblik has rounded out the program with a rich variety of pieces from other sources, and the Choral Society invites audiences to enjoy the results of his exploration.

*The composers are Vicente Lusitano, Nathaniel Dett, Bobby McFerrin, and Rhiannon Giddens/Michael Abels.