The Hartford Symphony Orchestra’s upcoming event, “The Fierce Urgency of Now: MLK Tribute Concert,” has solidified its name, place and message.
The orchestra and the advisory committee created to consult on the community outreach aspects of the event have settled on “The Fierce Urgency of Now” as the regular title of concert, which has used various names over the years. The phrase comes from the famous “I Have a Dream” speech King delivered at the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 23, 1963 during the March on Washington.
This year’s event takes place on Jan. 22 at 7 p.m. at Hartford’s Asylum Hill Congregational Church. The church is a uniquely appropriate location for the concert since King attended a brown-bag lunch event there in May 1959. King spoke that night at The Bushnell, a speech widely covered by local newspapers and the subject of editorials for weeks afterwards. “There’s a wonderful photo there of Dr. King with folks from the church,” Hartford Symphony Orchestra president and CEO Steve Collins said.
Curtis Stewart, the current Joyce C. Willis artist in residence at the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, has one of his compositions (a reworking of a Samuel Coleridge-Taylor spiritual) in the “Fierce Urgency of Now” concert on Jan. 22 at Asylum Hill Church. He will also perform in the concert. (Titilayo Ayangade)
Beyond that historical significance, Asylum Hill regularly holds cultural events and, as Collins puts it, is “skilled at transforming the church into a concert hall.”
King made numerous other visits to Connecticut, including four to Bridgeport between 1961 and 1964. His other major connection to the state is when he was a teenager and spent the summers of 1944 and 1947 working at a tobacco farm in Simsbury.
The diverse program ranges from gospel standards to new classical works. It opens with “Toast of the Town” by Quinn Mason, who was the inaugural Joyce C. Willis Artist in Residence at the Hartford Symphony Orchestra during the 2022-23 season. The concert continues with: “Audacity of Hope” by Detroit-raised Los Angeles-based composer Ozie Cargile; contemporary composer/violinist and current Joyce C. Willis artist in residence Curtis Stewart’s “recomposition” of the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor spiritual “Deep River”; the Metropolitan AME Zion Church choir performing the songs “Total Praise,” “King Jesus Is a Listening” and “Now I’m On My Way”; selection from self-described “urban classical” composer Jeff Scott’s collaborative COVID-era work “The Journey”; and the concluding Samuel Coleridge-Taylor piece “Danse Nègre.”
The concert also features reflections from Rev. Erica Thompson of Asylum Hill Congregational Church and Symphonie Privett of Fox 61. The concert is conducted by Wayne du Maine.
The Metropolitan AME Zion Church choir’s participation in the event is also noteworthy. The church is home to the oldest Black congregation in the area, dating back to the 1830s.
Collins calls the concert “a wonderful program with a great mix of traditional and gospel. Every single piece has some connection to the spirit of the event. Dr. King’s core messaging is more relevant and important now than it has ever been.”
Wayne du Maine is the conductor of the “Fierce Urgency of Now: MLK Tribute Concert” at Asylum Hill Congregation Church in Hartford on Jan. 22. (Courtesy of Hartford Symphony Orchestra)
The concert “celebrates Dr. King’s legacy of bringing communities together,” Collins said. “It’s a honor to be able to produce this celebration of his life and impact.”
The community advisory committee that helped plan the concert was recently formed to assess community interest in bringing a concert version of composer Terence Blanchard’s opera “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” to Hartford last year. The committee became “a viable asset in producing that concert,” according to Collins, and was kept together to assist with the Martin Luther King Jr. concert and other community-oriented Hartford Symphony Orchestra events. The committee will conduct a postconcert survey to help in the production of future events.
The concert organizers are also offering an online toolkit to help with community promotions, with descriptions of some of the works and performers.
Hartford Symphony Orchestra recently announced that it will be doing two patriotic concerts in Hartford in July to celebrate the United States Semiquincentennial: Its usual “Celebrate America!” concert outdoors in Simsbury on July 3 and a free concert in Bushnell Park on July 4 as part of the Hartford Bonanza festival. Both concerts will feature fireworks.
Some of the other events the Hartford Symphony Orchestra is doing outside of its main Masterworks concert series includes a string quartet playing scores from anime movies as well as classical takes on pop songs from the 1980s and 1990s and an “I’m Every Woman”-themed show at J Restaurant’s J Under the Dome series.
“One of the reasons we like doing so many crossover concerts is that it’s a way to open the symphony’s doors, so to speak, to diverse audiences,” Collins said. “Last year, the “Fierce Urgency of Now” concert was near capacity with 600 or so people. It was one of my favorite things we did all of last season. The folks at Asylum Hill Church are great collaborators. We are honored to have the opportunity to pay tribute.”
Hartford Symphony Orchestra’s “The Fierce Urgency of Now: MLK Tribute Concert” is Jan. 22 at 7 p.m. at Asylum Hill Congregational Church, 814 Asylum Ave., Hartford. The concert is free. Registration is required at hartfordsymphony.org.