Kellen Gray and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra: African American Voices II
Linn Records

Enhancing the already considerable value of African American Voices II is the fact that it features the first commercial recordings of orchestral works by Margaret Bonds (1913-72), Ulysses Kay (1917-95), and Coleridge Taylor-Perkinson (1932–2004). The forty-eight-minute release, recorded in Scotland's Studio, Glasgow in February 2023, is a superb complement to the 2022 volume issued by conductor Kellen Gray and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO) and featuring material by William Levi Dawson, William Grant Still, and George Walker. Having the pieces by Bonds, Kay, and Taylor-Perkinson available in a physical form for the first time feels like a wrong properly righted.

Gray and the RSNO are an excellent match for a number of reasons. While the conductor, a South Carolina native, was born in America, he's now based in Scotland and thus has a close bond with the orchestra. His roots in the southeastern United States and familiarity with its folk music styles help bring authenticity to the performances; drawing on childhood memories of singing and clapping in Sunday morning choirs and at the school yard, Gray even sang during rehearsals the songs on which the Bonds and Perkinson pieces are based “with the syncopated Gullah rhythms we'd clap and stomp on Sundays mornings.” Such first-hand experience can't help but have enriched the recording experience for all involved. The orchestra likewise draws on a long and proud legacy: formed in 1891 as the Scottish Orchestra and rechristened as the Scottish National Orchestra in 1950, the RSNO performs throughout Scotland and recently toured the USA, China, and Europe. Its discography boasts more than 200 releases, and the company's received eight Grammy Award nominations among other honours.

African American Voices II pairs Bonds' Montgomery Variations (1964) with Kay's Concerto for Orchestra (1948) and Taylor-Perkinson's Worship: A Concert Overture (2001). The only purely orchestral work not lost after Bonds' death and based on the spiritual “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me,” the seven-movement Montgomery Variations chronicles the first decade of the Civil Rights Movement, beginning with the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott and ending with the 1963 Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham that killed four young girls. After opening portentously with timpani rolls, “Decision” introduces a majestic folk theme before advancing to “Prayer Meeting,” which quickly blossoms from hushed solemnity to folk lyricism and rhythmic thrust. The latter quality naturally carries over into “March,” which also sees the spiritual's theme voiced with intensity and drama. The sophistication of Bonds' writing is never more evident than in the lovely tapestry that is “Dawn in Dixie” and the lighthearted “One Sunday in the South” that follows. The mood changes dramatically, however, with the church bombing engendering the sombre “Lament,” the spiritual theme now assuming a poignant funereal character, before reaching through faith, hope, and determination resolution in “Benediction.” Folk and spirituals deftly blend with classical writing and techniques in a work that its creator, sadly, never heard performed during her lifetime.

Echoing Bartok's same-titled work, Kay's three-part Concerto for Orchestra is an adventurous exploration of orchestral techniques and timbres. While it's grounded in tonality, Kay isn't afraid to venture into chromaticism and dissonance; however, his assured handling of melody, counterpoint, and rhythm ensures that the work never loses its coherence or shape. True to its title, the piece functions as a showcase of sorts for the orchestra's different sections, from strings and woodwinds to horns and percussion. Aligning itself to the fast-slow-fast format of the classical concerto, Concerto for Orchestra also naturally explores contrasts in tone and mood, moving as it does from a robust allegro at the start to an harmonically expressive adagio at the centre and an expansive andante at the finish.

Though Taylor-Perkinson arrives a generation after Bonds and Kay, his Worship: A Concert Overture makes for a fitting closer, especially when it, like Montgomery Variations, references spirituals, blues, and Black folk music in its treatment of the hymn “Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow.” Taylor-Perkinson's piece similarly blends multiple elements seamlessly, albeit into a single statement. Folk elements, muscular rhythms, and traces of Baroque counterpoint surface during the performance, making for an action-packed six minutes.

December 2023