Alabama Symphony Orchestra Presents Original Work in UA’s 2011 Realizing the Dream Concert

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The Alabama Symphony Orchestra will perform “Dream, Child. Hope,” an original composition by Adolphus Hailstork, as the featured work of the 2011 Martin Luther King Jr. Realizing the Dream Concert at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 15, in the Moody Music Building Concert Hall at The University of Alabama.

Tickets are $15 and are on sale at the Moody box office; phone 205/348-7111 for details. The Gloria Narramore Moody Foundation and the Martin Luther King Jr. Realizing the Dream Committee are sponsors of the event.

“Dream, Child. Hope” will be performed by the orchestra as well as an ensemble of 70 singers drawn from three area groups. The Martin Luther King Jr. Concert Choir will feature members of the newly formed African Negro Children’s Ensemble led by Dr. Gregory McPherson as well as female voices from the Prentice Concert Chorale and the UA Afro American Gospel Choir. More information is available at http://realizingthedream.ua.edu/index.html.

The Alabama Symphony Orchestra commissioned “Dream” as part of its Reflect and Rejoice concerts. It will perform the commissioned work again at 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 16, at the Alys Stephens Center’s Jemison Concert Hall in Birmingham. The text for the composition is drawn from the poems of three Birmingham schoolchildren. Among the texts are the lines: “The sweet sound of music. Music is hope. A dream in every child.”

Also participating will be conductor Michael Morgan, music director and conductor of the Oakland East Bay Symphony; and concert violinist and composer Daniel Bernard Roumain. Roumain also will perform two of his compositions: “Tuscaloosa Meditations” and “Voodoo Violin Concerto No. 1.” The concert also will feature “American Fanfare” by Hailstork as well as works by Michael Abels and William Grant Still.

Hailstork received his doctorate in composition from Michigan State University, where he was a student of H. Owen Reed. He completed earlier studies at the Manhattan School of Music under Vittorio Giannini and David Diamond, the American Institute at Fontainebleau with Nadia Boulanger and Howard University with Mark Fax. Hailstork’s works have been performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony and the New York Philharmonic.

A native of Margate, Fla., Roumain studied music as an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music, where he serves as a visiting professor of composition. He recently collaborated and performed with Lady Gaga on “American Idol” and was profiled as a “New Face of Classical Music” in Esquire magazine.

Morgan also serves as music director of the Sacramento Philharmonic and artistic director of the Oakland Youth Orchestra. Morgan makes about 100 appearances in the nation’s schools each year, particularly in the East Bay, and he is highly regarded as a champion of arts education and minority access to the arts.

The Gloria Narramore Moody Foundation is a sponsor of this year’s concert. The foundation was founded in 1990 by Gloria Moody and her husband, the late Tuscaloosa businessman Frank McCorkle Moody, to support the arts and music. In addition to bringing world-class performers to Alabama, the Moody Foundation has endowed scholarships at The University of Alabama and supported arts organizations elsewhere in the United States.

Previous Moody Foundation sponsored artists have included bass Samuel Ramey; New York Metropolitan Opera soprano Benita Valente; cellist Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Emanuel Ax in a joint recital; pianists Garrick Ohlsson, Christopher O’Riley, and Olga Kern; violinists Itzhak Perlman, Gil Shaham, and Leila Josefowicz; the Guarneri String Quartet; flutist Ransom Wilson. In 2007-2008, Glorida Moody celebrated “20 Years in the Moody Concert Hall” with QuinTango; pianist Drew Mays; Indra Thomas, soprano; and the Frank Moody Memorial Concert featuring the Alabama Symphony Orchestra with violinist Itzhak Perlman.

The “Realizing the Dream” concert brings together different parts of the community in ways that are fresh and rewarding. The Martin Luther King Jr. Realizing the Dream Committee is comprised of faculty and staff from Shelton State Community College, Stillman College and The University of Alabama. The committee’s mission is to raise consciousness about injustice and promote equality, peace and social justice by creating educational and cultural opportunities for growth, empowerment and social change so that every person may experience the bounty of life’s abundant possibilities.