Award-winning composer explores history and music in Pittsburgh events

PITTSBURGH - March 28, 2017 - PRLog -- A composer best known for works that explore American history and the triumphs and trials of African Americans will be in Pittsburgh in April as part of the "Requiem for Rice" project. Trevor Weston, Ph.D. is a professor of music at Drew University and the composer of the upcoming "Requiem for Rice," a modern take on a classic requiem that will be a lamentation for the souls who were enslaved, exploited and brutalized on rice plantations in South Carolina and Georgia.

Weston is one of a core group of scholars and artists who are creating the requiem, a project lead by Edda L. Fields-Black, a professor of African history at Carnegie Mellon University. CMU's Center for the Arts in Society has designated "Requiem for Rice" as its Performance Initiative for 2015 – 2017.

"We are excited to welcome Dr. Weston to Pittsburgh and to hear his approach to honoring the 'unburied, unmourned, and unmarked' Africans and African Americans who cultivated the Lowcountry's rice plantations," Fields-Black said.

The events are free and open to the public.

"Time-Binding: Communicating History with Music"

7 p.m.

Monday, April 10

An Interactive Presentation at Afro-American Music Institute

7131 Hamilton Avenue

Pittsburgh, PA 15208

"Composing as Confirmation"

4:30 p.m.

Tuesday, April 11

This public lecture at Carnegie Mellon University will be held at Margaret Morrison 103 Breed Hall (off Margaret Morrison Street near Forbes Avenue), Pittsburgh, PA 15213.

About "Requiem for Rice"

"Requiem for Rice" is a lamentation for the repose of the souls of the dead who were enslaved, exploited, and brutalized on Lowcountry South Carolina and Georgia's rice plantations and who remain unburied, unmourned, and unmarked. It is a modern take on a classic requiem performed by a full symphony orchestra and choir. An African and African-American inspired take on a classic requiem, it also features classical West African dance, drumming, and singing. The lamentation ends in celebration, laying to rest once and for all, the shackles of shame, blame, guilt, and denial that pervade this painful period in European, African, American, and African-American history. "Requiem" ends in celebration of enslaved African ancestors' lives, ingenuity, labor, and sacrifice for generations unborn and unseen, reclamation of our history and culture, and reconciliation among people of African descent, Africans, Americans, and Europeans.

"Requiem for Rice" is a collaboration between the Colour of Music Black Classical Musicians Festival and the Lowcountry Rice Culture Project. Carnegie Mellon's Center for the Arts in Society selected "Requiem for Rice" as its Performance Initiative for 2015-2017. Thus, Pittsburgh is the incubator in which the principals conduct our experiment as we develop The Requiem. "Requiem" will premiere on October 22, 2017 at the fifth annual Colour of Music Festival in the newly constructed Gaillard Performance Hall in Charleston, S.C.
http://www.requiemforrice.com/index.html


About Trevor Weston

Trevor Weston's music has been called a "gently syncopated marriage of intellect and feeling" (Detroit Free Press). Weston's honors include the George Ladd Prix de Paris from the University of California, Berkeley, a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the MacDowell Colony. The Boston Children's Chorus commissioned Weston's "Truth Tones" for a national television broadcast honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 2009. The Washington Chorus, directed by Julian Wachner, featured Weston's music in the first annual "New Music for a New Age" concert series in 2009. In 2010, Trilogy: An Opera Company premiered Trevor Weston's 50-minute dramatic work "4"honoring the lives of the four girls killed in the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama church bombing.The Manhattan Choral Ensemble premiered Weston's "Paths of Peace"in 2012 for choir and chamber orchestra using the text of the Long Island slave, Jupiter Hammond. "Griot Legacies" celebrates the African American spiritual in new ways for adult choir, children's choir and orchestra. Premiered by the Boston Landmarks Orchestra in 2014, this work demonstrated Weston's, "knack for piquant harmonies, evocative textures, and effective vocal writing," (Boston Globe).

Dr. Weston's musical education began at the prestigious St. Thomas Choir school in NYC at the age of ten. He received his B.A. from Tufts University and continued his studies at the University of California, Berkeley where he earned his M. A. and Ph. D. in music composition.  His primary composition teachers were T. J. Anderson, Olly Wilson, Andrew Imbrie and Richard Felciano. Dr. Weston is currently a Professor of Music at Drew University in Madison, NJ.