Program notes for Overcoming

Normally indifferent to pomp and ceremony, on January 20, 2009, I found myself, as I watched the inauguration of the first person of color as President of the United States, with a lump in my throat.  Millions watched on television.  Thousands made the journey and braved the cold to attend.  People, many old enough to have been denied the right to vote, wept.  We had indeed come a long way.  And, having lived through the 60’s, I remember that it has not been easy.  I could not help but feel a deep sense of gratification that—in this regard at least—we had matured somewhat as a people.

     From jazz critic James Maher: “Song is the wind chime of memory.”  Overcoming is built around that essential anthem of the civil rights movement, We Shall Overcome.  Virtually all melodic material in the piece is derived or taken directly from it.  Though the tune is always present in one form or another, it is never presented in its entirety.  It appears in a variety of keys, often changing keys as it goes or sounding in two keys at once—just as the people singing it responded in a variety of ways, not always in sync during a tumultuous time.  There is some emphasis on the portion of the phrase set to the word “someday.”

     The programmatic form of the piece follows a very rough abstraction of the history of the civil rights movement.  A seemingly innocent, self-evident concept—of justice for all Americans—is born.  It struggles against deeply ingrained resistance, some of it violent.  Ultimately the idea prevails owing to its ethical power and the thousands who worked and sacrificed to make it happen, some giving their lives.

     The piece begins with a quiet evocation of a beautiful idea—that inequality will be overcome.  A relatively brief period of optimism gives way to the struggle.  Roughly halfway through this, another tune important to the movement, Keep Your Eyes on the Prize, appears.  This section is eventually succeeded by another that celebrates the ascendancy of justice in a vague, nostalgic wash of songs that attended those years: Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind and The Times They Are a-Changin’, John Lennon’s Imagine, the Beatles’ Revolution, Pete Seeger’s Where Have All the Flowers Gone, Paul McCartney’s Blackbird, and The Star-Spangled Banner.  All of this is followed by a final rumination on the “someday” phrase.  The coda begins with a pizzicato section in which the ‘cello, while the upper strings play one more variation of We Shall Overcome, quietly celebrates with a playful version of Hail to the Chief.  It shifts briefly to a sentimental tone; then, a bell-like chord in the piano, heard at several points earlier, suggests the urgent need to remember the lessons of the past.  There is yet much, much work to be done.