Rain & Red Clay

Description

For many of us, the land of our ancestors holds a special power. For the Afro-British composer, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, that fascination drew him to the music and culture of Black America, where his forebears had been enslaved. We present his luscious Clarinet Quintet alongside two of his fundamental influences: the European tradition of composers like Brahms; and Black American music represented here by Valerie Coleman’s Red Clay and Mississippi Delta, which uses blues riffs to create a woodwind quintet with a southern accent.

Program: