By Randi Bjornstad

Here’s how the Eugene Concert Choir introduces their next performance: At this concert, you will experience incredible works of classical music by Black composers about beautiful Black lives.

In fact, the title of the concert is just that — Black is Beautiful — with a professional guest vocal ensemble called EXIGENCE onstage with the Eugene Concert Choir & Orchestra, performing powerful songs that call out for social justice that so often is denied, or at least applied unevenly, to people of color in this country.

One piece in particular, to be performed during the first half of the concert, is called Seven Last Words of the Unarmed, and if it evokes a somewhat Biblical mental image, that is its purpose.

Composed by Joel Thompson, a member of EXIGENCE, which hails from Detroit, Mich., the song begins follows the same theme as Joseph Haydn’s classic, Seven Last Words of Christ, only here it reflects the composer’s emotional reaction to the killing in this country of unarmed men of color.

The specific men — and their last words — that occasioned Thompson’s composition were Kenneth Chamberlain, Trayvon Martin, Amadou Diallo, Michael Brown, Oscar Grant, John Crawford, and Eric Garner. In the year since those deaths, the list has grown much longer.

Dr. Eugene Rogers, director of EXIGENCE

EXIGENCE, directed by Dr. Eugene Rogers, refers to its dictionary meaning, “an urgent need or demand.” The group consists of professional vocalists as well as educators, composers, and conductors and is part of the Sphinx Organization, dedicated to furthering participation and excellence in all aspects of classical music by people of color.

In selecting Seven Last Words of the Unarmed, which will be performed in the first half of the Black is Beautiful program, Rogers intends it to be not only “a lament over what has been lost” but also “a call to action.”

Also on the first half of the program will be Glory, a song written in 2014 by singer John Legend and rappers Common and Rhymefest, and which was used as the theme song from the film, Selma, the story of the Selma-to-Montgomery marches in 1965. The version included in this concert is Rogers’ arrangement of Glory, with lyrics rewritten by Rogers and his students to reflect the emotion and message of the Seven Last Words of the Unarmed.

The second half of the Black is Beautiful program is Scenes from the Life of a Martyr, conducted by Diane Retallack, founder and artistic director of the Eugene Concert Choir organization.

This 16-part oratorio, written by Undine Smith Moore, a Black woman composer born in 1904, reflects the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was first performed in 1982 at Carnegie Hall in New York City, and was a Pulitzer Prize nominee, but it has not been performed frequently since, probably largely because, in Smith Moore’s own words, “One of the most evil effects of racism in my time was the limits it placed upon the aspirations of Blacks, so that though I have been ‘making up’ and creating music all my life, in my childhood or even in college I would not have thought of calling myself a composer or aspiring to be one.”

The Black is Beautiful concert will be recorded for CD release and according to the Eugene Concert Choir will be the first publicly available recording of Scenes from the Life of  Martyr.

Eugene Concert Choir presents Black is Beautiful

When: 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, May 7, 2023

Where: Silva Concert Hall, Hult Center for the Performing Arts, One Eugene Center (7th and Willamette streets), Eugene

Tickets: $10 to $52, available at the Hult Center box office, 541-682-5000, or online at eugeneconcertchoir.org or hultcenter.org

Eugene Concert Choir Black is Beautiful video clip: https://youtu.be/KvKC4SK1CbQ

Information about EXIGENCE and the Sphinx Organization: sphinxmusic.org/exigence-vocal-ensemble