78TH SEASON OF

CONCERTS

national gallery of art | february 2, 2020 
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PROGRAM

Diane Monroe, composer, violin, riti, leader 

With PUBLIQuartet

Ayodele Maakheru, banjos 

Yacouba Sissoko, kora 

Lee W. Smith, acoustic bass 

Leonard “Doc” Gibbs, percussion 

Charlotte Blake Alston, narrator 

Curlee Raven Holton, visual artist

Violin Woman, African Dreams 

February 2, 2020 | 3:30 p.m.

West Building, West Garden Court

Processional: Chant “Upendo, Ukweli, Umoja” * 

Somebody’s Knockin’ at My Door

Moons Too

Moons

Waiting

Groove #3

Release

Lament

Courage

Intermission

African Dreams

Violin Solo

Words

Recessional: Wo YaYa “We Will Get There”

This concert is part of a series of performances by female violinists, showcasing the 

brilliance and stylistic versatility of the instrument.

* Title translation: “Upendo, Ukweli, Umoja” in Swahili: love, truth, and unity

All repertoire composed by Diane Monroe except the traditional spiritual “Somebody’s Knockin’ at 

My Door” and Wo YaYa “We Will Get There,” composed by Sol Amarfio, with lyrics by Teddy Osei.

left Diane Monroe, photo by Peter Checcia. right PUBLIQuartet, photo by Lelanie Foster
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THE MUSICIANS

Diane Monroe, composer, violin, riti, leader

Diane Monroe, a native Philadelphian, is a violinist whose versatility and expressive 

artistry consistently bring both jazz and classical audiences to their feet. Her visibility 

as a jazz artist began with her long-standing membership as first violinist of the 

Uptown String Quartet and the Max Roach Double Quartet. These critically acclaimed 

groups have appeared on The Cosby Show, CBS News Sunday Morning, and Mister 

Rogers’ Neighborhood and have recorded on the Soul Note, Philips/Polygram, and 

Mesa/ Bluemoon labels.

Monroe is more than a fine performer. Her original compositions and arrangements 

have been highlighted on television shows and recordings, as well as in performances 

with the Uptown String Quartet and the Max Roach Double Quartet in major concert 

halls and festivals throughout the world. In 2018, she won both a Pew Fellowship and 

a Pew Project grant from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. The Pew Project grant 

funded her 2019 project, Violin Woman, African Dreams. Concurrently, her work titled 

Vibes and her orchestration of Fred Rogers’s You Are Special appear on the Sony 

Classical Records’ soundtrack recording for the film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Recently, Monroe has performed in ensembles led by Odean Pope, Bobby 

Zankel’s Warriors of the Wonderful Sound, and Dave Allen’s residency ensemble at 

the Kimmel Center, as well as with Tony Miceli, vibraphonist. During her four-year run 

with the String Trio of New York, she toured in concert with Joe Lovano, Oliver Lake, 

Anthony Davis, Bang on a Can All-Stars, and literary artist, Quincy Troupe. She has 

also performed with Reggie Workman, Regina Carter, and Don Byron. Having won 

the coveted Pro Musicis Recital Award as a classical artist in 1983, Monroe performed 

violin recital debuts at New York’s Merkin Hall, Los Angeles’s Schoenberg Hall, and the 

Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her most recent solo premieres include David 

Baker’s Violin Concerto with the Duluth Superior Symphony, Sarasate’s Carmen 

Fantasy with the Harlem Symphony, and Paul Salerni’s The Big Sword and the Little 

Broom on Monarch Records. Diane Monroe has taught violin and coached chamber 

music at Oberlin Conservatory, Temple University, Swarthmore College, and The 

Quartet Program, New York. She is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and has 

also attended Oberlin Conservatory of Music and Michigan State University.

PUBLIQuartet

Applauded by the Washington Post as “a perfect encapsulation of today’s trends in 

chamber music,” PUBLIQuartet’s creative, interactive programming presents contemporary works, original compositions, and improvisations expanding the role of the 

string quartet. Selected by Concert Artists Guild as 2013’s New Music/New Places 

Ensemble, PUBLIQuartet was also recognized by Chamber Music America (CMA) in 

2015 with the ASCAP Adventurous Programming Award. In January 2019, it was 

selected to receive CMA’s third annual Innovator Award.

PUBLIQuartet’s commitment to support emerging composers inspired the 

ensemble’s innovative program, PUBLIQ Access, designed in 2014 to promote such 

composers and to present a wide variety of underrepresented music for string quartet — 

from classical, jazz, and electronic, to non-notated, world, and improvised music. The 

quartet showcases at least one of these works on virtually every program, and also gives 

regular performances in New York to present the newest pieces in this growing catalogue.

Founded in 2010, PUBLIQuartet has been presented by the American Composers 

Orchestra, the Virginia Arts Festival, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, and the 

Chautauqua Institution. The quartet has collaborated with members of the International 

Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), JACK Quartet, jazz tuba legend Bob Stewart, and innovative jazz clarinetist/composer Don Byron. 

Curtis Stewart, violin 

Jannina Norpoth, violin

Nick Revel, viola

Hamilton Berry, cello

Ayodele Maakheru, banjos

Ayodele Maakheru is a musician, composer, and teacher who studied at the Brooklyn 

Conservatory of Music, City College of New York, and Brooklyn College. He plays a variety 

of instruments, including guitar, banjos, mandolins, ukuleles, bass, harmonica, and 

djembe. He has performed, toured, and/or recorded with a variety of artists, such as 

Lionel Hampton, Savion Glover, Audra McDonald, Eartha Kitt, Leslie Uggams, Phylicia 

Rashad, Gregory Hines, Miriam Makeba, The Fifth Dimension, and the New York 

Philharmonic. He has been a featured soloist with the Clef Club Orchestra at Carnegie 

Hall and appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, along with the Noise/Funk 

band. Maakheru has been recognized as a winner of the 2004 Bronx Council on the 

Arts Brio Award for music composition, as well as an award recipient of the American 

Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) for composition. He has 

recorded three albums, Another Country, Sunship, and Distant Traveler.
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Charlotte Blake Alston, narrator

Charlotte Blake Alston is an internationally acclaimed storyteller, narrator, librettist, 

and singer who performs in venues throughout North America and abroad. For 

nineteen years, she was the featured host, storyteller, and narrator on the Carnegie 

Hall Family and School Concert series and performed as an artist for the Lincoln 

Center Institute. She has made multiple appearances at the Smithsonian Institution, 

the Kennedy Center, and festivals around the country, including the National Storytelling 

Festival, the National Festival of Black Storytelling, and the Timpanogos Festival. Alston 

has received numerous honors and awards, including a Pew Fellowship, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Artist of the Year Award, the National Storytelling Network’s 

Circle of Excellence Award, and the Zora Neale Hurston Award. In 2016, she was one 

of two storytellers selected to represent the National Association of Black Storytellers 

at the weekend opening of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African 

American History and Culture.

Curlee Raven Holton, visual artist 

A highly regarded professor, painter, and master printmaker, Curlee Raven Holton has 

exhibited his work throughout the world. His paintings, drawings, and prints are held 

by major museums and collections in the United States and abroad. His most recent 

solo exhibition, Journey: The Artistry of Curlee Raven Holton, was held at the University 

of Maryland Global Campus. Holton earned his master of fine arts degree from Kent 

State University with a concentration in printmaking and his bachelor’s degree in 

drawing and painting from the Cleveland Institute of Fine Arts. He served as the David 

M. and Linda Roth Professor of Art at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, where 

he taught printmaking and African American art history. Holton founded the Experimental Printmaking Institute with a vision to provide artists with the time, space, 

materials, and professional support needed to create new work. This vision was 

realized with more than two hundred works produced. In 2014, he was appointed 

executive director of the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and 

Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland, 

College Park. In 2015, he received the Anyone Can Fly Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2018, Holton was awarded an honorary doctorate in art and philosophy from the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts, New York City.

Yacouba Sissoko, kora

Yacouba Sissoko was born in Kita, Mali, to a well-known djely family. Djelys for centuries 

have been the traditional musicians and keepers of the factual history and fables of 

past rulers, nobles, social groups, and families. The kora was the traditional instrument 

that djelys played. At the age of nine, Sissoko started learning the kora and the oral 

traditions associated with it from his grandfather, until he moved to Bamako, Mali’s 

capital, to attend the National Institute of the Arts. Based in the capital, he caught the 

attention of the music world and began touring with noted international African artists, 

which eventually led him to settle in the United States in 1998. He has performed, 

toured, and recorded with well-known African musicians, including Baaba Maal, Sekou 

(Bambino) Diabate, and Kerfala Kante. In addition to African music, Sissoko has also performed and recorded with a variety of artists, such as Harry Belafonte, Paul Simon, and 

Lauren Hill. He regularly tours with Regina Carter, Rachel Brown, and his own band SIYA. 

Lee W. Smith, acoustic bass

Lee W. Smith is a Philadelphia-born jazz bassist. He has performed for over forty years 

with many R&B and jazz legends, including The Delphonics, Blue Magic, Billy Paul, Mongo 

Santamaría, Sonny Fortune, Odean Pope, and academy-award nominee Terrance Howard. 

Smith continues to expand his accomplishments as a composer, arranger, producer, 

and educator. He is also the proud father of bass great Christian McBride. 

Leonard “Doc” Gibbs, percussion

Philadelphia-native Leonard “Doc” Gibbs received his so-called “Doc”-torate from 

the late, legendary jazz saxophonist, Grover Washington, Jr. While recording the Live 

at the Bijou album in 1976, Grover acknowledged Doc for prescribing an herbal remedy 

that cured Grover’s nasty night-before-taping cold. He then gave Doc this nickname 

that appropriately describes a musician who performs with the precision of a surgeon. 

Early in his career, Doc worked with many of the music industry’s top artists, including 

Freddie Hubbard, George Benson, the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band, Nancy Wilson, 

and Anita Baker. Doc has also worked with contemporary Grammy Award–winning 

artists Erykah Badu and Wyclef Jean. For the past twenty-five years, Doc has been a 

dedicated educator, teaching the art of hand-drumming and percussion. In 2015, he 

relocated to Los Angeles, bringing his knowledge and experience to the West Coast, 

once again getting involved in teaching drum and percussion instruments. In Los 

Angeles, he also created Baba Doc’s Healing Sound Therapy, a practice that uses 

percussion as a form of healing and reconnecting. 
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“Nina S.”

I took out your albums today 

And I listened to you

For the first time in two years

I listened to you

I was so angry-hurt

Disappointed to find that

You are human too —

I just couldn’t listen anymore

Today I took out your albums

And I listened to you

And your Black voice 

Mellowed me

Welcome me back

Black Woman

Welcome me back

While I listen to you.

Poem for Nina Simone, by Kofi Aboygese (aka Arthur Burwell, Jr.) and known to Diane as her dear 

“Uncle Artie,” September 25, 1982

Excerpt from “Things Coming Things Going”

I would

Swim to Africa

(If she would have me) 

But so much has been lost

of my native self.

Would she remember, and claim me, or would she smile graciously . . . 

Poem by Glee Ivory, 1993. Ivory is a writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times series on 

Africa, after the artist returned from a Fulbright Fellowship to West Africa.

TEXTS

With musical boundaries lessening, artists are ever-more challenged to 

define our own identities and voices. With this project, I am challenging 

myself to not only disrupt musical classifications and hierarchies, but also 

to examine what it means for me to be an African-American woman.

— Diane Moore.

Composer and violinist Diane Monroe draws on her decades-long, genre-defying 

career to craft a musical memoir that bridges jazz, classical, and traditional African 

music, revealing an African-American violinist’s trials and triumphs. Her Violin Woman, 

African Dreams is inspired by the environment and by objects in The Colored Girls 

Museum (TCGM), a unique house museum located in a Germantown neighborhood of 

Philadelphia.

Written for violin, banjo, bass, the West African kora (a long-necked, twenty-onestring, plucked instrument), and percussion, the composition provides a framework for 

improvisations by each player, and weaves a musical narrative that incorporates sound, 

visual art by Curlee Raven Holton, and spoken word. Monroe’s acclaimed collaborators 

have included the adventurous string ensemble PUBLIQuartet, banjoist and Broadway 

veteran Ayodele Maakheru, and Yacouba Sissoko, an internationally recognized master 

of West African kora and traditional storytelling.

This concert is presented in conjunction with a Works in Progress conversation, 

featuring Diane Monroe and Curlee R. Holton discussing the creation of Violin Woman, 

African Dreams, on Monday, February 3, at 12:10 and 1:10 p.m., in the West Building 

Lecture Hall.

PROGRAM NOTE
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Upcoming Events of the SeventyEighth Season of The William Nelson 

Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin Concerts

Unless otherwise noted, concerts 

are held in the West Building, West 

Garden Court.

Nordic Voices

Music from the Time of Charles V

Celebrating Alonso Berruguete: 

First Sculptor of Renaissance Spain

February 9, 3:30 p.m.

Eighth Blackbird

Ice ‘n’ SPICE

Works by Nina Shekhar, Fjola Evans, 

Andy Akiho, and others. 

February 16, 3:30 p.m.

Third Coast Percussion

Music of Devonté Hynes (aka Blood 

Orange), Ryan Lott (aka Son Lux), 

and iconic composer Philip Glass. 

February 23, 3:30 p.m.

Sound Sketch 

Suspicious Cheeselords

From the Heavens

Music illuminating the Gallery’s holdings 

of images of heavenly beings. 

February 28, 12:10 p.m.

West Building Rotunda

McGill-McHale Trio

Works by Saint-Saëns, Rachmaninov, 

and others.

March 1, 3:30 p.m.

General Information

Admission to the National Gallery of Art 

and all of its programs is free of charge, 

except as noted.

The use of cameras or recording 

equipment during the performance 

is not allowed.

Please be sure that all portable electronic 

devices are turned off.

—

Concerts are made possible in part 

through the generosity of donors to the 

National Gallery of Art through The Circle. 

Reserved seating is available in recognition 

of their support. Please contact the 

development office at (202) 842-6450 or 

circle@nga.gov for more information.

—

The department of music produced 

these program notes. Copyright © 2020 

Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, 

Washington

cover Curlee Raven Holton, Blind Spots

(detail), 2003, National Gallery of Art, 

Washington, Gift of Jon D. Smith, Jr., 

Harold and Janet Tague, and Riley 

Temple, 2008.82.5

“We will Get There”

We are going.

Heaven knows where we are going.

We know we’re there.

We will get there.

Heaven knows how we will get there.

We know we will.

It will be hard, we know, and the road will be muddy and rough,

but we’ll get there.

Heaven knows how we will get there.

We know we will.

Wo YaYa (WoYaYa)

Wo YaYe (WoYaYe)
NGA.GOV/MUSIC