Jester Hairston was best known to the public for his role as the spry

octogenarian Roily Forbes in the long-running NBC situation comedy,

Amen. Less well-known is the fact that he had a lifelong career in film,

radio, and television and was an active singer, composer, and choral

conductor. A graduate of Tufts University in Boston, Hairston was a

choral assistant to Hall Johnson and worked with him on the film score

for Green Pastures in 1936. Other films for which he provided music

were Dmitri Tiomkin’s Lost Horizons and Ralph Nelson’s Lilies of the

Field, for which he wrote the song, Amen, and dubbed the singing voice

of actor Sidney Poitier.

A native of Georgia, Hall Johnson was one of the prime choral

conductors of New York City in the 1920s, thanks to his success as

founder and conductor of the Hall Johnson Choir. He conducted the

choruses for Broadway productions of Green Pastures and Run, Little

Children, and provided the sound track for the Hollywood film version

of Green Pastures in 1936. After ten years of choral conducting and film

work in Los Angeles, Johnson returned to New York in 1946 to found

and conduct the Festival Negro Chorus of New York. He published two

collections ofspirituals: The Green Pastures Spirituals (1930) and Thirty

Negro Spirituals (1949).

Program notes by the New England Spiritual Ensemble

Adapted and edited by Elmer Booze

During the months ofJanuary and February,

recent performances by the National Gallery Orchestra

can be heard Wednesday evenings at 9:00 p.m. on WET A, 90.9 FM.

The use ofcameras or recording equipment during

the performance is not allowed. Please be sure that all

electronic devices are turned offduring the performance.

The Sixtieth Season of

THE WILLIAM NELSON CROMWELL and

F. LAMMOT BELIN CONCERTS

National Gallery of Art

2409th Concert

THE NEW ENGLAND SPIRITUAL ENSEMBLE

VINCENT DION STRINGER, artistic director

FREDERICKA KING, pianist

Sunday Evening, 10 February 2002

Seven O'clock

West Building, West Garden Court

Admission free
PROCESSIONAL

Arr. John Andrew Ross Guide Me, O Tholi Great Jehovah

(b. 1940)

PROGRAM

I. O Black and Unknown Bards

(Poem by James Weldon Johnson)

Traditional Steal Away to Jesus

Jennifer Carey Hunter, soprano

J. Rosamond Johnson Nobody Knows de Trouble I See

(1873-1954) Milton Wright, bass

Harry T. Burleigh

(1866-1949)

Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Chile

Paula Elliot, soprano

Go Down Moses

Vincent Dion Stringer, baritone

William Dawson (adapted) Soon-Ah Will Be Done

(1899-1990)

J. Rosamond Johnson Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing

Roland Hayes

(1887-1976)

II. Biblical Songs

I’ll Make Me a Man

Vincent Dion Stringer, baritone

John Andrew Ross Didn’t It Rain

Stacy Scott, tenor

Ezekiel Saw de Wheel

Lit’l David Play on Yo’ Harp

Moses Hogan

(b. 1957)

Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel

INTERMISSION

III. Traditional and Contemporary Spiritual Arrangements

John W. Work III Done Made My Vow

(1901-1968)

John Andrew Po’ Pilgrim

Vincent Dion Stringer and James Bamswell, 

baritone and bass

Wendell Whalum God Is a God

Milton Wright, bass

John Andrew Ross Hold On

Paula Elliot, alto

John W. Work III Jesus Lay Yo’ Head in the Window

James Bamswell and Jennifer Hunter,

tenor and alto

John W. Work III Rock in Jerusalem

Jester Hairston Home in Dat Rock

(1901-1999) Stacy Scott and Myran Parker-Brass,

tenor and alto

John W. Work III This Little Light o’ Mine

Paula Elliot, alto

John Andrew Ross Nobody’s Fault but Mine

Arr. Hall Johnson 

(1888-1970)

Ain’t Got Time to Die

Myran Parker-Brass, alto
The New England Spiritual Ensemble was founded by Vincent Dion

Stringer, who has been its artistic director since its inception. Possessing

a “first-class bass-baritone voice,” according to the Boston Globe,

Stringer has a flourishing international career in opera and festival

appearances and is currently receiving high critical praise for his recitals

of German Lieder.

The ensemble has been heard nationally on CBS Sunday Morning and

on National Public Radio’s Performance Today. Its first compact disc

recording, Coinin' Up Shouting, features arrangements of spirituals and

original works by John Andrew Ross. The music critic of the Boston

Globe has pronounced the ensemble “excellent...blessed with

performers who own good voices...daringly expressive.” In addition, it

reported that the performance “brought a hush to the hall.” On another 

occasion the same critic reported that “the New England Spiritual

Ensemble offered sophisticated arrangements that never disturbed the

brilliant simplicity ofthe spirituals.”

The New England Spiritual Ensemble focuses on performing Black

spirituals in both traditional arrangements and in arrangements by more

modem Black American composers. At its core, the work of the

ensemble is a tribute to those who through their enslavement, ingenuity,

strength, and creativity paved the way for Blacks to live today as free

people and to be represented at all levels of life in the United States. The

members ofthe ensemble will forever remember their struggle and honor 

them.

The first group of selections on this program is a medley that was

developed at the request of Syracuse University for the centennial

celebration in February 2000 of Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing, written in

1900 by the brothers James Weldon and J. Rosamond Johnson. Their 

purpose was to include it in a celebration of Lincoln’s birthday that the

brothers were organizing with their classmates in Jacksonville, Florida.

Long after the Johnson brothers moved away from Jacksonville to New

York City, the people of that city continued to sing the song and it

eventually spread throughout the South. In the 1920s the NAACP 

adopted Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing as its official song and encouraged the

singing of it throughout the civil rights movement.

The ensemble has taken this piece and combined it with another of

James Weldon Johnson’s creations, Black and Unknown Bards, a poem

that first appeared in Century Magazine in the early 1920s and was later

used by the Johnson brothers in the preface of their book, The Book of

American Negro Spirituals. Upon reading this poem, Vincent Dion

Stringer clearly felt that this work should be the basis upon which the

ensemble could build the celebration around Lift Eviry Voice and Sing

and, at the same time, honor the Johnson brothers, who rightfully belong

in the ranks ofthe Great Black Bards.

In the poem Johnson pays tribute to those Black bards who gave us this

body of music we call spirituals. Although their names may not be

known, their words and melodies live on in present-day arrangements.

The ensemble uses the poem Black and Unknown Bards as a fabric

through which it weaves some of those great melodies, a number of

which are referred to in the poem.

The second group of spirituals on the program consists of songs the

ensemble considers its biblical songs. The texts refer to biblical events

that occurred in the Old Testament and exhibit an expression offaith and

hope for freedom.

The third group of spirituals makes up the second half of the program

and includes both traditional and contemporary settings of spirituals,

some very familiar and some relatively unknown. John Wesley Work III,

the arranger of three of the spirituals, was following in the footsteps of

his father and grandfather as he dedicated his life’s work to the

compilation of the songs of the Black tradition. A winner of Rosenwald

Fellowships for continued study, Work studied at Fisk University in

Nashville, Tennessee, the Institute of Musical Art, and Yale University.

A prolific composer and arranger, he published the collection, American

Negro Songs and Spirituals, in 1940.

Arrangements by John Andrew Ross appear in all three segments of

the program. A composer, choral conductor, jazz pianist, and organist as

well as an arranger, Ross is the ensemble master of the New England

Spiritual Ensemble. He is also minister of music for the First Parish in

Brookline, Massachusetts, and music director of the National Center for

Afro-American Artists and the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts.