God I’m an emotional mess after this 😭 More people need to perform this masterpiece, it’s genuinely one of the most emotionally stirring pieces I’ve ever heard

Beautiful performance. Smile on my face, tears in my eyes.

Bravo, BRAVO, University of Michigan! Here is my virtual standing ovation. You’re a true class act, a group of serious musicians in your magnificent Ann Arbor concert hall. Wish I had been there to hear this in person. I was just starting as a junior faculty at Portland State University when I attended a performance of this at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in September of 1994. The Oregon Symphony, conducted by the late James DePriest recorded this magnificent composition that night. Raymond Bazemore performed the narration. I was deeply moved. I bought a CD of it and have played it often, especially on the anniversaries of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial in August of 1963, or during the national holiday in King’s honor. I have a deep personal connection to this music and its meaning. My late father, a clergyman, was very active in the civil rights movement. Along with my brothers in the 1960s, I was often recruited to crank out handbills on a mimeograph machine and then help pass them out door-to-door and on street corners with my father and other activists. Of course we honor Dr. King, as we should. But I truly believe that if he had anything to do with it King would by shy about the near worship of his personality, and be more inclined to share the limelight with the countless cadres of supporters who worked tirelessly in his shadow. So many gave so much. The sacrifices are immeasurable and the movement consisted of a powerful force of resolute people who were also “tired of being kicked about” by the feet of brutal oppression. I place this musical composition among the ranks of pieces like Copeland’s “A Lincoln Portrait.” It is true Americana. The deep melancholy and tenderness in the subdued passages of this piece are contrasted with a kind of majesty when the score ascends. There’s an almost religious quality of the chimes, and in the elaborate percussion progressions there builds a drama and expectation. I look at your marvelous young musicians and realize they had not been born until well after the turbulence of those trying years of social change and political reform (and yet we now backslide into a kind of darkness enveloping us in this age of a fake president and his band of bigoted thugs dismantling so many of the things for which so many paid so dearly). King’s words are delivered brilliantly by your narrator (you don’t name him here) and your conductor is truly a star (why no credits?). Still, THANK YOU, THANK YOU for posting this. Deeply appreciated. We must be inspired to pick up where King left off. We must keep his dream alive and the dreams of countless others who will never forget what they did.

Happy 40th anniversary to this piece!

I really love this piece. Here, for the first time, I hear it only with two double basses but no other strings! Is this version for large wind ensemble, double basses, percussion, piano, celesta, and harp written by the composer? If not: Who wrote this fantastic arrangement? Thank you for sharing this really outstanding performance!

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