Burleigh Spirituals Festival Scholarship Concert
On Monday April 14, a lovely gift was shared with a rather sparse, but welcoming audience. Since 2016, Patrick Dailey has been Nashville’s leading force in preserving and honoring the legacy of Harry T. Burleigh who was, himself, a leading force in both preserving and honoring the legacy of African American spirituals. Burleigh (1866–1949) was one of the earliest classically trained American composers to arrange black spirituals for the concert stage. His arrangements were heard worldwide.
Dailey, world-traveling countertenor and part of the voice faculty at Tennessee State has worked with a broad variety of musical allies to produce this annual event. Each year there is a slightly different variation based on the same theme. In 2023, when the annual event was held in the Country Music Hall of Fame, connections were made between American roots music and spirituals. This year’s event, held in the Laura Turner Concert Hall, made connections between Jazz, Gospel, and spirituals. One thru-line was the performance of spiritual arrangements by African American composers, like Moses Hogan. Another thru-line featured both choral and solo works.
The printed program did not name specific works but, instead, divided the evening into five segments: first featuring six Nashville Opera HBCU Fellows; then HBCU choirs; the awards section; features by the guest artist, Damien Sneed; and finally, excerpts from Duke Ellington’s wondrous Sacred Concerts.
Excellence blossomed throughout the evening. Two students delivered standout performances among the interns. From TSU, Brooklyn Cook’s pitch, enunciation, and delightful stage presence worked well for her musical theater piece “Mister Snow” from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel. In a very different style, singing “Steal Away,” Fisk University’s Anna Sims exhibited subtlety in dynamics and timbre. Both clearly understood the assignment required by their respective works.
The HBCU choir section likewise shone in differing styles. The TSU Meistersingers, directed by three-time Grammy nominee Jasmine Fripp, have clearly mastered the more traditional college choir techniques of blend and solid presentation. Lane College’s Jennie E. Lane Ensemble, directed and performing a piece composed by Assistant Professor Alexis Rainbow, a graduate of the Cleveland Institute, displayed a vivid style that fused African call & response elements with the wailing elements of African American spirituals. The audience response was notably enthusiastic. Again, both groups and their directors were true to their roots, clearly understanding the necessary excellence such performances required.
The Burleigh Arts Trailblazer and Burleigh Civic Champion awards were presented to Darryl G. Nettles, interim chair of the TSU Music Department and Lorenzo Washington, founder of the Jefferson Street Sound Museum, respectively. Both recipients were obviously moved and well-deserving.
World-famous artist and current host of The Bobby Jones Radio Show, singer Bobby Jones introduced the featured artist of the evening, Damien Sneed. This section of the program, alone, should have filled the hall. Sneed, winner of Dove and NAACP awards, collaborated with San Franklin, Alysha Nesbitt, and Dailey bringing the house down with expertly performed “Tell Me It’s the Truth,” “Praise God,” and “Come Sunday” from Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concerts, a sophisticated fusion of jazz and gospel. Franklin’s saucy performance delighted the crowd while likewise, Dailey, most widely-known for his performance of 18th-century Baroque music, revealed a little-known, but well-developed skill for scat singing.
My favorite part of this well-wrought program, however, featured the TSU’s Jazz Collegians—yet another well-trained student group with tight performance and excellent soloists in the trumpet, trombone, and sax sections. They were well prepared by Professor James Sexton. Ellington, whose career overlapped substantially with Burleigh’s in trying to expand the reach of black spiritual music, came at this goal from a differing angle. Like Burleigh’s works that have reached canonic status, Ellington’s soul-stirring Sacred Concerts deserve more performances like these solo and jazz combo excerpts.
In the future, I hope the administrations of the schools and organizations involved with such events will engage more vigorously. When students get a chance to perform at one of the region’s premier locales, upper-level administrators could well get college buses to bring faculty and students as support in the audience. And allies like Nashville Opera and the Nashville Symphony could encourage more of their audiences to support such worthy events. But, regardless, those who attended experienced a wonderful treat, and for students to witness and take part in such an event cannot help but have a lasting impact on their growth as musicians.
Kudos to Professor Dailey (founder of the Big Blue Opera Initiative), Kellee Halford (Executive Director of the Nashville Black Music Association), the Burleigh Legacy Alliance who funded the Sneed’s appearance, and all those who contributed to treasuring Burleigh’s legacy. Proceeds from the event support the NBMA’s Harry T. Burleigh Fund for Vocal Studies. One additional piece of good news: Next year’s tenth-anniversary event will be held in Burleigh’s homebase Erie, Pennsylvania celebrating at the home of one of the world’s most active Burleigh organization, the aforementioned Burleigh Legacy Alliance.
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Y Kendall is a Stanford-educated musicologist, specializing in dance history who recently earned an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Columbia University, studying nonfiction writing with Ben Ratliff and Margo Jefferson. Kendall’s diverse works have been published in Alchemy: Journal of Translation, Columbia Journal, Mitos Magazín, The Hunger Mountain Review, and The Salt Collective, among others. Born and raised in Tennessee, Kendall now lives near Nashville, freelancing as a flutist and writer, while caregiving for relatives.
