Mother and Child for String Orchestra was arranged from the second movement of the Suite for Violin and Piano that Still composed in 1943 for Louis Kaufman (1905-1994), a celebrated soloist, concertmaster for over 500 Hollywood movies, and an acclaimed recording artist who released more than a hundred albums. The Suite’s three movements were inspired by three works of African-American visual artists. Mother and Child evokes a 1932 chalk drawing by the multi-discipline artist Sargent Claude Johnson (1888-1967). The mother’s melancholy expression in the drawing and the gentle, plaintive elements in Still’s musical representation of it may recall the death of Johnson’s own mother when he was twelve and his subsequent time in an orphanage.

For those who remain carry the name, the people who remember their words, wit, wisdom, how they were scratch cooks, made chicken curry and rice, fry bread and pinto beans, sweet potato pie, peach cobbler, took turns driving the kids to practice, stomped puddles in rain…

Remember, remember, light a candle, say a prayer, a blessing some funny thing they said when alive when you laughed so hard you cried, but you didn’t, that was a road trip a family vacation when the back seat smelled less than fresh after a drive through the desert without air conditioning.

These are the days of our lives and to those who loved and lost. This poem is for you, for me.

Let us mourn all those we loved who no longer breathe this spring air, or get to see their first Robin this season. The world is a lovely place when you care and have skin in the game, and harbor a secret love in your heart for all things full of color, sound and feathers, soft sheets, chocolate ice cream, puppy breath, baby chuckles, your face in the morning, in the mirror smiling back so alive.

Lee wrote of An Engraved American Mourning, commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra for this “Concert of Remembrance” observing the 20th anniversary of 9/11, “I entitled the work An Engraved American Mourning because the events of September 11, 2001 were of such a nature that they will forever be remembered by those who were alive and old enough to understand what happened. I know that I, like many others, can remember exactly what we were doing when we saw the events unfolding on television. Because of this horrendous tragedy, I decided to use the homophone ‘mourning’ to describe the aftermath of the events that happened that morning. The word ‘engraved’ is purposefully used to describe the cutting or carving of a visual text on the ‘surface’ of our minds.

“An Engraved American Mourning has an overall arch form of emotions. It starts with a dreamlike four-note motive in the strings that I use throughout the piece in various instruments. These four notes stand for ‘we re-mem-ber,’ which was inspired by the words of former President George W. Bush on November 11, 2001. As the work progresses, the harmonies suggest that ominous actions and experiences would soon follow. The music becomes denser in texture and has episodes of struggle and a strong desire to rise above the destruction and rebuild with a sense of hope. As the music nears its conclusion, the four-note motive returns and the strings sustain a chord, which suggest a serene and prayerful atmosphere that seeks God’s gift of healing.”

On the Town (1944) concerns three sailors on leave in New York during World War II who are determined to see everything in the city during their 24-hour pass. On the subway, one of the sailors falls in love with the poster picture of Miss Turnstiles, and the boys set out to find her. Their efforts take them all over the city until they discover Miss Turnstiles in Coney Island, where they learn that she is not the glamorous girl they expected from the poster, but a belly dancer. Gabey, the sailor infatuated with Miss Turnstiles, sings that without a companion, New York is a Lonely Town.

West Side Story (1957) was one of the first musicals to explore a serious subject with wide social implications. In the story, Riff, leader of the Jets, an “American” street gang, determines to challenge Bernardo, head of the rival Sharks, a group of young Puerto Ricans, to a rumble. Riff asks Tony, his best friend and a co-founder of the Jets, to help. Tony has been growing away from the gang, and senses better things in his future, but agrees. The Jets and the Sharks meet that night at a dance in the gym, where Tony falls in love at first sight with Maria, Bernardo’s sister. Tony promises Maria he will try to stop the rumble, but he is unsuccessful, and becomes involved in the fighting. He kills Bernardo. Maria learns that Tony has slain her brother. Tony comes to her apartment, but she cannot send him away, and they express their longing for a place free from prejudice in a dance performed while a woman’s voice is heard singing Somewhere.

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, with book and lyrics by Broadway veteran Alan Jay Lerner (Paint Your Wagon, Brigadoon, My Fair Lady, Camelot, On a Clear Day, Gigi), was Bernstein’s contribution to the United States Bicentennial Celebration in 1976. The musical opened on May 4, 1976 at Broadway’s Mark Hellinger Theater after try-outs in Philadelphia and Washington but ran for just seven performances (“Well, you remember the Titanic …” was Lerner’s wry summation), and it has remained among the least accessible of Bernstein’s works. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, subtitled “A Musical About the Problems of Housekeeping,” traces a series of presidencies in the White House as seen through the eyes of the domestic staff. Take Care of This House is sung by Abigail Adams, the wife of President John Adams. Bernstein performed the song with Frederica von Stade on the Inaugural Concert at Kennedy Center in January 1977 in honor of President and Mrs. Jimmy Carter.

Simon, born in Atlanta in 1986, grew up playing organ at his father’s church, immersed himself in music in high school, earned degrees from Georgia State University and Morehouse College, and completed his doctorate at the University of Michigan, where he studied with Evan Chambers and Grammy-winning composer Michael Daugherty. Simon also studied in Baden, Austria and at the Hollywood Music Workshop and New York University’s Film Scoring Summer Workshop. He taught at Spelman College and Morehouse College in Atlanta before being appointed in 2019 to the faculty of Georgetown University, where his projects include a new composition dedicated to the slaves who helped build the school. In addition to his recent opera, Simon has composed works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo voice, chorus, concert band and film, several of them on commissions from such noted organizations as the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera and Philadelphia Orchestra; the gospel-influenced Amen! (2017) was commissioned by the University of Michigan Band in celebration of the university’s 200th anniversary. He has also performed as keyboardist with the Boston Pops, Jackson Symphony and St. Louis Symphony, toured Japan in 2018 under the sponsorship of the United States Embassy in Tokyo and US/Japan Foundation performing in some of the country’s most sacred temples and important concert venues, served as music director and keyboardist for Grammy Award-winner Jennifer Holliday, and appeared internationally with Grammy-nominated soul artist Angie Stone. Simon received the 2021 Medal of Excellence of the Sphinx Organization, which is dedicated to promoting and recognizing Black and Latinx classical music and musicians. His additional honors include the Marvin Hamlisch Film Scoring Award, ASCAP’s Morton Gould Young Composer Award, fellowships from the Sundance Institute and Cabrillo Festival for Contemporary Music, and a residency at the 2021 Ojai Festival.

Simon’s This Land, whose title and expressive intent echo Woody Guthrie’s iconic folk anthem about inclusion and equality in America, was the result of a competition organized by the University of Arizona for a new work for a program on the theme “Towards a More Perfect Union,” whose objective was to move the “conventional symphonic experience into an immersive, welcoming world of new ideas, dialogue and hope.” This Land was premiered by the University of Arizona Symphony Orchestra on October 5, 2019 under the direction of Michelle Di Russo, a doctoral student in orchestral conducting who herself embodied the vision of the entire endeavor. “It is such an honor to be part of this inspiring project,” she said, “especially as a female and a Latinx immigrant in this country. Seeing myself represented not only in the music we will be performing, but also being featured as an artist is very special to me.”

Simon wrote, “This Land is inspired by Emma Lazarus’ gentle, welcoming words in her poem The New Colossus. Lush, bright harmonies in the strings are used to represent hope and unity. I’ve also incorporated the anthems of the many countries of the immigrants (Russia, Mexico, France, etc.) under a dissonant bed of pulsating harmonies. This is as a reminder of the melting pot of culture, communities and people that is central to the USA.”

Like Ms. Di Russo, conductor of the premiere, Emma Lazarus symbolizes the fundamental place of immigration in this country. Lazarus (1849-1887) was among the first successful and well-known Jewish American authors. Her ancestors fled an Inquisition in Brazil and arrived in what was then New Amsterdam in 1654 (three years before George Washington’s forebears settled in Virginia); they were the first Jewish immigrants to America. Her collections of poems and translations of Hugo, Schiller, Goethe, Dumas and Heine were well known in America and abroad by the time she wrote The New Colossus in 1883 as part of the effort to raise money for the construction of a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty. Twenty years later, Lazarus’ poem was cast onto a bronze plaque and mounted inside the pedestal’s lower level. Its closing lines still distill America’s continuing responsibility to those coming here to help build “A More Perfect Union”: Give me your tired, your poor,/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,/The wretched refuse of your teeming shore./Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,/I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

When the Episcopal hymnal was being revised in the early 1890s, Roberts submitted God of Our Fathers for consideration and it was accepted by the project’s editor, George W. Warren, organist at the influential St. Thomas Church in New York City. In 1892, Warren was asked to choose a hymn appropriate for the church’s celebration of the Centennial of the United States Constitution that year. He settled on God of Our Fathers, but thought that the Russian anthem was not appropriate music for such a quintessentially American occasion, and wrote for Robert’s text a new tune that he titled National Hymn. (Among Warren’s other compositions were hymns, anthems and organ pieces, including a Requiem in memory of Abraham Lincoln.) The United States does not have an official “national hymn,” but the Roberts-Warren God of Our Fathers serves perfectly in its place.

The present arrangement of God of Our Fathers was done for the United States Marine Band to perform at the 1981 inauguration of Ronald Reagan as President by Thomas Knox (1937-2004), a trumpeter, composer and arranger for the Marine Band from 1966 to 1985. The arrangement has been heard at many significant national events, including later presidential inaugurations, the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in 1982, and the Congressional Prayer Vigil held in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda the day after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

This arrangement is by Carmen Dragon (1914-1984), Oscar-winning composer, arranger, conductor, educator, and radio and television personality, who gained a wide reputation through more than 65 recordings of his arrangements and light classics with the Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra.