Shortly after the 1960 premiere of her Christmas cantata, The Ballad of the Brown King, black female composer Margaret Bonds wrote to her friend and collaborator, Langston Hughes, that her primary goal was to get one good recording of the work. With the release of The Ballad of the Brown King and Other Selected Songs (Avie Records) in November 2019, that goal became realized. Dr. Jackson shared her research on Bonds and The Ballad of the Brown King with Dr. Malcolm J. Merriweather (Associate Professor, Brooklyn College) who led the Dessoff Choirs in a new arrangement of the large-scale choral work. The Ballad of the Brown King is based on the spiritual, “Nobody Knows the Trouble I See,” and features Bonds’s signature use of black musical styles (jazz, gospel) within large-scale forms. Hughes provided the libretto, which focuses on the story of Balthazaar, the dark-skinned king who journeyed to Bethlehem for the birth of Jesus Christ. The recording was listed in Gramophone Magazine as one of the Holiday Recommendations. The Gramophone reviewer writes, “The musical language, light but lucid with the occasional glow of Hansel and Gretel-like warmth, hints at gospel and jazz and swells with guarded pride at lines such as, ‘the kind who was tall and brown.’ In addition to the providing the liner notes, the recording also features Dr. Jackson on harp in new arrangements of Bonds’s more well-known art songs, including Three Dream Portraits, based on the poetry of Hughes. Opera News wrote, “Performed by Merriweather and harpist Ashley Jackson, this three-song cycle provides a fuller understanding of the depth of Bond’s talent for creating mood, poetry and drama….Jackson’s delicate, soulful playing respond perfectly to the aching and haunting qualities of the first two songs in the cycle.”
Listen to the The full album here.
