The 2016 Atlanta Music Festival will be November 14-18, 2016. Comprising several events devoted to advancing relations among the races through the arts, the Festival will culminate in a gala concert featuring opera star Jessye Norman at Glenn Memorial Auditorium on the Emory University campus, Friday, November 18, 7:00 PM. Tickets are $25 and $18.
Excerpts from the opera Frederick Douglass, by Dorothy Rudd Moore will be performed, as well as the string quartet GRACE by T.J. Anderson, originally composed for Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane and Company, in 1994.
Having conquered the stages of Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, The Metropolitan Opera as well as the great houses of Europe, and won five Grammy awards, the National Medal of Arts, France's Légion d'honneur, as well as 40 honorary doctorates, Jessye Norman is one of the greatest and most celebrated classical singers of our time. Also featured in the concert are Pultizer Prize winning civil rights scholar Taylor Branch, Atlanta tenor Timothy Miller, the Morehouse and Spelman College Glee Clubs, and the Meridian Chorale. Dwight Andrews is artistic director and Steven Darsey is music director.
The final work of the evening will be an anthem arranged by the renowned composer Adolphus Hailstork. Scored for choirs, soloists, and orchestra, it will conclude with the audience joining the performers in singing words inspired by President Obama's speech "A More Perfect Union": "We will be each other's keeper there, in a land where all are free; where equality and justice rule, we will write our destiny."
