Two Wings:
The Music of Black America in Migration
West Coast Premiere
The Music of Black America in Migration
Thursday, February 17, 2022, 7:30pm
Zellerbach Hall
The run time for this performance is approximately 2 hours, with intermission.
This performance is made possible, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts and Patron Sponsors Dalia and Lance Nagel.
From the Executive and Artistic Director
Welcome to this evening’s eagerly anticipated West Coast premiere of Two Wings: The Music of Black America in Migration, produced by and starring mezzo-soprano Alicia Hall Moran and pianist Jason Moran. Described by the Chicago Tribune as a series of “gripping portraits of a vast social upheaval,” this splendid production explores the Great Migration (between 1910 and 1970) of six million Black Americans from the rural South to northern cities, the West, and beyond. A Cal Performances Illuminations “Place and Displacement” presentation (see our website for more details), Two Wings also features a star-studded roster of guest performers, writers, and thinkers led by composer/conductor (and 2021 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music) Tania León, narrator Donna Jean Murch (author of Living for the City), and the Imani Winds chamber ensemble (to name just a few). Together, these exceptional artists trace the Morans’ family histories through the music that accompanied their brave antecedents throughout the 20th century, from Harlem Renaissance-era jazz, gospel hymns, and Broadway show tunes, to classical and chamber music and the artists’ own compositions. While we at Cal Performances like to think of each of our programs as unique and remarkable, tonight’s concert promises to be something truly special!
I also want to make sure you know about another season highlight scheduled for next month (Mar 12), the West Coast premiere of Place, Ted Hearne and Saul Williams’ bold meditation on the topographies of gentrification and displacement. Also one of this season’s Illuminations events, Place is a remarkable work, something I don’t think you’ll want to miss. (The recording for the New Amsterdam label captured the attention of the music world, earning two 2021 Grammy nominations—for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance and Best Contemporary Classical Composition.)
February marks the time each year when Cal Performances’ programming shifts into high gear. From now through the beginning of May, the remainder of our 2021–22 season is packed with ambitious and adventurous programming. You won’t want to miss…
- sensational dance performances like Memphis Jookin’: The Show, featuring Lil Buck (Feb 25–26); The Joffrey Ballet (Mar 4–6); and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (Mar 29 – Apr 3)
- the peerless London Symphony Orchestra (Mar 20), appearing under the direction of superstar conductor Sir Simon Rattle in a program of orchestral masterworks
- early-music masters Jordi Savall and Le Concert des Nations (Mar 4) performing selections from the classic 1991 film soundtrack to Alain Corneau’s Tous les matins du monde
- the renowned English Baroque Soloists with conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner in a transfixing program of works by Mozart and Haydn (Apr 10)
- pianist extraordinaire Mitsuko Uchida playing and directing Mozart with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra (Mar 27)
- our 2021–22 artist-in-residence Angélique Kidjo in her brand new music-theater piece Yemandja (a highly anticipated Cal Performances co-commission and Illuminations event, Apr 23).
Fasten your seatbelts; we have all of this—plus much more—in store for you!
We’re very proud of our new and updated winter brochure and know that a few minutes spent reviewing our schedule—in print or online—will reveal a wealth of options for your calendar; now is the perfect time to guarantee that you have the best seats for all the events you plan to attend.
I know you join us in looking forward to what lies ahead, to coming together once again to
encounter the life-changing experiences that only the live performing arts deliver. We can’t wait to share it all with you during the coming months.
Jeremy Geffen
Executive and Artistic Director, Cal Performances
Welcome to this evening’s eagerly anticipated West Coast premiere of Two Wings: The Music of Black America in Migration, produced by and starring mezzo-soprano Alicia Hall Moran and pianist Jason Moran. Described by the Chicago Tribune as a series of “gripping portraits of a vast social upheaval,” this splendid production explores the Great Migration (between 1910 and 1970) of six million Black Americans from the rural South to northern cities, the West, and beyond. A Cal Performances Illuminations “Place and Displacement” presentation (see our website for more details), Two Wings also features a star-studded roster of guest performers, writers, and thinkers led by composer/conductor (and 2021 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music) Tania León, narrator Donna Jean Murch (author of Living for the City), and the Imani Winds chamber ensemble (to name just a few). Together, these exceptional artists trace the Morans’ family histories through the music that accompanied their brave antecedents throughout the 20th century, from Harlem Renaissance-era jazz, gospel hymns, and Broadway show tunes, to classical and chamber music and the artists’ own compositions. While we at Cal Performances like to think of each of our programs as unique and remarkable, tonight’s concert promises to be something truly special!
I also want to make sure you know about another season highlight scheduled for next month (Mar 12), the West Coast premiere of Place, Ted Hearne and Saul Williams’ bold meditation on the topographies of gentrification and displacement. Also one of this season’s Illuminations events, Place is a remarkable work, something I don’t think you’ll want to miss. (The recording for the New Amsterdam label captured the attention of the music world, earning two 2021 Grammy nominations—for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance and Best Contemporary Classical Composition.)
February marks the time each year when Cal Performances’ programming shifts into high gear. From now through the beginning of May, the remainder of our 2021–22 season is packed with ambitious and adventurous programming. You won’t want to miss…
- sensational dance performances like Memphis Jookin’: The Show, featuring Lil Buck (Feb 25–26); The Joffrey Ballet (Mar 4–6); and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (Mar 29 – Apr 3)
- the peerless London Symphony Orchestra (Mar 20), appearing under the direction of superstar conductor Sir Simon Rattle in a program of orchestral masterworks
- early-music masters Jordi Savall and Le Concert des Nations (Mar 4) performing selections from the classic 1991 film soundtrack to Alain Corneau’s Tous les matins du monde
- the renowned English Baroque Soloists with conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner in a transfixing program of works by Mozart and Haydn (Apr 10)
- pianist extraordinaire Mitsuko Uchida playing and directing Mozart with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra (Mar 27)
- our 2021–22 artist-in-residence Angélique Kidjo in her brand new music-theater piece Yemandja (a highly anticipated Cal Performances co-commission and Illuminations event, Apr 23).
Fasten your seatbelts; we have all of this—plus much more—in store for you!
We’re very proud of our new and updated winter brochure and know that a few minutes spent reviewing our schedule—in print or online—will reveal a wealth of options for your calendar; now is the perfect time to guarantee that you have the best seats for all the events you plan to attend.
I know you join us in looking forward to what lies ahead, to coming together once again to
encounter the life-changing experiences that only the live performing arts deliver. We can’t wait to share it all with you during the coming months.
Jeremy Geffen
Executive and Artistic Director, Cal Performances
About the Program
We gather tonight to recognize the Great Migration—a chapter of American history spanning, approximately, 60 years, from 1910 to 1970. During that time, six million Black Americans left their homes in the South. Seeking release from the grip of unremunerated labor and domestic terrorism, worsening Jim Crow laws and statutes, Black families headed up North and out West in search of better work, better education, and better odds. Two Wings spans diverse musical worlds forever indebted to this mass movement of people.
Gospel, folk, rock ‘n’ roll, opera, Broadway, jazz, orchestral, and chamber music are all represented this evening, because in each of these genres stirs the Black musical imagination.
Work songs and Negro spirituals travel up and along the routes of American music, through bodies and technologies, bending into the blues and gospel, into rhythm and soul, and into rock. The music migrates into the nation’s performance halls—the classical stage, the Broadway stage, the opera stage—and reaches church musicians, school choirs, and piano lessons. Musicians moving around the country create new tastes, inspire new institutions, and spread Southern Black culture and traditions across the map of the United States. And with each new point of access—and every new opportunity to express their ingenuity—the sonic evidence of their survival of injustice in America slowly became the new sound of America.
Two Wings embraces a telling of the history of the Great Migration that includes songs that were made possible by the Great Migration. We believe this energy continues to shape the country’s cultural and political landscape to this very day.
In Two Wings, we wish to express our gratitude to our ancestors for taking such bold steps to insure a brighter future for each of us standing on stage this evening. We thank those who left the South; we thank those who stayed.
We trace a narrative written in these songs—they tell their own story about a great movement of people, about artists who sought out new communities and found new homes within the wide constellation of Black music.
—Alicia and Jason
About Cal Performances
Making and remaking music of the Great Migration, a Berkeley Voices podcast.
Credit: Neil Freese/UC Berkeley
In this fifteen minute story, UC Berkeley history professor Waldo Martin, Alicia Hall Moran and Jason Moran discuss the Great Migration. Listen to the Podcast >