Guided Discussion with Albany Symphony & Special Guest

Join the panel in this discussion to explore the themes of identity, forgiveness, expression, and the power of music in performance. In January 2025, the Albany Symphony will perform Daniel Bernard Roumain and Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s Forgiveness, A Suite for Spoken Word & Orchestra at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. In composer Daniel Bernard Roumain’s words:

This work is a marriage between Marc’s words, my music, and our ideas of how words and (orchestral) music can have impact and power as we navigate the roles we have to play within a culture of terror and frequent inability to see, hear, and forgive one another. Each of the four movements presents Marc’s ideas on forgiveness (i.e., ‘Redemption,’ Reconciliation,’ ‘Discernment,’ and ‘Grace’). The music responds to these concepts in various ways at various points: as underscoring, as commentary, as a raucous, percussive crowd, or as a ‘Greek Chorus’, where Marc’s call elicits a response from the brass, woodwinds, and string sections. -DBR, 2023

About the Guest Artists

Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR) is a Black Haitian-American composer who sees composing as collaboration with artists, organizations, and communities within the farming and framing of ideas. He is a prolific and endlessly collaborative composer, performer, educator, and social entrepreneur. “About as omnivorous as a contemporary artist gets” (New York Times), Roumain has worked with artists from J’Nai Bridges, Lady Gaga, and Philip Glass to Bill T. Jones, Marin Alsop, and Anna Deavere Smith.

Composer & Violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain: https://www.danielroumain.com/

Marc Bamuthi Joseph is a 2017 TED Global Fellow, an inaugural recipient of the Guggenheim Social Practice initiative, and an honoree of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship. He is also the winner of the 2011 Herb Alpert Award in Theatre and an inaugural recipient of the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award. In the Spring of 2022, he was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was most recently welcomed into the 2023-24 Emerson Collective Dial Fellowship. An internationally renowned cultural strategist, Bamuthi is the co-creator of the paradigm-shifting allyship training HEALING FORWARD™. He has lectured in 25 different countries, and his TED talk “You Have The Rite” has been viewed more than five million times.

Poet & Cultural Strategist Marc Bamuthi Joseph: https://www.bamuthi.com/

Performances:

Saturday, Jan 11, 2025 – 7:30 PM & Sunday, Jan 12, 2025 – 3 PM

Use Code JAN30 for 30% off your tickets to Marc and Daniel’s concert with the Albany Symphony at the Troy Savings Bank Hall.

Buy tickets at https://www.albanysymphony.com/

The Albany Symphony originally performed the world premiere of the work on June 10, 2023 at EMPAC in Troy as part of American Music Festival: Convergence.