“The goal of tonight is to show how music — and specifically how singing — can be a form of pushing back against authoritarianism across the world, across many movements,” SBU Chorale Director Shoshana Hershkowitz told a well-attended audience at the Staller Center Reception Hall on May 5. The occasion was the Chorale and Camerata Singers’ Spring 2025 Concert.
“You’ll hear music tonight from South Africa, from Puerto Rico, from Iran and from the Civil Rights movement,” she continued. “All different time periods and styles but all rooted in the same belief in a better day and in an abiding belief that we all deserve to be free.”
Up first on the program, the Chorale sang songs in Farsi, Spanish and English — accompanied by not just piano but alternately including clapping, stomping, whispering and percussion instruments. “Zan, Zandegi, Azadi” (translated: “Woman, Life, Freedom”) focused on the rallying cry for women’s rights in Iran, fueled by the murders of female freedom fighters there. “Hymn to Freedom” asserted that ‘When every heart joins every heart and together yearns for liberty, that’s when we’ll be free.’
The music was written by Oscar Peterson, a Black Canadian composer who, Hershkowitz explained, “was subject to the same racism and discrimination as his American counterparts when traveling in the US. Like not being allowed to enter through the front door for concerts and rehearsals.” The piece centered on the Civil Rights movement, she said.
A second Civil Rights-centered piece — and the “banger” finale (as Hershkowitz called it) — was “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around.” A traditional spiritual arranged by Rollo Dilworth, the song featured interspersed lyrics from Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, such as: “There are words like Freedom, sweet and wonderful to say. On my heartstrings Freedom sings all day every day.”
Listen to, and view, the Chorale singing “Canto ‘E Libertad” (translated to “Song of Freedom” in English):
With words and music by Diana Saez and Suzzette Ortiz, the piece is based on an Afro-Puerto Rican musical genre called “bomba,” developed by the enslaved people of Puerto Rico who worked in the sugar plantations during Spanish colonial times.
Following a brief intermission, the Camerata Singers sang what Hershkowitz called “pop tunes reimagined for choir, which was a real departure for me from classical music but it’s important to always evolve!”
The songs also had meaningful and powerful messages, from a climate change-themed song, to Stevie Wonder’s anti-Vietnam themed “Higher Ground” (reimagined as a jazz song “with a Stevie Wonder groove”), to the finale, “Riuh,” by Tracy Wong, featuring a beatbox — and also the song below, called “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” by Dolly Parton, with a theme of the promise of a beautiful morning after a long night.
Listen to, and view, the entire concert:
— Ellen Cooke
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