Reginald Mobley: Spirituals

Just as Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven were settling the backbone of Western European musical canon, across the Atlantic, slave songs and Negro spirituals were being created and sung in the American Colonies which would eventually become the newly formed United States. From spirituals also came ragtime, barbershop, jazz, gospel, blues, rock, and even techno and many forms of electronic music. The universality of this music and all its evolutions of power and beauty has spread globally and changed us all forever. The newly curated programme by Reginald Mobley in partnership with French pianist, Baptiste Trotignon explores songs by Black composers (such as HT Burleigh, Florence Price, J Rosamond Johnson) on the texts of great poets (Langston Hughes and Paul Laurence Dunbar).