Hold Fast to Dreams: Songs of Goodness and Liberty with Poetry by Langston Hughes & W.E.B. Du Bois

Name: Hold Fast to Dreams: Songs of Goodness and Liberty with Poetry by Langston Hughes & W.E.B. Du Bois
Start: 2024-10-13T15:00:00-07:00
End: 2024-10-13T16:30:00-07:00
Location: Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute

Schedule

Sun Oct 13 2024 at 03:00 pm to 04:30 pm

UTC-07:00

Location

Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute | Seattle, WA

Visionary voices soar in pitch and poetry with bold aspiration toward the best of what we can be in community and as country. Margaret Bonds’s 1965 setting of W.E.B. Du Bois’s Credo powerfully expands his “I believe” texts, moving us towards a “life lit by a large vision of beauty and goodness and truth.” Our community partner, Youth Speaks Seattle, grounds us in the here and now with “I believe” responses by young poets, engaging with Du Bois’s Credo today in Seattle. Bonds’s longtime friendship with Langston Hughes comes alive in solo song settings of his poetry, sung by guest artists Myah Rose Paden and Richard L. Hodges. Hopeful settings of Langston Hughes by Atlanta-based composer Joel Thompson spur us to dream of a new dawn, to sing for the future, and to swear for all, “America will be!”
With Special Guests:
Myah Rose Paden, mezzo soprano
Richard L. Hodges, baritone
Serena Chin, piano
Youth Speaks Seattle
Washington Voting Justice Coalition will be on-site to educate, inform, and register voters.
Program highlights include:
Margaret Bonds’s CREDO & Joel Thompson’s America Will Be!
Poetical texts by Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, and more
Recitations of original poetry by Youth Speaks Seattle.