“The first thing to know about Castle of our Skins is that it’s a Roxbury-based concert and education series of classical music by black composers, past and present,” writes David Weininger in Thursday’s (9/22) Boston Globe. Its fourth season opened Saturday at Roxbury Community College with “a program of works by the Ohio-based African-American composer Jeffrey Mumford…. Castle of our Skins repertoire now stretches from composers born in the 19th century such as William Grant Still and Florence Price to current voices such as Jessie Montgomery and Renee Baker.… In addition to Saturday’s concert, there will be an ‘edu-tainment’ concert of string quartets in the courtyard of the Boston Public Library … a residency at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania … the premiere of three pieces written in response to the group’s call for works for strings inspired by black visual art … and a performance in the group’s annual residency at [Boston’s] Museum of African American History.” Says Ashleigh Gordon, the series’ co-founder and co-director, “It’s exciting and also incredibly overwhelming at the same time. But it really feeds itself, a kind of energy that you give out and you receive at these events.”
Posted September 28, 2016
