“Countertenor Reggie Mobley (in photo) curates and directs ‘Every Voice,’ the Handel and Haydn Society’s annual free concert series, which offers two performances this weekend in partnership with the faith-based nonprofit Unitarian Universalist Urban Ministry and Union United Methodist Church,” writes Zoë Madonna in Wednesday’s (10/30) Boston Globe. “ ‘The [Every Voice] project, in a way, seeks to kind of un-straightwash and un-whitewash music history, especially in the classical sphere,’ said Mobley … for whom activism and music frequently mix…. Each concert focuses on a few groups within the community; this year, music by black and Jewish composers will be performed by members of the H&H Orchestra and Chorus and a youth chorus from the H&H Vocal Arts Program…. Composers include Ignatius Sancho, a black man who was born into slavery and then advocated for abolition … Salamone Rossi, an Italian Jewish composer of the early Baroque period … Harry T. Burleigh, whose arrangements of spirituals were enormously popular in the early 20th century; and Yiddish art song pioneer Lazar Weiner. Mobley, who is not Jewish, … collaborate[d] with Jewish musicians … to create the concert. ‘I refuse to do this project if it is only from my perspective,’ Mobley said.”
Posted November 1, 2019
