Welcome again to The Paramount and to the Oakland Symphony.   For his final commission, Michael Morgan engaged composer Carlos Simon and librettist Dan Harder to create a work based on Paul Robeson’s Here I Stand, his moral testament written at the dawn of the modern Civil Rights movement.   In this piece we hear Robeson’s words and the feelings and actions they inspire.   

In the last century, Paul Robeson was a celebrated athlete.  He was the first Black actor to perform Othello, and did so to wild acclaim, as well as Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones on stage and on film.   It is for his films and his singing, with his commanding bass-baritone, that Robeson is best remembered.  

And he was also a champion of justice for Black Americans at home.  He took this cause around the world on behalf of all oppressed people.   Deemed subversive, the State Department revoked his passport.  Blacklisted at home, no longer free to travel, or to speak, or to earn, Robeson eventually published his testament, Here I Stand.   Not a single mainstream newspaper would review it.  

But he would not be silenced.  When Welsh miners invited him to sing, he did so by telephone.   With Canada’s unionized miners gathered on their side of the border, Robeson stood on ours in Washington state and sang for them.   

Tonight’s conductor Kedrick Armstrong returns to the Oakland Symphony podium following his family concert appearance.  Tonight’s concert also features a stirring Fanfare by Joan Tower, and the defiant Fifth Symphony of Shostakovich, whom Robeson met during his tour of the Soviet Union.    

Since his passing in 1973, Robeson’s words have continued to resound and will again tonight.  “I stand here struggling for the rights of my people to be full citizens in this country,” he wrote.  “Every artist must decide where he stands. Through the propagation of false ideas of racial and national superiority, the artist is challenged. The struggle invades the formerly cloistered halls of our universities. The battlefront is everywhere. On this platform I take my stand.”

Sincerely,

Dr. Mieko Hatano,
Executive Director

HERE I STAND

Friday, February 16, 2024 | 8pm
Paramount Theatre, Oakland

Kedrick Armstrong, conductor
Morris Robinson, bass

Oakland Symphony Chorus
Ash Walker, director

Pacific Edge Voices
Ash Walker, music director

PROGRAM

Joan Tower
Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman No. 6

Carlos Simon with libretto by Dan Harder
Here I Stand: Paul Robeson
(World Premiere – Oakland Symphony Commission)

INTERMISSION

Dmitri Shostakovich
Symphony No. 5, Opus 47
I. Moderato
II. Allegretto
III. Largo
IV. Allegro non troppo

The 2023-2024 Season of Oakland Symphony is generously funded in part by the East Bay Music Fund at the East Bay Community Foundation; the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency; and supported by the Oakland City Council and funded by the City of Oakland’s Cultural Funding Program.