- This event has passed.
Music of Faith and Hope from Uganda and Haiti
Sunday, December 4, 2016 at 2:00 pm
free and open to the public
Music of Faith and Hope from Uganda and Haiti is a concert of string quartet concert by Haitian and Ugandan composers.
The program includes Rudy Perrault‘s Exodus String Quartet. His writing is heavily influenced by the culture of his native Haiti, and he portrays through music the story of being forced to leave Haiti under circumstances less fortunate than his own. The work is dedicated to people around the world forced from their homelands, especially those persecuted in their new country. The work ends on a tentative but hopeful note that the lives of the children of the work’s dedicatees will be better.
Also included is Justinian Tamusuza’s On the Way of the Cross, which celebrates the Uganda Martyrs. The Uganda Martyrs are the first Black African saints canonized by the Catholic Church. In the 1880s, the vile king Mwanga II invited religious men to his court to argue the merits of their religions. When his authority became compromised because men in his court converted to Christianity, he had them put to death. According to legend, they were so happy to be spiritually freed by their new faith that they accepted their fates peacefully and even joyously, so happy were they to have found this new religion. The Uganda Martyrs are widely celebrated in Uganda and through Africa to this day.
Tamusuza‘s work extensively incorporates elements of the music of the Buganda cultural group from which he hails, imitating its instruments and using its rhythms, scales, and melodies.
Sabrina Jean Louis is a 21-year-old Haitian cellist who is largely self-taught as a composer. Her beautiful piece Allo Seigneur (“Hello Lord”) is a moving and personal testament of her deep Christian faith.
This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
