National Philharmonic, Washington Chorus whip up a storm at Strathmore

Washington Post

16-03-2025

On Saturday night, the combined forces of 76 National Philharmonic musicians and the 170 choristers of the Washington Chorus presented 'Stand the Storm' — an homage to American composers, yes; a program-length meditation on justice and resilience, yes. But, more than anything, it was a showcase of the musical powers of these two formidable groups.
From the stage, conductor and Washington Chorus artistic director Eugene Rogers urged the audience to support and champion the arts (we have officially reentered 'now more than ever' territory) and noted that the program was designed to fortify a sense of hope: 'There is no room for complacency, and we refuse to give in to despair,' Rogers said with nondescript clarity, earning long applause.
Rogers opened the evening with the wallop of his own orchestral arrangement of 'Glory,' the Oscar-winning song from the 2014 film 'Selma,' written by John Stephens, Lonnie Lynn and Che Smith, artists more readily recognized as John Legend, Common and Rhymefest, respectively.
Tenor LaVonté Heard stepped in as the soloist (in for Damian Norfleet, who put his bass-baritone toward narration duties for the evening), accompanied by mezzo-soprano and spoken-word performer Monique Holmes-Spells (also a voice instructor at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts). This was a reprise for the two vocalists, who also performed 'Glory' at a 2023 concert at the Kennedy Center with the Exigence Vocal Ensemble (led by Rogers), members of the Washington Chorus and the Sphinx Symphony Orchestra.
Rogers's arrangement of 'Glory' is a crowd-pleaser, building from the piano out, stirring the woodwinds, spreading across the strings and recruiting a snare for a militaristic rhythm. Heard came in with restrained heat, showing off a mighty, agile voice that made me wonder whether he needed the microphone in his hand. That question was answered when the animated chorus — swaying, clapping and crossing arms — brought its full weight to the music, building a steadily mounting call-and-response with Heard and a spoken verse from Holmes-Spells as triumphant trumpets streaked past.
Nkeiru Okoye's 'And the People Celebrated' was commissioned by BBC Radio 3 as part of its '25 for 25: Sounds of the Century' project: 25 newly commissioned works inspired by 25 significant events that have defined the past 25 years. Okoye chose the inauguration of President Barack Obama as her inspiration, and the world-premiere performance at Strathmore offered an advance of the BBC's premiere broadcast of her work, scheduled for March 22.
The piece is composed around a mix of Okoye's own text — a hymnlike treatment of Obama's road to the White House — and excerpts from three of his speeches, from the 2008 New Hampshire primary, the Iowa caucuses and his 2009 inauguration, all sturdily narrated by Norfleet.
Okoye, who composed the 2014 opera 'Harriet Tubman,' brings her attuned dramatic sensitivity to the music of her tribute. Opening with glimmering chimes, shimmering cymbals and the cool hiss of a rain stick, it assertively signaled the approach of a political spring. Awakening harps were joined by stripes of clarinet and French horn as the strings crested into a fanfare of trumpets.
The utterance of Obama's core campaign slogan — 'Yes we can' — launched an uplifting shift in tempo and vibe, with tambourine and timpani picking up an insistent rhythm. This surge of hope was tempered by a swell of shadowy brass that rolled in like a dark cloud, attending Obama's consideration of the historic odds against him.
A gorgeous passage of strings and glowing horns underlined the 'sacred oath,' which delivered us into a celebratory outro of drums, claps and stomps that spread from the orchestra to the chorus atop cautiously optimistic brass — and a quadruple-jump ending that faked everyone out.
At first glance, Leonard Bernstein's 'Chichester Psalms' may have seemed out of place on the program, but the three-movement work contains some of the composer's most beautiful choral writing, and its combination of lyrical contemplation and spiritual angst was of a piece with the evening's larger considerations of hope and struggle.
The chorus masterfully accommodated Bernstein's action-packed melodic sensibilities, as well as his ecumenically guided preservation of the original Hebrew, singing with crisp authority and power. The men delivered an especially beautiful performance in the third movement ('Psalm 131, Psalm 133 v. 1'), followed by a stunning duo from principal cellist Lori Barnet and assistant principal cellist Kerry Van Laanen.
But the star of the 'Psalms' was guest countertenor Reginald Mobley — an extraordinary singer whom I've primarily heard in baroque settings. Within the milieu of Bernstein's nostalgically tinted but thoroughly modern music, Mobley's lithe voice provided the steady assurance and beckoning brightness of a lighthouse beam.
The evening's second half was also its namesake: a world-premiere symphonic orchestration of composer Rollo Dilworth's 'Weather: Stand the Storm,' composed in six movements and set to text by poet Claudia Rankine. It was a smart choice to welcome Norfleet back to the stage to recite Rankine's poem in full, unaccompanied — her lines leaving a scratch for the chorus to balm. (Example: 'I say weather, but I mean a form of governing that deals out death and names it living.')
In its first movement ('The Meditation'), a marchlike procession atop thick brushstrokes of trumpet, trombone and tuba develops a theme that, once passed into the second movement ('The Marginalization'), grew into a swinging, colossal blues. It's one of many times that Dilworth achieves an uncanny confluence of grief and jubilation, the movement's mournfully tolling bells and ecstatic brass-band spirit all part of the same parade.
Below the surging singers of the chorus, a wood block signaled the 'eight minutes and forty-six seconds' that George Floyd was held down under 'the full weight of a man in blue.' And although Floyd's words 'I can't breathe' have been incorporated into multiple musical contexts since his death, Dilworth's treatment turns the phrase into an exaltation — an elegy of defiant pride. The third movement ('The Memorial') brought Norfleet back to recite the names of a dozen Black victims of police violence as the chorus beckoned the assembly to 'say their names.'
Rogers brought visible joy and ferocity to his task on the podium, stoking a climbing fire of sound in the fourth movement ('The Meltdown'), his body trembling over the rumble leading into 'The March,' in which the orchestra and chorus stomped percussively in place.
The orchestra and chorus carried Rankine's cutting verses forth with the sweetened sadness of a second line band, with the tap of a lone tambourine suggesting the individual role in a larger goal and the work it will require to reach it. Such is the importance of music that responds clearly and directly to its own place in history, or, as the poet puts it, 'We are here for the storm that's storming.'