Black Voices live streams on Sunday, December 6 (6pm) at the Miami Beach Woman’s Club, with guest speakers Allison Matulli and Darius Daughtry.

Joseph Bologne String Quartet #1 in C major (1771)
Jessie Montgomery Strum (2012)
DBR String Quartet No. 1, “X” (1993)
George Walker String Quartet #1(1946)

Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745-1799) was a champion fencer, classical composer, virtuoso violinist, friend of Mozart and conductor of the leading symphony orchestra in Paris. Born in the French colony of Guadeloupe, he was the son of George Bologne de Saint-Georges, a wealthy married planter, and Anne dite Nanon, his wife’s African slave. His father took him to France when he was young, and he was educated there, also becoming a champion fencer. During the French Revolution, the younger Saint-Georges served as a colonel of the Légion St.-Georges, the first all-black regiment in Europe. He fought on the side of the Republic. Today the Chevalier de Saint-Georges is best remembered as the first known classical composer who was of African ancestry; he composed numerous string quartets and other instrumental music, and opera.

Jessie Montgomery is an acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator. She is the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, and her works are performed frequently around the world by leading musicians and ensembles. Her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, language, and social justice, placing her squarely as one of the most relevant interpreters of 21st-century American sound and experience. Her profoundly felt works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life” (The Washington Post). Jessie Montgomery (1981) was raised in Manhattan’s Lower East Side by parents working in music and theater and involved in neighborhood arts. She began her violin studies at the Third Street Music School Settlement. She holds a bachelor’s degree in violin performance from the Juilliard School, and completed a master’s degree in Composition for Film and Multimedia at New York University in 2012. Starting in 1999, Montgomery became involved with the Sphinx Organization, a Detroit-based nonprofit that supports young African American and Latinx string players. After receiving multiple Sphinx awards and grants as a young performer and composer, she now serves as composer-in-residence for the Sphinx Virtuosi, the organization’s professional touring ensemble.

Daniel Bernard Roumain is a prolific and endlessly collaborative composer, performer, educator, and social entrepreneur. “About as omnivorous as a contemporary artist gets” (New York Times), DBR has worked with artists from Philip Glass to Bill T. Jones to Lady Gaga; appeared on NPR, American Idol, and ESPN; and has collaborated with the Sydney Opera House and the City of Burlington, Vermont. Acclaimed as a violinist and activist, DBR’s career spans more than two decades, earning commissions by venerable artists and institutions worldwide. Known by his initials, DBR (born 1970) is a classically trained composer, performer, violinist, and band-leader noted for blending funk, rock, hip-hop and classical music into an energetic and experiential sonic form. DBR is of Haitian-American heritage and he attended Dillard Center for the Arts in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He received a doctorate in musical composition from the University of Michigan. He combines his classical music roots with a multicolored spectrum of contemporary black popular music. “A Civil Rights Reader” collects five of DBR’s string quartets celebrating five iconic figures from the American civil rights movement: Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Maya Angelou and Rosa Parks.

George Theophilus Walker (1922-2018) was an American composer, pianist, and organist, who was the first African American to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for Lilacs in 1996. His father emigrated from Kingston, Jamaica to the United States, and became a physician after graduating from Temple University School of Medicine. His mother, Rosa King, supervised his first piano lessons when he was five years old. Walker was presented in a debut recital in Manhattan’s Town Hall. With this “notable” debut, as it was described by The New York Times, he became the first black instrumentalist to perform there. Over the course of the next five decades, he balanced a career as a concert pianist, teacher, and composer. In 1946, Walker composed his String Quartet #1. A string orchestra arrangement of the second movement of that work received its world premiere in a radio broadcast that was conducted by pianist Seymour Lipkin. Originally titled “Lament”, Walker later changed the title to Lyric for Strings. It has been one of the most frequently performed orchestral works by a living American composer.

Guest speakers

As the executive director of Legal Kid, Inc., Allison Matulli is the leading expert empowering kids to know the law. As a graduate of Howard University School of Law where she was the recipient of the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship, she has dedicated her career to promoting legal literacy and designing creative curriculum for thousands of our youngest minds to know law. Holding a Master’s in Education from Endicott College and Bachelor’s in Economics from Saint Joseph’s University, she is commonly called Professor Ally by her colleagues and pupils. Her book, Plessy a shoemaker makes his mark, is from the Legal Kid’s Court Cases Collection – the only children’s book collection teaching kids the law one case at a time. As parents and educators looks for anti-racism literature to empower kids with life lessons, Allison’s has partnered with attorney and literary powerhouse Clelia Castro-Malaspina to co-author the first-ever law books for children due out in 2021. On July 15, 2020, Allison wrote an Op-Ed for Education Week, “Why I Showed My Young Children the Video of George Floyd’s Death.” Our children see that the law does not apply equally to all, writes lawyer and historian Allison Matulli. It’s a lesson that parents and educators can’t ignore.

An accomplished poet, playwright, director, and educator with over a decade worth of experience in South Florida and beyond, Darius V. Daughtry has committed himself to using the arts as a vehicle for change. He is the Founder and Artistic Director of Art Prevails Project, a performing arts organization dedicated to expanding cultural conversation through theatrical performance, arts education, and community engagement. Darius has spearheaded literacy initiatives with NFL Hall-of-Famer Jason Taylor and poet and actor, Omari Hardwick. Darius has been commissioned to write, perform, and conduct workshops for various organizations: The Poetry Foundation, The U.S. Naval Academy, O, Miami, City of Fort Lauderdale, Miami-Dade Schools, Broward Schools, and more. He has written and directed performances for numerous groups and organizations – ArtServe (RedEye), Broward Cultural Division (Sistrunk Market Place, State of Black Broward), Old Dillard Museum (Juneteenth, Kwanzaa), The World Aids Museum (Saving Grace), and more. Mr. Daughtry is currently a member of the Sistrunk Artists in Residence cohort. And the Walls Came Tumbling, Darius’ debut poetry collection published by Omiokun Books, is available for purchase.