Delta State University and the DSU Diversity Committee will host the Core Ensemble for the Chamber Music Theatre performance, “Of Ebony Embers: Vignettes of the Harlem Renaissance.” The event, free and open to the public, takes place Feb. 25 at 7 p.m. in Jobe Auditorium.
Chamber Music Theatre is a unique performance format featuring a marriage of theatrical narrative set to chamber music performance. The format was created by Core Ensemble.
Since 1993, the Core Ensemble has toured nationally to every region of the United States and internationally to England, Russia, the Ukraine, Australia and the British Virgin Islands. The ensemble was the recipient of the 2000 Eugene McDermott Award for Excellence in the Arts awarded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has received support from the state of Florida Department of Cultural Affairs, New England Foundation for the Arts, Palm Beach County Cultural Council, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music and the Virgil Thomson Foundation.
During the performance, Dracyn Blount portrays multiple characters while interacting with the onstage musical trio of cello, piano and percussion.
Celebrating the music and poetry of the Harlem Renaissance era in New York City, the work examines the lives of three outstanding but very different African American poets — Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Claude McKay — as seen through the eyes of the great painter and muralist Aaron Douglas.
The script was written and directed by Akin Babatunde.
The Core Ensemble performs music by African American composers ranging from jazz greats such as Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus, to concert music composers Jeffrey Mumford and George Walker.
For more information, contact Arlene Sanders at 662-846-4095 or asanders@deltastate.edu.
