Na’Zir McFadden conducts 47th annual Classical Roots concerts on February 28 and March 1 with pianist Awadagin Pratt
24th annual Arthur L. Johnson-Honorable Damon Jerome Keith Classical Roots Celebration on March 1 raises funds to support DSO’s African American music and musician development programs
March 1 performance webcast for free at dso.org, YouTube, and via Facebook Live as part of DSO’s Live from Orchestra Hall series; February 28 concert broadcast and streamed live on 90.9 WRCJ in Detroit and network of stations across Michigan
Detroit, (November 22, 2024) – The Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) will honor acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator Jessie Montgomery and businessman, Detroit civic pioneer, and longtime Classical Roots supporter Walter Edmond Douglas Sr. at the 24th annual Arthur L. Johnson-Honorable Damon Jerome Keith Classical Roots Celebration on March 1, 2025. The event will also celebrate Detroit educator, conductor, and Detroit Harmony managing director DamienCrutcher as this year’s recipient of the Marlowe Stoudamire Award for Innovation and Community Collaboration, presented in memory of late Detroit community leader and ClassicalRoots Steering Committee member Marlowe Stoudamire.
Classical Roots honors African American composers, musicians, educators, and leaders for lifetime achievement and raises funds to support the DSO’s African American music and musician development programs.
Montgomery is a Grammy-winning, acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator whose music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of 21st century American sound and experience. Douglas is a businessman and civic pioneer recognized for his philanthropic work with the Detroit community, and for the success of his car dealership, Avis Ford, of which he became majority owner in 1992 and currently serves as Chairman. In the 1980s, Douglas served on the DSO’s Board of Directors and is a longtime supporter of Classical Roots. Crutcher transforms the lives of students in Detroit and beyond as founder and CEO of Crescendo Detroit, managing director of the DSO’s Detroit Harmony initiative, Music Director of the Farmington Concert Band, and director of the Detroit Community Concert Band, part of the DSO’s Civic Youth Ensembles.
The 47th annual Classical Roots concerts will take place in Orchestra Hall on Friday, February 28 at10:45 a.m. and Saturday, March 1 at 8 p.m. and will be conducted by Na’Zir McFadden (DSOAssistant Conductor and Phillip and Lauren Fisher Community Ambassador). The Brazeal Dennard Chorale—a vital part of Classical Roots since its inception—and Artistic Director Alice McAllister Tillman will open both performances with Lift Every Voice and Sing, which has been performed atthe beginning of every Classical Roots concert since the event’s inauguration in 1978.
In addition to works performed by the Brazeal Dennard Chorale, the program will include the world premiere of a new work by award-winning Detroit trumpeter, composer, and educator Kris Johnsonentitled Marlowe's Wings: Detroit's Champion of Change, which honors the memory of Marlowe Stoudamire. Johnson is an alum of the DSO’s Civic Youth Ensembles and the 2023 recipient of the Marlowe Stoudamire Award for Innovation and Community Collaboration. The next piece featured on the program is Florence Price's The Oak. Price was the first Black woman to have her work premiered by an American orchestra. The program will also include two works by Montgomery: Snapshots, a DSO co-commission which brims with “glowing washes and surges of sound,” (Dallas Morning News), and Rounds, which evokes imagery and themes from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets and will be performed by virtuoso pianist Awadagin Pratt. Rounds won a GRAMMY® Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition in 2024.
The Classical Roots Celebration raises funds to support the Classical Roots mission and is organized by a dedicated steering committee, co-chaired this year by Mable Jones and Nicole Brown. Celebration attendees will enjoy a seated dinner in the Peter D. and Julie F. Cummings Cube, Classical Roots concert, and afterglow with dessert and dancing. For information on the Classical Roots Celebration, contact DSO Director of Donor Engagement Ali Huber atahuber@dso.org or 313.576.5449, or visit dso.org/classicalroots.
Concert-only tickets for the February 28 and March 1 Classical Roots concerts start at $20. Tickets can be purchased at dso.org or by calling the Box Office at 313.576.5111, open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. 2024–2025 PVS Classical Series and Create Your Own subscription packages are also available.
The Saturday, March 1 performance will be webcast for free at dso.org, YouTube, and via Facebook Live as part of DSO’s Live from Orchestra Hall series; the February 28 concert will be broadcast and streamed live on 90.9 WRCJ in Detroit and a network of stations across Michigan.
The title sponsor of the DSO’s Classical Series is PVS Chemicals, Inc. DSO Live is presented byFord Philanthropy. Technology support comes from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Digital programming is produced from the Al Glancy Control Room.
About Classical Roots
The first Classical Roots concert took place in 1978 at Detroit’s historic Bethel AME Church. Co-founded by the DSO’s then-Resident Conductor Paul Freeman, along with other prominent African American leaders including choral director and artistic administrator Brazeal Dennard, ClassicalRoots soon outgrew Bethel AME and moved to Orchestra Hall in 1981, where it has been a beloved annual tradition ever since. The gala Classical Roots Celebration and lifetime achievement component were added in 2001. The Celebration was named the Arthur L. Johnson – Honorable Damon Jerome Keith Classical Roots Celebration in 2019 following a generous endowment gift from Dr. William F. Pickard, who counted Johnson and Keith as his two biggest mentors.
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Concert experience:
PVS Classical Series
Friday, February 28 at 10:45 a.m.
Saturday, March 1 at 8 p.m.
Orchestra Hall
Na’Zir McFadden, conductor
Awadagin Pratt, piano
Kris Johnson, trumpet
Acclaimed composer Jessie Montgomery is one of today’s “most distinctive and communicative voices” (BBC). Experience two of her recent masterpieces. Co-commissioned by the DSO, Snapshots brims with “glowing washes and surges of sound,” (Dallas Morning News). Her Grammy Award-nominated Rounds, played by virtuoso Awadagin Pratt, evokes imagery and themes from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. Opening the program is a world premiere by award-winning Detroit composer and trumpeter Kris Johnson.
Program to include:
JOHN ROSAMUND JOHNSON Lift Every Voice and Sing
KRIS JOHNSON Marlowe's Wings: Detroit's Champion of Change (World Premiere)
FLORENCE PRICE The Oak
JESSIE MONTGOMERY Snapshots (Co-Commission)
JESSIE MONTGOMERY Rounds
Full gala experience:
Saturday, March 1, 2025 at 5 p.m.
The Max M. and Marjorie S. Fisher Music Center
EVENING SCHEDULE: 5 PM - Doors Open and Cocktails—William Davidson Atrium
6 PM - Seated Dinner—The Peter D. & Julie F. Cummings Cube
8 PM – 47th Annual Classical Roots Concert—Orchestra Hall
10:30 PM – Dessert and Dancing Afterglow—The Peter D. & Julie F. Cummings Cube
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About This Year’s Honorees
Jessie Montgomery
Jessie Montgomery is a Grammy-winning, acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator whose music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter 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) and are performed regularly by leading orchestras and ensembles around the world. In June 2024, she concluded a three-year appointment as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Mead Composer-in-Residence.
Montgomery’s music contains a breadth of musical depictions of the human experience—from statements on social justice themes, to the Black diasporic experience and its foundation in American music, to wistful adorations and playful spontaneity—reflective of her deeply rooted experience as a classical violinist and child of the radical NYC arts community of the 1980s and ‘90s. From choral-symphonic works such as I Have Something To Say (2019), to her more intimate solo instrumental works, she presents a fresh perspective on the contemporary concert music experience. As stated bySan Francisco’s NPR station KQED in response to her Grammy-winning work Rounds (2021), “this is what classical music needs in 2024.”
Montgomery is a highly engaged collaborator with performing musicians, composers, choreographers, playwrights, poets, and visual artists alike. Recent collaborations include a recording and touring project with Third Coast Percussion, including commissioned and adapted works and her performance of the Lou Harrison violin concerto; an ongoing collaboration with choreographer Pam Tanowitz has lead to several of her concert works being choreographed with major dance companies across the US including the Nashville Ballet and the Miami Ballet. Her interest in improvisation and collective music making has led to the development of her band The Everything Band, which comprises 8 composer-performers of varied stylistic backgrounds, including her longtime collaborator, bassist Eleonore Oppenheim, with whom she created the genre-bending improv duo big dog little dog. She is also a founding member of the Blacknificent 7, a composers collective focused on presenting and supporting the works of Black composers through concert curation, scholarship, and mentorship.
At the heart of Montgomery’s work is a deep sense of community enrichment and a desire to create opportunities for young artists. During her tenure at the Chicago Symphony, she began the Young Composers Initiative, which supports high school-aged youth in creating and presenting their works, including regular tutorials, reading sessions, and public performances. Her curatorial work engages a diverse community of concertgoers and aims to highlight the works of underrepresented composers in an effort to broaden audience experiences in classical music spaces.
Her growing body of work includes solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral works, as well as an opera in development with Lincoln Center Live and The Metropolitan Opera which explores family histories and the impact of her mother, playwright and actress Robbie McCauley, on the telling of American historical narratives. Her music has been heard on global stages across the US, Canada, Central America, Europe, and Asia, from the Hong Kong Cultural Center, to the BBC Proms, Elbphilharmonie, Hollywood Bowl, and Carnegie Hall. Recent highlights include The Song of Nzingha(2024) as part of the multi-movement African Queens work composed by the Blacknificent 7; Procession (2024), a percussion concerto written for the principal percussionist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cynthia Yeh; “Space” (2023) as part of the Elements project, commissioned and performed by violinist Joshua Bell; Five Freedom Songs, a song cycle conceived with and written for soprano Julia Bullock, for Sun Valley and Grand Teton Music Festivals, San Francisco, Kansas City, Boston and New Haven Symphony Orchestras, and the Virginia Arts Festival (2021); and I was waiting for the echo of a better day, a site-specific collaboration with Bard SummerScape and Pam Tanowitz Dance (2021).
Montgomery has been recognized with many prestigious awards and fellowships, including the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, and being named Musical America's 2023 Composer of the Year. Since 1999, she has been affiliated with the Sphinx Organization in a variety of roles including composer-in-residence for Sphinx Virtuosi, its professional touring ensemble. A founding member of PUBLIQuartet and a former member of the Catalyst Quartet, Montgomery holds degrees from The Juilliard School and New York University and is currently a doctoral candidate in music composition at Princeton University.
For more information visit www.jessiemontgomery.com
Walter Edmond Douglas Sr.
Businessman and Detroit civic pioneer Walter Edmond Douglas Sr. was born in North Carolina. The child of educators, he was raised in the major railroad community of Hamlet. Douglas holds two degrees from North Carolina Central University including a BA in accounting (1954) and MBA (1955). Upon graduation, he briefly taught at Edward Waters Junior College in Jacksonville, Florida, before being drafted into the US Army in 1956. In 1959, Douglas was hired by the Internal Revenue Service. He moved to Detroit in 1966 following an assignment transfer. Douglas was deeply moved by the July 1967 riots in Detroit, which were the worst in American history at the time. He began volunteering around the city, and his efforts were noticed by city leaders. In 1972, he became the vice president of New Detroit Inc, a nonprofit founded in 1967 to manage the city’s racial and employment tensions. Douglas became a key advisor of Coleman Young, the city’s first African American mayor, following Young’s election in 1974. Young appointed Douglas to several positions, notably, the city’s new civilian police commission. In 1978, Douglas was named president of New Detroit, where he remained until he decided to explore the private sector. In the 1980s, Douglasserved on the DSO’s Board of Directors and is a longtime supporter of Classical Roots.
In 1985, Douglas entered a minority training program hosted by Ford Motor Company which aimed toprovide more African Americans with the opportunity to own car dealerships. In 1986, Douglaspurchased a share in Avis Ford in suburban Detroit, a historic dealership owned by the founder of the Avis Airlines Rent-A-Car System. Douglas became majority owner in 1992 and since then has earned a host of awards for the success of his dealership and his continued work within the Detroit community as a philanthropist. In 2006, he turned over the business operation to his son, Mark. Douglas lives in suburban Detroit with his wife of more than 40 years, Retha.
Damien Crutcher
Damien Crutcher, a Detroit native and Cass Technical high school graduate, holds a bachelor’s in music education from Michigan State University and a master’s in conducting from The University of Michigan. With mentorship from Dr. Ronnie Wooten and Prof. H. Robert Reynolds, Crutcher’s conducting career includes performances at Carnegie Hall, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s Orchestra Hall, and more. He is the founder and CEO of Crescendo Detroit, a nonprofit transforming Detroit’s youth through music, and managing director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s Detroit Harmony initiative, a city-wide collaboration aiming to provide every student in Detroit with access toinstruments and music education. Crutcher also serves the DSO’s Civic Youth Ensembles—of which he is an alum—as director of the Detroit Community Concert Band and Civic Symphonic Band. Since 2004, he has served as Music Director of the Farmington Concert Band, and previously served as Director of Bands and Orchestra at Southfield-Lathrup High School. Many of his former students are currently professional musicians, music teachers, and artists.
About the DSO
The acclaimed Detroit Symphony Orchestra is known for trailblazing performances, collaborations with the world’s foremost musical artists, and a deep connection to its city. Led by Music Director Jader Bignamini since 2020, the DSO makes its home at historic Orchestra Hall within the Max M. and Marjorie S. Fisher Music Center, offering a performance schedule that features the PVS Classical, PNC Pops, Paradise Jazz, and Young People’s Family Concert series. In addition, the DSO presents the William Davidson Neighborhood Concert Series in metro area venues, as well as eclectic multi-genre performances in its mid-size venue The Cube, constructed and curated with support from Peter D. & Julie F. Cummings. A dedication to broadcast innovation began in 1922, when the DSO became the first orchestra in the world to present a live radio broadcast of a concert and continues today with the groundbreaking Live from Orchestra Hall series of free webcasts.
Since its first school concerts a century ago, and particularly since the founding of the Civic Youth Ensembles in 1970, the DSO has been a national leader in bringing the benefits of music education to students, teachers, and families in Detroit and surrounding communities. The DSO remains committed to expanding its participation in the growth and well-being of Detroit through programs like its Detroit Neighborhood Initiative—cultural events co-created with community partners and residents—and Detroit Harmony, a promise to provide an instrument and instruction to any student in the city who wants to learn. With unwavering support from the people of Detroit, the DSO actively pursues a mission to impact lives through the power of unforgettable musical experiences.