The Montgomery Symphony Orchestra, Music Director Jamie Reeves, and choruses in the February 9 world premiere of Nkeiru Okoye’s A Time for Jubilee. Photo by Jennifer Barker.
In Friday’s (2/27) National Endowment for the Arts site, Carolyn Coons writes, “When composer Dr. Nkeiru Okoye set out to write an oratorio based on the 1965 voting rights marches, she channeled Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s spirit of unstoppable movement towards equality and justice…. The music presses ahead, echoing the physical and spiritual resolve of those who walked the 54 miles for voting rights…. Okoye created ‘A Time for Jubilee,’ the 25-minute oratorio to honor Dr. King’s role in the marches, as part of the Montgomery Symphony Orchestra’s Alabama Composers Project, which commissions one new work per season by composers who are Alabama natives or whose work is shaped by the state’s history and cultural heritage. ‘A Time for Jubilee’ premiered on February 9, 2026 … in Montgomery, Alabama. The project was supported with a $25,000 National Endowment for the Arts award through the grant program ‘Celebrating America250: Arts Projects Honoring the National Garden of American Heroes.’… ‘When I say that this NEA grant really made this project happen, I mean literally it did,’ said Montgomery Symphony Orchestra conductor Jamie Reeves…. The piece featured vocalist Laquita Mitchell alongside choirs from Tuskegee University and Alabama State University—both Historically Black Universities—and Huntingdon College.”
