The National Symphony Orchestra, bass-baritone Morris Robinson, and conductor Eugene Rogers at the NSO’s recent “Echoes of America" program. Photo by Michael Andor Brodeur/The Washington Post.
In Sunday’s (9/15) Washington Post, Michael Andor Brodeur writes, “Saturday night at the Kennedy Center, the NSO offered a preseason program that went well beyond a warm-up. As a prologue to both the concert and the election season, ‘Echoes of America’ was … sharp, impactful programming … Forcefully led by Washington Chorus Artistic Director Eugene Rogers and presented as ‘a rousing collection of songs and stories that celebrate and challenge the American narrative,’ the concert was less an attempt to capture what America sounds like, and more of a sustained meditation.” The first half featured works by Jessie Montgomery and Aaron Copland. Then, Rogers led bass-baritone Morris Robinson, “the orchestra and … 145 singers from the Washington Chorus [in] the East Coast premiere of ‘Here I Stand: Paul Robeson’—a monumental new oratorio (and NSO co-commission) from Kennedy Center composer-in-residence Carlos Simon and librettist Dan Harder…. It’s a work that puts on full display Simon’s often breathtaking combination of cinematic scale and high-resolution detail. It also highlights the composer’s inventive choral writing, which found the Washington Chorus forging together in rich, gratifying sound, disintegrating into a chattering crowd, or embodying the chilling admonitions of a society forbiddingly angled against Robeson.”
