Award-winning composer and musician Tamar-kali joins forces with opera and theatre director James Blaszko and the American Composers Orchestra to bring Freedom Is a Constant Struggle to Lincoln Center. A second-generation musician with roots in the coastal Sea Islands of South Carolina, Tamar-kali has designed an evening of orchestral performances and readings that highlight the African-American struggle to reap the benefits of liberty and justice defined as a part of American citizenry. The concert traces the African-American struggle to achieve freedom—from the call to abolish chattel slavery through the Civil War, from reconstruction and the early movement for racial equality to the ‘60s civil rights movement, all the way to our present-day fights for equity. The performance includes the world premiere of Tamar-kali’s Sea Island Symphony: Red Rice, Cotton and Indigo, and spotlights pivotal works by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes, Nina Simone, and Ida B. Wells, among other notable works. Featuring an orchestra, choir, guest vocalists, orators, and ring shouters, this will be an unforgettable, not-to-be missed evening of innovation, experimentation, and introspection.

View the full program here

The performance features American Composers Orchestra conducted by Glenn Alexander II, The Resistance Revival Chorus, Members of the Dorothy Cotton Jubilee Singers, Carl Hancock Rux, Toshi Reagon, Taiwan Norris, Darren K. Stokes, Portia, Samuel Getachew, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Martha Redbone & Aaron Whitby, and Liza Jessie Peterson

Leading up to the Freedom is a Constant Struggle performance in Damrosch Park on July 5, you're invited to a series of three panels where artists, activists, and historians in conversation with cultural colleagues bring the inspiration behind the performance into focus. Join us at Lincoln Center's David Rubenstein Atrium on June 24 at 12:00 pm for Classical Music and the Quest for Liberation, and on June 25 at 12:00 pm for Lift Every Voice and Sing: African American Contributions to the American Orchestral Canon. The panel series culminates on June 28 at 7:30 pm at the Harlem Stage Gatehouse with History and Cultural Identity as Inspiration, a conversation with the composer Tamar-kali and cultural colleagues Melissa Cooper PhD, John Goff, and Sheldon Scott. The performance and the panels are free.

If you have any questions about this event, please contact Guest Experience at 212-875-5456 or [email protected].