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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Fiona Maddocks

Classical home listening: African American Voices with the RSNO; Clare Hammond plays Montgeroult

Kellen Gray holding a baton
‘Buoyancy and dexterity’ from the RSNO and conductor Kellen Gray. Photograph: Martin McCready
CKD 699 cover 3000x3000
CKD 699 cover 3000x3000 Photograph: handout

• The three composers on the Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s African American Voices (Linn), conducted by the orchestra’s assistant conductor, South Carolina-born Kellen Gray, are enjoying a vigorous revival. William Grant Still (1895-1978), George Walker (1922-2018) and William Levi Dawson (1899-1990) combined classical training with the Black vernacular music of their upbringing. Dawson played as a jazz trombonist (with Louis Armstrong and others); his melodic Negro Folk Symphony (1934) bursts with powerful orchestral gesture and taut rhythms.

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