Classically Black: Celebration
The Music of Adolphus Hailstork

4:06 pm Sunday, February 20, 2005
4 pm Friday, February 25, 2005

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In Adolphus Hailstork’s music, WILL-FM’s Roger Cooper hears sweet, conventional harmony as well as the bite of strategically inserted dissonance.

In Cooper’s newest Classically Black program, Cooper introduces listeners to some of the composer’s music and talks to him about his creative process. 

Cooper said Hailstork uses dissonance to drive home a point. The composer tells Cooper, “One critic once described my music as using dissonance with a purpose. I don’t just strew dissonances from one end to the other for the sake of dissonance.” Instead, he said, he uses it to create tension and suspend resolution.

Hailstork, who has written works for chorus, solo voice, chamber ensembles, band and orchestra, was open to talking about his work. “He’s very affable, colorful and easy to talk to,” said Cooper. “His music is lyrical and very singable, which he attributes to his experience singing with his mother around the house.”

Hailstork, whose compositions have been described as a crossover hybrid of African-American and European-American music, talks about his rhythms, his fondness for viola music and the ways he creates music. The composer grew up in Albany, N.Y., where he took lessons in singing, violin, piano and organ. He conducted a boys’ choral ensemble in high school, and graduated from Howard University. He studied in Europe, and earned a master’s in composition from the Manhattan School of Music, and a doctorate from Michigan State University. He is now professor of music at Virginia’s Old Dominion University.

The program will include the broadcast premiere of Hailstork’s new violin concerto, which premiered Nov. 11 at Williams University in Williamstown, Mass. Ronald Feldman conducts the Berkshire Symphony with violinist Mark Peskanov. Also included are Hailstork’s best-known work, “Celebration”; “Sanctus” for viola and piano; “Sonata da Chiesa”; and his piano concerto premiered by Leon Bates. 

The program is being distributed by Public Radio International and will air on public radio stations across the country.

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