Legal Milestones in Choral Music

Two upcoming choral concerts honor historic legal events.

1297 copy of Magna Carta on display
in the National Archives
(and the NationalArchives
Featured Documents web exhibit)

UW Collegium Musicum presents a musical setting of a medieval poem about the events leading to the Magna Carta in 1215. Magna Carta 800: Music of the British Isles, Sat. April 18, 2015, 7:30 PM, Mary Gates Hall, $10.

Orchestra Seattle and Seattle Chamber Singers present 1954 in America , Sunday, May 17, 3:00 PM, First Free Methodist Church (in West Seattle). One of the works is Breathe, by Stacey Phillips:

Breathe, a work for chorus and orchestra selected as the winning entry in the 2014–2015 OSSCS Composer Competition, features lyrics drawn from the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Paul Dunbar’s poem “Sympathy.” Written during the months following protests in response to the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, Breathe “raises the continuing question of how this country, founded on the principles of equality, continues to struggle with questions of social justice.”

Thanks to Patty Roberts.