Performances + Events
Trumpeter Lemuel Marc ’24, left, and bassist Aidan Devine perform during the 2024 Coretta Scott King Tribute Concert in Jordan Hall.
On Saturday, March 8, New England Conservatory’s Black Student Union and the Boston-based nonprofit Castle of our Skins will pay tribute to activist and NEC alumna Coretta Scott King ’54, ’71 hon. DM, who was married to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and first met him on the Jordan Hall steps. This is the second year the two groups have collaborated to organize a tribute concert featuring music and narration.
Like last year’s event, the March 8 concert will be student-driven, program-wise, said violist and NEC alumna Ashleigh Gordon ’08 MM, who, in 2013, with NEC alumnus Anthony Green ’08 MM, co-founded Castle of our Skins, “a Black arts institution dedicated to fostering cultural curiosity and celebrating Black artistry through music,” according to the organization’s mission.
In curating the concert program the past two years, Gordon has asked members of NEC’s Black Student Union what a tribute to King means to them. “If I were to create a tribute to you,” she’s asked students, “What would you want included? What does that mean — to honor someone?” Those conversations have connected students to King.
“While we may in sort of a linear time — past, present, future — not be connected, we are very much connected because there’s still a lot of ideologies that that are mapped from the Civil Rights Movement period to now that are still in play and are being assaulted right now and being attacked,” Gordon said. “There’s music that is evergreen that crosses those different time periods between her (King) being in this particular building and the students being in this particular building. … That, I think, was really meaningful and really touching for the students — to be able to find connectivity and, through their own medium, through their own agency, through their own words and music, be able to talk to someone … who has a lot of meaning and still has a lot of relevance today.”
The March 8 tribute concert is titled “One Soul. One Dream,” a nod to King’s words about her late husband. “They very much were like one soul, one body, one dream,” Gordon said about Coretta and Dr. King. “The program will remember King “as we know her in association to her family, fellow activists, and global community.”
NEC’s Black Student Union and Gordon have curated a program of music by “African descended composers,” she said, including Adolphus Hailstork’s Morning Song and I’ve Seen the Day, William Grant Still’s “Lyric” Quartet, Kehinde Oretimehin’s Magbagbemi, Carlos Simon’s Hold Fast to Dreams, Maxwell Fairman’s Duo for Flute and Clarinet, Shileta Peregrino Cezario’s All That I Am, Fred Onovwerosuoke’s arrangement of the Nigerian folk song Otu b’oma, Daniel Bernard Roumain’s Music for Black People, and more.
Part of the reward Gordon receives in co-curating the tribute concert is seeing NEC students grow and realize that they have the capacity to bring something meaningful to life.
Learn more about NEC’s Black Student Union, Castle of our Skins, and the March 8 Tribute to Coretta Scott King, “One Soul. One Dream.”
