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Alvin Singleton's "Sweet Chariot" at the National Museum of African American History & Culture

On February 26, members of the US Army Band "Pershing's Own" performed Alvin Singleton's Sweet Chariot in the recently-opened National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Sweet Chariot, composed as a "tentet" with multiple reed doublings, sets the traditional spiritual with Singleton's characteristic inventiveness and unique compositional voice. Carman Moore writes,

Sweet Chariot seems to be, much like Singleton’s recent orchestral work Different River, created from a series of disparate events, often divided from one another by silences or long-held tones. Some of them seem lyrically mournful, some fanfare-esque, some dancey (at one point almost salsa-like), some joyful, some loud, some soft, high and low…but always highly-contrasted and unpredictable. 

If you weren't in DC, you can still watch the performance, which was live-streamed and recorded here (starting at 57:45); Sweet Chariot was also recorded and released on Albany Records in 2014.

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