The 2025 Gateways Music Festival opens April 21 at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, and continues in New York City, including a concert in Carnegie Hall.
The festival got its start in 1993 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, as a labor of love by Armenta Hummings Dumisani, a Juilliard-trained pianist and former associate professor at the Eastman School. After joining the Eastman faculty, Dumisani brought the festival to Rochester in 1995 and served as its president and artistic director until she retired in 2009.
From the beginning, Gateways has challenged the historical use of art to perpetuate racial hierarchies by celebrating and amplifying the contributions of Black classical musicians and using the arts to cultivate a more just and inclusive world.
People of African descent have played an important role in classical music for centuries. Alexander Laing, the festival's president and artistic director, came to Gateways for the first time in 2001. He said it changed his life by bringing the two most important parts of his life together – a commitment to classical music, and the need to be in relation to Black people and Black culture.
"It's important to tell the story of how we express ourselves and our culture through this music," Laing said.
The Gateways Festival Orchestra made its Carnegie Hall debut in 2022, led by conductor Anthony Parnther, who succeeded the festival's original music director, the late Michael Morgan. This year's festival includes a work that will be heard in Carnegie Hall for the first time in over 90 years: William L. Dawson's "Negro Folk Symphony," based on spirituals that he cherished from his childhood in early 20th century Alabama.
The work had its New York premiere in Carnegie Hall in November 1934 and received great acclaim. This performance will be the first time that this work has been realized in that space since Dawson himself was there. Dawson said of the piece, "I've tried to be simply myself, a Negro. My greatest hope, upon hearing it, is that people will know that it is unmistakably not the work of a white man."
In the 21st century, the use of the word "Negro" can be controversial. But in the title of Dawson's symphony and other works, it has a historical context that is appropriate and comfortable, Laing said.
The festival will also feature a newly commissioned work that will receive its world premiere in Kodak Hall, and its broadcast premiere in Carnegie Hall.
The piece is called "Reflections of Resilience: Five Spirituals" by Damien Sneed with J'nai Bridges singing "Go Down Moses," "There is a Balm in Gilead," "A City Called Heaven," "Sinner Please Don't Let this Harvest Pass," and "I Don't Feel No Ways Tired."
Spirituals were often rooted in biblical stories, but they also described the extreme hardships endured by enslaved people in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. There is some disagreement among historians about what's apocryphal and what's factual.
For example, "Go Down Moses" is strongly associated with Harriet Tubman, who used it as a code song in her underground railroad work. "Balm in Gilead" comes from the Book of Jeremiah, when the prophet cries out, "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician here?" Theologian Howard Thurman spoke about the incredible resilience of a people who would answer that question in song and straighten that question mark into an exclamation point.
The Gateways Music Festival also includes several recitals, a performance by the Gateways Brass Collective, and a Community Conversation exploring the influence of spirituals on classical music, cultural empowerment and Dawson's legacy. It opens on April 21 and concludes its Rochester residency on April 24 with a concert by the Gateways Festival Orchestra before moving on to New York City for the rest of the Festival. The entire schedule is available at www.gatewaysmusicfestival.org.
Hear the Gateways Festival Orchestra perform James V. Cockerham's Fantasia on "Lift Every Voice and Sing."
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