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The School of Music, Theatre, and Dance (SMTD) is excited to announce the 2023 concert honoring the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Please plan to join us after the winter break for an evening of dynamic and uplifting music on Friday, January 27, 2023, at 7:30 p.m. in Ford Hall. 

Concert attendees will experience the heart of the African-American musical experience, including spirituals, gospel, jazz, and popular. The Ithaca College Wind Symphony, Symphony Orchestra, Choir, Chorus, Treble Chorale, and Jazz Vocal Ensemble; the Dorothy Cotton Jubilee Singers; and SMTD alumni and faculty—including first year assistant voice professor Jean Bernard Cerin—will all perform. There will also be a reading of King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

In addition, the concert will feature the world premiere of “Don’t Look Away (Requiem for a World that Never Was),” a thought-provoking piece about racism in America commissioned by SMTD associate voice professor Dawn Pierce ’97 in collaboration with IC alumni John Conahan ’96 (composer) and Meaghan Boeing ’00 (librettist). The project stems from their deep discussions of how to engage in anti-racist work and marry it with the art of music performance, and is designed as a call to engagement and point of entry for majority white communities that may be unsure of how to begin this difficult conversation.