Official site of composer Andrea Clearfield. Biography, list of works with audio, score samples, reviews and program notes, photographs, upcoming performances.
Scored for: SATB (suited for intergenerational chorus), narrator, orchestra Instrumentation: 3 Flutes (3 doubles Picc.), 2 Oboes, E.H., 2 Clarinets in Bb, Bass Clarinet, 3 Bassoons, 4 Horns in F. 3 Trumpets in C, 2 Tenor Trombones, 1 Bass Trombone, Tuba, Harp, Timpani, 3 Percussion, Strings Text: Charlotte Blake Alston Language: primarily English, with Prologue in 3 West African languages: Yoruba, Sepedi, Wolof Duration: 18 min. Premiere: July 25, 2008, Charlotte Alston Blake, combined choruses: The Camden Community Arts High School Choir and the Christina Cultural Center Choir, led by Suzette Ortiz, The Temple University Music Prep Children’s Chorus, led by Stephen Caldwell, The Philadelphia Singers, led by David Hayes. Narrator: Charlotte Blake Alston, The Philadelphia Orchestra, Conductor: Rossen Milanov Commissioned by: The Philadelphia Orchestra Published by: Self-published, Angelfire Press. Octavo (1st Movement) published by:Hal Leonard, Rick Bjella Series, “Welcome Home Child” for SATB chorus, piano and optional percussion
Contact Trudy Chan at Black Tea Music for orchestral score and parts. Contact Andrea:
WELCOME HOME CHILD (MOVEMENT I), FOR SATB, PERCUSSION AND PIANO:
Here is a piece honoring the youth from your community…an exhilerating and passionate tour de force – Hal Leonard. Purchase here.
REVIEWS:
“Clearfield has a considerable history of handling large-scale choral and orchestral forces that are a forum for social issues but also have artistic texture that gives them staying power. The music’s broadly drawn strokes touched emotional bases as only music can. It was bound to make the audience jump up and cheer at the end. And it did.”
“What an incredible experience this has been, for me and for the chorus! We have really enjoyed the process and are looking forward to a stellar premier tomorrow evening! I’m greatly looking forward to conducting this work, and the impact it will have on our St. Louis audience! Thank you for this tremendous work.”
–Kevin McBeth, Associate Conductor, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra
PROGRAM NOTE:
Andrea with Charlotte Blake Alston and The Philadelphia Orchestra at Kabo Omowale premiere
As the Camden Music Workshops entered its third year of collaboration with the Linden Elders Center, participants expressed their desire to focus on a celebration of young people. In keeping with the overarching workshop theme, Camden: Full of Hope, this work would be a representation of hopes realized. The creative process for Kabo Omowale began with elders sharing early music memories and the ways music impacted their lives. We revisited childhood rhythms, jump rope rhymes, handclapping games and recalled spirituals, hymns, religious anthems, gospels, jazz, Jamaican folk music, and stories. Students from the Camden Arts High School Choir added their own insights ranging from the significant influence of contemporary religious music, to R&B and hip-hop, to classical music and opera. Linden Elders shared memories of their youth, comparing their experiences with the changes, disparities, and challenges young people face in today’s urban environment. They also selected, wrote and shared poems that celebrated or acknowledged the lives – and tragic losses – of children. The result was Kabo Omowale (Welcome Home Child): a text-driven one-movement work in four sections for spoken word, chorus and orchestra. Section 1/Prologue places the voices of the elders inside ancient rituals heralding the birth of a child: the assurance that the survival and legacy of the village was secure. Words of welcome, thanks and praise from three indigenous languages are chanted while the names of the elders’ children and chorus members are whispered. The perpetual rhythmic cycle of life is represented by the drum, regarded in some cultures as the most sacred of instruments. Section 2 transitions to a time of village upheaval and displacement, incorporating elements of African-American spirituals and sorrow songs, followed in Section 3 by an energetic expression of adaptation in a new world – rural to urban, ancient to contemporary. Section 4 begins as a reflective lament, gradually evolving into a joyous reclamation and declaration to “step into the Elder space”: to reach out, embrace, encourage and guide. In the Epilogue, the choir chants the names of the elders: those who have pledged to walk beside our children into a future Full of Hope. We are honored to have been part of this process.
Charlotte Blake Alston
Andrea Clearfield
TEXT
Andrea choir members and Suzzette Ortiz, who prepared the The Camden Community Arts High School Choir and the Christina Cultural Center Choir in the premiere of Kabo Omowale
KABO OMOWALE
(Welcome Home Child)
_________________________________________________________
Texts by Charlotte Blake Alston
The texts were inspired by, and incorporate the work of the participants of the Camden Music Workshop, a collaboration between The Philadelphia Orchestra and Respond, Inc. Linden Elders Center in Camden, NJ.
Participants were Ida Allen, Bertha Bethea, Betty Charity, Ernestine Cummings, Patricia Douglas,
Caroline Drumgoole, Retina Grant, Dorothy Kinzer, Evelyn Lowe,
Annie Sadler, Kay Scott and Mildred Young.
Chorus (spoken in unison and canon)
Kabo omowale (Welcome home child: Yoruba)
Badímo – bafásë (We thank the ancestors in the ground: Sepedi)
Woyu julli bi yaa ko moom – yaa ko moom (This praise-song is for you: Wolof)
Chorus (names of children whispered, names of other children in the community may be substituted)
Sister, Brother, John, Mary, Woodie, Hezekiah, LaDonya, Matilda, Walter, George Anthony, Lorna (each chorus member adds their own name and any sisters/brothers)
Narrator
From the earliest existence of family, the birth of a child was one of the most important events in the life of the village. Each child was received with great ceremony. The infant’s name would be whispered into her ear – she would be the first one to hear it. Ritual said, “We welcome you. We enfold you into the bosom of your family, your people. In you are all who have gone before.”
I.
Chorus
We have been waiting
To welcome you home
Bearing gifts from ancestors
Known and unknown.
In you lay our hope!
In you lay our dreams!
In you is our future
Our faith is redeemed.
Redeemed – renewed
With each sacred life –
In you there shines
The ancestors’ light.
We have been waiting
To welcome you home
We have been waiting
To welcome you.
Anticipated, celebrated,
Welcomed with joy,
Respected, protected,
Our prayers we employ
So we sing, we dance
We call out your name
We shout to the universe
From whence you came.
We have been waiting
To welcome you home.
Narrator
Each birth, each child was an answered prayer, a sacred gift, evidence of life’s longing for itself. The words of celebration went deep inside the children’s ears and nestled in the marrow of their bones.
Chorus and Narrator
You – our song, our prayer on the wind
You – our yearning from deep within
You – our joy – the ancestors’ pride
We – your anchor, your strength, your guide
Narrator
Voices raised in celebration, new life carried on the beat of the drum, words riding the wind across time and space. Every beat heralding the cycle of existence, each song an ancient prayer brought to life.
Chorus
Songs, prayers, rhythms, new life – songs, prayers, rhythms, new life
Narrator
And so it continued season to season, age to age. Children welcomed, celebrated, nurtured, guided through childhood’s bruises and bumps – prepared to stand; prepared to have the village’s future place in their hands. Season upon season, age unto age.
II.
Narrator
And then –
A disturbance, interruption, imbalance, cessation,
Deviation, mutilation, transformation, separation,
Words, songs, voices, rhythms – distorted, changed, scattered, silenced – lost.
Mezzo-soprano solo, followed by chorus
Old spirits – new lands
Old voices – new words;
From chants and rituals to songs in new tongues
Songs of survival of sorrow, of grief
Pleas to the heavens for solace, release.
Sorrow songs rising, mingling with heaven’s tears
Deep ancestral moans; forces gathering near.
Narrator
Songs told of golden chariots carrying souls to higher ground,
Of meeting by the riverside and laying burdens down.
The songs brought calm to dispirited hearts. Each word, each moan, each hum
Issued a call, a warning – a new day was soon to come.
III.
Narrator
New day – new time – new songs – new rhyme.
Change in the landscape – farms left behind
Migration northward – new livelihoods
Transforming the village into neighborhoods.
Chorus
New day, new time
Narrator
3-6-9 – the goose drank wine
Chorus
New songs, new rhyme
Narrator
The monkey chewed tobacco on the streetcar line
Chorus
New day, new time, new songs, new rhyme
Narrator
The line broke; the monkey got choked
And they all went to heaven in a little tugboat
Chorus
Double-dutch – jump rope – hand-bone rhymes
Rhythms and beats race through my mind
Taking me back to an earlier time
When the WHOLE community kept you in line!
Youth chorus, or all women
Jumping, skipping on down the street
A group of friends I’d go to meet
One mischievous prank and a neighbor would shout –
“I’m going to tell your mother!”
Chorus
Double-dutch – jump rope – hand-bone rhymes
Rhythms and beats race through my mind
Taking me back to an earlier time
When the WHOLE community kept you in line!
Chorus
Each and every time you stepped outside
You carried yourself with grace and pride
The community made it evident –
Your family is who you represent.
Sunday mornings, church would be
The gathering place for the community
No strangers here, everyone belonged
Unison voices raised in song
Chorus
Double-dutch – jump rope – hand-bone rhymes
Rhythms and beats race through my mind
Taking me back to an earlier time
When the WHOLE community kept you in line!
IV.
Narrator
A change of time, seasons, landscapes:
Migration, adaptation, transformation, stagnation,
Devastation, realization, reclamation, declaration.
Old ways forgotten – abandoned, discarded.
Wisdom of elders too long disregarded.
Vanished – the rituals that brought validation,
Vanished – the ancient songs of celebration.
Gone – the voices, the guideposts, the signs,
That anchored the children in their place and time.
Called into existence in this time and place,
We step into the Elder Space.
With this declaration we pledge to impart
Our love, our wisdom, our prayers from the heart.
So we sing, we dance, we call out your name.
We shout to the universe from whence you came.
Solo voice (spoken)
Thank you, our elders, for welcoming all of us.
Chorus
We welcome you into our circle of hope
We welcome you into our circle of faith
We welcome you into our circle of light
We welcome you, we welcome you, we welcome you –
Home.
EPILOGUE
Chorus (names of elders spoken in unison, other names of elders in the community may be substituted)
Bettie, Patricia, Retina, Ida, Mildred, Annie, Ernestine,
Caroline, Kay, Dorothy, Bertha, Evelyn
Kabo Omowale (Welcome Home Child)
Scored for: SATB (suited for intergenerational chorus), narrator, orchestra
Instrumentation: 3 Flutes (3 doubles Picc.), 2 Oboes, E.H., 2 Clarinets in Bb, Bass Clarinet, 3 Bassoons, 4 Horns in F. 3 Trumpets in C, 2 Tenor Trombones, 1 Bass Trombone, Tuba, Harp, Timpani, 3 Percussion, Strings
Text: Charlotte Blake Alston
Language: primarily English, with Prologue in 3 West African languages: Yoruba, Sepedi, Wolof
Duration: 18 min.
Premiere: July 25, 2008, Charlotte Alston Blake, combined choruses: The Camden Community Arts High School Choir and the Christina Cultural Center Choir, led by Suzette Ortiz, The Temple University Music Prep Children’s Chorus, led by Stephen Caldwell, The Philadelphia Singers, led by David Hayes. Narrator: Charlotte Blake Alston, The Philadelphia Orchestra, Conductor: Rossen Milanov
Commissioned by: The Philadelphia Orchestra
Published by: Self-published, Angelfire Press.
Octavo (1st Movement) published by: Hal Leonard, Rick Bjella Series, “Welcome Home Child” for SATB chorus, piano and optional percussion
Contact Trudy Chan at Black Tea Music for orchestral score and parts. Contact Andrea:
See preview score pages: KABO OMOWALE CHORAL SCORE EXCERPT (PDF)
KABO OMOWALE PIANO/VOCAL SCORE EXCERPT (PDF)
KABO OMOWALE FULL SCORE EXCERPT (PDF)
LISTEN (short excerpt):
WELCOME HOME CHILD (MOVEMENT I), FOR SATB, PERCUSSION AND PIANO:
Here is a piece honoring the youth from your community…an exhilerating and passionate tour de force – Hal Leonard. Purchase here.
REVIEWS:
“Clearfield has a considerable history of handling large-scale choral and orchestral forces that are a forum for social issues but also have artistic texture that gives them staying power. The music’s broadly drawn strokes touched emotional bases as only music can. It was bound to make the audience jump up and cheer at the end. And it did.”
David Patrick Stearns, The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 29, 2008. Read the entire review here.
“Powerful”
The Philadelphia Daily News, January 15, 2010
“What an incredible experience this has been, for me and for the chorus! We have really enjoyed the process and are looking forward to a stellar premier tomorrow evening! I’m greatly looking forward to conducting this work, and the impact it will have on our St. Louis audience! Thank you for this tremendous work.”
–Kevin McBeth, Associate Conductor, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra
PROGRAM NOTE:
Andrea with Charlotte Blake Alston and The Philadelphia Orchestra at Kabo Omowale premiere
As the Camden Music Workshops entered its third year of collaboration with the Linden Elders Center, participants expressed their desire to focus on a celebration of young people. In keeping with the overarching workshop theme, Camden: Full of Hope, this work would be a representation of hopes realized. The creative process for Kabo Omowale began with elders sharing early music memories and the ways music impacted their lives. We revisited childhood rhythms, jump rope rhymes, handclapping games and recalled spirituals, hymns, religious anthems, gospels, jazz, Jamaican folk music, and stories. Students from the Camden Arts High School Choir added their own insights ranging from the significant influence of contemporary religious music, to R&B and hip-hop, to classical music and opera. Linden Elders shared memories of their youth, comparing their experiences with the changes, disparities, and challenges young people face in today’s urban environment. They also selected, wrote and shared poems that celebrated or acknowledged the lives – and tragic losses – of children. The result was Kabo Omowale (Welcome Home Child): a text-driven one-movement work in four sections for spoken word, chorus and orchestra. Section 1/Prologue places the voices of the elders inside ancient rituals heralding the birth of a child: the assurance that the survival and legacy of the village was secure. Words of welcome, thanks and praise from three indigenous languages are chanted while the names of the elders’ children and chorus members are whispered. The perpetual rhythmic cycle of life is represented by the drum, regarded in some cultures as the most sacred of instruments. Section 2 transitions to a time of village upheaval and displacement, incorporating elements of African-American spirituals and sorrow songs, followed in Section 3 by an energetic expression of adaptation in a new world – rural to urban, ancient to contemporary. Section 4 begins as a reflective lament, gradually evolving into a joyous reclamation and declaration to “step into the Elder space”: to reach out, embrace, encourage and guide. In the Epilogue, the choir chants the names of the elders: those who have pledged to walk beside our children into a future Full of Hope. We are honored to have been part of this process.
Charlotte Blake Alston
Andrea Clearfield
TEXT
Andrea choir members and Suzzette Ortiz, who prepared the The Camden Community Arts High School Choir and the Christina Cultural Center Choir in the premiere of Kabo Omowale
KABO OMOWALE
(Welcome Home Child)
_________________________________________________________
Texts by Charlotte Blake Alston
The texts were inspired by, and incorporate the work of the participants of the Camden Music Workshop, a collaboration between The Philadelphia Orchestra and Respond, Inc. Linden Elders Center in Camden, NJ.
Participants were Ida Allen, Bertha Bethea, Betty Charity, Ernestine Cummings, Patricia Douglas,
Caroline Drumgoole, Retina Grant, Dorothy Kinzer, Evelyn Lowe,
Annie Sadler, Kay Scott and Mildred Young.
_________________________________________________________
PROLOGUE
Kabo Omowale with the St. Louis Symphony
Chorus (spoken in unison and canon)
Kabo omowale (Welcome home child: Yoruba)
Badímo – bafásë (We thank the ancestors in the ground: Sepedi)
Woyu julli bi yaa ko moom – yaa ko moom (This praise-song is for you: Wolof)
Chorus (names of children whispered, names of other children in the community may be substituted)
Sister, Brother, John, Mary, Woodie, Hezekiah, LaDonya, Matilda, Walter, George Anthony, Lorna (each chorus member adds their own name and any sisters/brothers)
Narrator
From the earliest existence of family, the birth of a child was one of the most important events in the life of the village. Each child was received with great ceremony. The infant’s name would be whispered into her ear – she would be the first one to hear it. Ritual said, “We welcome you. We enfold you into the bosom of your family, your people. In you are all who have gone before.”
I.
Chorus
We have been waiting
To welcome you home
Bearing gifts from ancestors
Known and unknown.
In you lay our hope!
In you lay our dreams!
In you is our future
Our faith is redeemed.
Redeemed – renewed
With each sacred life –
In you there shines
The ancestors’ light.
We have been waiting
To welcome you home
We have been waiting
To welcome you.
Anticipated, celebrated,
Welcomed with joy,
Respected, protected,
Our prayers we employ
So we sing, we dance
We call out your name
We shout to the universe
From whence you came.
We have been waiting
To welcome you home.
Narrator
Each birth, each child was an answered prayer, a sacred gift, evidence of life’s longing for itself. The words of celebration went deep inside the children’s ears and nestled in the marrow of their bones.
Chorus and Narrator
You – our song, our prayer on the wind
You – our yearning from deep within
You – our joy – the ancestors’ pride
We – your anchor, your strength, your guide
Narrator
Voices raised in celebration, new life carried on the beat of the drum, words riding the wind across time and space. Every beat heralding the cycle of existence, each song an ancient prayer brought to life.
Chorus
Songs, prayers, rhythms, new life – songs, prayers, rhythms, new life
Narrator
And so it continued season to season, age to age. Children welcomed, celebrated, nurtured, guided through childhood’s bruises and bumps – prepared to stand; prepared to have the village’s future place in their hands. Season upon season, age unto age.
II.
Narrator
And then –
A disturbance, interruption, imbalance, cessation,
Deviation, mutilation, transformation, separation,
Words, songs, voices, rhythms – distorted, changed, scattered, silenced – lost.
Mezzo-soprano solo, followed by chorus
Old spirits – new lands
Old voices – new words;
From chants and rituals to songs in new tongues
Songs of survival of sorrow, of grief
Pleas to the heavens for solace, release.
Sorrow songs rising, mingling with heaven’s tears
Deep ancestral moans; forces gathering near.
Narrator
Songs told of golden chariots carrying souls to higher ground,
Of meeting by the riverside and laying burdens down.
The songs brought calm to dispirited hearts. Each word, each moan, each hum
Issued a call, a warning – a new day was soon to come.
III.
Narrator
New day – new time – new songs – new rhyme.
Change in the landscape – farms left behind
Migration northward – new livelihoods
Transforming the village into neighborhoods.
Chorus
New day, new time
Narrator
3-6-9 – the goose drank wine
Chorus
New songs, new rhyme
Narrator
The monkey chewed tobacco on the streetcar line
Chorus
New day, new time, new songs, new rhyme
Narrator
The line broke; the monkey got choked
And they all went to heaven in a little tugboat
Chorus
Double-dutch – jump rope – hand-bone rhymes
Rhythms and beats race through my mind
Taking me back to an earlier time
When the WHOLE community kept you in line!
Youth chorus, or all women
Jumping, skipping on down the street
A group of friends I’d go to meet
One mischievous prank and a neighbor would shout –
“I’m going to tell your mother!”
Chorus
Double-dutch – jump rope – hand-bone rhymes
Rhythms and beats race through my mind
Taking me back to an earlier time
When the WHOLE community kept you in line!
Chorus
Each and every time you stepped outside
You carried yourself with grace and pride
The community made it evident –
Your family is who you represent.
Sunday mornings, church would be
The gathering place for the community
No strangers here, everyone belonged
Unison voices raised in song
Chorus
Double-dutch – jump rope – hand-bone rhymes
Rhythms and beats race through my mind
Taking me back to an earlier time
When the WHOLE community kept you in line!
IV.
Narrator
A change of time, seasons, landscapes:
Migration, adaptation, transformation, stagnation,
Devastation, realization, reclamation, declaration.
Old ways forgotten – abandoned, discarded.
Wisdom of elders too long disregarded.
Vanished – the rituals that brought validation,
Vanished – the ancient songs of celebration.
Gone – the voices, the guideposts, the signs,
That anchored the children in their place and time.
Called into existence in this time and place,
We step into the Elder Space.
With this declaration we pledge to impart
Our love, our wisdom, our prayers from the heart.
So we sing, we dance, we call out your name.
We shout to the universe from whence you came.
Narrator
We’ll be here to guide you
Chorus
We’ll walk without fear
Narrator
We’ll be here to guide you
Chorus
The pathway is clear
Narrator
We’ll be here to guide you
Chorus
We’ll set our goals high
Narrator
We’ll be here to guide you
Chorus
We’ll reach for the sky!
Hope! Dream! Believe! Press On!
Strive! Thrive! Achieve! Press On!
Reclaim! Change! Create! Press On!
Solo voice (spoken)
Thank you, our elders, for welcoming all of us.
Chorus
We welcome you into our circle of hope
We welcome you into our circle of faith
We welcome you into our circle of light
We welcome you, we welcome you, we welcome you –
Home.
EPILOGUE
Chorus (names of elders spoken in unison, other names of elders in the community may be substituted)
Bettie, Patricia, Retina, Ida, Mildred, Annie, Ernestine,
Caroline, Kay, Dorothy, Bertha, Evelyn