This composer’s work is in high demand, putting a spotlight on Lexington music

Shawn Okpebholo is an internationally recognized composer who is about to get a big moment in his hometown.

A moment that Lexington Philharmonic music director Mélisse Brunet says is putting a major spotlight on Lexington and classical music.

On May 18, the Philharmonic will debut a new work that orchestras around the world will soon be performing from a composer who, as a child, first started to develop his musical talents for classical music in an unexpected place, the Lexington Salvation Army.

Okpebholo will cap his yearlong tenure as the philharmonic’s composer-in-residence with the world premiere of his “Two Black Churches (for baritone and orchestra).”

“Just to give you a sense of the importance, a lot of orchestras are lining up to perform that piece ... so I think it’s gonna be a very important event for Lexington in so many ways,” Brunet said, “Because Shawn was born here, he discovered music and loved music through our town of Lexington, and he’s become that major composer, not only in the US, but worldwide. And this is very unique that we can afford to have him as a composer in residence for world premiere — very exciting.”

The performance at the University of Kentucky’s Singletary Center for the Arts is the full-orchestra version of a piece originally composed for voice and piano by Okpebholo, who currently is the Jonathan Blanchard Distinguished Professor of Composition at Wheaton College-Conservatory of Music in Wheaton, Ill. The larger version was commissioned by Lexington Philharmonic.

Okpebholo’s music has been performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and Los Angeles Opera and been commissioned by the Kennedy Center, Tanglewood and Aspen music festivals.

He’s collaborated with artists such as Lawrence Brownlee and Rhiannon Giddens and been hailed by outlets including the New York Times and the BBC. He has even been nominated for a Grammy Award.

Where Okpebholo’s musical journey began

Shawn was interested in music as a child, taking a first crack at writing a song and finding a desire to get on stage at Tates Creek Elementary School, participating in music at the Salvation Army Church, and continuing with music at Lexington Traditional Magnet School and beloved music teacher Charles F. Little Jr.

It was attending the Salvation Army church with his family, that he met the teacher who would play a key role in guiding him to a career in music.

“That’s an overall theme of my life,” Okpebholo said from his Illinois home. “People saw things in me, and they said, ‘You know what? I’m gonna work with you.’”

The local connection made a night last October extra special: On that night, the Lexington Philharmonic was performing Okpebholo’s music at Singletary.

“It was like a full circle moment,” Okpebholo said. “It’s the first orchestra I saw, right? When I was in fifth grade, we would go to the Singletary Center on field trips and see Dr. George Zack conduct these children’s concerts.”

“The whole community came out,” Okpebholo said. “Three former teachers, friends, my family, which is most important. Oftentimes, when I do these gigs or have these engagements, I love a good audience, but sometimes I don’t know anyone in the audience, personally.

“But to have my music performed in a place where I know a lot of people there, they actually see what I’m doing ... that is so special, because Lexington is my music education. The Lexington Salvation Army Church, the Fayette County Public Schools, that is my music education. I owe where I am today to what went on in my upbringing.”

What Okpebholo is doing is ... a lot. His early 2024 schedule featured well over two dozen performances of his music, from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco, Winnipeg to Dallas. There’s also speaking engagements, guest curation on the popular NPR music show “Performance Today,” and work on his third album with artists such as Giddens and baritone Will Liverman, who will be part of the May 18 performance.

Connection Birmingham, Charleston tragedies

The catalyst for the work, which Liverman proposed to Okpebholo, was the killing of an unarmed Black man and woman. Okpebholo said what makes that catalyst sadder is that because of the preponderance of killings and injustices against people who are Black documented in video recordings, “I can’t even tell you what atrocity sparked this.”

Liverman had Dudley Randall’s poem “Ballad of Birmingham,” a narrative account of the 1963 bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., by members of the Ku Klux Klan that killed four girls and injured more than a dozen more people. That became the basis for the first movement, the first church, which incorporates Black gospel music, contemporary art song and allusions to the Civil Rights anthem “We Shall Overcome” and hymn “Amazing Grace.”

Liverman and Okpebholo commissioned Charleston, S.C., Poet Laureate Marcus Amaker to write a poem reflecting on the racist murder of nine members of Charleston’s historic Mother Emanuel AME Church during a Bible study in June 2015. That is the basis for the second movement which thematically and musically is built around the number nine and repeatedly invokes rain as a metaphor for a flood of racism and injustice people who are Black continually face in the United States.

“They happened decades apart, right?” Okpebholo said. “That is the reason behind this, to demonstrate that this stuff is all happening, this stuff is still going on, decades apart.”

Then came the murder of George Floyd

A world premiere was anticipated in 2021, but the murder of George Floyd by a Minnesota police officer, several other killings of people who were Black and subsequent international uprising persuaded Okpebholo and Liverman it needed to be out in the world. So “Two Black Churches for voice and piano had its world premiere July 6, 2020, at Chicago’s Studebaker Theatre. Okpebholo and two camera people were the only people in the theater aside from Liverman and pianist Paul Sánchez due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Philharmonic residency, which includes a commissioned work for the orchestra, gave Okpebholo a chance to create the orchestration for “Two Black Churches” he felt it needed.

“For it to happen with my home orchestra is very special,” he said.

And the experience has been extraordinary. While a commissioning process often involves a composer writing a work and bringing it to the orchestra to play pretty much as written, Okpebholo says Brunet, the LexPhil music director, has been intentional about rehearsing the piece with the orchestra with Okpebholo present or joining via video and receiving notes from the musicians.

“I’ve been very fortunate to work with some of the best musicians all over the world,” Okpebholo said. “But Lexington was special. It was a true partnership. Not only was I writing for the orchestra, working with the orchestra, just being in the environment where I felt appreciated. It was amazing … And now the piece is that much stronger.”

Okpebholo said Brunet, who is ending her second season as Philharmonic music director with the May 18 concert, has been a trusted partner working toward the goal of making the orchestral “Two Black Churches” the best it can be.

“She’s a dream, like Lexington is so lucky to have her,” Okpebholo says. “She’s an incredible musician, one of the best musicians I know. But she also loves what she does, and she loves this community.”

Brunet said she appreciates the pulse and drive in Okpebholo’s music and the blend of familiar melodies in “Two Black Churches.”

“It is very intense in its subject matter, of course,” Brunet said.

Reconnecting with Lexington, Kentucky roots

Okpebholo says one of the great things about being in the Chicago area is its relatively close proximity to Lexington and his wife Dorthy’s home in Cincinnati. But the Lexington composer-in-residence engagement has given him a chance to have a deeper engagement with his roots, musical and otherwise, like visiting his alma mater Tates Creek High School and talking to students there.

It takes him back to his own roots, starting as a kindergartener writing a song for Lutisha Coleman-Morton’s music class at Tates Creek Elementary. He remembers great music education at all schools, including Lexington Traditional Magnet School. But his musical journey really got on track at the Salvation Army Church, where Okpebholo and his family attended after he and his siblings went to summer camp at the Salvation Army.

It was at the church that he met several accomplished musicians including James Curnow, a successful composer and, at the time, professor at Asbury College in Wilmore.

“He was just amazing in that I had a lot of other students older than him over the years, and none of them really had that drive, that incredible energy, inquisitiveness to learn more,” Curnow said from his current home in Lexington, North Carolina. “I was just so excited to work with him.”

Like all composition students, Curnow said, Okpebholo wanted to dive in and write his first symphony. They started smaller and soon he was having pieces performed at the church and elsewhere. When it came time to go to college, studying with Curnow at Asbury was the logical next step. Okpebholo always came to lessons with more material than they could go through in an hour. A lot of his music in college was composed for smaller ensembles, but in his senior year he came in with notice of a composition competition for the United States Army Field Band, and part of the prize was having the work performed by the internationally acclaimed ensemble.

That composition, “Ritual Dances,” won the competition and set the stage for graduate studies at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), where Okpebholo discovered his love of teaching.

“I was working on an assistantship at CCM, and what that meant was I was able to teach,” Okpebholo said. “The class I taught was orchestration for all the undergraduate students in the conservatory, and I have a big personality, so I walk in the class, and whatever I said, they would write down, and they thought I was funny, and I was like, ‘I’m the star of this class. How can I do this for a living?’

“I didn’t realize I would be a professor until I actually stepped in front of a classroom. My goal was just to compose music, however that looked. But it was really when I first taught an autonomous class at CCM that I realized this is fun. I’m able to learn from my students, but also teach my students and have a good time. I like to engage with different people about music. This is what I need to do.”

Lexington music fans got to see that big personality that night last October when the Philharmonic opened its season playing two of Okpebholo’s works, “Sing Dumb” and “Kutimbua Kivumbi (Stomp the Dust!).” The composer recalled those elementary school field trips to see young people’s concerts and one where a student from the audience was picked to come up and conduct the orchestra.

“I remember being so jealous, like, ‘I want to conduct an orchestra,’” Okpebholo said, recalling that moment in an interview last month. “I was enough of a musician at that point that I was intrigued by the idea of waving my hands around in front of 50 musicians or so.”

Now, more than three decades after those experiences, he is living a dream he didn’t even know to dream at that time.

Two Black Churches (for baritone and orchestra)

What: World premiere orchestra concert by Lexington Philharmonic composer-in-residence Shawn Okpebholo

When: May 18, 7:30 p.m.

Where: University of Kentucky’s Singletary Center for the Arts Concert Hall, 405 Rose St.

Tickets: $11-$78; lexphil.org or by calling 859-233-4226