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Shawn Okpebholo’s Songs in Flight Brings Untold Stories to Light
Cedille is excited for the upcoming release of Songs in Flight, a powerful work that responds to Freedom on the Move, a remarkable database from Cornell University of over 30,000 newspaper ads placed by enslavers to track down those who had escaped their captors.
With “Freedom on the Move” as a starting point, composer Shawn Okpebholo and poet Dr. Tsitsi Ella Jaji collaborated on this 12-movement song cycle. The work includes a poem by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tyehimba Jess and a series of haikus by poet Crystal Smith. The evocative text engages these ads in multilayered ways while also blending them with current events. The heartbreaking and violent murders of Ahmaud Arbery in 2020 and Trayvon Martin in 2012, along with the imprint of too many others to name, are embedded within the fabric of Songs in Flight.
Songs in Flight marks Okpebholo’s first full album on Cedille, one on which he also serves as producer, leading recording sessions, and working with Cedille’s primary producer, President, and founder Jim Ginsburg. Okpebholo comments:
“[It] shows humility, respect, creative freedom, trust. I’m so grateful to work with a label that allows for creative freedom and a dialogue because we have one goal: to produce great art.”
Joining Okpebholo for this album is an outstanding roster of artists, including Rhiannon Giddens, soprano Karen Slack, countertenor Reginald Mobley, baritone Will Liverman, pianist Paul Sánchez, and saxophonist Julian Velasco. Together, they give voice to the stories and struggles that are central to this project. The New York Times says the work “takes these murky, dehumanizing documents and illuminates them, shifting their perspective to reveal the person hidden in plain sight.”
Your support of Cedille has made it possible to bring these voices from history to the present, providing space for reflection, healing, and a deeper understanding of our shared past. Songs in Flight will be released in February 2025.
Recommended
From Chicago-based composter Stacy Garrop comes INVICTUS, Latin for “unconquered.” The work unfolds across four movements and an interlude, moving between lyrical introspection, fierce determination, and triumphant resolve, with Grammy-nominated pianist Marta Aznavoorian and the Chicago Philharmonic under the direction of Artistic Director Scott Speck. Available 5/8.
Haymarket Opera Company presents early-18th-century master Leonardo Vinci’s rare operatic gem, Artaserse (1730). A prominent figure of the Neapolitan School of opera, whose work influenced composers such as Johann Adolph Hasse and Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Vinci’s three-act opera seria centers on the Persian prince, Artaserse, who must bring his father’s murderer to justice amidst betrayal, deceit, and mistaken identity.
To celebrate Stacy Garrop‘s piano concerto, INVICTUS (5/8 release), based on a poem about perseverance and resilience in adversity, a playlist of Cedille tracks that represent struggle against prohibitive odds — explicitly in words or as program music, or inherently in their musical nature.
Enjoy Cedille’s Weekly Featured Release.