NICK RELEASES 'A CHANGE IS GONNA COME' WITH PALAVER STRINGS
NICK RELEASES 'A CHANGE IS GONNA COME' WITH PALAVER STRINGS
First Preview Track from 'A Change Is Gonna Come' Now Streaming!
Three-time Grammy-nominated tenor Nicholas Phan, whom the Boston Globe declared “one of the world’s most remarkable singers,” joins Palaver Strings, a musician-led string ensemble based in Portland, Maine, and jazz vocalist Farayi Malek for the new album A Change Is Gonna Come on the Azica label, exploring America’s rich legacy of protest songs (May 24). A vinyl release through Onyx Record Press is planned for July 1 and may be pre-ordered here. Repertoire on the album includes traditional songs of protest and music inspired by social movements and historical events, including the world premiere recording of a new commission by Errollyn Wallen titled Protest Songs, sung by Phan. Eight of the thirteen tracks on the album are heard in arrangements by Attacca Quartet’s Domenic Salerni. Spanning genres, eras, and movements, A Change Is Gonna Come provokes conversation, confronts the past and present, and celebrates the act of protest as one of humanity’s most precious rights. Leading up to the album release, a single of Phan singing Joni Mitchell’s “Fiddle and the Drum” will be released this Friday, April 5. Phan elaborates:
“In an age where it seems like most tech algorithms’ primary goal is to provoke anger in order to keep us scrolling on our phones, this program feels important. Music is unique as a form of protest, because, as these songs demonstrate, it has the power to win hearts and minds. Hope for lasting change lies in that special power of song, as does hope for healing and consensus building in this increasingly fractured and fraught time.”
Now celebrating its tenth season, Palaver Strings is led by twelve co-artistic directors passionate about engaging new audiences, amplifying underrepresented voices, and broadening the definition and cultural impact of chamber music. A Change Is Gonna Come marks the ensemble’s second disc on Azica, after the “lively performances” on 2022’s Ready Or Not, which featured music by female composers, left the reviewer for BBC Music magazine “wanting more.” Elaborating on their mission and the new album, the group says:
“This album has been in the works for several years, and we are thrilled to finally release it into the world. The constant barrage of racial inequalities, environmental degradation, political instability, and war we are confronted with every time we tune into current events can easily leave us feeling overwhelmed and hopeless. Protest is a fundamentally hopeful act, which is why it feels particularly important to revisit and reimagine these classic protest songs through a contemporary lens, as both an act of protest, and as a way to imagine a better world.”
The centerpiece of A Change Is Gonna Come is the world premiere recording of Errollyn Wallen’s Protest Songs, commissioned for this project in 2021. An award-winning, Belize-born British composer and performer, Wallen herself wrote the text for the first movement, setting the second to a text by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, an abolitionist and one of the first Black poets published in the United States. Wallen says: “It has been the greatest privilege to compose for Nicholas Phan and Palaver Strings. I am delighted that my new work, Protest Songs, is included on this important album.”
The album opens with an instrumental arrangement of Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind, one of the most popular protest songs of all time, and closes with the title track by Sam Cooke, an anthem closely identified with the Civil Rights movement. Partly inspired by Blowin’ in the Wind, Cooke’s song – which features Farayi Malek – was also a response to his lived experience of Jim Crow-era racism. The melodies of both songs have roots in the spiritual “No More Auction Block For Me/Many Thousands Gone.” From the same era are “What Are You Fighting For,” “Freedom is a Constant Struggle,” Malvina Reynolds’s “It Isn’t Nice,” Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” and Joni Mitchell’s “Fiddle and the Drum,” being released as a single this Friday.
If the most immediately recognizable protest songs come from the 1960s and 70s, the struggle against violence and racial prejudice is obviously nothing new, and a few tracks look back further still. “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill,” a tribute to the labor activist who was executed on tenuous murder charges in 1915, is based on Paul Robeson’s recording from 1939. Harry T. Burleigh’s “Lovely, Dark and Lonely One,” written in 1935, is a setting of Langston Hughes’s “Song” and was written with iconic contralto and Civil Rights activist Marian Anderson in mind, though she never performed it. Abel Meeropol’s searing anti-lynching song “Strange Fruit,” also featuring Malek on the present album, was unforgettably recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939. Malek comments:
“It was such a joy to work with Palaver Strings as a guest on A Change Is Gonna Come. The pieces I’m featured on, ‘Strange Fruit’ and ‘A Change is Gonna Come,’ have been part of my repertoire for as long as I can remember. Having the opportunity to record these fresh, new arrangements with Palaver Strings was a privilege and honor.”
Rounding out the album is an instrumental depiction of war reaching back to 1673: the movement “Der Mars” from Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber’s Battalia à 10. The fiddle solo leading up to it, coming out of “Fiddle and the Drum,” features Palaver violinist Maya French and bassist Nate Martin.
