Echoes of Conscience

Echoes of Conscience

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Mar 15, 2026 - 3:00 pm

Echoes of Conscience
Voices of the French resistance
Concert Highlights: The spirit of Josephine Baker with chanteuse Jacqueline Tabor

World Premiere Dance Commission
Darius Milhaud, La Creation du Monde
Donald Byrd, Spectrum Dance Theater

Darius Milhaud’s La Création du Monde was inspired by the composer’s trip to Harlem. For this daring ballet work, he drew on a blend of jazz and classical idioms to imagine the creation of the world according to African myths. Few details remain of the original choreography, but Music of Remembrance has commissioned Spectrum Dance Theater’s award-winning Donald Byrd to create a new dance score for this captivating work that evokes the experimental aura of Paris in the 1920s.

Milhaud was part of “Les Six,” a group of six young French composers who shared a reaction to stylistic conventions of their day, and sought clarity, wit, and modernity in their music. Several of them were active in the French resistance under Nazi occupation, and our program features songs in which they and others dared to set eloquent poetic words of protest by banned authors like Louis Aragon and Paul Élouard.

Few artists have fused art and activism as powerfully as Josephine Baker, the legendary singer and dancer who escaped racism in America to become an icon of resistance and freedom in France. We feature chanteuse Jacqueline Tabor in a medley of songs that Baker made famous – songs of love, liberty and an unshakable spirit. 

Featuring:
Spectrum Dance Theater

2025 David Tonkonogui Memorial Award recipient:
Tom Wang, clarinet

Music of Remembrance Ensemble:
Laura DeLuca, clarinet; Mikhail Shmidt, violin; Elisa Barston, violin;
Susan Gulkis Assadi, viola; Walter Gray, cello; Cristina Valdes, piano